Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend

Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend Gregor Townsend Gregor Townsend is one of rugby’s true greats. The most capped Scotland international of all time, a captain of his country and a winning British Lions tourist, Townsend’s time in the game has spanned continents, cultures and the amateur and professional eras. Always worth the admission money, his own story provides a unique perspective on rugby.The game of rugby has taken Gregor Townsend from the Scottish border town of Galashiels to the great playing fields of the world: Twickenham, Stade de France, Newlands, Stadium Australia and Eden Park. No current player can provide as comprehensive and objective a perspective on rugby culture as Townsend.‘Frustratingly mercurial,’ says one expert commentator of Scotland’s most celebrated fly-half. ‘He can empty bars with his brilliance,’ waxes another in contrast. But no-one can question his commitment as a pioneer of the cosmopolitan rugby life.From year-round seasons playing for both Gala and Australian side Warringah, he joined the Ian McGeechan revolution at Northampton – alongside England greats Matt Dawson, Paul Grayson and Tim Rodber – becoming a fan’s favourite. He has featured in some of the biggest matches in the sport – Grand Slam showdowns with England in 1995 and 1996, World Cup quarter-finals in 1999 and 2003 against New Zealand and Australia, British Lions Test victories, and European and French Cup Finals.Along the way, Townsend recounts his experiences of working alongside some of the greats of the world game – Gavin Hastings, Clive Woodward, Martin Johnson, Jonny Wilkinson, Jim Telfer, Ian McGeechan, and many more.He reveals how a team-mate tried to persuade the entire Scottish XV to sign up for rival Kerry Packer’s professional league. He details his shock at being omitted from the 2001 Lions squad, and the infamous 1994 Scotland tour to Argentina where he was blasted for his performances and almost gave up the sport. And he discloses for the first time the controversial circumstances behind his enforced international retirement.From his candid descriptions of the fierce political battles of selection to the events leading to professionalism that almost destroyed union, Gregor Townsend shows what it has meant to have experienced a lifetime playing, thinking and living rugby. Copyright (#ulink_09362a83-093e-5b78-9d6b-942d46fbbf67) HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in 2007 by HarperSport an imprint of HarperCollins London © Gregor Townsend 2007 Gregor Townsend asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication. Source ISBN 9780007251131 Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008140663 Version: 2015-03-13 Dedication (#ulink_7b017b07-c953-528d-8cda-22d8d879b8f5) Dedicated to rugby in the Borders, and the hope that it can rise again. Have you ever stopped and wondered why Border rugby is so strong I’ll tell you how it started, just listen to my song How the Reivers wrought disorder And the rule of law was lame And the Bonnie Scottish Borders became The Kingdom of the Game Frae Gala, Hawick and Melrose The Gospel quickly spread The magic of its spell rose Frae Selkirk don tae Jed Frae Kelsae doon on Tweedside Tae the muckle toon they came And they fought tae find the best toon In the Kingdom of the Game Their features carved in granite Their hearts as stout as stone They won the ball and ran it They made the game their own Now many Border Callants Bring honour and great fame Tae the heartbeat of the Nation Tae the Kingdom of the Game ‘The Kingdom of the game’ (Henry Douglas) Contents Cover (#u8448f285-773e-536e-9955-db68aff3d1ec) Title Page (#uf5054192-1a57-530a-beeb-f5cdce884563) Copyright (#ulink_605b8962-ee4a-523b-a25c-e31985f1c563) Dedication (#ulink_b823956e-783a-5712-8a99-a63da924ea1f) Preface (#ulink_49d7938b-c60d-551b-8711-6f6c1d758513) 1. Borders Crossing (#ulink_e296b472-029a-5528-a9ed-fdfac9b183cc) 2. Odyssey (#ulink_6fb82ab3-40b1-5dfe-982c-9b6c748a6a90) 3. Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina (#ulink_4045b3e0-fd7e-57f9-8750-9db27ef7d4dc) 4. Breakthrough (#ulink_b0aa9f90-a190-5f93-a37c-c67059b3df33) 5. Rebels with a Cause (#litres_trial_promo) 6. Last Orders and First Steps (#litres_trial_promo) 7. Pride of Lions (#litres_trial_promo) 8. Recurving (#litres_trial_promo) 9. Vive la diff?rence! (#litres_trial_promo) 10. Le beau jeu (#litres_trial_promo) 11. Feeling Blue (#litres_trial_promo) 12. Full Circle (#litres_trial_promo) 13. Spirits Lifted: Rugby World Cup 2003 Diary Part 1 (#litres_trial_promo) 14. Breaking Point: Rugby World Cup 2003 Diary Part 2 (#litres_trial_promo) 15. Farewell to All That (#litres_trial_promo) 16. Swimming with Sharks (#litres_trial_promo) 17. State of the Union (#litres_trial_promo) Career Statistics (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo) Photo section (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Preface (#ulink_371736ba-6197-5a5d-9e52-bbb0a0ffcd15) Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember. Oscar Levant 15 September 2006 I suppose we are never angrier than when we feel ourselves to be at fault. In only the third game of this season – my final season – I played as badly as I’ve ever done in my career. I was playing for the Border Reivers down in Wales, and we succumbed to another defeat – this time against the Ospreys. However, my own disappointment was much greater than that of my team-mates. This wasn’t entirely to do with my error-strewn performance. The match also forced me to admit an undeniable truth – my rugby career was all but over. Throughout my career, I would set myself goals of getting into club, Scotland or Lions teams, but my real focus was on trying to improve every time I got my hands on a rugby ball, trying to play the perfect game. A few months previously I had announced publicly – and set as a goal – that I was going to retire at the end of the season. It wasn’t the most positive of targets and for the first time in my career, I began to feel demotivated. Now, showing signs of being unable to reach the standards I had set for myself, I feared that I’d lose the respect of others, never mind my own self-respect. Professional sportsmen never know when the best time is to retire. The preferred option is to ‘go out at the top’, when you are still at the height of your powers. I couldn’t see the logic in that – surely you would want to achieve as much as was possible? Another option is to wait until injuries force you out of the game. My body had been crying ‘enough’ for some time – a broken ankle, torn shoulder ligaments and a cortisone injection in my neck were some of the things I’d faced in the previous two years – but I couldn’t resist working myself back to some sort of match fitness and playing once more. In the weeks following the Ospreys game, I realized just when the right time to take your leave was – when you start to feel that rugby has become a job. When the exciting becomes mundane and challenges mere chores, then it is time to call it a day. My last two years back in Scotland have had precious few highlights, as the overriding memories are of recovering from a stream of injuries and of striving to just make it through the day, whether it was a weights session, rugby training, video analysis or rehab work. At times I was getting by on the bare minimum, and I knew it. It’s not a sentiment I want to associate with the sport I love, especially as I’ve felt blessed at the opportunities that rugby has given me. For the past seventeen years I have been playing, thinking and living rugby. It has taken me from the Scottish Borders to the great playing fields of the world: Twickenham, Stade de France, Lansdowne Road, Stadium Australia and Eden Park. I have crammed in eighty-two Tests for Scotland and two more for the British Lions and I have been in a privileged position to witness the incredible changes that have taken place in the game over the last two decades, as rugby has transformed into a fully professional sport. I have also been in the unique situation of playing club rugby in five different countries, and my experiences in France, South Africa, England, Australia and Scotland have not just helped my rugby but enriched my life. Rugby has given me so much and has had a hold over me for over half of my life. I’ve found the game compelling and, if given a choice, I wouldn’t have wanted to play any other sport. I believe that, at its best, there isn’t another sport that comes close in terms of excitement, commitment and spectacle. Rugby demands bravery from its players and can contain unforgettable moments of individual brilliance and equally momentous passages of immense team effort. What is it that gives rugby its special qualities? For me it’s no single thing, but the sum of its wonderfully diverse parts – its history, its personalities and its camaraderie. One of the best quotes I’ve heard about rugby was from a TV interview with Philippe Sella I saw when I was playing in France. He said that to be a true rugby player you have ‘to take the game, but not yourself seriously’. Most of the people I have met during my rugby career would fit this description, although it seems to be less of a prerequisite now that the sport has been chiselled down from a fun-loving amateur game to a hard-nosed, image-conscious professional sport. Throughout the book you will see that I am an avid collector of quotes. I can only apologize for borrowing from others so much, but as Michel de Montaigne once said, ‘I quote others only the better to express myself.’ My rugby career has been a series of experiences and lessons and it has been the main source of my misery and joy. I’ve had highs and lows, triumphs and disappointments and through playing for Scotland and the Lions I have experienced the whole range of sporting emotions. The spine-tingling combination of fear and excitement before an international match is something you don’t experience in other walks of life. There is a sense of adrenaline and anticipation that is the equivalent of arriving at church on your wedding day; the moments before you turn over an exam paper; and attending a job interview – all rolled into one. It is something I will yearn for each year come the Six Nations. There have been times when I’ve been able to step out of the moment and see that rugby has taken me to the pinnacle of sporting intensity and achievement. These are memories that stay with you forever, private recollections that make you realize how lucky you are. Standing facing an All Black ‘Haka’ with hundreds of camera flashes going off around the stadium made me aware how far-reaching the game had become. And I’ll never forget standing arm-in-arm with my Lions colleagues at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town as we approached kick-off time in the First Test. It was a balmy evening and there was a gentle breeze in the air. I was incredibly focused, but I felt myself become an onlooker as the crowd began to sing the new South African anthem ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’. It is a beautiful, mesmerizing song and I couldn’t help but hum along with the thousands of proud supporters as I realized that this was going to be one of the most significant nights of my life. In addition to the memories, it is the people you meet over your career that make it all the more special. There are too many to mention but rugby seems to have so many ‘good guys’ – people like Derek Stark, Neil Jenkins, Tabai Matson, Jason Leonard, Anthony Hill, Carl Hogg, Tony Stanger, Francois Duboisset, Lisandro Arbizu, Semo Sititi and A. J. Venter. This book is a tribute to these and the many others that have helped me over the years. In putting this book together, I’ve been reminded of just how many people have been involved in my journey, and I would like to thank those, especially my family, who have shared in and contributed to the many wonderful times I’ve experienced. There will no doubt be many occasions in the future that I will be wishing I was still part of a squad on tour or preparing for a Test match somewhere, but the thing I’ll miss most is the vision of a scrum-half fizzing a pass through the air into my outstretched arms, and the thrill of running on to that ball with a world of possibilities stretched out in front of me. CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_035553fe-ff29-5a06-af46-a0cf5da52402) Borders Crossing (#ulink_035553fe-ff29-5a06-af46-a0cf5da52402) Inspiration starts with aspiration. Mary Lyon Craig, my brother, was inconsolable. He was trying hard to hold back the tears. I asked him what had happened. ‘Someone’s called off – I’m going to have to tell the others we can’t play.’ For the previous month he’d been organizing a team to enter the Ward Sevens – the highlight of the rugby calendar for any Gala youth. He had managed to recruit six of his mates from the ‘ward’ we lived in – a ward being a designated area of the town – but he had just found out on the morning of his big day that one of the team was down with the flu. He couldn’t enter a side with six players and so his hopes of winning the 1980 Under-10 trophy seemed lost. I saw an opportunity and I wasn’t going to let it pass me by. ‘Dad, if I play then there would still be a team.’ ‘No chance – you’ve never played a game of rugby before.’ ‘But I’ve run about with Craig’s friends lots of times.’ ‘No.’ Since the age of five I had been going to mini-rugby sessions on a Sunday morning and had joined in with the older boys who played touch rugby in the dead-ball area of Netherdale after Gala matches had ended. I knew I would be fine in my brother’s team. For the next ten minutes I pleaded with my parents to allow me to take part. I had just turned seven years old and they were obviously very reluctant to let me play. However, faced with two screaming kids, it wasn’t long before we persuaded them to change their minds. Craig was given instructions that I was to be picked as a winger and only involved in play as a last resort. As I ran out on the Netherdale pitch on a sun-drenched afternoon, the day’s events flashed by. My mum said it was comical – it looked like everyone else was a foot taller than me. I only received two passes throughout the day, but she said I got a huge cheer both times I touched the ball. We went on to win the tournament and I remember spending the evening taking the trophy round the houses in our ward. And so, in the same weekend that Mount St Helens erupted in North America, my love affair with the game began. I was brought up in the town of Galashiels (or ‘Gala’ as it is better known locally), which is situated right at the very heart of the Scottish Borders. It is a busy town on the A7 road from Edinburgh to Carlisle and lies in the bottom of the steep-sided valley of the Gala Water, a mile upstream from its confluence with the River Tweed. Other Borderers from rival towns sometimes disparagingly call Gala people ‘pail mercs’. This refers to us being – allegedly – the last town in the Borders to get indoor plumbing, thus leaving ‘pail mercs’ (local dialect for ‘bucket marks’) on the backsides of those using the outside toilets. I have myself been abused as a ‘pail merc’ – (amongst other things) at Mansfield Park in Hawick. Gala folk much prefer to be known as ‘Braw Lads or Lasses’. The Braw Lads Gathering in late June is one of several summer festivals in the Borders and is the focal point of the local calendar, with hundreds of horse riders marking boundaries around the town. The day also commemorates the town’s history, notably an incident in 1337 when a party of English soldiers, resting nearby after picking and eating wild plums that had made them ill, were surprised and defeated by a band of locals. I’m amazed Mel Gibson hasn’t made the story into a film yet! Borders history has long been closely tied to the fluctuating fortunes of the textile trade, which used to be far larger than it is today. There has been a steady decline since the Second World War and the many woollen mills that once proliferated in towns like Gala and Hawick have now all but disappeared. The local communities thrived during the nineteenth century, the height of textile boom. In Gala alone there was a population increase from 1,600 in 1825 to 18,000 by 1891 – nearly 4,000 more people than live in the town today. Efforts at establishing a more balanced economy by introducing electronics factories in the town in the 1960s have also seen a reversal in fortunes over the last ten years, with most employers relocating to Asia. However, the area’s future now seems to be on more of an upward curve. The Waverley Line – the train link from Edinburgh that was lost in 1969 – will be reinstalled in 2011 and the trend for young people to leave the Borders to seek work and opportunities elsewhere in the UK is much less pronounced nowadays. This might be to do with house prices being much lower than in Edinburgh, but it has created a positive vibe about the Borders once again. I suppose most people would describe their upbringing as ‘normal’. Looking back, there was nothing out of the ordinary with my childhood. Life was constructed around the pillars of family, school, church, work and sport. My personal beliefs come from my family. I believe that I formulated all my values from them. My parents stressed the importance of being humble, modest and never taking things for granted. My dad has always been my rugby conscience. He will notice a missed tackle or a poor bit of play that others would not have seen and is quick to remind me that I can always make improvements to my game. Only hearing positive things about yourself might seem more pleasant, but avoiding the truth won’t make you a better player. I remember early on in my career that he hadn’t spoken to me about an upcoming international, which I thought was strange. But on match day, when I got my boots out of my bag, I found little notes just saying ‘concentration’. From my mum I have inherited other qualities: a desire to please and not to let anyone down. She is an eternal optimist and has been incredibly supportive to my brother and me in everything we have done. Whilst I’ve realized that you can’t please everyone, I would still like to aim to reach her standards of being good natured and helpful with everyone she meets. Craig was a talented centre who played a few seasons for Gala and Exeter, although golf has always been his preferred sport. One of my proudest moments came when I caddied for him in the Scottish Amateur Championship, even though he went out in the quarter-finals. He’s also responsible for our family recently having to make the unusual adjustment of supporting the ‘Auld Enemy’ – after spending some time working for the RFU as an Academy Manager, Craig is now the manager of the England Sevens team. My dad was a print setter for a local paper – The Southern Reporter – before becoming an estimator for a printing firm in Gala. My mum still works today as a library assistant at the Borders campus of Heriot-Watt University, less than 100 yards from Netherdale, home of Gala rugby club and the Border Reivers. Our house was on the west side of the town near the summit of Gala hill, which I’ve recently found out has a tenuous link to the film Braveheart. In 1296 William Wallace pursued the Earl of Dunbar – who had betrayed him to the English – to the top of the hill, where the Earl had taken refuge. I am descended from rugby stock – my dad played in the centre for Gala and twice for the South. His father, John, was also a centre, but was forced to move from Gala to Melrose in the Thirties due to the presence at the time of Scotland international Doddie Wood in the side. My mum might not have such a direct rugby lineage, but it is impressive all the same. Her second cousin was the late Jock Turner, a classy midfielder for Gala and Scotland in the Sixties, and one of five players from the club to have played for the Lions. My folks have a strong work ethic – a common trait in Borders people. I suppose I must have inherited some of this, as my paper round was the toughest in Gala, reaching 102 papers a day at one point. On one occasion I was even waiting to pick up my papers before the shop owner had arrived. As I sat outside the paper shop I saw my dad approach, looking slightly bedraggled. ‘What do you think you’re doing here?’ ‘I was going to ask you the same question – I’m waiting for the shop to open.’ ‘Have you seen what time it is?’ In my zombie-like state of semi-consciousness, I hadn’t checked my watch that morning. I looked up at the town clock, which loomed large over us. It was 3 a.m. I was four hours early. Fortunately my dad had been awoken by the noise of the door shutting as I’d set out on my very early shift. I made a mental note to check that I set my alarm properly before I went to bed. I have two images of my young self. The first, prior to enrolling at Galashiels Academy, is of a manic, sports-mad, stubborn, attention-seeking lad prone to a tantrum or three – basically a parent’s nightmare. The second image is of a shy, solitary and curious boy uneasy with handling praise. Later I became more geared to using humour rather than bravado to get people’s attention. I still like to get the last word but this second description is much more in line with my present character. My parents were a huge influence in helping me get involved in as many sports as I could squeeze into my days. At twelve years old, newly enrolled at Galashiels Academy, I played rugby on Saturday for the school first year team. Then, every Sunday, Mum and Dad ferried me up and down the A7 to play football for Hutchison Vale, a renowned boys club in Edinburgh. John Collins, another Gala lad, also turned out for Hutchie at the same time as me, but for their Under-18 side. He was a much more talented footballer and went on to captain Scotland – in the same month that I captained the Scotland rugby team – during an illustrious playing career. In the summer I shared my time between playing golf and cricket and competing for Melrose Athletics Club. At other times of the year Craig and I would turn to other sports – these ranged from marking out a chalk tennis court on the road outside our house to creating a jumping course (usually when The Horse of the Year Show was on TV) in the woods nearby. Sometimes I didn’t need anyone else to keep my sporting obsession going. There would be many a night I’d kick a football against a wall beside our garage, or take my misshapen orange Mitre rugby ball and practise drop-kicks and up-and-unders. I must have been happy in my own company as this usually evolved into a match, passing to myself and side-stepping past some imaginary defenders. I became stand-off for Scotland against a world XV, honing my Bill McLaren-from-the-commentary-box impersonation as I scored yet another try. I did the same at golf, often playing the top nine holes at the local Ladhope course with four balls and commentating on each shot as I pitted myself against the likes of Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros and Sandy Lyle. Perhaps speaking to yourself on a regular basis isn’t that great an idea, but I’d choose it over today’s ‘PlayStation generation’ who spend an inordinate amount of time indoors watching television or playing video games. I also have to thank my parents for making me attend the Boys Brigade. This created a foundation that was very worthwhile because of the discipline the BB instilled – like going for badges, keeping the uniform clean for weekly inspection and working as a team. During my teenage years when there were many other distractions, I hardly ever missed a Friday night parade or a Sunday Bible class and I went on to gain the Queen’s badge, the Brigade’s highest honour. I came under the influence of some excellent role models like Al Christie and Riddell Graham – people who had given up their time to help others. It wasn’t all hard work and for me, it was an excellent outlet for my competitive nature. We competed against other battalions in the Borders at things like drill, table tennis and cross-country. But my personal highlight was a game called ‘Murder Ball’, which we played each week. It was really just a raw form of rugby played indoors, but because of the confined space and hard floors it was sometimes more physical than the real thing. I was, as you may have guessed, a fairly competitive youngster, although winning itself wasn’t the sole motivation for me. I just wanted a chance to be out there doing some sort of sport and I was forever organizing games of football during break time at school. Looking back I must have taken this just a little too seriously. As there was only one rugby tournament – the Ward Sevens – for primary school children at the time, I concentrated my efforts on getting teams together for the handful of football five-a-side competitions that were held during the year. I remember arranging trials and selection meetings and even doing a poll with everyone in the school – St Peter’s Primary – to decide what would be the best name for the side. I had obviously come up with the two or three names that were on the ballot sheet. For the record, ‘Liverpool Lads’, ‘Rangers Reserves’ and ‘Tottenham Toddlers’ were the options. Not the most inspiring of choices I must admit. Probably because I played more football at primary school and then went on to play on a weekly basis in Edinburgh, I was much more committeed to football than to any other sport. I loved playing for Hutchison Vale and went with them on a tour to Holland, although I never really felt part of the football scene as all my team-mates were from Edinburgh and I couldn’t make the midweek training sessions. Moving to Gala Academy meant that there were now weekly games of rugby to get stuck into and although I still harboured dreams of being a dual international for Scotland, I knew something would have to give. The following season saw the end of my football career as the games changed from Sundays to Saturdays and I had to decide which sport I would have to sacrifice. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make and probably the correct one – I had started at Hutchie Vale as a striker but ended up as a defensive midfielder, running all day but not possessing enough skilful touches to make it as a professional. By that stage I was also a huge fan of the Scotland rugby team. I had first been to a Murrayfield international in 1982 – there had been a record crowd that day and my dad had to hold me above his head to avoid the crush outside the stadium. Being a Rangers supporter as well, I’d been to Tynecastle to watch them play Hearts and also to Hampden to see them play Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup Final. Whilst it was great to see my heroes like Ally McCoist and Davie Cooper close up, there was an unpleasant edge to watching football games at the time. The atmosphere was very threatening and was probably one reason why my dad had bought us tickets for the Aberdeen end at Hampden. However, the Aberdeen supporters were just as abusive as the raucous Rangers fans packed into the other end of the ground, and what made matters worse was that I was too scared to celebrate any of Rangers’ goals when they went on to win the match on penalties. Having spent my youth watching Scotland win two Grand Slams in the space of six years, it is something of a disappointment to have been a member of the Scotland team for eleven years and not to add to this total. I suppose playing in the side that were crowned the last-ever Five Nations champions in 1999 is a pretty good recompense, but that year’s narrow defeat at Twickenham grates a little more with each passing year. However, I remain convinced that I helped Scotland topple the French in 1984. With France leading 6–3 at half-time and their key players like captain Jean-Pierre Rives, stand-off Jean-Patrick Lescarboura and full-back Serge Blanco growing in influence, a Scottish Grand Slam was looking less and less likely. Sitting in the schoolboys enclosure, I repeated a prayer throughout the second half. I urged God to grant my wish of a Scotland victory, and I wrote ‘Scotland win’ and ‘Scotland Grand Slam’ over and over again with my finger on the wooden bench upon which I was perched. My prayers were answered as Jim Calder scored the decisive try, diving over at a lineout after the French failed to control the ball. The media later described the score as a brilliant piece of instinctive play by Calder. I still think there was an element of divine intervention involved. The year 1984 was an inspirational one for Scottish rugby supporters and I had been hooked all that season as the team worked its way to the Grand Slam. The 32–9 hammering of the Irish was their best game of the championship, with my favourite player, Roy Laidlaw, scoring two tries. As two Gala players were at the heart of that season’s successes, it resonated even more. Captain Jim Aitken scored the match-winning try in Cardiff and full-back Peter Dods kicked seventeen points in the win over the French. A couple of days after the decider against France, just after I had started that morning’s paper round, I remember seeing Peter Dods in the dark, an electrician by trade, also beginning his working day. This was a fairly normal occurrence – such was the nature of the amateur game and also the number of internationalists living and working in the Borders. The abundance of rugby knowledge in the area was plain to see and I was lucky that I had been able to come under the influence of some very astute teachers. After being invited to attend a summer sports school, I had sessions from Jim Telfer and Jim Renwick, one of the best ever Scottish players. He showed us how to use a hand-off and how to accelerate into the tackle – advice that I still draw on to this day. I also tried to watch and imitate those who played in my position, which is the best and fastest way to learn a sport. Although I had started as a scrum-half, I was now certain that stand-off was the best position to play. Watching the 1984 Grand Slam video, I noticed that when he was kicking to touch, John Rutherford placed his right hand underneath the ball, not on top as I had been previously taught. This adjustment, and later copying how Craig Chalmers struck his drop kicks, helped my kicking game immeasurably. I remember getting up in the middle of the night with my dad and my brother to watch Scotland play France in the opening game of the 1987 World Cup. As well as desperately hoping for a Scottish win, I was also starting to imagine myself running out in the future as a Scotland player. I played sufficiently well to be selected for Scotland Under-15 against Wales Under-15 in 1988. I know it might sound clich?d, but the first time I wore the Scottish jersey was a hugely uplifting experience: something about the blue jersey made me swell up with pride. My performance in the game itself wasn’t anything special, and we lost 23–6 in front of a large Borders crowd. I hadn’t exactly frozen on this elevated stage, but I hadn’t done anything that suggested I’d attain any higher honours in the game. It wasn’t until a year later that I convinced myself I could make it to the highest level. And on top of that, this epiphany came during a match in which I was on the wrong end of a fifty-point hammering. I managed to get picked for the South Schools team at the end of that season and even though Midlands Schools beat us heavily, I knew then that playing against better players only improved my own game. My build may have been more akin to the gable end of a crisp, but I played really well and scored two tries, one of them a longrange effort. That season had seen a major improvement to my game, mainly because I was playing two, sometimes three, matches every weekend. Most people will probably agree with the maxim that being grown up isn’t half as much fun as growing up. This is certainly true in terms of my rugby career. The pressures, frustrations and emotional swings involved in professional rugby were not evident back when I was fifteen years old. Although my limbs were usually aching by the time I clambered into a bath on a Sunday night, I couldn’t wait to play the following weekend. On a Saturday morning I was now turning out for the senior side at the Academy and the following day I played for the Gala Red Triangle, which ran an Under-16 team. After a couple of months of the season, Craig asked me if I would be interested in also playing for the Under-18 side, the Gala Wanderers, who played on Saturday afternoons. The last time I had played with my brother was eight years previously and my parents had feared for my well-being. This time around they let me decide if I was ready. I soon became a regular and playing alongside my brother was a thrill, especially when we won most of the sevens tournaments at the end of the season. These early games for Gala Wanderers were an essential part of my rugby education. Physically inferior to the other players, I had to use pace and evasion to get past opponents. There was also a much rougher edge to youth rugby than I’d been experiencing at school – my first game against Selkirk Youth Club ended up in a mass brawl that even involved some of our replacements on the touchline. It showed me that you could never afford to take a backward step in rugby. I also received some excellent guidance from our coaches, Johnny Gray and Arthur ‘Hovis’ Brown. Enthusiasm is a crucial characteristic for any successful coach. This is even more the case when coaching youngsters. Johnny and Hovis had this in spades, and it was such a joy to train and play for them. They are real characters, full of banter and proud Gala men. Being coached by them made you feel you were part of something much bigger. I used to love hearing their stories. They also knew the game inside out – Johnny having coached the South to victory over Australia in 1984, and Hovis being full-back for Scotland in the Seventies before Andy Irvine came on the scene. We were never dictated to or told to play in a certain way and I’m sure this freedom was a major help in enabling us to win the Scottish youth title at Murrayfield the following season. We had some really promising players like Mark Ballantyne, Greig Crosbie, Alan Bell and Alan Johnstone, but our antics must have driven the coaches mad at times. One night after a heavy snowfall they still wanted us to train – instead we went outside and built a snowman and then pelted them with snowballs. I’m sure Johnny was wishing he was still preparing to play the likes of Mark Ella and David Campese. Like anyone else in Scotland, on 17 March 1990 I was celebrating the fact that we had beaten England to win the Grand Slam. Everything about that day at Murrayfield was a credit to the values of Scottish rugby at the time: humility, passion, graft and togetherness. Four days later I felt very privileged to run out on the same ground to play in the Schools Cup Final against St Aloysius. In fact during the next month I played on five occasions at Murrayfield. I had made it into the Scotland Schools side and we played three matches at the ground, together with a match against Ireland at Lansdowne Road. Unfortunately, all four games were lost. The Schools Cup Final had also ended up in a defeat and left me with an embarrassing reminder each time I returned to the home of Scottish rugby. Before the match we were in the home dressing room, a vast area underneath the old West Stand. As was the tradition at the time, we had a pre-match ‘psych up’, which involved slapping our legs and faces then grabbing someone and wrestling with them. With memories of David Sole leading out his troops the previous Saturday, we were all pumped up. On the way out, in a rush of adrenalin, I kicked the door to the changing room. Unfortunately, my boot went right through the plywood, leaving a sizable hole. Each time I returned over the next few weeks, I was racked with guilt. Just as well the West Stand has now been replaced or I think the SRU would probably come looking for some compensation! Following the success of Gala Wanderers in winning the national title at Murrayfield, I came under the radar of the Gala selectors. This I know, because my dad was still one of the selectors at the time. He had told me they wanted to give me a run at the end of that season, when I was still sixteen years old, but both he and my school coach, Rob Moffat, were not keen on the idea so it never happened. I had enjoyed an outing for Gala in the Kelso Sevens a few months later, but I presumed my final year at the Academy would be spent once again playing for the school in the morning and the Wanderers in the afternoon. That was how things were panning out until we broke up for the October holidays. For a Borders youngster with a talent for sport, rugby was seen as the only true way to express your natural abilities. I grew up in the golden age of Borders rugby. We had some great ambassadors for the area – people like Gary Armstrong, Roy Laidlaw, John Jeffrey and John Rutherford – all of whom successfully blended courage, modesty and skill. The Scottish League officially started in 1973, the year I was born. Between then and 1990, the year I made my debut for Gala, there was only one occasion when a non-Borders team won the championship. So, when I was asked if I would be available to play for Gala in their league match away to Stirling County, I jumped at the chance. A club’s tradition and history are what make it special. If the club is also your home town, it makes it something to aspire to be a part of. Even though it had been a few years since Gala’s run of three championship titles in the early Eighties, at the start of the Nineties the side still had a reputation of being a tough team to play against. They invariably finished in the top half of the table. One key difference that separated Gala from the likes of Hawick or Melrose was that they lacked a ruthless streak and a sizeable forward pack. However, Gala possessed many talented individuals. Players like Ian Corcoran, John Amos, Mark Moncrieff and Mike Dods were some of the most skilful in the country and were on the fringes of the Scottish squad. However, it was the more experienced players like Hamish Hunter, Peter Dods and Dave Bryson that I turned to as I prepared for my first match at that level. Brideghaugh, Stirling’s home ground, was almost completely waterlogged after some torrential rain, but the game went ahead. We went on to lose 12–10, but I’d put in a decent enough performance. I relished the step up in intensity and the fact that everyone was taking things seriously. There had been times when I felt that there weren’t many of my teammates at school or youth level who cared that much about rugby. This time, however, I could see the guys were visibly upset at not coming away with a win. The Gala players had been great with me and were already talking about next week’s fixture as if I’d be playing. Although Gala’s traditional rivals had always been Hawick, it was Melrose – just four miles away – who had emerged as the team we most desperately wanted to beat. Melrose set the benchmark in Scottish club rugby, and would go on to repeat the feats of Hawick who had dominated the championship in the Seventies and early Eighties. Well marshalled by their inspirational coach Jim Telfer, they were aggressive and relentless up front and had halfbacks who knew how to control a game. One of those half-backs was Scotland standoff Craig Chalmers, who had played for the Lions and won a Grand Slam in the previous eighteen months. I was due to face him on his home turf in only my second game for Gala. Against the odds, we defeated the reigning champions 19–15 in a game that was much more open than it had been at Stirling. I had a pretty mixed game, making some good breaks but also missing tackles and struggling with my restarts. I once read in a coaching manual that the biggest room in the house was the room for improvement and that definitely applied to my game – I knew I had many things to work on. That was why I had already decided I would return to play for the school team the following weekend. I thought it would be a better way to work on my basic skills, as well as offering a chance to finally win the Scottish Cup after two Final defeats in a row. Later, some said that my return to schoolboy rugby had been bad for my game. They said that as I had continued to dominate games bad habits had developed. For years I would have argued with this sentiment. I worked very hard on my kicking and passing under the expert eye of Rob Moffat, often spending lunch hours during the week out on the pitch. I also achieved my goal of captaining the Scottish Schools team and leading Gala Academy – finally – to a Scottish Cup success. However, my form a year later, when I became established in the Gala side, was not as good as I expected. Part of the reason was a frustration borne from being unable to find holes as easily as I had done at Under-18 level. Throughout my career I have always felt my game has improved every time I’ve had to make a step-up to a better standard of rugby, but it wasn’t immediately obvious that I had made real progress in my first season of senior rugby. Although my last season at school was very enjoyable, maybe I should have decided to stay with Gala after the win at Melrose. Near the end of the season, I managed to play the odd game for the club and made it into the side for the 100th Gala Sevens, which attracted international teams such as Canada and Fiji. Despite incessant rain, thousands turned out at Netherdale and they were treated to a wonderful exhibition of sevens rugby from the South Sea Islanders. The annual sevens season in the Borders is the region’s rugby heartbeat, and the five spring tournaments are still an established part of Borders life. The abbreviated form of the game was the brainchild of Ned Haig, a butcher from Melrose, where the first ever sevens tournament took place in 1883. Melrose Sevens today draws crowds of up to 15,000 and it was a pity and a mistake that the SRU did not give the town the right to host the Scotland leg of the IRB Sevens circuit. The 1991/92 season – my first full season with Gala – was delayed because of the Rugby World Cup. This coincided with my first weeks at Edinburgh University where I’d enrolled to study history and politics. The season started well as we got our revenge on Stirling, winning 31–9. I made a break that led to a try and featured Kenny Logan falling for an outrageous dummy that was shown on the BBC’s Rugby Special as part of their intro for the next few years, much to Kenny’s irritation. Gala were undefeated going into December as we prepared for the biggest game of the season, at home to Melrose. This was one of two matches in a month that got me a reputation for being brilliant one minute, lousy the next. It was a bitterly cold day and the pitch was barely playable from an overnight frost. This hadn’t deterred 5,000 supporters turning up at Netherdale. Melrose made a dream start to the contest, galloping away to a 28–3 lead after only twenty minutes. Apart from a try from their hooker Steve Scott, the other three Melrose scores all came from mistakes by yours truly. I learned some harsh lessons as a bout of nervousness led to two fumbles and a loose pass. A paralysing feeling had enveloped me but I came back to score a cracking try late in the first half. We lost 28–16 and, although I was devastated by the start I had made, I knew that once I had recovered my composure I had played really well. James Joyce once remarked that mistakes are the portals of discovery – I discovered that day that temperament is a key factor in achieving sporting success. I thought that the Melrose game might have dampened down the expectations that had been building up around my play, but less than two weeks later and after only three months of senior rugby, I was selected to play for Scotland ‘B’ against Ireland. At eighteen years old, I was set to become the youngest ever B cap. I spent a week giving press interviews and being photographed for the Scottish papers. I remember one dodgy photo I had to have taken with my dad, which for some strange reason involved us both cleaning my golf clubs. An article appeared in the Daily Telegraph that had the headline ‘Scot set to rival Barry John’. It quoted John Jeffrey as saying I was Scotland’s ‘outstanding hope for the future’. The Telegraph had even managed to get in touch with Barry John himself: ‘I have only seen him on video and heard rumours. Although I wouldn’t want to burden the boy with unnecessary expectations, there is clearly no limit to what he might achieve.’ While flattering, I found it daft and I believed that it was both a reflection of the state of the game (which at the time was dominated by kicking) as well as a lack of rugby stories since the end of the World Cup. It was nice to hear illustrious people say such things, but all I wanted to do was play and improve – expectations weren’t in my control. There’s a quote from Henry Ford that you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. I wanted to be judged on how I was performing in the present, not on whatever potential I had. All I could do was remind people that I hadn’t done anything to justify this talk, remind them of my mistakes; and together with the media I helped build up my image of being ‘prone to errors’. The irony is that I spent the last few years of my career trying to tell them I wasn’t prone to errors after all. For the B international we stayed in Edinburgh’s opulent Balmoral Hotel, which was in a different world to the room I had been given that year in the university halls of residence in the same city. My room was G1 – something I wouldn’t forget in a hurry. G1 meant the first room on the ground floor, situated next to the main entrance of the halls. This frequently meant I’d get a restless sleep as drunken students arrived back at various times through the night talking loudly or singing. This wasn’t as bad, though, as the times I would hear a knock on my window, followed by the request, ‘Could you open the main door? Sorry, I’ve forgotten my key.’ It drove me mad. I lapped up the luxury of the Balmoral and felt that this was a much better way to prepare for a game. A few of the Scotland team were congregating in the hotel lobby as I wandered about after dinner. ‘Toony, you want to come for a walk along Princes Street with us? It’s a tradition the night before a big match, and it’ll help you sleep later.’ One of the others suppressed a laugh at this, but I couldn’t see what the joke was. I agreed to join them for a leisurely walk. We were a group of around half-a-dozen, all from the Borders, which was comforting to me – not just the fact that I knew the other players, but in that I presumed that Borders rugby guys would know how to best prepare for a match. After making it to the end of Princes Street we skirted by the Castle on our way to the Grassmarket. Up ahead, my Gala team-mate Gary Isaac shouted back to me, ‘We’re stopping at the next pub for a drink, before we turn back to the hotel. It’s just a lemonade – you coming with us?’ ‘Of course’, I replied. I didn’t want to walk back on my own and everyone else seemed keen to get into the pub, in fact they seemed to start walking more quickly than before. We had walked up a hill at the end of the Grassmarket into darker territory. We stopped and were now facing three pubs, all of which did not look the most salubrious of establishments. What I later realized was that we had been drawn into Edinburgh’s ersatz red-light district – affectionately known by locals as the ‘pubic triangle’. This had not happened by coincidence. Within seconds of entering the bar, most of my teammates were seated next to the stage where a stripper was well into her routine. Like any hormonal teenager finding himself surrounded by half-naked women, I was initially in a state of shock. I tried my best to relax, and after ten minutes it’s fair to say my mind was no longer on the fact that I was making my debut for Scotland B the following day. Just then the door to the bar swung open and in walked the three members of the Scotland management team. We had been busted and thoughts were running through my head that we’d be sent back to our clubs for a lack of professionalism. However, it turned out that the Scotland management had arrived not on a search and rescue mission, but clearly with more personal agendas. We quickly made our excuses and left, although we couldn’t shout to one of our team-mates at the other end of the bar. We left him stranded, beer in one hand, stripper in the other. Curiously, neither players nor management ever mentioned the incident again. The next day I played a game that was almost the reverse of my performance for Gala against Melrose. On this occasion, I played some of my best rugby to date for the first sixty minutes. I don’t think I had ever kicked as long and as accurately, and my half-back partnership with Andy Nicol was going very well. However, just after the hour mark I committed an absolute howler, which saw the Irish take the lead for the first time. From a scrum near the halfway line I called a pretty standard backline move called ‘Dummy rangi, rangi’. This may sound like something that is shouted at a toddler’s birthday party, but all it involved was that I ran across the field with my inside-centre dummying the outside centre before I finally gave the ball to the full-back on a scissors pass. However, for whatever reason, full-back Mark Appleson stayed out wide as I took off on my lateral run. In attempting to show him that he was supposed to be running towards me, I stuck out the ball in one hand. Irish centre Martin Ridge didn’t need a second invitation and stole the ball from my fingertips to run in unopposed from fifty yards. In hindsight, this was not my wisest career move to date. Just to rub salt in the wound, I dropped a ball close to my goal-line near the end of the game – another mistake which resulted in an Irish try. We lost the match 29–19. Press cuttings now began to appear with words like ‘mercurial’ and ‘enigmatic’ used to describe my game. These were to stay with me for the rest of my career. After the disappointments of the Irish match I had the chance to bounce back immediately as I was selected at stand-off in the National Trial for the Reds (possibles) against the Blues (probables). We blitzed the shadow Scotland team, winning 27–18, and my performance exorcized a few of my Murrayfield demons. While I was probably still too raw to have any chance of being included in the Five Nations, it was now obvious that rugby had become an integral part of my life. And more than that, it was about to take me all over the world. CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_0f61f60f-a25f-546a-8457-e19b2745e055) Odyssey (#ulink_0f61f60f-a25f-546a-8457-e19b2745e055) Life is far too important to take seriously. Oscar Wilde ‘Benzo – Where are you?’ There was no response. Grudgingly, I picked up the sledgehammer once again and looked at the wall in front of me. I could have done with some help, and I cursed my workmate, Benzo (Stuart Bennett), under my breath. Covered in a thick coat of sweat that only a humid Australian afternoon can generate, I tried to knock right through the wall. I failed miserably. After a few more whacks, I’d only made a small hole. We had been told that we’d be able to rip at the plasterboard once a gap appeared, so I dropped the sledgehammer and went at it with my hands. Eventually, I saw some daylight. I relaxed in the knowledge that it would be much easier work from now on. Almost immediately, Benzo’s head appeared through the hole I’d made. I recoiled in shock and he burst out laughing. But it wasn’t him that had given me the fright. Instead, my acute alarm was down to the swarm of huge cockroaches pouring out of the new opening. Benzo was not smiling for long. This was the glamour of my first season playing abroad. In the two years after leaving school, I discovered very quickly how richly rewarding a successful rugby career could be. These were the amateur days so there was no financial return, but opportunities abounded. Within this period rugby had taken me to Australia, Hong Kong, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, France, Italy, Spain and Dubai. This was a time when enjoyment was almost as important as winning – an ethos that underpinned the amateur game. It was also when I made the most improvements to my play as I absorbed the lessons and benefits from what felt like an endless succession of amazing adventures – a rugby odyssey. After the high of beating a Blues side led by Gavin Hastings at Murrayfield, I was selected once more for Scotland B, this time in Albi against the French. Despite losing 27–18, we competed well and my own game was solid and mercifully error-free. It had been the last chance for players outside the Five Nations squad to impress the selectors in an attempt to win a place on the summer tour to Australia. Although I was never really in the running to play for the senior team that spring, being a part of the Scottish Students squad for their Five Nations Championship was just as challenging – and much more fun! John Rutherford coached the side – a bonus for me as ‘Rud’ was rightly regarded as the best number 10 Scotland had ever produced. He gave me little tips like how to kick into the wind, but the best thing for me was the fact I had a coach who was a former stand-off. I felt that we viewed the game from the same perspective, which helped me no end. It was also obvious that Rud’s temperament must have been a major reason he had performed so well at the highest level. I was starting to discover that being relaxed in pressure situations was a better way to succeed than getting so pumped that you tighten up. Rud was always very laid-back and an ideal coach for a team like the Students, who could be a wild bunch at times. After losing to a strong England Students team, we went to Dublin for our second game of the tournament. As we had only met a few hours before the game the week before, we didn’t know how rigorous our match preparations would be before the Irish game. After our arrival, the captain, Graham McKee, announced to the squad that we would meet in the hotel bar to talk things through for the following day’s match. It seemed like we were taking a much more detailed approach to our preparations this time around. Once the squad had assembled, McKee stressed to us the importance of beating the Irish: ‘Guys, we may have a talented squad but it’s no use if we can’t get a win tomorrow. I think I know how we might be able to do that.’ He had our attention. Just then he turned round and nodded to the barman: ‘Two compulsory pints of Guinness for everyone!! No one is allowed to leave until they have finished them both.’ Such was the hedonistic atmosphere surrounding the Students Five Nations – bonding together was as important as training together. We didn’t take ourselves seriously at all, but we went out onto the pitch prepared to die for one another. Unfortunately, this sometimes wasn’t enough. Going into the last five minutes of the match against Ireland, McKee asked the referee, Irishman John Cole, what the score was. He replied that we were trailing 21–19. The next time we got hold of the ball we broke through the Irish defence and scored. As a try was still only worth four points, we believed we were now leading 21–23. However, something didn’t seem right – both teams began kicking the ball into touch at any opportunity. Mr Cole had in fact got his sums wrong, as we had actually been 21–16 in arrears prior to our late score. Much to the puzzlement of the Irish, our front-row celebrated the score with ‘victory’ leaps that, in retrospect, must have looked distinctly out of place. The following afternoon I stood on the terracing at Lansdowne Road with the thousands of other travelling Scots, thankful for the many hip-flasks of whisky that were being passed around to keep us warm. It was great to play a form of international rugby and then experience the real thing the next day from a supporters’ point of view. There weren’t many better sporting occasions in the world than a Five Nations weekend in Dublin. Our match against the Welsh had been yet another narrow loss, this time played in driving rain at Llanelli’s Stradey Park. We soon forgot about the result. At the after-match dinner, just as things were starting to get out of control, one of the Welsh players announced it was a tradition at Llanelli to get hit over the head with a metal beer tray. Phil May, the ex-Llanelli and Wales second row shouted in agreement and picked up a tray and whacked one of the Welsh players. He then turned to us and said someone had to do the same to him. For whatever reason, I was unanimously voted as being that someone. Tentatively I took the beer tray and gently tapped Phil May’s bald head. My feeble effort was met by howls of derision and I was urged to do it again – this time with feeling. I didn’t hold back, hitting Phil May so hard that the metal tray was bent in two. I was worried for a moment that I might get a punch from the big man; instead he slapped my back saying, ‘Well done – you’re next!’ The resulting sore head was alleviated an hour later by one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen throughout my rugby career. We had headed back to Swansea, where we were staying, and got dressed up in our kilts before going out on the town. As we arrived in the town centre, there were a number of people shouting at us to lift up our kilts. One car had stopped at the traffic lights, and a group of girls had rolled down the window, urging us to show them if we really were ‘true Scotsmen’. Our prop, Stuart Paul, did the honours, lifting up his kilt and ‘mooning’ to them. This wasn’t enough for one of the girls who asked for a closer look. Stuart obliged and tried to place himself on the front windscreen. We all watched in disbelief as his bodyweight suddenly proved to be too much for the car – the windscreen caved in. Managing not to fall into the car himself he joined the rest of us who were by then already running as fast as we could to seek shelter in a pub. We didn’t stop laughing all night. I can only imagine what the girls felt like to see a kilted Scotsman’s hairy arse coming towards them at close range! Following the Five Nations, I received the good news that I’d been selected to tour with Scotland to Australia. I also had a rather more unexpected phone call from the Irish Wolfhounds asking if I’d be available to play for them in the Hong Kong Sevens. I was eighteen years old and was being asked to play a lot of rugby, probably too much. I had just played for the Students and Scotland Under-21s and was all set to play sevens for Gala. However, I enjoyed playing so much that I found it hard to say no. An opportunity to play in Hong Kong was too good to turn down. I had been drafted into the Wolfhounds side as a replacement for Stephen Bachop, who had played stand-off for Western Samoa in the World Cup the year before. I had apparently impressed the manager during the students international in Dublin. What I didn’t realize when I met up with the squad was that our time in Hong Kong would be just like an extension of a weekend’s partying with the Scottish Students. There were some great characters like Dave Beggy, Paddy Johns and Jonny Garth on that trip and it was certainly an eye-opener for myself and another draftee, young Irish winger Niall Woods. During our week together, the only time we didn’t go out to bars like ‘Joe Bananas’ and the ‘Bull and Bear’ was the night before the opening day of the tournament. Not surprisingly, we failed to qualify for the quarter-finals of the main competition, losing the pool decider against France. We didn’t fare that much better in the Plate, going out in the semi-finals to Tonga. This was more disappointing than our defeat to the French, as winning the Plate had been a realistic goal. However, by that stage a tropical storm had made it a much more level – and extremely muddy – playing field. When the storm hit, it hit hard. Torrents of water sluiced through the stands, turning the grounds into a swamp. I looked on in amazement and admiration as Fiji sailed through the tournament, seemingly unaffected by the mud and rain. They went through their full repertoire of skills in the most horrendous conditions, just like they had done at the Gala Sevens the previous year. Even New Zealand, whom they met in the final, were left chasing shadows as Waisale Serevi and player of the tournament Mesake Rasari dominated proceedings. I knew the Scotland tour to Australia would be much more professional – anything led by David Sole had to be. Sole had been Scotland’s Grand Slam winning captain two years before, famously leading the side out against England at Murrayfield. I got to witness both the intense and inspirational sides to his character, in what proved to be the final time he wore the dark blue jersey. Early on in the tour I was Sole’s room-mate. Being amongst members of the 1990 Grand Slam team was a daunting experience at the best of times – a bit like being a pupil asked to spend some time in the staff room with a group of teachers. They gave the impression of possessing amounts of self-confidence I could only dream about. Sole also appeared to have something about him that gave him automatic authority; an almost eerie, potentially crazed nature. He could have been well cast ahead of Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I had seen him snap at one of the players for turning up late on one occasion, so I decided to keep out of his way and try to be early to meetings for a change. Sole’s performance as a substitute in our third game of the tour against Emerging Wallabies in Hobart left everyone in awe. It also inspired the team to come back from 4–24 to draw the match 24–24. He was magnificent – it was one of those moments when you feel privileged to be on the same pitch as a true rugby legend. What made it all the more special was that Sole, normally a loose head prop, came off the bench to play at openside flanker. He took the game to the opposition at every opportunity, continually cajoling us to do better, and on one occasion lifting the huge second-row, Garrick Morgan, clean off his feet in a tackle that saved a certain try. The second half also coincided with an upturn in my form. We had lost our opening match in Darwin by a point to a Northern Territory Invitation XV. Although the weather was stiflingly hot and the opposition had brought in some quality guest players, my disappointing kicking performance had much to do with our subsequent defeat. Things continued in the same vein for me in Hobart until we began our comeback. However, my final two games on tour were much better and I ended up winning the man-of-the-match award in my last outing against Queensland Country. While it was pleasing to improve each time I played, I knew there would be many people who thought I would never be able to control an international match from stand-off. Otherwise, my first Scotland tour had been a blast. I struck up great friendships with Derek Stark, Ian Smith, Sean Lineen and Tony Stanger and I discovered that touring with Scotland wasn’t all hard work. The squad seemed to be very conspiratorial and keen to have fun together. We had a couple of ‘kangaroo court sessions’ during our month in Australia – this was basically a variety of ways to get drunk as quickly as possible. After two weeks we realized that having to drink large amounts of Bundaberg Rum was a sure-fire, one-way-ticket to oblivion. It was used as a punishment for those misbehaving while the court was in session. No one escaped from having to consume a shed-load of alcohol. Firsttime tourists, points scorers, those that had done something stupid that week, those that hadn’t – everyone was called upon to empty their glasses. Saturday matches were usually followed by a ‘happy hour’ back at the hotel. This was a chance for us to play drinking games. It sorted out the weak – guys like me – from those experienced at this type of thing. It also got us prepared for our night out – a compulsory activity for those who had played that day. ‘Work hard, play hard’ seemed to be an unwritten rule on tour. Another rule was that of ‘Dirt Tracking’. This happened the night before a match and involved those players who weren’t in the squad for the following day’s game. The theory was that they were to find out which bars and clubs were the best for everyone to visit the next night. What everyone really wanted was for the players to get wasted so there would be a few stories to tell at the ‘happy hour’ the next evening. Incredibly, the management at the time sanctioned this. In fact, the team manager paid for a meal with the ‘Dirt Trackers’ to get them started on their way. What with going out with the midweek team after our matches, I think I was drunk at least three times a week in Australia. At times amateur rugby wasn’t good for your liver! I think I was a bit of an enigma to the older guys – I combined some daft things like attempting to wash my clothes in a tumble dryer, and trying to keep up with my studies by reading books such as Plato’s Last Days of Socrates. I was the nonchalant, disorganized student and I soon had a reputation for always being the last person to turn up at meetings. While most people called me ‘Toony’, I was renamed ‘Hint-End’ by Tony Stanger on tour. ‘Hint-End’ is Scottish for ‘tail-end’, which was usually where I was – wandering around with my head in the clouds. I didn’t really mind my tag as it gave me an identity. I played up to the stereotype even though it insinuated that I was immature and unreliable. Being known as something was better than being ignored, even if it was a negative. I realized that others laughing at your expense seemed a sure-fire way to be popular within a rugby squad. I helped this no end by my efforts at horse riding. We spent a day at a ranch out in the bush, enjoying an Aussie ‘barbie’ and getting to ride around on quad bikes. There were a few guys riding horses and I was asked if I wanted to join in. I had never ridden a horse before, but this only seemed to encourage my team-mates who wanted to see me at least have a go. I didn’t have a clue what to do and I naively thought the horse would just trot around at a leisurely pace. However, within seconds my horse had started to pick up some speed. My feet had come out of the stirrups and I lost hold of the reins. I was clinging on to the saddle and feeling very uncomfortable. For some insane reason I thought giving the horse a kick would act as a brake. As you can imagine, the opposite happened. The horse was in complete control and heading fast for a boundary fence. I decided to jump off. It was a long way to the ground and I crashed down onto the dirt. I was very sore but hadn’t broken any bones. Through the dust, I could see my team-mates were hysterical with laughter. Well at least it had been funny for someone. If I had any thoughts about getting back on the horse they were quickly dispelled as my eyes and face started to swell up. The tour doctor then informed me I had an allergy to horses. At that moment I hoped I had got all the bad luck out of my system, as the following day we were due to go bungee jumping. Next stop on my world tour was Italy. Number 8 Carl Hogg and myself had agreed to be available for the Students World Cup, even though we had both just toured with Scotland in Australia. It had already been a long season and we only had three days’ rest at home before leaving for Italy, but we felt it would be worth it. The coaches, David Bell and John Rutherford, had reassured us that we would be used sparingly in matches and could lounge by the pool instead of training. As it turned out, we trained every day and we were two of only three players to play every minute of every game. I would describe us as a rabble with good intentions. Although our squad was similar to a Scotland 3rd XV in terms of quality, the SRU only provided ?10,000 of the total ?30,000 costs. This meant that players had to pay ?250 each for representing their country. France, on the other hand, ranked their Students behind only the senior national team in their priorities. Our shoestring budget provided us with the scariest plane journey I’ve experienced and some very basic accommodation once we got to our Italian base in Arenzano, a seaside town an hour from Genoa. Despite a ramshackle and chaotic beginning, we bonded as a group and went on to play some great rugby. We qualified for the last eight as runners-up, having lost to a strong French side that included the likes of Fabien Pelous, Thierry Lacroix and Olivier Brouzet. Although we had been leading them after the break, their experience told and it was no surprise to see them go on and win the tournament. I think we had won their respect, though, and we had a good time with them afterwards in the bar. Our players couldn’t believe their luck the next day when the French turned up at our hotel and handed us some of their stylish Eden Park kit in exchange for some of our gear. They must have felt sorry for us – our T-shirts wouldn’t have looked out of place at a primary school gym class. The subsequent draw for the quarter-finals gave our management a few headaches. The matches were to be played over two days the following weekend, although we only had enough money to stay in our hotel until the Sunday morning. We put in a request to have our game against Argentina brought forward to the Saturday but the opposition refused, citing the need for an extra day’s rest. It was an embarrassing situation but didn’t ultimately affect our preparations. Mind you, I remember the look of disgust the hotel manager gave us as we stayed an extra night on credit. We put in a valiant effort against the Argentines, who had a huge pack and looked like they had a lot of postgraduates in their team. The French squad had turned up to support us and sang ‘Flower of Scotland’ as best they could from the stands. We were very much in the game and the final result – a 29–18 defeat – was down to their superior scrummaging and a costly mistake by me. I was close to running on empty by the second half as too many matches that season – my first season of senior rugby – had finally caught up with me. A charged-down kick gifted Argentina six points at a crucial stage of the match and left me distraught – not for the first time that year. I was glad the summer break was on the horizon. I spent my time working as a plasterer’s labourer in Gala and trying to get on top of my studies. I had been forced to put back my exams until September having been in Australia when I was originally due to take them. Being a model student at Edinburgh University didn’t really fit with my efforts at furthering my rugby career. There were many times I would have to miss lectures and tutorials, but I had deliberately chosen a subject – history and politics – that wasn’t too intensive in the hope that I would have free time to catch up and also fit in some extra fitness and weight training. University had a similar raison d’?tre as amateur rugby – enjoyment. I’ve heard university described as a holiday of indulgence, which is hard to deny. I suddenly found myself free to drift, happily suspended from the real world. It was no wonder I became known for having my head in the clouds. Spending an hour discussing the American mid-term elections or listening to a lecture on seventeenth-century Scottish history was a delight and if rugby had turned professional five years earlier, I would have missed it terribly. As well as a sense of freedom, I enjoyed the anonymity of university life. Strolling through the Edinburgh’s Meadows on the way to a lecture with hundreds of fellow students was a pleasant departure from the expectations and pressures of trying to break into the Scotland team. I remember lining up for the national anthems at Lansdowne Road two years later and being distracted by someone trying to wave at me. I looked around and saw a guy who was in my political theory tutorial. His face was a picture of utter disbelief – he hadn’t a clue that I was a Scotland rugby player. I became less anonymous when I was presented with a sponsored car from a garage in the Borders. My name was emblazoned on both sides and I used to dread parking it in case anyone noticed me. Years later, Duncan Hodge, a top bloke who also played stand-off for Scotland, admitted to me that his student mates used to try and find my car after a night out and then urinate over each of the door handles. I suppose I had been asking for it. The following season I was quickly back in the groove with Gala, enjoying an excellent run of games. However, we blew our chances of winning the championship on the penultimate week of the season. We were only a point behind Melrose with two games to go, the first of which was away to already-relegated Dundee. Our final fixture was a home match against Melrose and all the talk in the Borders was about what a fantastic climax to the season it would be – almost like a play-off for the title. There was predicted to be a record crowd at Netherdale and I think we got carried away with it all when our focus really should have been on first beating Dundee. I remember talking with the Gala players on the bus to Dundee about moves that might work well against the Melrose backline. We were far too complacent against a fired-up home team and lost the match by a point. It always brings a smile to Andy Nicol’s face – the Dundee captain that day – when I remind him that it was the biggest disappointment of my time playing for Gala. That season also saw me move position for the first time in my career, as I was picked at outside-centre for the South in the Inter-District championship and also for Scotland ‘A’ in a one-off match against Spain in Madrid. I continued to run at stand-off for Gala, but there was now a lot of speculation that I might get a start in the number 13 jersey for that season’s Five Nations. As Sean Lineen had recently retired, pundits predicted that the Scottish midfield would include either Graham Shiel or myself at centre to play alongside established backs Craig Chalmers and Scott Hastings. The selectors showed their intentions with the team they picked to play Italy in December. It was Gavin Hastings’ first game as Scotland captain, although caps were not awarded for the fixture. I was chosen as outside-centre, partnering Scott Hastings in the midfield. Duncan Paterson, the team manager, said that the five debutants were very unlucky not to be winning their first caps. Scotland, like other countries at the time, still deemed Italy not to be of a standard worthy of awarding Test-match status. Although we just sneaked a 22–17 win over the fast-improving Italians, I’d felt reasonably comfortable and was getting increasingly used to playing at 13. There were only two more games before Scotland’s opening Five Nations match against Ireland and I was given two further opportunities to play at centre. First up was an A international against Ireland and then the National trial. This time I was picked to play for the Blues (probables). Unfortunately the timing of my first real rugby injury couldn’t have been any worse as I tore my medial knee ligament after only twenty minutes. It was only a minor tear, but it was enough to keep me out of action for three weeks, consequently missing the Irish match. Even the help of a machine used to heal horses’ joints couldn’t reduce the recovery time. After Scotland won their opening game, Graham Shiel held onto his place in the centre and I had to be content with sitting on the bench for the remaining three matches. By the time of our final match, away to England, I was resigned to the fact that I wouldn’t be winning my first cap that season. At the time, replacements could only come onto the field for an injured player. As no one in their right mind would want to quit a Test match unless it was a serious injury, we didn’t even bother leaving our seats during play. All the subs were aware that if any player suffered a bad injury our team doctor, James Robson, would throw a towel onto the ground – these were the days before the medics had a radio link with the coaching staff. After twenty minutes of the game, Craig Chalmers was being treated for an injury and I got told to do the obligatory warm-up just in case. I thought this was unlikely as Craig usually got up with a shake of the head and carried on playing. I was on my way down to the touchline when I saw the doctor’s towel being lobbed onto the field. The blood started to drain from my body and I became as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. What made me even less comfortable was what coach Ian McGeechan then told me. He said that I was to go on at inside-centre, a position I had never played before, with Graham Shiel, who had been at inside-centre all season, moving to stand-off. I didn’t have time to feel disappointed about this bizarre and unexpected decision but the little confidence I had in reserve now evaporated. I did the necessary stretches as I waited for Craig Chalmers to be carried from the field. I couldn’t help looking up at the huge stands opposite, which didn’t do much to console me. I also started thinking of friends and family watching the game on television. My focus certainly wasn’t on playing inside-centre against quality opponents like Will Carling and Jeremy Guscott. The first ten minutes were a blur – I ran about in a daze unable to control my movements, and certainly not any movements associated with tackling. This was no doubt due to trying to work out what to do at inside-centre and also due to an element of being self-conscious in front of 70,000 people. It was as if I was running around with my eyes closed. Unfortunately, the opposition ran towards me on a couple of occasions with the ball. It really seemed like I couldn’t remember how to tackle and I was as effective at stopping them as a speed bump is at stopping a car. Martin Bayfield was one of two players who ran through me and when I later joined him to play at Northampton he thanked me for my efforts in getting him selected for the Lions Tour in 1993. In fact there is a photo from the match in the clubrooms at Northampton of me poised to tackle him. Luckily the photo wasn’t half a second later as ‘Bayfs’ strode on to make what was undoubtedly his longest break of his international career. If Geech had been thinking of the players that might become Scotland regulars, I’m sure he must have already put a line through my name. However, I got my act together after twenty minutes and by the second half I was desperate for the ball, enjoying the atmosphere instead of being intimidated by it. England had hit a purple patch where they ran us a bit ragged, but we were much more competitive after this. Considering our midfield after Scott Hastings went off injured was Graham Shiel at stand-off, myself at inside-centre and Tony Stanger at outside – all three of us playing out of position – we had done well to keep the score down to 26–12. We drowned our sorrows at the after-match dinner – an event that seeks to destroy those that have just won their first cap. A tradition at the time was that new caps had to finish whatever was in their glass each time someone came over to them with a drink. Predictably, this happened quite frequently. To make matters worse, I was forced to drink port because the red wine on the table wasn’t deemed strong enough. I soon became very drunk, and was back in my hotel room with my head in the toilet before midnight. Mind you, I fared better than when lock Ian Fullarton won his first cap in New Zealand in 2000. He didn’t even make it to the toilet and has the memory to tell his grandchildren that he was sick all over the shoes of Jonah Lomu, who had been sitting beside him. In the midst of trying to win my first cap, I had been involved in the build-up to the inaugural World Cup Sevens. In November, I was part of the Scotland team that went to Dubai and shocked everyone by winning the tournament. There were maybe only a handful of international sides present, but we had beaten France, Queensland, Natal and England along the way. The setting was as far removed as it was possible to be from anything we could have experienced back home in Scotland – we played in extreme heat and the pitch consisted of tightly packed sand. I had imagined that playing rugby on sand would be much the same as running on a beach, but this was very different and very painful. It was as if a thin layer of sand had been put on top of concrete and even though we wore knee and elbow pads, we still ended up having our skin lacerated every time we hit the ground. Two days after my first cap at Twickenham the next leg of our sevens preparations took me to Australia, Fiji and Hong Kong. Known at the time as the ‘debacle’, the best we achieved in the three tournaments was a quarter-final appearance in Hong Kong against Western Samoa, the eventual winners. Our win in Dubai, where we had mixed a kick-and-chase game with traditional Borders sevens rugby, had led us down a cul-de-sac. Sevens rugby was evolving very fast and the best exponents were those that had a physical edge to their play. We had opted for stamina over explosiveness and weren’t in the same league as the leading nations. Samoa’s performance in Hong Kong and later England’s triumph at Murrayfield demonstrated that the abbreviated game was now all about power. Despite our poor results and some punishing bouts of endurance training, the sevens tour was very enjoyable – we only had a squad of ten players and we became quite a close-knit group. Also, our time in Fiji was terrific, as none of us had experienced anything like it before. As soon as we had boarded the bus at Nadi airport and on the three-hour trip south to the Fijian capital Suva, we saw people playing rugby wherever we went. Usually in bare feet, in fields sometimes having to dodge past trees, Fijians were out throwing a ball around. There can’t be another country in the world where rugby is so popular. On the morning of the tournament, all the teams were driven in open-top buses through the streets of Suva. The parade brought out thousands of exited locals, many of whom mobbed our bus, but their interest wasn’t in any of the players. Our assistant coach, John Jeffrey (‘JJ’), got the locals very animated and we could hear them saying excitedly ‘White Shark’ over and over to each other. The Fiji tournament was another disappointment as we failed to qualify from our group – just like the previous week in Australia. However, the skill on show from the local village sides was amazing. Six out of the eight quarter-finalists were Fijian – having consigned Australia, the All Blacks and us to the Plate competition. That the Fijian national team turned out to be the eventual winners was solely due to the presence in their team of one man – Waisale Serevi. I had always wanted to call my first born after my favourite rugby player. David Campese was my rugby idol for years but by 1993 the two potential options were Zinzan or Waisale. I don’t think I would have persuaded my future wife with either of these choices. Waisale Serevi, known as ‘the wizard’ by his team-mates when he later played for Leicester, was the instigator of the Fijian wonder try of the 1990 Hong Kong Sevens which is one of my all-time favourite sporting moments. Under pressure from a strong All Black defence, Serevi took a low pass and instinctively passed it between his legs to Noa Nadruku who, as he was being tackled, flicked it on to the captain Tomasi Cama. Cama then sprinted fifty yards – hitch-kicking all the way – to score the tournament-clinching try. Serevi was a magician and I had seen him close-up in the 1991 Gala Sevens and the 1992 Hong Kong Sevens where he danced through the mud to win yet another sevens trophy for Fiji. While in Fiji, I think I had bored my team-mates senseless eulogizing about Serevi. I felt it was justified when he proceeded to produce a master class of sevens rugby on the final day of the competition. Unknown to me, JJ had spoken to Serevi and told him that I was his biggest fan. So, between them they decided to have some fun at my expense. As I was watching one of the ties I got a tap on my shoulder from none other than Waisale T. Serevi. ‘Hello Gregor. Can I have your autograph?’ ‘Well, y-y-yes. Erm, of course.’ Although somewhat surprised, I thought I couldn’t turn him down and it wasn’t until I started to sign my name that I noticed JJ laughing with the rest of the team. I’d been stitched up. In Fiji, the rugby-mad public treated Serevi like royalty. He was married the weekend before we arrived in the country, and the national paper devoted almost all of its pages to cover the event. I remember a local rugby supporter raving about Serevi and a try he had scored at a recent sevens tournament. It involved him flicking up the ball with his feet as two defenders were chasing him. I wish I had seen it. It was probably with this in mind that I tried to do something similarly outrageous in the World Cup Sevens that were held at Murrayfield in March. As I went back to cover a kick that had been put in behind our defence I could sense that there was an Argentine player very close to me so, instead of diving on the ball, where I would inevitably be tackled as I tried to get back on my feet, I chose the element of surprise and back-heeled the ball past the oncoming defender. With Serevi as my inspiration I had tried the most unlikely of options and it had worked. Unfortunately as I was in the process of picking up the ball, I got smashed by another Argentine player. The back-heel was to be my only good memory from the World Cup as I suffered the ignominy of being dropped. I watched the action from the bench for the next two days and it was obvious that our three-week tour had drained our energy levels and belief. Although I wouldn’t have said so at the time, being a replacement was probably no bad thing as Scotland ended up in a dismal eighteenth place. A number of players who had taken part in our many squad sessions and the three-week tour had since been dropped or were out injured. The attrition rate had been horrendous, and for those left standing, there was little left in the tank. Just to rub salt into the wound, England were crowned world champions after having decided not to enter any other sevens event. Their lack of any meaningful preparation had left them fresh to play a high-octane brand of power sevens. We had reached the end of the road a long time before. I remember chatting to Tony Stanger prior to the tournament about injuries – he had hamstring problems and missed the World Cup while I was struggling with a groin strain. But I couldn’t resist carrying on playing and I made myself available for the Scotland tour to the South Seas at the end of the season. Although we were due to play the Test sides of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the SRU deemed that no caps would be awarded. The reasoning was understandable – with the Lions touring New Zealand and a spate of injuries, just three players in our tour party had played during the Five Nations. Travelling in the South Pacific was a peculiar experience. The 180th meridian of longitude, which indicates where the western hemisphere comes to an end, passes through the Fijian island of Taveuni. Situated some 400 miles to the east is Tonga. However, the King of Tonga – more of whom later decreed that, geography notwithstanding, the 180th meridian would be stretched eastwards to embrace his kingdom and thus enable Tongan time to be thirteen hours ahead of GMT instead of eleven hours behind it. This meant that the Tongan people would be the first in the world to greet the new day, but caused us no little confusion as we toured the South Sea Islands. On one occasion, we boarded a one-hour flight from Tonga on a Tuesday night and arrived in Samoa – our destination – on the Monday night. Robin Charters, our jovial president quipped, ‘I haven’t had a drink since tomorrow!’ As with the West Indies and cricket, so with the Pacific Islands and rugby. Rugby – union and league – suits Polynesians, who enjoy the physical challenge. They thrive on making big tackles and running with the ball in hand. In addition, they tend to have oodles of flair and daring. Fiji have dominated sevens rugby for the last two decades and we’ve seen at a number of World Cups how good Samoan rugby is. This is achieved with little help for creating a professional structure in any of the three countries. Samoa once played in the Super 10 competition – a forerunner of the Super 14 – but have been largely ignored ever since the game went professional. It is a disgrace that the All Blacks have never played a Test match in Tonga or Samoa, but are quite happy to fly around the world for revenue-generating games at Twickenham. If rugby really has ambitions of being a global game then it must stop snubbing the Pacific Islands – and Argentina for that matter – and include them in international tournaments such as the Tri-Nations or the Super 14. Being dropped seemed to be becoming a habit, as I didn’t make the starting line-up for our First Test match against Fiji. My performance in the opening game of the tour was patchy and my kicking was all over the place, despite us winning 51–3 against Fiji juniors. I thought the coaches might have taken into account the fact that I hadn’t started a fifteen-aside match for over three months and was understandably rusty. My battered confidence needed games, and I hoped I could play myself back to form. Certainly, I knew I had lost an edge to my game – a spot of soul-searching was inevitable. I felt I was being forced to grow up too quickly and began having second thoughts about what direction my life was taking. With questions being raised about my future as a stand-off, I felt a long way from home. Coach Richie Dixon tried his best to put me at ease with the comment: ‘Gregor, we have belief in you and I know you’ll soon be back playing well. You’ve got to concentrate on playing your natural game – that’s when you’re at your best.’ This was a great help – although waiting a week on tour for a chance to prove yourself is a long time, especially in a barren place like Tonga where we were staying in the island’s only hotel. I knew my next game against a Tongan President’s XV, bolstered by many of their Test side, wasn’t going to be criticized for a lack of desire or concentration. I was determined to bounce back. The match still ranks as one of the hardest games in my career, both in terms of the pressure to perform and in having to face such hard-tackling opposition. We were all wearing elbow and knee pads as in Dubai – this time because the grass pitch felt as hard as an airport runway. The Tongans were incredibly physical in the tackle, sometimes even if you had already passed the ball seconds before. We were fiercely competitive ourselves and battled to a 21–5 victory. I scored sixteen points (which included a try) and my confidence was restored. I remember calling my parents later from the hotel – I think we all felt relief and joy that I’d come through my toughest examination to date as a fledgling international. I had always felt that I just needed another chance to show what I could do, and that I was capable of getting rid of the errors in my game from the previous week. But I knew deep down that this was a turning point in my career. I was determined to kick on from here. I had decided that I wasn’t going to pay heed to those who advised me to rest in the summer. Coaches, the medical staff and even some players had been questioning the wisdom of my intention to go and play club rugby in Australia after the tour, especially given my continuing groin pain, but the last month convinced me to leave Scotland and learn rugby away from perceived opinions. It was also a place where I knew I could play attacking rugby. Having won back my confidence, I couldn’t wait to play more rugby. I finished the tour in good form. I was recalled to the Test side and we went on to beat Tonga 23–5. It was a much less intense match than that in midweek, and I think the experience of meeting royalty before the game may have slightly altered our focus. The seventy-five-year-old King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (an absolute monarch who had been in power since 1965) was seated on a makeshift throne up in the main stand of the national stadium in Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital. The King wasn’t only famous for his longevity, but also his waist size. He had previously made international headlines when he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s heaviest monarch, tipping the scales at a staggering thirty-three stone. We were made to walk up the steps to the King to shake his hand before the game could begin. For some strange reason he was wearing a motorcycle helmet – it was as if we had slipped into some surreal parallel world. Tonga consists of 170 islands, but its population – at 100,000 – is less than that of the Borders. The locals seemed much more aloof than the ever-smiling Fijians, and there were times when they looked like real warriors surveying the enemy as they watched us walking about. This might have had something to do with the garish tour outfit we had been issued with: knee-length royal blue socks complemented grey shorts, white shirt and a royal blue blazer – it’s no wonder that the Tongans looked like they wanted to kill us! Before we left for our final destination – Western Samoa – a few of the squad were asked to lead a training session at the former school of Australian backrower Willie Ofahengaue. They wanted to know what sequences to run from lineouts, so we showed them how to get quick off-the-top ball out to the stand-off. We explained that this was the easiest way to get a strike runner over the advantage line. Then I gave a flat ball to inside-centre Ian Jardine who was running at half-pace, trying to show the Tongan lads the best angle to attack the opposition line. Out of nowhere a fourteen-year-old schoolboy poleaxed him with a chest-high tackle. Jardie, struggling to get back to his feet, congratulated the lad on his defence and added that it wasn’t necessary to put in tackles against us. It was a reminder to never to let down your guard while in Tongan rugby circles. Samoa – a tropical paradise – was my favourite destination. The people seemed to be somewhere in between those we’d met in Fiji and Tonga – friendly and welcoming but taking no prisoners on the rugby field. We lost the Test 28–11 but this was by no means a disgrace. After all, this was the same group of players that had made the World Cup quarter-final two years before and included future All Blacks Alama Ieremia and Junior Tonu’u in their line-up. In temperatures reaching 36°C – so hot in fact that before the game we had to move from the touchline into a shaded area to sing ‘Flower of Scotland’ – Samoa were too strong for our development side. A month later they pushed the All Blacks all the way, eventually losing 35–13 in Auckland. Having just turned twenty, I had experienced a lot in two years of senior rugby, but it was being suggested in some quarters that my rugby career was faltering and that my game was characterized by errors. Learning over the summer could only help me improve – and doing it outside Scotland was likely to make it more pleasurable. A year previously I had wanted to stay out in Australia after the Scotland tour to play club rugby, but was forced to return to compete in the Students World Cup. Tony Stanger had turned out for Warringah and it was through him that I had established contacts to join up with the Sydney-based team for a three-month stint. Going to Warringah wasn’t just an opportunity to improve my rugby experience – it was also a chance for me to grow up on my own terms. Only 25 km away from the city, on Sydney’s northern coast, Warringah Rugby Club is close to many magnificent beaches and headlands. The club captain, Rob Blyth, and his wife Leanne provided me with a room in their house alongside the Kelso flanker Stuart Bennett. From Borders farming stock, Benzo kept his side of the room as tidy as a neglected pigsty, and our living space inevitably began to attract cockroaches and spiders as big as your hand. Benzo played really well for the club and gained respect for his combative approach. He was different to Aussie backrowers at the time in that he played the game much closer to the ground. He was always first to a loose ball and was much better than them at clearing rucks. Up against more physical players, managing to break into the Warringah first-grade team was a superb achievement. Warringah organized jobs for its itinerant players – like Benzo and myself. First we were demolition men, but once the plagues of cockroaches grew too much for us, we were given the positions of groundskeepers at the rugby club. Our first task was to clear away the large rocks that were scattered around the outside of the pitch and car park. Feeling a little like Paul Newman on the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, we set to work. Our Calvinist spirit drove us to clearing most of the rocks by midday, much to the horror of the head groundsman – this one job was supposed to take us three months. We soon slowed to the rate of a rock a day, playing games of cricket with our spades and the numerous golf balls that had been hit over the fence from the nearby driving range. Warringah were known as the ‘Green Rats’, after the 9th Australian Division that defended Tobruk during the Second World War. Although they had never won a Premiership title, the team had a reputation for uncompromising rugby. They were coached by Steve Lidbury, a former backrower who been capped twice by the Wallabies in the Eighties before switching to rugby league. On a Thursday night after training we always went out as a squad to a pizza restaurant and Benzo and I used to make sure we sat near our coach. With his muscular frame and quick wit he always dominated conversation, and he was soon recalling anecdotes from his time playing for Warringah, the Wallabies and Canberra Raiders as well as stories from his other employment as a security guard. Despite having to retire after breaking his neck, he continued to play touch footy with us and was an astute coach. He must have been some player in his day. I think Libbo liked me as a player, and he moved me into stand-off (or five-eighth as it was called over there) after two appearances for the club at outside-centre. For the first time in my career I had a coach that really appreciated my kicking game. Although I’d made a lot of improvements, this was probably more due to the fact that there was hardly any kicking in Australian rugby, which was in stark contrast to the situation at the time in the northern hemisphere. Watching paint dry was occasionally a better option than attending a British rugby union match in the early Nineties, as the ball very rarely got past two phases without someone kicking it in the air. In contrast, it seemed that most coaches in Australia insisted on the ball being kept in play, as up-and-unders left too much to chance. My centres always wanted me to use them to set up another phase and the only kicks we tended to utilize were diagonals, which forced the opposition to kick to touch and give us the throw at the lineout. Australia had won the World Cup two years before through some terrific attacking play, which was a credit to the standards and attacking philosophy of their club competition. In successive weeks, I encountered two of the driving forces of that World Cup victory – captain Nick Farr-Jones and record try scorer David Campese. My first match in the number 10 jersey was against Farr-Jones’ Sydney University side, which went well as I was voted man of the match in our home win. I could tell that Farr-Jones was a natural leader and organized his team from scrum-half. He impressed me not just with his ferocious commitment but also his goal-kicking ability that had kept his side in touch for long periods of the match. Next up was an away fixture against Randwick – the most famous club in Australia. They were known for playing a quick-passing game, and their pancake-flat alignment was pioneering. The Ella brothers had once strutted their stuff for the ‘Galloping Greens’, as they were called, and they continued to deploy a similar attacking style. I remember seeing my opposite number, Lloyd Walker, arrive at the ground with his family at the same time as me. Walker had played several times for the Wallabies, but I fancied my chances against him that day. He looked old, overweight and I expected him to be slow off the mark. I was later shown a masterclass in how to play in heavy traffic, and how to make a defence open up for you. Walker was so flat from scrum and phase ball that I could almost touch him. At first, I left him alone for my open-side flanker to deal with, as Randwick had some devastating runners out wide who posed much more of a threat. Walker’s lack of pace didn’t prove to be a drawback for him – he started so close to the advantage line he was soon getting in behind us, causing panic in our defence. When I later changed track and marked him directly, he began to deliver some deadly accurate wrist-passes to runners on either side of him. We never once managed to line someone up in the Randwick backline and knock them back in the tackle. Out wide, Campese was a continual threat. I also noticed a tenacious edge to his game, which proved to me that you don’t get to the top unless you are mentally tough. Libbo had instructed me to test out Campese with some high balls, but to make sure they landed shorter than usual so that the pack got the chance to ruck the living daylights out of him. This we did on a couple of occasions. It all seemed to no avail, as Campo got back on his feet without complaint and played superbly thereafter. I realized he must have had to endure that sort of treatment right throughout his career. During the previous season I had seen seasoned internationalists being laid-back, but it finally hit home in Australia that I needed to relax much more around game time. At Warringah, in the lead up to kick-off, the backs nonchalantly threw a ball around in the car park, chatting to each other as if they were about to go out to train, not play an important match. I loved this mindset – it implied that this was no different from training and there was no added pressure to worry about. Once on the field they were passionate and totally committed to the cause, effectively embodying the spirit of the club – never to give in, just like the Rats of Tobruk. I used to live by a quote I’d read somewhere: ‘If you’ve never made a mistake, you’ve never made a decision.’ Now I was getting much better at recognizing the two benefits of failure: first, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. As the game was fought out on the gain line it was really high-pressure stuff, which brought out the best in me. Players were bigger, more physical and the pitches were hard and fast. I loved every minute of it. We climbed up the table and I was playing consistently well – by far the best rugby of my career. Unfortunately I had to return to Scotland for my exams, which I had missed because of the Scotland tour to the South Seas in June. Warringah tried hard to get me to stay. They arranged to have the exam paper faxed out to a university in Sydney, and said I could fly home to Scotland and pick up anything I needed to help with my studies before coming back a couple of days later. In the local paper, the Manly Daily, Libbo had said, ‘I am going to block his way to the airport, handcuff him, anything to get him to stay.’ I was worried that Libbo might prove to be all too persuasive in terms of stopping me from returning, as I was reluctant to muck around Edinburgh University any more than I needed to. I’d cut a few corners already in the first two years of my course and I knew I would have been further distracted if I was to sit my exams in Australia. I left Warringah with two games still to play. Unfortunately, the club went on to lose the Grand Final. Looking back, I wish I could have stayed. However, at the time there was another reason I wanted to return home. The new club season in Scotland was just about to begin. First up for Gala was an away trip to arch-rivals Melrose – a game I didn’t want to miss. We won 14–13 and I carried on my Warringah form, once more in direct opposition to Scotland stand-off Craig Chalmers. I was buzzing with confidence and played well the following week against Boroughmuir. We again won away from home, which meant that we had now beaten the champions from the previous two seasons in our opening two matches. I remember former Scotland centre Sean Lineen daring me to take a quick drop-out against him during the game. I dummied the normal kick to the forwards to my left before knocking the ball along the ground to the right, past his despairing dive. After having shown caution and self-doubt at times during the previous season, Sean might have been right in thinking that I wouldn’t have had the audacity to try something like that, but my experiences in the summer had made me much stronger mentally. Having shown my resolve in Tonga and then become much more relaxed and rounded in Sydney, I felt I was ready-made for international rugby. A year earlier I had been too caught up in other people’s opinions and expectations of my talent and there would have been times when I’d actually have been thinking ‘I shouldn’t be doing this’, even when I was making a break. Pace and willingness to have a go had always been my two biggest assets, but I now had a greater awareness of other aspects of play and was confident in my decision-making. Things couldn’t have been going any better – which is often the exact moment that adversity chooses to seek you out. CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_2a3fb21a-695c-5796-b9c3-ba65f532239e) Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina (#ulink_2a3fb21a-695c-5796-b9c3-ba65f532239e) We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow On a clear day the Buenos Aires Sheraton has stunning views over the Rio de la Plata and beyond the river valley to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. Sadly, clear day or not, my room was positioned on the other side of the hotel. As I got out of bed I opened the curtains to gaze across the rooftops of the largest city in Argentina. Below me I noticed that the streets were crammed to bursting with emotional, flag-waving Argentines – just like a scene from Evita. I resisted the temptation to climb out onto the hotel balcony and deliver a song. Instead, I rushed downstairs to see what the celebrations were for. In the hotel lobby, members of the Real Madrid team, who were also on tour in Argentina, were gathering. I met up with Bryan Redpath and Stuart Reid – two team-mates who were, like me, keen to join in with the carnival atmosphere on the streets of Buenos Aires. However, several Argentine policemen were blocking the hotel’s exit. ‘I’m sorry, you can’t go outside today. Or tomorrow. There is a demonstration being held in Buenos Aires.’ ‘Surely we’ll be okay to go to the shops on the other side of the road?’ ‘No – it is for your own safety.’ ‘What about the Real Madrid players? Look – they’re joining in with the locals.’ ‘Yes, but it is okay for them – they are not British. Don’t you know it is Malvinas Day?’ The penny finally dropped – the Malvinas, of course, are better known in English as the Falkland Islands. The policeman explained to us that Malvinas Day is officially titled ‘The Day of the War Veterans and the Fallen’ in the Falklands Islands. What the people were also demanding was the recovery of these islands. I looked back at the crowds outside – the passion I had earlier seen in their eyes now looked a lot more like anger than celebration. Even though the Falklands War had ended over ten years before, it was clearly still an emotive subject for the Argentine people. And our hotel was situated right next to the focal point of their fury – a memorial for those killed in the conflict. We were more than happy to agree to police demands to stay in our hotel for the full forty-eight hours. Unfortunately Claudia Schiffer, who we had spotted a few times earlier that week, had just checked out, so as time passed we grew more and more frustrated and bored. Although I suppose it was preferable to being out on the streets. Argentina was a tour I wish I could forget. My torment in trying to become an established Test player continued thousands of miles from home and I had to endure another character-building episode, just like in Tonga. Loss of confidence, loss of form, injuries and public criticism are the sporting equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I met all four on my own personal tour of hell. Before the tour, I had squeezed so much playing and travelling into my first three years of senior rugby that at times I wondered whether I would ever have the chance to stop and reflect – not least on how lucky I had been. Luck, of course, will always run out at some point, and before I knew it, I had more than ample time to take stock as my career was halted by injury problems. My time in Australia had taken my game to a new level and I was playing with confidence and verve on my return to Scotland. However, following my second match back for Gala, my wrist was in severe pain and I couldn’t really take a grip of anything without wincing. An x-ray showed that I had broken my scaphoid, which meant I was facing ten to twelve weeks on the sidelines. There is never a good time to get injured, but being struck down when you are in the form of your life is hard to take. I knew that getting back to that level wasn’t going to be easy. During my time out, I did a lot of speed work with Charlie Russell, a local sprint coach. As I had a lightweight plaster on my arm I was able to run at close to 100 per cent. Pace has been, and always will be, the most vital component when it comes to beating a defensive line, no matter how organized and compact that line is. I was sceptical whenever I was told that I was quick, but I surprised myself when during the Scotland tour to Australia in 1992 I took on winger Iwan Tukalo over 100m and won. I’d always felt that my overall speed wasn’t that great, just my change of pace or acceleration. This is what I worked on with Charlie. As a favour in return, I agreed to run for him in the New Year Sprint at Meadowbank. A handicap race held over 110 metres, the Sprint has been staged in Scotland on or around New Year’s Day annually since 1870. As it was my debut on the pro-circuit, I was given an arbitrary handicap of six metres. This meant that I was left with 104 metres in front of me. There was another runner with a handicap of 6 m, but the rest of the field started the race in front of us, the furthest being given a handicap of 25 m. Trying hard to go on the ‘B of Bang’, I managed to get pulled back for a false start. In professional athletics, you get docked a metre for jumping the gun, so I was now facing the daunting prospect of being the back-marker in my first ever professional sprint event. The other competitors suddenly seemed to be quite far up the track. I finished in sixth place, which I was told later was a reasonable first-time effort. Mind you, there had only been six people in the race! I was desperately hoping my return to rugby wasn’t going to be such an anticlimax. I was lucky to have missed playing against the All Blacks, as they had rampaged their way through Scottish rugby – winning 84–5 against the South and 51–15 at Murrayfield against Scotland. I had a month to play my way into the selectors’ thoughts before Scotland’s first match of the 1994 championship, away to Wales. My form was nowhere like it had been before my wrist injury. However, after the desperate performance against the All Blacks, the Scotland selectors seemed eager to make changes. While it was obvious that I had lost momentum following my lay-off, I was selected at stand-off for the A side against Ireland, only a few weeks before the Five Nations. We won the game comfortably and my own performance was composed, but lacking the attacking edge I’d developed in Australia. Despite this, the media began to raise the bar of expectations once again after I was picked in the number 10 jersey for the Blues team in the national trial. Craig Chalmers had been demoted to the Reds. At the time the SRU Director of Rugby, Jim Telfer, commented on the recurring theme of the media building me up, by saying: ‘You begin to wonder if we expect him to bring on the oranges at half-time on top of everything else.’ The trial game as usual was a torrid affair, but a small personal triumph for me – I notched up a try in our 24–14 win. The score involved a one-on-one with Craig Chalmers, which made it even more enjoyable. With only two weeks to go before the Welsh match, I was quietly confident that my first start for Scotland would be in my preferred position of stand-off. After all, if I had been selected there in the trial, which had gone well, surely the selectors would follow this through for the next match? Regrettably, this wasn’t to be the case, although I did make the Scotland starting line-up for the first time – at outside-centre. As Scott Hastings was injured, the selectors opted for the experience of Craig Chalmers at stand-off and I was partnered in the centres with the hugely underrated Ian Jardine. The game was to be a disaster for Scotland – we were soundly beaten on the scoreboard as well as in the all-in brawl that had erupted early in the match. Given the terrible weather, our limited style of play and our poor performance, my first start in the Five Nations almost felt like a non-event. I was by and large a spectator in the first half, and I didn’t touch the ball until the thirty-third minute, and even then it wasn’t from a pass. This wasn’t too much of a surprise in those days because Scotland tended to adopt a kick-and-chase approach to the game. Although I was itching to be involved, I didn’t let myself get frustrated and I tried to be positive when the ball eventually did come my way. My involvement in the play increased tenfold when I was moved to stand-off after Craig Chalmers left the field injured in the second half. By that stage the match was beyond us, but at least we did try to chase the game as much as we could. I enjoyed my first taste of international rugby as a number 10 even though I now had the dubious distinction of having played three positions – stand-off, inside- and outside-centre – in what was only my second cap. Little did I know then that this was to be a recurring feature of my Scotland career. I did my best to take the game to the Welsh and nearly got on the end of a chip-and-chase to score a try. I knocked over a drop-goal, although the referee, Patrick Robin, inexplicably ruled that it had fallen under the crossbar. Admittedly, it was a wobbly effort but the players on both sides knew that it had been good. Television pictures later showed that my drop-goal was a valid one and that I should have registered my first points for Scotland. Soaked to the skin, I tried my best to persuade Monsieur Robin that the ball had gone over the bar. My lack of French meant that I was reduced to playing a game of charades with the referee to explain my frustrations. Unfortunately, it was all to no avail, which really upset our hooker Kenny Milne, who was claiming a share in the drop-goal that never was. Kenny had come to my aid before the match as I was facing an extremely embarrassing situation just before going out to win my first full cap. Trying to relax in the changing rooms at the Arms Park, I noticed that other players in the side were changing their studs for longer ones – the pitch had become a mud bath due to some torrential rain. My studs weren’t too bad but, being a student, it was ingrained in me not to turn down anything that was free. ‘I’ll take a handful of those, please’ I said to one of the forwards, who handed me a dozen shiny new studs. I waited patiently for a pair of pliers, and then set about changing my studs. Obviously my technique wasn’t the best as I broke the insert on a couple of studs, thus making my boots quite unusable. This was potentially disastrous as the game was less than an hour away. The only player who had a spare pair of boots in their kitbag was Kenny Milne, so I was saved the mortification of running around in lopsided boots. The downside to wearing Kenny’s boots, though, was that they were a size 9, which was one size smaller than I normally took. It was a painful lesson that reminded me to be more organized in my match preparations. The 29–6 defeat to Wales, which had followed on the heels of the hammering by the All Blacks, dealt a further blow to the confidence of Scottish rugby. The result in Cardiff, however, wasn’t the most important issue – rather the fact that we had been bullied up front and were unimaginative and leaden-footed in the backs. Next up was the Calcutta Cup game and there was much soul-searching and hand-wringing throughout the land as to how we could get back to winning ways against the Auld Enemy. And at a time of crisis, who better to turn to than a real live talisman – Gary Armstrong. Gary had actually retired from the international game some nine months previously and had been playing at fullback and centre for his club, Jedforest, before being persuaded to make himself available once more for Scotland. He is a heroic figure to supporters and players alike and, having been named at stand-off for the first time, it was an honour to be selected as his half-back partner. I remember in my first year at Edinburgh University going into a pub that was a local for the motorbike community and a small number of students who were attracted by the cheap beer, where the walls were covered with photos and newspaper cuttings of Gary who was obviously loved by the clientele. I don’t know if he was aware about this unlikely shrine to him, but it illustrates the high regard in which he was held by Scots from all walks of life. The match was to be the most emotional fixture at Murrayfield since the Grand Slam game against the same opponents in 1990. Gary started the match as if he had never been away from the Test arena and was desperately unlucky to have a try ruled out early on for a double-movement. Fortunately, Rob Wainwright scored soon after this and our forwards began to get the upper hand in their battle with the hulking English pack. This was a remarkable transformation from the Welsh game and maybe had something to do with the rucking session that Jim Telfer had taken with the forwards at our hotel on the morning of the match. Officially, Jim wasn’t allowed to coach the team as he was now in the salaried position of SRU Director of Rugby. His appearance on the Saturday morning certainly focused the minds of our forward pack – he didn’t hold back during the intense session, which was all about keeping a low body position and flying hard into rucks. However, I was disappointed with my own contribution as I was kicking most of the ball I received from Gary. This was, in fact, our game plan and at times it brought success – our try had come from an up-and-under – but I didn’t utilize the quick ball that came my way to run at the opposition. My role in the game could have been a lot more influential. The absence of conviction was due to a lack of confidence, which was probably the first time in my career I had felt this way. The events of the closing minutes very nearly erased from my memory my lack of attacking ambition, as we looked to have won the match in injury time. England had clawed their way back into the game and led 12–11 going into the last minute of the match. According to a newspaper headline the following day, I was ‘A hero for sixty seconds’. From slow ruck ball wide on the left I managed at last to drop a goal for Scotland, following two earlier misses in the match and my disallowed effort against Wales. This time I was very grateful to the referee as I’d struck my kick very high and I wasn’t totally sure myself whether it had gone inside or outside the left upright. As the game moved deeper into injury time, I was anxious that we might be denied our hard-earned victory. I had a vision of Rob Andrew dropping a goal just like he had done to win the World Cup semi-final 9–6 against Scotland in 1991. It was with this in mind that I sprinted out of defence to try and charge down my opposite number, as Andrew had positioned himself in the pocket to go for the winning kick. I lunged forward at the right moment and his drop-goal attempt crashed against my arms. When I saw Ian Jardine secure the loose ball I was now sure that we were going to win the match. Unfortunately, the referee had other ideas. As we surged forward, the New Zealand referee, Lyndsay McLachlan, blew his whistle to award a penalty for handling in the ruck … to England! This was a stupefying decision, as we had recovered the ball – why would we have wanted to handle in the ruck for ball that we had just won? More importantly the ball came out on the English side, which meant that whoever had handled the ball on the ground had wanted to turnover Scottish possession. A few days later, television pictures confirmed that an English hand had scooped the ball back from the ruck. The guilty party was Scotland’s nemesis, Rob Andrew. The only thing that could excuse the referee from his appalling decision was that England had navy cuffs on their white jerseys. But surely McLachlan was aware of this anomaly before his game-changing aberration? It was suggested that England would now be stitching green cuffs to their sleeves for their next match against Ireland. Anyway, Jon Callard held his nerve and his successful penalty-kick gave England a 15–14 win. The referee blew the final whistle immediately after the ball sailed through the uprights. We were absolutely gutted and a nation was seething with outrage. Our captain Gavin Hastings even broke down in tears during a television interview after the match. This won him many more admirers and he told the squad the following week that he had received hundreds of letters of support – which even included one from my mum! Despite the agonizing result, in what is always our most important fixture of the year, we had won back respect and confidence by the way we had played. However, the one-for-all unity of the amateur era wasn’t in much evidence when I read an article by Craig Chalmers in the Sunday Post the day after the game. He wrote that Scotland would have played much better if he had been selected at stand-off instead of me. It wasn’t the last time that he resorted to the tactic of criticizing his rivals in the media, and I kept his article to give me motivation in our fight for the number 10 jersey. I was determined to do my talking on the pitch, although I was disappointed by the selfish actions of a supposed team-mate. I kept my place at stand-off for our next match away to Ireland but I knew there were a number of areas in my game that needed to improve; notably kicking, passing off my left hand and tackling. Above all, though, I was disappointed that the Scottish public had yet to see me attacking the opposition with ball in hand, the best part of my game. Now, in my third year of senior rugby, I had learned to stop breaking for the sake of breaking and was responding to situations more as they arose rather than forcing play. However, this had made me somewhat conservative in the match against England, which was probably the first game of my career that I hadn’t managed to break the advantage line at least once. It is often said that the fear of failure is more stimulating than the reward of success and I’ve heard many coaches and players shout before a game: ‘We’ve got to be scared of losing today!’ I agree that losing sometimes hurts much more than the equivalent feeling when you win, but I don’t think it’s a good way to motivate players. A culture of fear leads to worry and anxiety, which is not a winning attitude. Being positive and concentrating on the process – not the end result – is a much surer route to success. I resolved to be free from worry and tried to express myself much more in Dublin. We drew with Ireland 6–6 after having dominated the first half, in which we played into the teeth of a howling gale. Gary was monumental at scrum-half, despite playing for most of the game with a broken hand. The match was also my best performance yet for Scotland, as I made a couple of breaks and tackled well. It was our first time for almost a year that we hadn’t suffered a defeat, but we knew that it was the second game in a row that we should have won. With Gary now injured, I lined up with Bryan Redpath at half-back for our final Five Nations match at home to the French. Although we only had five caps between us, I thought we would work well together. As it turned out, we didn’t have the immediate understanding I had hoped for and my own game was again as frustrating as it had been against England. To cap it all off, I threw an interception pass that gifted France seven points at a stage in the game when we still might have come back to win. After the match Gavin tried to console me, saying that if my pass had hit its intended target we would have scored a try. The move was a simple miss-one loop, which had achieved its aim of committing the French midfield. With Gavin and Kenny Logan outside me, a clear overlap had presented itself. As we had predicted in our pre-match analysis, Philippe Saint-Andre rushed in from his wing to try and block my pass. Because of my poor execution, plucking the ball from the air was his reward for this ‘blitz’ style of defending, and he ran unopposed all the way to the try-line. A lack of experience can only go so far in explaining my poor decision at throwing the interception pass. Just as in the England game, I had attempted a pass that I would never have tried in a club match. But when you are not confident in your actions, hope replaces certainty. Normally, I would have relished the fact that Saint-Andre had come off his wing to pressure my pass. This is an ideal situation in which to hold onto the ball for as long as possible so that the defender has to make a decision as to what to do next. Because I was moving forward, Saint-Andre would have had to come in and tackle me or go out to tackle Gavin. Either way, at least one of our players would have been in space. However, instead of waiting for his actions to make the decision for me, I presented him with an opportunity by trying to pass the ball to Gavin as soon as possible. It was a 50–50 pass, which more often than not is punished at international level. We lost the match 20–12. I suppose everyone in sport has to navigate a learning curve, but my problems had nothing really to do with either the opposition I was facing or the step up to Test level. The reason I hadn’t played to my potential was entirely to do with my state of mind. Although this was exasperating, I realized that it was probably much easier to remedy than a physical weakness or any problems coping with the speed and intensity of international rugby. Two years later, Scotland coach Richie Dixon made the wise decision to introduce a sports psychologist, Dr Richard Cox, to work with the team. Dr Cox showed us an example of how the dangers of having doubts about your ability can have a direct affect on your performance. He produced a document that included quotes that were familiar to me. The text was in fact an interview that I had given to the Sunday Times a few weeks after the French game and the gifted Saint-Andre try. Dr Cox described it as an ideal example of the importance of self-belief in sport. During our internationals at Murrayfield in 1994 I sometimes went for a pass when there would be no way I’d do that in a club game. I went in thinking that I must not make mistakes, but that meant not trying things. I was thinking I would be dropped if I made a mistake. Now, I realize I was thinking wrongly. Getting over injury problems and trying desperately to balance the expectations of others had made me incredibly frustrated. Worryingly, this had also left me short of confidence. I viewed rugby as a game that I took enjoyment from and I had always tried to play without constraints. I knew I hadn’t been true to myself over the past few months in this regard, and was no longer doing things that had always come naturally to me. After the Five Nations were over I managed to start taking pleasure in the game once again as I played sevens rugby for Gala. We had a superb group of sevens players – guys like Grant Farquharson, Jim Maitland and Ian Corcoran – and we won the Melrose and Jed Sevens, as well as our own tournament. We very nearly made it four wins out of the five spring tournaments, losing in the final at Langholm. Away from the glare of expectation at Murrayfield, I was smiling on a rugby field once again. I also went to the Hong Kong Sevens for the third time and did my best to enjoy my twenty-first birthday party, which was held in a student pub in Edinburgh. However, it was whilst playing in the sevens circuit that my injury problems began to get close to unbearable levels. My wrist had been sore during the Five Nations but it was my knee that was more of a worry – it had given me constant pain since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to take a break from rugby and I was again trying to fit in as much as possible. To try and alleviate my knee pain, I adopted an unconventional recovery technique at the suggestion of the sprint coach I’d worked with the previous year, Charlie Russell. He said to me that the best thing I could do was to sit downstream in a river for ten to fifteen minutes after every training session. He said this had worked for a few players, citing as an example Kelso’s Eric Paxton, who had sat in a river after a hamstring tear and had been able to play the following weekend. Ice baths may be common rehabilitation practice nowadays, but this cold-water treatment was almost unheard of back in 1994. Although it wasn’t a pleasant experience, it certainly kept the swelling down a little, and provided some interesting viewing for one surprised Borderer. For my outdoor ice bath I had been using the Caddon River on the edge of Clovenfords, which was a ten-minute drive from Gala. Late one night after a training session, I drove up there on my own to try to ease the pain in my knee. With my three jerseys and a waterproof jacket I was almost ready to sit in the water for fifteen long minutes. The finishing touch was to place a hot-water bottle under my jerseys to keep my heart warm as I sat down on the riverbed. It was a dark night, and I switched on my Walkman to try and think about something other than my freezing legs. I closed my eyes and hummed along with Kylie Minogue. After ten minutes of sitting downstream, I thought I heard the noise of a dog barking which I found odd as I’d never heard it before in the song I was listening to. Something made me look around, and I nearly jumped out of the water when I saw a man standing above me on the riverbank. He was pulling back on his dog’s lead, which was excitedly barking at this strange person lying in the river below. There was no doubt that I’d had a shock at the sight of someone suddenly appearing out of the darkness, but I can only imagine how surprised the Clovenfords local was feeling stumbling across someone shivering and mumbling a song at ten o’clock at night while partly submerged in the burn below! As I was trying my best to recover from my dual injuries, the summer tour to Argentina was looming on the horizon. Touring, I hoped, would give me an opportunity to become more consistent at international level. During the championship I had performed much better away from home than at Murrayfield. If I could overcome my knee and wrist problems, I aimed to excel in Argentina and enjoy the thrill of touring once again. To the wives and families of international players it may be a four-letter word but, in the amateur days, a tour was the absolute highlight of the season. Nothing else really came close. Despite rugby being a minority sport in Argentina, it was a notoriously tough place to play, and there had only been a few teams in history that had managed to win a Test series there. In our first few days in Buenos Aires, we were soon aware of the dominance of football in the culture and daily lives of the populace. Locals were far more interested in Boca Juniors and River Plate than a touring rugby team from Scotland, and there were posters of Diego Maradona everywhere. Argentina’s major concern seemed to be if Maradona would be fit for the forthcoming football World Cup, not whether their rugby side could extend a proud home winning record. We undertook the challenge with a severely weakened touring party, as most of our senior internationalists – Gavin Hastings, Scott Hastings, Gary Armstrong, Kenny Milne, Doddie Weir and Tony Stanger – had decided that their best preparation for the following season’s World Cup was a rest from the summer tour. At the time, there seemed quite a bit of logic in this, but looking back from an era where the game is much more physically demanding, it seems as if maybe a few of the players just didn’t really fancy a month of rugby in Argentina. In the weeks prior to our departure, injuries robbed us of more key personnel – Andy Nicol, Craig Chalmers and Derek Stark from the backs and Iain Morrison and Rob Wainwright from the forwards. The words ‘on a hiding to nothing’ hung over those of us who left for Argentina. The spate of call-offs led to the appointment of the unlikeliest of captains – Andy Reed, our second-row from Cornwall. Andy had the rather harsh nickname of ‘Boring Bob from Bodmin’, but he didn’t seem to mind that players teased him about his rambling stories. In 1993 he had burst onto the international scene playing well and looking very much like a modern day second-row forward – physical but also able to get around the field. Although he had been a member of the much-criticized Scottish front five on that season’s Lions Tour to New Zealand, he had still kept up his good form for Scotland in the lead-up to Argentina. The management obviously selected him because he was one of the few players that had made themselves available to tour and who had played well in the recent Five Nations. However, there are many more factors than just form involved in choosing a captain. Whether it was because of his Cornish accent or a lack of leadership experience, Andy found it a tough act to follow the likes of Finlay Calder, David Sole and Gavin Hastings as Scotland captain. Although he struggled at times with the role, he tried his best and was one of Scotland’s better players on tour. Just as with the previous year’s tour to the South Pacific, prior to leaving I hadn’t played any fifteen-a-side rugby for a couple of months. I was determined to start the tour totally focused, as my rusty performance in the first match a year before in Fiji had cost me my place in the Test side. Despite increasing pain in my wrist and knee, I viewed the tour as the final opportunity of the season to boost my confidence before taking some time away from the game and resting my injuries. Unfortunately, this was to be wishful thinking – by the end of the tour I would have been happy never to touch a rugby ball again. Things seemed to be very promising early on and I got off to a much better start in Argentina than I had done in Fiji. On a hot afternoon we played some good attacking rugby in our opening match against Buenos Aires. Only some decidedly dodgy refereeing decisions denied us a deserved victory as we were held to a 24–24 draw. It was another ten days until the First Test against the Pumas, but most of the players involved in the Buenos Aires game were rested for the next two matches. We were constantly reminded that Argentina was one of the hardest places in world rugby to tour, but our first three outings against their best provincial sides hadn’t been that menacing. Our major problem had been the interpretation of the laws by the local referees in charge of our matches outside the Test Series. The Argentine game plan was based on a strong scrummage, aggressive defence and a considerable amount of mauling by both backs and forwards. It wasn’t attractive to watch but has proved to be effective. The First Test was played in a hostile atmosphere at the FC Oeste stadium in Buenos Aires. The excitable spectators all seemed to have these long red horns, which annoyed my flatmates no end when I brought one back to Scotland. The horns created a noisy backdrop to the game, more like a football match. However, the game itself was nothing to shout about. We weren’t able to control the play as we would have liked and we seldom strung more than two phases together. This was mainly because the Argentine midfield rushed up very quickly in defence and their forwards continually spoiled our lineout ball. Although it was an error-strewn match, it was clear that we had been the better side. That we lost the game 16–15 was largely due to our inability to finish good build-up work. Also, our goal kicker, Gala’s Mike Dods, obviously hadn’t borrowed his older brother Peter’s boots, having missed five attempts at goal. I was frustrated with my own performance in that I hadn’t been able to rise above the general malaise and dominate proceedings. While I hadn’t done myself justice, I was more disappointed that as a team we didn’t perform and weren’t able to get an historic win in Argentina. This would have been even more memorable given the fact we were missing a number of established internationalists. It was a gloomy scene in the changing room, but at least we knew we had the means to win the Second Test the following Saturday. I had just finished icing my aching knee and showering, when head coach Dougie Morgan came over to give me news that left me reeling: ‘Gregor, I’ve just spoken to the press and I told them that you had a shocker.’ How do you respond to that? For several moments he looked at me as if he wanted me to agree with him. ‘Cheers’ was all that I could say to fill the silence that hung between us. It was the end of our conversation. As soon as he walked away, I was angry with myself for not fighting my corner – to point out to him that I hadn’t been the only one. ‘Blamestorming’ is a term used in business for those sitting around in a group, discussing why a project failed, and who was responsible. I remember after international defeats at Murrayfield, the coaches and selectors used to stand in the middle of the changing rooms discussing quietly amongst themselves what went wrong. The players knew what was being talked about as we returned from the showers to get changed. If any of the selectors mentioned your name or turned to look in your direction it wasn’t a good sign. Still, it was preferable to the very public naming-and-shaming I received in Argentina. I felt a shiver run right through me even though it was a warm evening in Buenos Aires. I was concerned with my coach’s view of the game, which was one I didn’t share. It would have been hard for me to argue that I’d played well, but there had been no glaring errors. Stand-off is at times an exposed position, especially when you have to lead the attack from slow-ball, as was the case in the First Test. I was finding out just what John F. Kennedy meant when he once said that ‘victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan’. Criticism should be done in private with the aim of trying not to repeat mistakes and improve the player in question. Having just turned twenty-one, there were many areas I needed to work on and my performance in the First Test flagged up two or three that I needed to sort out very quickly. I have always been a harsh critic of my own game and, although I felt I had played badly, that had also been the case for the majority of the team. Only two or three players had played well. Naively, I thought that during the press conference Dougie had maybe gone on to say that more than half the team had been shocking too. I also hoped that he had been joking when he said that I’d had a shocker or that the press hadn’t taken him seriously. I had previously got on well with Dougie despite the fact that he had dropped me from the Scotland Sevens team during the World Cup the year before. We would later have a very good relationship during his time as Scotland manager leading up to the World Cup in 2003. He was terrific in this role and the only member of the management that contacted me after my retirement from Test rugby, and I greatly appreciated his kind letter. However, back in 1994, when what he had said after the First Test began to sink in, I couldn’t envisage us ever being friends again. Dougie’s comments about my performance became the story of the First Test. ITV, who had filmed the match, broadcasted Dougie’s comments, which were backed up by the tour manager, Fred McLeod. For the next couple of days I wasn’t really aware of the story that had blown up back in the UK, but I was miserable and started to feel a long way from home. I had been publicly criticized by our management and to make matters worse, there didn’t seem to be any attempts being made to remedy the situation. It didn’t take a genius to work out that I wasn’t going to be selected for the Second Test against Argentina. My fears were confirmed when the midweek team to play Rosario was announced and I was named at centre – one of only two players to be selected who had played in the First Test. At training it looked obvious that Graham Shiel was being lined up to move from number 12 to stand-off, as he had already been given the goal-kicking duties ahead of Mike Dods. With my knee and wrist injuries deteriorating, the last thing my body needed was to play another game just four days after a Test match. But on the other hand, lining up against Rosario, I was glad to be back out on a rugby field so quickly after my so-called ‘shocker’ and I was determined to show that the weekend’s events hadn’t affected my self-belief. I wanted to play as if I didn’t have a care in the world. It was frustrating that the coaches had selected me at centre, not allowing me the opportunity to prove what I was capable of in the number 10 jersey. Even though I didn’t get much ball, I managed to put on a decent pretence of being confident and found a couple of gaps. However, we lost 27–16 to Rosario, an Argentine side who had unexpectedly moved the ball wide. The following day back in Buenos Aires, I bought a Times newspaper, which was now a few days old. Interestingly for me it included a match report from our game against Argentina. The headline said it all: ‘Townsend shocking in narrow Scots defeat’. The majority of the article was concerned with Dougie’s outspoken comments. I realized that it would have been an even bigger story in the Scottish press. Speaking to my mum and dad on the phone I tried to sound as upbeat as possible. They told me there had been debate in the media about Dougie’s criticism of me and that most commentators seemed to think it had been unmerited. There had even been letters of support for me printed in The Scotsman newspaper. I am sure Dougie had made a heat-of-the-moment remark and later regretted what he said. This was maybe why he came to speak to me so soon after the press conference, but even though the manager Freddie McLeod sent me a courteous letter after the tour, Dougie never backtracked on his comments about my performance. I’m certain, however, that he hadn’t intended to create a story that was to dominate our build-up to the crucial Second Test. Dougie had been through a tough season already – no wins in seven games – and this had been another narrow defeat to go alongside the agonizing loss to England in the Five Nations. Perhaps my interception pass in our last championship match against the French was in his thoughts and he had finally lost patience with me. Nevertheless, there should be no scenario that justifies publicly hanging a player out to dry in what I believe is the ultimate team game. Coaches who do this deflect the criticism away from themselves and the team, whether or not that is their intention. There’s a great quote by American football coach Bear Bryant, who said: ‘If anything goes bad – I did it. If anything goes good – we did it. If anything goes really, really good – congratulations guys, you did it.’ Back in Buenos Aires I got a surprise by being named at stand-off for the Second Test – a strange change of fortune but I wasn’t complaining. It was the beginning of a volte-face in the management’s dealings with me. I am positive that this had much to do with the influence of the SRU Director of Rugby, Jim Telfer, who had flown out to Argentina to take in our final match. He talked me up to the press and was being very positive about my long-term international future. He even stayed behind after our final team run when I did some extra kicking, offering me encouragement and helping return the balls to me. Jim had never coached me up to this point and this treatment was a surprise, as he had a reputation for being a hard taskmaster, more used to shouting at his players. He was genuinely trying to help and I had always felt he rated me as a player. I was touched that he was going out of his way to get me in a better frame of mind for the following day’s match. I played better, making some yards with the ball-in-hand and knocking over a drop goal, but in many ways it hadn’t been that different to my performance in the First Test. The team improved slightly, although we still couldn’t shake off the Argentine spoiling tactics and we suffered yet another narrow defeat. Our goal-kicking again let us down as it had done throughout the tour – our overall strike rate was a mere eighteen goals from forty-nine kicks. On this occasion, Graham Shiel and Mike Dods missed five attempts between them. In contrast, Argentina’s Santiago M?son had a 100 per cent return and we succumbed to a 19–17 loss. We almost salvaged a win in the last minute, but a couple of bizarre incidents – or maybe fate – kept us from scoring. First, late in the second half Argentina tried to make a substitution but didn’t actually take anyone off and, for a few minutes, had sixteen players on the field. The illegal ‘replacement’, Leandro Bouza, was fast becoming my nemesis – he had charged down a clearance kick of mine to score a try two years earlier in the Students World Cup quarter-final. As luck would have it, he again got his hands to another kick, this time charging down my attempted drop-goal. Finally the referee noticed there was one too many Argentine players on the field and we were back to fifteen against fifteen going into injury-time. As we progressed into the Argentine 22-m I called for the ball, seeing that we had an overlap to the right. However, calling for the ball on the left-hand side of the ruck was our ebullient hooker, Kevin McKenzie. He was probably the loudest member of our squad, and it was no doubt for this reason that Bryan Redpath passed the ball to him instead of his halfback partner on the right. Wee Kev then lined himself up for a drop-goal that would have made him an instant hero. However, infamy beckoned as he scuffed the ball tamely along the ground. He will be forever remembered not for having the guts to go for the winning kick, but as that Scottish hooker who nearly had a fresh air trying to drop a goal. It was an ignominious – yet fitting – end to what would remain the only tour that very nearly managed to do what I once would have thought impossible: destroy my enthusiasm for rugby. CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_5b24dd03-058f-551f-90cd-a595eaf76359) Breakthrough (#ulink_5b24dd03-058f-551f-90cd-a595eaf76359) Courage is the ability to get up when things are getting you down, to get up and fight back. Never to know defeat, let alone accept it; to have principles, be they of fitness or morality, and stick by them; to do what you feel you must do, not because it is the popular thing to do but because it is the right thing to do. Courage is skill, plus dedication, plus fitness, plus honesty, plus fearlessness. Bill Shankly At the end of the tour to Argentina my left knee was injected with cortisone to try to put an end to the pain I’d suffered throughout the season. It had been a difficult twelve months and I was desperate for a change of scene. Along with my close friend and fellow Scotland cap Derek Stark, I set off to Florida for five weeks. As our trip coincided with the football World Cup in the US, we spent our time watching the round ball game and avoiding thinking about rugby. My knee didn’t improve, despite the injection. Also, something wasn’t right with my wrist – I winced whenever we did any weight training (or when Derek coerced me into being his beach volleyball partner). When I returned to Scotland I had to undergo two operations. The first was on my knee to clean out my patella tendon. Then, after a precautionary x-ray on my wrist, it was revealed that my scaphoid had broken once again, the fracture probably occurring during Scotland’s Five Nations campaign. The next step was to have a pin inserted in my wrist with some bone grafted from my hip to keep it sealed. It was late summer, I hadn’t touched a rugby ball since the Argentina tour and had to face being out of action until Christmas. Even though I endured two bouts of invasive surgery, I wasn’t as disappointed as perhaps I should have been. The pain in my knee and wrist had troubled me so much the previous season that I knew that something had to be done if I was going to be able to play anywhere near my capabilities again. Normally injuries are incredibly frustrating but in this instance they allowed me to take some time away from my problems at handling the expectations of others and my lack of assertiveness at international level. Argentina had convinced me that an extended break from rugby could provide me with some much-needed relief. I was also thankful that I hadn’t been involved with Scotland in their solitary Test match in the autumn. They were beaten 39–10 by South Africa at Murrayfield – a ninth match without a win. I returned to full fitness in December, playing first for the South then a few games at stand-off for Gala. My form was good, but more importantly I was hungry, confident and keen to express myself. The time I spent out of the game made me realize that the thing I missed most was actually playing matches. It was what I was good at and it was a part of my life that filled me with joy. I knew that the window on a rugby career wasn’t open for too long and my injuries had sharpened my focus to attempt to play without inhibition and fear of making mistakes. They say that ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose and this was exactly how I felt coming back from injury. Less than a month later I was selected at outside-centre for Scotland in a Five Nations warm-up match against Canada. It wasn’t an enjoyable game for the outside-backs – the ball remained a stranger to us for almost the full eighty minutes. However, on this occasion I couldn’t blame stand-off Craig Chalmers as the weather was atrocious in Edinburgh. By the second half, sleet had turned to heavy snow and the intrepid supporters that had turned up at Murrayfield must have wished they had stayed at home – although at least they could say they had witnessed a Scotland victory. Despite narrow losses to England and Argentina, the best we had managed throughout 1994 was a draw against Ireland. Canada was my first ever win in a Scotland jersey. It wasn’t much, but at least it sparked a tiny bit of hope going into the following week’s Five Nations Championship. We followed the victory over Canada by winning our opening match at home to the Irish. This boosted the squad’s confidence considerably and saw the criticism of our coach, Dougie Morgan, quieten down. Our much-maligned captain, Gavin Hastings, also experienced an end to what had been months of sniping from the media. He would never again be criticized in what was the final season of his playing career. Big Gav was an inspirational figure for the squad, especially to the younger players like myself, Kenny Logan and Craig Joiner. Having your full-back as captain usually means that you intend to play fluid, open rugby. Although we weren’t there yet with this Scotland team, Gavin always encouraged the backs to move the ball and have a go at the opposition. As he stressed to the squad, this would be the only way we could play if we were to win our next match, which was against France. Paris in the springtime was full of romance, in rugby terms at least, and provided me with a wonderfully memorable day. Scotland hadn’t managed to win in Paris for 26 years and had never recorded a victory at the famous Parc des Princes, a bowl of a stadium that reverberated with constant noise. Back in 1969, a certain Jim Telfer had scored the winning try at the Stade Colombes, which had been Scotland’s last away win against the French. We were determined to replace the black-and-white images of Jim powering over the try-line, which were always shown on the eve of France–Scotland games. However, I didn’t make the most auspicious start to what ended up being the breakthrough game I’d been searching for. As we boarded the bus for our final team run the day before the match, the manager, Duncan Paterson, called me over. I could tell that he wasn’t happy and he showed his disgust by pointing to my shoes: ‘Gregor, where do you think you’re going with those on?’ ‘Erm, on the bus with the others?’ ‘Not with those trainers on you’re not. Get them changed or you can’t do the team run.’ ‘But I’ve only got my kilt shoes I brought for the dinner tomorrow night.’ ‘Well, that’s what you’ll have to wear for not bringing your Nike trainers then, won’t you?’ For a split second, I thought it was some big joke and I started to smile – hoping this would result in us both having a laugh and boarding the bus as best friends. Unfortunately, he just scowled, putting his body between the doorway to the bus and myself. As other players were waiting to get on board – and realizing that it wasn’t worth pushing my luck any further – I trooped off back to my hotel room exasperated and angry. Just why Paterson was upset with me was a combination of my forgetfulness and an over-zealous interpretation of what was still an amateur sport. Many of the squad were given money or merchandise to wear a certain type of rugby boot, which was perfectly within our rights as amateur players. Earlier that season, I had been contacted by Reebok to become one of their sponsored players, and I have been associated with them ever since. However, we were also supplied with Nike boots and training shoes from the SRU. I think Nike supplied the SRU with kit for their age-group sides and part of the deal was that anyone playing for Scotland had to wear Nike boots. If you look at photos of our win in Paris you’ll see a few of the side playing in blacked-out boots. Those of us who chose not to wear Nike had to make sure that no branding was showing. That was after having to convince the management that we had a medical reason for not wearing the Nike boots we had been given. My excuse – which was actually true – was that I’d got blisters from training with the Nike boots. Reebok didn’t give me any money for wearing their boots in an international – the ?2,000 yearly payment was a flat fee irrespective of how many games and what boots I wore for Scotland. Reebok would send me a number of items of footwear and other gear, which was mainly stored at my folk’s house in Gala together with the kit I’d received from the SRU. In packing my bags for the French match, I must have put in a pair of Reebok trainers instead of my Nikes by mistake. I realized this when opening my kit bag in Paris, but thought nothing more of it. Our final team run wasn’t going to be filmed and the odd newspaper photographer who turned up wouldn’t be interested in what trainers I was wearing. And I’m sure a global company such as Nike wouldn’t have been bothered even if I had had Reebok tattooed to my forehead during our run-through. But it was insignificant details like this that the SRU liked to catch people out on, even at the detriment of Scotland’s preparations for such an important match. Sometimes the custodians of the game were more demanding in the amateur days than they are now in the professional era. A couple of minutes later I was back – the last to board the bus – now wearing black brogues, which didn’t really go with my shorts and tracksuit top. If it had been the manager’s desire to make me feel very small, he had achieved his goal. I was deeply embarrassed and could tell the rest of the squad had worked out what had just happened. My embarrassment continued at the training ground close to our hotel as I was forced to wear my black shoes to do a few laps of an athletics track and a stretching routine with the rest of the boys. Luckily, when we ran through some team plays, one of the subs let me borrow their trainers until we had finished the session. I tried not to dwell on the morning’s team run and thought back to two years before when I’d sat on the bench for the French game. I had thoroughly enjoyed the peculiar build-up to a match in Paris. We were again using the Hotel Trianon as our base, which was by far the best hotel I had ever stayed in. Even more impressive was the fact that the hotel was only a five-minute walk from Versailles Palace, a stunning building of sublime grandeur surrounded by lavish fountains, a huge lake and magnificent gardens. There are few places in the world that can match the grounds of Versailles for a final get-together as a squad on the morning of a game. It turned out to be the beginning of an unforgettable day. For a Test match, both teams are usually given a police escort to the stadium. This means that the bus isn’t delayed, as other vehicles are obliged to give way. In France, watching the antics of the gendarmes who flank the team bus is something not to be missed. Despite huge traffic jams blocking la peripherique of Paris, we never seemed to slow down as our police motorbike outriders banged on car doors, waved us through red lights and forced other traffic onto the pavement. That day, we must have made it to the Parc des Princes in record time. The pulsating atmosphere in the stadium was the stuff of legend, and we experienced a taste of what was in store during our warm-up. There were traditional French bands all around the ground – drums were banged, trumpets and trombones blared and the deep rumblings of innumerable tubas seemed to vibrate through the pitch itself and up into our boots. It felt as if we were the headline act about to come out on stage at a rock concert. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the ball. We had agreed that moving the ball wide was our only hope of success, but I wasn’t convinced that we would have the courage to start the game playing attacking rugby. However, events in the opening two minutes deprived us of any choice in the matter. Even though we knew that the French loved to try little kicks ahead for their wingers to chase, we were powerless to stop France’s captain, Philippe Saint-Andre pouncing on Thierry Lacroix’s neat chip ahead. The game was seconds old and already we were a try down – and at a ground where no Scot had ever tasted success. You could say that, at the very least, this focused our minds! Gavin, who had been caught out of position for the try, rallied his team. And his performance from then on was flawless as he almost metamorphosed into the Scottish rugby equivalent of ‘Roy of the Rovers’. Somehow, the early blow freed us of our inhibitions. We began to play like we had nothing to lose. I took some flat miss passes from Craig Chalmers and surprised myself that I was able to find space against the brilliant Philippe Sella, offloading the ball to Gavin on a couple of occasions. The second of these led our captain surging up-field into the French half. The move was continued through good linking work by our forwards and when we recycled I was standing out wide screaming for the ball. I could see there was a gaping hole in the French defence. Ian Jardine’s pass almost didn’t reach me – I had to flick at the ball with my foot and, amazingly, it bounced up into my hands, allowing me to side-step the covering Philippe Benetton to score between the posts. Every aspiring young rugby player has sat at home imagining what it is like to score your first try for your country; very few actually get the chance, but in their dreams the sun is out, the ground is full and it is against one of the best teams in the world. When it happens it is as if time briefly stands still before suddenly going on fast forward. Relief and joy combine in one ecstatic moment. All the hours of toiling on muddy fields on dark evenings, the disappointments of injury – it all seems worthwhile. I tried to run back to my half of the pitch as nonchalantly as possible, pretending that the emotion of the moment hadn’t affected me. Inside I was bursting with pride. The stadium and even my own players were temporarily reduced to a blur of colour. I couldn’t think of a better arena in which to score a try and I felt ten feet tall as I ran back to be with the rest of the team – that’s nine and a half feet taller than I had felt sliding around with my black brogues at our team run the previous day. With Gavin knocking over a huge penalty kick, by half-time we were in a position to go out and win the game. More importantly, we were all starting to really believe we could win. And, when you start believing you can win games, more often than not, you do win them. I was enjoying the match and I was particularly focused on the various tasks an outside-centre has to perform. With a very dangerous French backline moving the ball at will, I was trying to track the movements of the full-back Jean-Luc Sadourny, and I was able to tackle him man-and-ball a couple of times. We were competing well and making it very hard for the French to get the upper hand in the set piece. However, we seemed to retreat into our shells whenever we nudged ahead on the scoreboard. It made for a decidedly close match. The last ten minutes had more twists than a liquorice factory and must have been agonizing to watch for our supporters. Revelling amidst the colour, the noise and the sheer whirlwind intensity of the Parc des Princes, I was directly involved in the final two tries of the contest … Unfortunately the first of these tries went to France. Having been responsible for Saint-Andre scoring an interception try at Murrayfield the previous season, I felt a depressing sense of d?j? vu as he again crossed the line to touch down for what looked like being the clinching score. With the game tied at 16–16 we had won phase possession in our half and, as Craig Chalmers was out of the 22 m, the call was ‘miss-one diagonal’. What this entailed was that Craig would send a wide pass to me at outside-centre, missing inside-centre Ian Jardine, and it was then my job to dispatch a clearing kick to the opposite touchline and into the French half of the field. However, for the only time in the game I was indecisive and failed to complete a fairly basic task. Even though I started in the 22 when Craig moved onto Bryan Redpath’s pass from scrum-half, I was unsure whether I was still there or not when I caught his pass and prepared myself to kick. I decided it would no longer be safe to kick to touch as – if I had stepped out of the 22-m zone – France would be given a lineout deep in our half. Instead, I thought the best thing to do was to kick as far as possible into French territory. Frustratingly, I didn’t strike the ball as I wanted to. Saint-Andre had also dropped deep and my weak kick gave him the perfect opportunity to counter-attack. Still, we should have been able to defend better than we ended up doing, as the French were more than fifty metres from our try-line. However, with only Gavin and Craig Joiner outside me when I kicked, the move had the potential to go wrong if I didn’t make touch. Saint-Andre and Sadourny easily exploited our lack of defenders. Gavin hadn’t come up in a line with Craig Joiner, and I compounded the error of not making touch by not following my clearance. In fact, I had barely moved after seeing the French run the ball back at us, frozen in the hope that Saint-Andre might somehow drop my misdirected punt. Crucially, Thierry Lacroix missed the conversion, which left a glimmer of hope that we could still win the match. There was probably a feeling of inevitability among our supporters – here was yet another gallant defeat in Paris – and no doubt some of our players began to feel the same way too. However, the urgings and belief of our captain didn’t allow us to wallow in any self-pity. Gavin shouted at his troops, looking each of us in the eyes: ‘That’s it. From now on we run everything. We’re going to get back up the other end of the pitch, score between the posts and win this game. Okay?’ Finally, he looked directly at me. ‘Okay, Gregor?’ I nodded my assent. I was desperate not to disappoint my skipper and, with five minutes remaining, I knew there was still enough time for us to score a converted try. We attacked the French with everything we had, but found it increasingly difficult to get out of our own half. I called for the ball wide and took a pass from Craig Chalmers just over the halfway line. With the French defence looking like they were drifting out to the touchline, I stepped back inside to try and find a gap between Thierry Lacroix and Laurent Cabannes. I was tackled by both of them but I managed to wrestle my right arm free in the hope that I could offload once more to Gavin. He had been a constant presence on my outside shoulder every time I had run at the defence, but on this occasion I heard him calling for the ball on my inside. Gavin had sized up the situation in advance and was aware that a sliding French defence had left a gap. Although I couldn’t see him charging up on my inside shoulder, I knew I had to gamble and turn my wrist to send out a reverse pass. Only after letting go of the ball did I see Gavin – who looked more than a bit surprised – surge onto my pass. In the few seconds that it took Gavin to sprint to the French goal-line he became a Scottish living legend. His angle wrong-footed Sadourny and there was no French player left to stop his run to glory. He still had to knock over the conversion, and showed that his confidence was even greater than normal, as he dummied his run-up to try to catch the French offside. My heart missed a beat when he did this, but he made sure of the two extra points to seal a momentous victory. It would be the only Scotland victory at the fabled Parc des Princes, with France moving to the brand-new Stade de France three years later. In my old bedroom at my parents’ house there is a photograph of the instant the ball left my hand as I flicked the reverse pass that sent Gavin away on his match-winning run to the try-line. The movement became dubbed the ‘Toony flip’ by the media. Whenever I am back in the room I inspect the picture nostalgically: my focus at trying to get my pass away while being dragged to the ground, and Gavin’s look of astonishment as he is about to grasp the ball in both hands. In the twelve years since that wonderful spring day, the memory of that instant is still strong – the move off my left foot after drifting across the field, the effort to get my elbows high and free from the two tacklers, and finally the almost blind pass as I struggled to look over my shoulder to find where Gavin actually was. One rugby writer commented that it had been the day that I had finally delivered – and I suppose he was right. Paris was my breakthrough match and put an end to feelings of self-doubt that had prevented me from playing to my potential. It was only once we were back in the changing room that what we had achieved began to sink in – especially for the older players. We had accomplished something special, something that had evaded all the great Scottish players of the Seventies and Eighties. I looked around at the faces of my team-mates and saw unrestrained rejoicing. This elation was illustrated in different ways with groups of players singing ‘Flower of Scotland’, others hugging each other and even tough competitors like our prop, Peter Wright, crying uncontrollably. The word quickly spread around the team that most of our supporters were still in the stadium so we went outside to join in the celebrations with them. There were over 7,000 Scots at the ground and we threw our socks and shorts into the crowd as we sang our anthem together one more time. Our team that day – a mix of youth and experience – is worth noting: Gavin Hastings, Craig Joiner, Gregor Townsend, Ian Jardine, Kenny Logan, Craig Chalmers, Bryan Redpath, Eric Peters, Iain Morrison, Rob Wainwright, Damien Cronin (Doddie Weir), Stewart Campbell, Peter Wright, Kenny Milne and David Hilton. Inevitably, the dressing-room festivities carried on right through the weekend. The after-match dinners in France usually involved a lot of drinking as we were always placed together at a long table without the distractions of the management or the opposition. We started by smashing all the plates that were placed in front of us. The temptation was too great – they came out piping hot and only needed a tap from a spoon to crack in two. The champagne was flowing and not even a ticking off from our manager could stop us from having fun. Gavin soon became the focus of our frivolity as we told the French players to approach him every five minutes with a strong drink. As captain, he was duty bound to knock them back. Worse was to follow for big Gav as, naively, he had allowed Damien Cronin (who was playing for Bourges at the time) to write his speech in French. Gavin didn’t realize that instead of talking about the match, he was describing to the whole French team and the numerous dignitaries present, the sexual acts he was going to perform later that night with his wife Diane. Of course, the French found this hilarious and gave him a standing ovation. Gavin looked very pleased with himself. It wasn’t until the early hours of the morning that someone eventually told him what he had actually said! In reply FFR president Bernard Lapasset was magnanimous in defeat. His words were very prescient and I hope his sentiments stand the test of time: ‘Rugby is not for the country that is stronger or richer, it is for the country that shows greater courage, discipline and teamwork over eighty minutes.’ After the dinner I went with some of the squad to search for our partners who were supposed to have been at a function with the other WAGS. I had been seeing Claire for almost a year – we had met at university – but this was her first experience of accompanying me on an away trip with the Scotland team. I thought I’d better leave our dinner early, just in case she wasn’t enjoying herself. I shouldn’t have worried … The girls had disappeared. The only people left at the ladies dinner were the wives of the SRU committee. After a quick search, we moved outside – in time to see our partners flying past clinging to the backs of the same motorbike outriders that had taken us to the match earlier in the day. Claire and the girls were buzzing with excitement. In the satisfying glow of the day’s magical events, victory in Paris felt like we had won a Grand Slam. And it suddenly began to dawn on us that we were on course to achieve that feat if we continued our good form. A fortnight later we beat Wales 26–13 at Murrayfield, although I thought our win could have been even more comprehensive if we had moved the ball as we had done in Paris. Nevertheless, we had won our fourth game on the bounce and, more importantly, had a real chance to win the Grand Slam. Our next game, away to England, meant both sides would be going for the Slam – a scenario that had famously occurred back in 1990. Since their loss five years before at Murrayfield, England had returned to playing a very restrictive game plan. It had brought them success with Grand Slams in 1991 and 1992 as well as being runners-up to Australia in the 1991 World Cup. Yet, they had never fully utilized their awesome attacking potential. For the 1995 Five Nations finale, their backline included the Underwood brothers, Mike Catt at full-back as well as centres Will Carling and Jerry Guscott. However, stand-off Rob Andrew adopted a kicking strategy, safe in the knowledge that his gargantuan pack of forwards could dominate the game. With a back five of Martin Johnson, Martin Bayfield, Tim Rodber, Ben Clarke and Dean Richards, the English forwards strangled the life out of us and the match as a spectacle. It was ironic that their hooker, Brian Moore, complained afterwards that ‘Scotland’s spoiling tactics had ruined the whole game.’ I suspect that he had been upset by the fact that we hadn’t submitted meekly to the English juggernaut. Although we managed to stop England from scoring a try, I can’t say we deserved to win as we hadn’t played to our potential. Our work-rate and defence had been exemplary, but we never attacked with the same skill and ambition that we had done in Paris and we missed the direct running of the injured Ian Jardine. However, the 21–12 scoreline flattered England, and we were aware that we hadn’t been too far away from winning a Grand Slam. We had built up some great momentum and we were resolved that our belief wasn’t going to be affected by the defeat. The squad had real belief that if we developed our attacking edge we could perform well in the upcoming World Cup in South Africa. From a personal point of view, I felt that I had finally shaken off my previous inhibition when playing for Scotland and, although I would have probably preferred playing in the number 10 jersey, I was now comfortable in the Test match environment. I felt I could beat my opposite number when I got my hands on the ball and I was looking forward to the World Cup on the hard grounds in South Africa. Craig Chalmers had played well that season and I noticed at close quarters that he had an undoubted big-game temperament. There were times against England when I was glad it was him and not myself who was kicking to touch. I was learning more and more with each international and I decided I could wait until next season to make a challenge for what I was convinced was my best position of stand-off. There was just one more club game to negotiate before the World Cup squad left for a training camp in Spain prior to our departure to South Africa. The rearranged fixture – the last club match of the season – was against Hawick, Gala’s traditional rivals. With both teams safely ensconced in mid-table there was nothing but local pride at stake. Little did I know at the time but it was to be my final performance in the maroon jersey. And it was an occasion I was to remember for all the wrong reasons. After recovering my own chip kick late in the second half, I received a stinging blow to my knee as I attempted to beat the Hawick full-back Greig Oliver. I knew immediately something wasn’t right as my leg was very painful and felt unstable when I tried to get back on my feet. The Gala captain, Ian Corcoran, was telling me that I’d be able to run it off, but I knew I would have no chance of finishing the game. My mind went back to two years previously and the only other time I’d suffered a similar injury during a match. Although I was forced to miss the first game of the Five Nations, my medial knee ligament tear in the 1993 national trial had only kept me out of action for three weeks. With Scotland’s opening match in the World Cup almost two months away, I convinced myself that it must be a comparable injury and there was no way it would prevent me from going to South Africa. Looking back now it was obvious that I was in denial. The following day, despite the fact that I struggled to get in and out of the car, Claire and I left for a four-day break in Ireland that we had already planned. In the days before mobile phones I was incommunicado during our tour around the Emerald Isle, and when I got back home there were numerous messages waiting for me. In particular, the Scottish team manager and doctor were anxious to assess how serious my injury really was. My knee had improved since the weekend and I was quite relaxed when I met up with the SRU’s doctors, Jimmy Graham and Donald Macleod. An arthroscopic scan revealed that I had completely ruptured my posterior cruciate ligament, which equated to a best-case scenario of three months’ rest and rehabilitation. I was dizzy with shock as it meant that I was now ruled out of the World Cup. The whole timing of the news was the thing that fazed me at first. Missing the World Cup felt like a repeat of missing out on my first cap. On top of my wrist and knee problems from the year before, I started to ask myself whether I was jinxed or, even worse, injury prone. On the way back from the hospital I tried to change my disappointment and anger into goal setting. I decided then that I would return to Australia in three months time when I was due to be available to play again. I also very nearly convinced myself that there were a number of positives to take from my injury. For the first time in four years I would be able to sit my university exams at the same time as everyone else. I was glad to have my student life to fall back on. There followed a lot of sleeping in the university library, getting over late-night studying and regular drowning of sorrows. Also my daily physiotherapy at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital in Edinburgh kept my disappointment in perspective. A three-month injury didn’t seem so bad when compared to some of my fellow patients. Many had massive operation scars and had recovery periods of over a year. One man even told me that he had already torn his cruciate ligaments on five separate occasions and he didn’t play sport of any kind. Rehab work is a frustrating and seemingly endless repetition of strengthening exercises, but the tedium at least made me determined that I must make the most of the rugby talent I had been blessed with. I had spent the best part of the previous two seasons playing with or recovering from injuries and it was conceivable that the rest of my career could be more of the same. My rugby mates were great at helping me deal with the trauma and frustrations of missing out on the game’s biggest occasion. I met up regularly with Derek Stark, Andy Nicol and Sean Lineen and I remember us all watching Scotland take on France through a drunken haze in the notorious Edinburgh student pub Oddfellows. Our former team-mates put on a tremendous show and were desperately unlucky not to win the match. If they had, they would have met Ireland in the quarter-finals – a match they would have been favourites to win. As it was, Scotland met the All Blacks with Jonah Lomu et al. and they crashed out of the tournament, despite having played well in all of their games. The 1995 World Cup was a watershed moment in rugby union and all of a sudden it looked as if the game was poised to turn professional. I put it down to wishful thinking and continued to apply to financial institutions in London, hoping I could work there after the summer. It may seem strange, but I was never envious when I looked around at other sports and saw the money involved. Playing international rugby in front of 80,000 crowds was a privilege and I did not feel it was my right to expect money – the sheer experience seemed payment enough. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». 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