Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography

Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography Bill Beaumont First published in 2003 and now available as an ebook.One of the best lock forwards in the history of English and Lions’ game, and a successful captain to boot. Bill Beaumont’s popularity on the field and his appearances on A Question of Sport made him a household name.This is the light-hearted and amusing life story of a larger-than-life character.A serious head injury forced Bill Beaumont to retire from rugby prematurely at the age of 29, after leading his country 21 times in 34 appearances – including a memorable Grand Slam in 1980 – and captaining the Lions to South Africa in 1980.Since then he has been honoured with an OBE and turned effortlessly to a career in broadcasting as a BBC and Sky Sports summariser and, more famously, as captain on the sports quiz show A Question of Sport.He is also a brilliant after-dinner speaker, and recently became chairman of the RFU's National Playing Committee.Beaumont reflects back on a wonderful career, reliving the dramatic events on the field as well as the off-the-field scrapes and humorous escapades that characterised the game in its amateur era. And now as an elder statesman, he is perfectly positioned to talk knowledgeably about the game he so loves. COPYRIGHT (#ulink_809228fa-0c08-5696-ac02-deb298777908) HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) First published in Great Britain in 2003 Copyright © Bill Beaumont 2003, 2004 Geoff Green 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, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks 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: 9780007156702 Ebook Edition © JULY 2017 ISBN: 9780008271114 Version: 2017-07-18 DEDICATION (#ulink_d4243107-d5cc-5e0a-8b98-a077c33e02d1) To my wife Hilary and our sons Daniel, Sam and Josh. Thank you for your support and encouragement and for selflessly providing me with the opportunity to do a lot of things I wouldn’t, otherwise, have been able to do. CONTENTS Cover (#u0f52e920-48b7-536c-acbe-28029a73a7c9) Title Page (#u51f4adb0-dde6-5a3f-94bb-62ae22630942) Copyright (#ulink_b8dbcf99-f301-547d-8403-acec3566dcb7) Dedication (#ulink_d6467a5b-9e84-5c42-9db1-f8b12bda0517) Foreword by Clive Woodward (#ulink_587f2b73-d755-5499-b97f-54ba111f98a7) Prologue (#ulink_3e02b64d-9858-5973-82f3-6ed6396c9545) One Childhood, school and family life (#ulink_046b1645-bd18-58c4-839b-0d6eefaccd9a) Two Remember you’re a donkey (#ulink_83be66b6-8ca1-51d3-b5e2-ca95307f36ea) Three Your country needs you (#ulink_58aec891-13dd-5ea3-a660-3c3b0338fd1d) Four Lion cub (#ulink_6edc6400-e6d5-5083-97bb-abce9367ebbb) Five A slam at last (#litres_trial_promo) Six Leader of the pride (#litres_trial_promo) Seven A brain discovered … and damaged! (#litres_trial_promo) Eight Banished (#litres_trial_promo) Nine Battle stations (#litres_trial_promo) Ten A Question of Sport (#litres_trial_promo) Eleven The World Cup (#litres_trial_promo) Twelve The future (#litres_trial_promo) Thirteen Nothing but the best (#litres_trial_promo) Fourteen On top of the World (#litres_trial_promo) Career Record (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) FOREWORD (#ulink_c58041d5-4909-5483-a370-383387bab772) Clive Woodward (#ulink_c58041d5-4909-5483-a370-383387bab772) I was delighted to accept Bill’s invitation to write the foreword for his autobiography. Bill had a huge influence on my international career. He was captain when I made my debut for England against Ireland in January 1980, the same year he led England so brilliantly to the Grand Slam, England’s first for 23 years. On the day I replaced Tony Bond, who was very unfortunate to break his leg on what was an otherwise enjoyable afternoon. To win your first cap, as Tony and Bill would testify, is a great feeling and one of Bill’s strengths as captain was to make the new caps feel welcome. I was fortunate to play in the remaining three games of the 1980 Grand Slam and they are memories that will always stay with me. Bill captained England a further 11 times with me in the side and his influence on the team was huge. He was inspirational and a very good leader. To survive the slaughtering he received from his team-mates, including me, when he was ignored during his half-time team talk against Australia, while we were all distracted by a young lady called Erica Roe running across the sacred turf of Twickenham, showed his true mettle! In total Bill played 34 times for England, 33 of them consecutively and on seven occasions for the British Lions on two tours to New Zealand and South Africa, the latter as captain. He stayed loyal to his club Fylde and retired prematurely at the age of 29 when surely further honours would have followed. Once a player retires, it’s often difficult to make the move from sport to business but Bill has made the transition effortlessly. Bill’s achievements on the field of play have been matched off it. An OBE in 1982, a successful career in broadcasting, notably A Question of Sport, and running a profitable textiles business, endorse his versatility and commerce skills. Bill has also remained dedicated to rugby. He is one of two RFU representatives on the International Rugby Board and earlier this year he was made Chairman of the British and Irish Lions Committee, underlining the worldwide respect for a man who has given so much to the game. Enjoy the book, it contains the life of an extraordinary man and one whom I’m proud to call a friend. Clive WoodwardEngland May 2003 PROLOGUE (#ulink_7499ce7d-f739-5ae6-a451-085f4aa7a8ff) A Glasgow pub may seem an unlikely setting for a defining moment in English rugby history but The Drum and Monkey, in the city centre, will always be associated with England negotiating our way back into the Six Nations Championship after being unceremoniously kicked out of the competition four years ago in a dispute that was as stupid as it was damaging. It was a major bust-up over money – television money in this case – that reflected badly on everyone concerned and went a long way towards destroying trust between England and our immediate rugby neighbours. Over the years I fought many battles in England’s cause, having the scars to prove it, so I wasn’t prepared to stand by and watch us turfed out of a marvellously compelling tournament, even though there were some at Twickenham who had been doing their best to extricate England from the Six Nations in a deluded belief that our interests would be better served by aligning ourselves with the big three from the southern hemisphere: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Which is why I took the bull by the horns, jumped into my car and drove north to thrash out a compromise deal over what the media, in their colourful way, called ‘a pie and a pint’. That last bit wasn’t entirely true but I see no reason to spoil a good story and the media made the most of the combatants sealing a new accord over refreshments in The Drum and Monkey. The hard negotiating had actually been concluded in the Glasgow office of Allan Hosie who, as chairman of the Five Nations Committee, had announced our banishment to a startled rugby world 24 hours earlier. With the media pack in attendance, we simply retired to the pub – I was driving so had to settle for shandy – to wind down, the ‘early doors’ trade considerably boosted by our entourage! Being banned from the championship wasn’t exactly a new experience. It had happened three years earlier after England had broken with the tradition of collective bargaining and negotiated its own television deal with BSkyB without involving Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The difference then was that the ban had taken effect in the summer, leaving plenty of time for common sense to prevail before the competition could have been affected. In 1999 we were on a very different timescale as our banishment came as Clive Woodward was preparing his England side to face Scotland in the Five Nations Championship. The fixture was scheduled to take place less than three weeks later. England had sold all their tickets for the game. Lucrative hospitality and sponsorship deals with the business world were in place and thousands of ordinary fans had bought tickets for the game. Yet, when the Rugby Football Union Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the possibility of a ban, days before Allan Hosie’s public pronouncement, members were talking about challenging the move in the courts. We were given legal advice that England would be able to resist a ban and the mood seemed to be that it wouldn’t happen anyway, that the other nations were bluffing, and that we should leave it to the lawyers to sort out. I stood up at the meeting to urge my colleagues to forget the legal route and use dialogue to extricate ourselves from a ban that would have had serious financial implications, not just for England but also for the other leading European nations because revenue from international matches is essential for the health of the game at large. I’m not suggesting that England shouldn’t have been seeking a bigger slice of the financial cake from any television deal for coverage of international matches and I still argue our case on this issue on the Six Nations Committee, but we had gone about things in the wrong way. We are often, wrongly I believe, accused of arrogance but in this case I suspect there were those in the England camp who felt that we were bigger and better than the other home countries and therefore entitled to take advantage of the financial rewards on offer. Some might suggest that doing the Drum and Monkey deal, instead of taking the other countries to court, cost England millions of pounds in television revenue. We will never know but I have always taken the view that problems can best be solved if people are prepared to sit down together and debate contentious issues sensibly. I told the Council that we owed more to the game than simply winning a legal argument – assuming we would have won – especially as bad feeling would have increased rather than diminished. We had to think about all those people, predominantly members of rugby clubs throughout the country, who had been going to Twickenham for the last 20 years or so to support the national team and who would have been perfectly justified in kicking us all out for the mess we had created. My message to the other countries was not to give up on us. There were some at HQ, in particular personalities like Graeme Cattermole, RFU Chairman Brian Baister and Fran Cotton, who were doing their best to sort out the whole, sorry mess. Even so, it came as a shock when, a few days later, Allan Hosie told the world that England had been kicked out of the championship. I heard the news as I was driving home from work and decided to act very much on my own initiative, especially after Allan had been quoted as saying he thought he could still avoid disruption by sitting down with someone like myself and going over the various contentious issues. I rang Brian Baister and told him, ‘I’m going to Glasgow tomorrow so get yourself up there and we’ll sort it out together.’ I felt it important to have Brian with me because he was Chairman of the RFU and his views on the issue were very much in line with my own. I drove to Glasgow but Brian flew, Allan Hosie picking him up from the airport. We all met in Allan’s office and, because I had told officials at Twickenham what we were doing, the telephone lines had already been working overtime. In the end we found enough common ground for Allan to reverse a decision that I felt should never have been made. I had known Allan a long time and disagreed with him on that occasion, believing his action to have been a bit over the top. I suppose the powers that be wanted to force the issue by banning us; they certainly succeeded if that had been the intention. As a result of our deliberations we had to make concessions and didn’t end up with as big a slice of the financial cake as I felt we were entitled to as the biggest rugby-playing nation in the competition. In that situation it wasn’t equitable to have equality. That may sound double-Dutch but our share of television money has to be spread much farther because we have many more players and clubs to support than the other nations. Also, more television sets are switched on in England than anywhere else when the Six Nations swings into action and I will continue to fight for a better deal in future although I will do so sitting around a table rather than taking to the trenches. So, a form of peace prevailed, although the whole thing could have been handled rather better by all concerned. Whilst the episode didn’t reflect well on England, it didn’t reflect too well on our neighbours either at a time when the leading nations in the northern hemisphere should have been pulling together to turn Europe into the dominant force in world rugby rather than continually hanging on to the coat tails of the only three nations to ever win a World Cup: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. From a personal perspective I’m delighted that my initiative helped to keep England in the Six Nations without a courtroom battle that would have lined the pockets of the lawyers if nobody else, although I did see a certain irony in finding myself in the role of peacemaker for an organisation that had once kicked me into touch too. Being banned had become something of a habit because, under the archaic amateur laws that prevailed until recently, my reward for leading England to a first Grand Slam in the Five Nations for 23 years, back in 1980, was to be outlawed for having had the audacity to retain the proceeds of a book written after injury had forced my premature retirement as a player. I joined a long line of well-known players who were denied the opportunity to put something back into the game because they had cashed in on their fame, to lesser and greater degrees, after hanging up their boots. Some, who had sacrificed so much during their playing careers, hardly benefited at all financially but still paid a heavy price by being outlawed. Many, like myself, felt very hurt at being treated in that way. I’m sure I speak for most when I say that we never even thought of being paid to play for our country. It was deemed a great honour to be selected and I would have paid the RFU for the privilege of donning the England shirt and taking the field at Twickenham, walking all the way from my Lancashire home if necessary. Fortunately, the wind of change finally blew through rugby union and players like my friend Fran Cotton and I, formerly banished, were welcomed back into the fold. We have since thrown ourselves into administration of the game with the same enthusiasm and dedication we showed as players and were both involved in the creation of Club England, the arm of the RFU that has laid the foundations for what I am sure will be a great future for our country on the international stage. Perhaps if we had been able to stay in the game after injury brought our playing careers to an end we might have helped to prevent England, the country that gave the game to the world, becoming so distrusted. It is bad enough that everybody wants to beat England; our scalp is more prized than that of any other country, with a passion. But it saddens me that the word of an Englishman is no longer held in the high regard it once was. That was brought home to me very forcefully when, as a member of the Six Nations Committee, I was a candidate to take over the chairmanship when Allan Hosie stood down. It was a role I felt eminently qualified to take on. I had captained my country for several years, led the British Lions in South Africa in 1980 and had fought to preserve the viability of the Six Nations – a tournament that would lose much of its appeal without England’s involvement. Competing against me for the position was Jacques Laurans from France. He is a nice man and I have no beef with Jacques (if the French will pardon the expression) but I felt I had better credentials to take on the job. So the show of hands around the table felt like a stab in the back as Scotland and Ireland, in particular, combined to ensure that I didn’t win the vote. I did have the support of the Welsh representatives but I had no illusions about how England was regarded after a display of tactical voting with the sole intention of keeping English hands off the reins. There is no doubt that the deep wound, opened by the bitter row over television money, had continued to fester, as was made plain to me after the meeting when I talked to the two Irish representatives, Syd Millar and Noel Murphy. When the British Lions toured South Africa in 1980, with me as captain, Syd went as manager and Noel as coach. Although we didn’t win the series the three of us had worked very well together as a management team and I regarded them both as good friends. I still do. But they had been mandated by the Irish RFU to support Jacques and, when I asked why they had voted against me, the explanation was simple. ‘We trust you Bill but we don’t trust England.’ So, despite our friendship, I was guilty by association of a crime they clearly felt very strongly about. I was an Englishman. So, in a few short years, I had been turned away by England after leading my country to overdue success and rejected by friends within the international community for no other reason than my nationality. Both were bitter blows, but I didn’t shun England when they invited me back into the fold a few years ago and I won’t turn my back on our Celtic neighbours either because I believe very strongly in the Six Nations Championship and have established close friendships over the years with players and officials from the three other home countries. There was a certain irony in the vote for chairmanship of the Six Nations Committee being taken in Dublin. I have had three major disappointments in the Irish capital: it was there that I suffered defeat when I was first capped by England, there that I failed to secure chairmanship of the Six Nations, and there that the vote was taken this year to grant the 2007 World Cup to France rather than England. I was disappointed that the exciting English concept of a 16-team tournament, backed by a Nations Cup for a further 20 countries, wasn’t adopted. The formula would have generated a lot more money, with the extra revenue enabling the Nations Cup to take place alongside the main event and enabling developing rugby countries to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of a World Cup. The English format allowed for a Super Eight play-off that would have given another chance to countries that lost a game in a hard pool. It was not to be and, whilst it will take time to heal the wounds, we will gain nothing from remaining at loggerheads. We should all be working together to develop and improve rugby in the northern hemisphere, both in domestic and international competition, and England has a great deal to offer in that respect, having set the standard in recent seasons. And, by being completely open with our neighbours, we will hopefully regain their respect. CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_25859816-5ab2-59c3-8db2-8ec42b6caf99) Childhood, school and family life (#ulink_25859816-5ab2-59c3-8db2-8ec42b6caf99) If the meeting with Allan Hosie at The Drum and Monkey was fairly critical for the wellbeing of English rugby, the meeting between my parents and doctors at Preston Royal Infirmary shortly after my birth on 9 March 1952 was even more critical for the wellbeing of William Blackledge Beaumont. I had arrived somewhat prematurely by Caesarean section and, within days, had gone down with pneumonia. My chances of surviving beyond a few more days were deemed to be so minimal that I was actually christened in hospital as it was felt that I would never make it to a church. Not much of a vote of confidence for someone who, despite arriving a month earlier than expected, had still weighed in at a pretty healthy-sounding nine pounds. The will to ‘hang on in there’ must have been pretty strong, even at that early age, because I confounded medical opinion by coming through the crisis, aided by a new drug so revolutionary that doctors had to obtain permission from the Ministry of Health in order to administer it to me. That wasn’t the end of my medical saga, unfortunately. Hospital staff expressed concern that I couldn’t keep anything down and was throwing up with messy regularity. If they were puzzled by this phenomenon, my mother certainly wasn’t. Having seen it all before, she was able to make an instant diagnosis: I was suffering from a hereditary condition – that had also afflicted her brother – known as Pyloric Stenosis, which occurs when a skin forms between the gullet and the stomach, preventing anything from being digested. A fairly simple operation rectified that little problem – my uncle had been less fortunate, spending his first 12 months being fed minute amounts of food on a tiny salt spoon. My wife Hilary and I have three sons and, thankfully, none of them inherited the condition. Quite the contrary, they’ve never had a problem digesting anything and have been eating us out of house and home ever since! So, after a longer than average sojourn in the hospital’s baby unit, I finally made it to the family home in Adlington to join my parents, Ron and Joyce, and sister Alison. She was two years my senior and brother Joe arrived four years after me. Adlington was a working Lancashire village where everyone seemed to be employed at either the local weaving mills or at Leonard Fairclough’s, a large construction company responsible, at that time, for building bridges on the new motorways that were mushrooming all over the place. It was a small community and we were a tight-knit family with our own lives tending to revolve around the family textile business – a cotton and weaving mill founded in nearby Chorley by my great grandfather, Joseph Blackledge, in 1888. My mother’s family, the Blackledges, had always made their way in the commercial world but the Beaumonts were academics. A succession of teachers, who had the unenviable task of trying to impart knowledge to a largely unresponsive pupil, would suggest that I leaned more towards my mother’s side of the family, despite the fact that my paternal grandparents were themselves both teachers. My grandfather, Harry Beaumont, had started teaching at Blackpool Grammar School – the Alma Mater of my old adversary and friend Roger Uttley – after the First World War and started a rugby team called the Bantams. He had been badly wounded fighting in Mesopotamia, now Iraq, and was awarded the Military Cross. My father carried on the academic tradition by winning a place at Cambridge University after serving in the Royal Navy during the Second World War. He had been put in charge of a motor torpedo boat so maybe it was from him that I acquired my own interest in boats. It all started when the family owned a house on Lake Windermere, and I’ve been messing about in them ever since. When they sold the property some time later we rented cottages in the area for summer holidays, and Hilary and I still keep a caravan on the waterfront in the Lake District because the boys took up my interest in water-skiing, although I spend most of my time in the boat these days. I even ventured back into the world of learning that I spent so much of my youth trying desperately to escape from, in order to study navigation. Lakes are pretty straightforward but I fancy myself as something of a seafarer these days and I reckon it helps if you know what you’re doing! My grandparents fully expected my father to follow them into teaching once he had graduated from Cambridge but he had other ideas. He chose to go down the commercial route and took a job as a sales representative with a company called Bradford Dyers’ Association, which was a great move from my point of view because he ended up endeavouring to sell his wares at the Blackledge mill in Chorley. He walked in one day hoping to secure a little business but secured a wife instead. My mother had joined the armed forces after leaving school and had experienced an ‘interesting’ war, working as part of the back-up team for our ‘foreign agents’, who would regularly be sent into occupied France and other theatres of the war. Once peace had been restored she had joined the family business and, as luck would have it, was there the day my father popped in. By that time my father had started playing rugby at Fylde, having also played at Cambridge as an undergraduate. I don’t think he had any great pretensions in the game but, like the majority of players, he was a great enthusiast for the sport and made it as far as the second team. The club played a lot of games in the Manchester area in those days and he used to call in to see my mother on his way back to Blackpool. She wasn’t over keen on rugby at that time and, after they married, he never played again. In any case he was busy because, when he asked my grandfather for my mother’s hand in marriage, he was asked, in turn, when he could start work in the family business. He really threw himself into the job and did a great deal of work on developing the sales side of the business whilst my grandfather and uncle concentrated on manufacturing. The job involved a good deal of travelling and I can recall times when he would go off to Australia on business trips that lasted as long as two months. Apart from those trips we were always together as a family and, until the age of eight, childhood was an uncomplicated affair that revolved around playing football and cricket in the garden or on the rec with the local lads. We didn’t have a care in the world in those days and the only person who would get upset at times was my father, when our games of football and cricket made a mess of his pride and joy, his garden. He was a budding Alan Titchmarsh, and would spend hours pruning the roses, weeding and continually mowing the lawn – an activity I deemed a complete waste of time although, whilst not inheriting his green fingers, I have been known to tell off my own boys for doing a pretty good job of wrecking our garden. It is a case of going full circle because the lads have always turned our garden into a rugby, soccer or cricket pitch, according to the season or inclination at the time, and you often can’t move for cricket bats, rugby and soccer balls and golf clubs. Our boys are of the fairly boisterous variety, now rapidly growing into men, and, as they are all into one sport or another, we are now the proud owners of two washing machines and two tumble driers because just one of each simply wouldn’t be enough to cope with the mountains of muddy, sweaty playing kit they manage to accumulate in just 24 hours. The Blackledges were always heavily into cricket and the game dominates the summer months at the Beaumont homestead, whilst rugby league is a favoured activity in the winter when uncle Jack Partington, who used to play in either halfback position for Broughton Park, Fylde and Lancashire, happily joins in. He hasn’t any children of his own to wear him out so he turns up with boundless energy and goes through a sort of second childhood, which the boys take full advantage of. That takes the pressure off me, allowing me, unless I get roped in, to sneak off and read my newspaper. The boys, Daniel (20), Sam (17) and Josh (11), have always been crazy about sport. I’ve never been a pushy father, preferring to let them pursue the sports that interest them and to find their own level. But I have always been there with support and advice when needed. Interest in, and an aptitude for, sport must be in the genes and they certainly take after me when it comes to size. At birth, Danny weighed in at 8lb 13oz, Sam at 9lb 7oz and Josh tipped the scales at 10lb 5oz. Like any father, I was just delighted that they were born healthy and that Hilary was fine. We were living in Longton, near Preston, when Daniel was born and I had a bad habit of driving around with nothing other than fresh air in my petrol tank. Hilary was convinced I would run out of fuel if I had to take her to hospital in a hurry, but fortunately we made it to Preston Royal Infirmary when Hilary went into labour, without running dry. It wasn’t the easiest of deliveries and, like many fathers before me, I sat around for hours anxiously awaiting his arrival and feeling like the proverbial spare part. When Sam was born he looked just as he does now; his features haven’t changed at all. Both he and Danny had little hair at birth but Josh had a mass of black hair when he arrived on the scene, his brothers christening him ‘Bear’ – a pet name they still use. Despite being born the size of a three-month-old baby, however, he has still, unlike his older brothers, to graduate to the pack on a rugby field. All three boys took to the game immediately, Daniel developing as a front-row forward and Sam as a second row while Josh, who looks like being the tallest of the three eventually, is currently playing junior rugby at fly-half – a position his father once graced! They also play a lot of cricket, soccer, tennis and golf. It is a case of indulging in whatever is in vogue at the time. During Wimbledon fortnight, for instance, it is tennis, whereas when the World Darts Championships appears on television, I notice that the dartboard suddenly reappears. It hasn’t been easy for the boys, because having a high-profile sportsman for a father can work against you and I feel that Daniel, in particular, has had a raw deal. He’s a bright lad but very sensitive and he has had to cope with the expectation that comes from the Beaumont name. He played at Fylde from an early age, turned out at tight-head prop for Lancashire Clubs’ Under-15s, and is now hooking at Manchester University where he is studying for a business degree, but he was largely ignored by school selectors and when he dropped the ball or did something wrong, even at the age of seven playing mini-rugby, he would have to put up with stupid comments such as, ‘You of all people should know better than that.’ Sam is the quiet one and, at the moment, the tallest of the three boys. He played for the Lancashire Under-18s A-team a year early and has a good knowledge of the game. That may come from the fact that the boys have accompanied me to World Cups, been taken on British Lions tours and used to join me in the commentary box when I was working for television. They have watched a lot of top-class rugby and had the advantage of being in the company of people who have played the game at the highest levels, so they have a better than average understanding of what is happening on the field. I have always found having to stay on the sidelines and not get involved in the boys’ sporting activities at school frustrating, but I could see it being difficult for a schoolteacher being scrutinised by a former British Lions captain. So I stand back and try to help the school in other ways, such as fundraising so that the school team can undertake tours overseas. At present young Josh seems to be least affected by the famous father syndrome. When his brothers were born, there was quite a bit of media interest and their pictures appeared in newspapers and magazines, to be followed later by happy family features. By contrast there was no fuss whatsoever when Josh arrived and he may well escape the goldfish bowl. In any case he is one of those annoying little characters who confidently take everything in their stride – in his case probably because of having to compete with older and bigger brothers – and he is naturally good at every sport he attempts. He captains rugby and cricket teams, and competes in the school swimming team as well, even though he hasn’t bothered joining the swimming club. He also regularly embarrasses both Hilary and me on the golf course! I remembering partnering him in a fathers-and-sons tournament at the Royal Lytham course in which we had to play alternate shots. Josh decided very early on in the round that I was the weakest link! At another time I had been due to play in a tournament during the festive season and we were sitting around at home with nothing particular to do so I said to Josh, ‘Come on, let’s go and hit a few balls down at the golf range.’ When we got there we bumped into Paul Eales, a PGA European tournament professional, who told me he had just been reading a new coaching manual but added that there was no point in lending it to me because I was beyond help. When I suggested that Josh might benefit he said, ‘I can’t do anything with him because he already has a swing to die for.’ Josh’s temperament is such that I suspect he will ride out any family references and cope with the inevitable question, ‘Do you play rugby and are you as good as your dad?’ The great thing is that, whilst they are all very different in character, each of the boys has inherited our love of sport. And, as parents facing the difficulties of modern society, Hilary and I take great comfort from the fact that they enjoy the ethos of rugby and cricket and socialise within that environment, just as we always did. It is an environment in which I have always felt comfortable because it attracts people from all walks of life and is very family-orientated. Family life is very important for Hilary and I and, whether playing football and cricket on an Algarve beach, skiing in France or water-skiing in the Lake District or at our home in Spain, the important thing is all being together. Our impromptu games of cricket and football on foreign beaches have often attracted other holidaymakers who ask to join in. They were always most welcome but we had to take care where we elected to play after inadvertently finding ourselves playing cricket on a nudist beach on one occasion. We were blithely unaware until a bather suddenly appeared between batsman and bowler. Sam’s eyes were like organ stops! The boys have accompanied me on Lions tours and to World Cups. They also go to Twickenham with Hilary and I and join in the traditional get-together in the car park with Fran Cotton, Steve Smith, Roger Uttley and their families. (I remember how, during the last Lions tour to Australia, Josh had his face painted – they’d never seen anything like that before in the committee box!) Importantly, they aren’t blas? about this, always making a point of thanking us for taking them. I didn’t have the same opportunities for travel that my boys have enjoyed throughout their lives but I had a very happy childhood nonetheless – the carefree routine only being broken when I started attending the Council School in Adlington and adopted a stance that was to stay with me throughout my scholastic career. I took very little notice of the bookwork and thought only about getting into the playground with a ball. Lessons were merely an unwelcome distraction but I was about to be doused in ice-cold water – metaphorically speaking. When I was eight I was packed into the car and driven to Kirkby Lonsdale, on the edge of the Lake District, to be introduced to Cressbrook Preparatory School, which was to become my home for the next few years. To say the experience was a shock to the system would be putting it mildly. It took me a long time to settle in and I was very homesick. Years later I can recall asking my mother how she could have sent me away from home like that but it wasn’t easy for her either. She said it had been the worst week of her life because Alison, who was ten at the time, went off to boarding school in Harrogate on the Thursday, I went to Cressbrook on the Friday and my father flew to Australia on business the following day. From having a house full of people she was suddenly left with just four-year-old Joe to look after. I don’t think our three boys would have appreciated a boarding-school regime, and anyway Hilary and I always enjoyed them being at home with us so that we could sit down together to chat and find out what they had been up to. Of course, things were different when I was young and, by sending my siblings and me to boarding school, my parents were only doing what was the norm for people in their social circle. As I say, I wasn’t happy at first but you get used to it and there was the saving grace of sport being available to me almost on tap. Another good thing from my point of view was the headmaster, David Donald – a great guy. Interestingly, the head boy at the school was someone I would come to know very well through rugby in later life: former England centre John Spencer. He subsequently had no recollection of me because he was in his final year at Cressbrook before going on to Sedbergh, but those of us in the first year knew who he was because of the position he held in the school’s pecking order. Since then, of course, we have become good friends and have worked together for many years in rugby administration. Arriving at Cressbrook was certainly traumatic. We slept in dormitories and it was lights out at 6.30 p.m., followed by the cruel wake-up exercise of a swim in the freezing pool at 7.15 the following morning. Little wonder, then, that I hated the countdown to returning there after our very occasional holidays. I was so determined not to go back one term that I hid in a tree! Unlike the local schools my pals attended back in Adlington, we had few holidays and our parents were only allowed to make three visits each term, although they were permitted to turn up to watch us play for the school at soccer, rugby or cricket. Being a boarding school, the routine was very different from most schools. A typical day, for example, might comprise lessons in the morning, sport in the afternoon and then more lessons at four before supper and bed. The sporting routine in my first year was soccer in the winter and cricket during the summer months. Fortunately, I enjoyed both games. Cricket was probably my greatest love and I still like nothing better than sitting down to watch a game, whether it is a Test Match at Old Trafford or just a knockabout on the village green. The game was in the blood; my maternal grandfather was such an enthusiast that he was one of the founders of the Northern League. My uncle, Joe Blackledge, was not just a good cricketer but also Lancashire’s last amateur captain, taking on that role for the last time in 1962, by which time he was probably past his prime and his timing was not as good as it had been. I remember Dad picking me up from school and taking me to watch him play at Old Trafford but Uncle Joe ducked into a ball from Butch White of Hampshire and was knocked out. To add insult to injury the ball fell on to his wicket, so he was out in more ways than one! Uncle Joe played at our local club, Chorley, and that’s where you would find me during the school holidays. I was a wicketkeeper and opening batsman, and played quite a lot of my league cricket in the same team as both the father and the uncle of former England fly-half Paul Grayson, who also had a spell playing cricket at Chorley. Another cricketing pal was Paul Mariner, who went on to play soccer for the Chorley Town team before moving on to Plymouth Argyle, Ipswich Town, Arsenal and England. As the youngest players in the team, we tended to knock around together. Paul ended up coaching in America and we have rather lost contact, but I still bump into his parents when I am out and about in Chorley. I have never tired of watching cricket and, fortunately, our boys developed the same avid interest in the game although Hilary thinks it is akin to watching paint dry. I had to explain that cricket is a wonderfully social game, just as rugby was when I was a young player. It is also a very unforgiving game, cruel almost. More than any other team game, the spotlight is on the individual, and luck can play an important part in success or failure. Some guy might be dropped five times and go on to score a century whereas the next guy could be out first ball to a brilliant catch. When I first started playing rugby at Fylde I continued opening the batting at Chorley in the summer months, usually in the second team, but all that stopped when I got into the pattern of touring every year, either with England or the British Lions. I did make my ‘cricketing comeback’ a number of years ago, however, when we went to live in Wrea Green, a pretty village not far from Blackpool. It is the archetypal English village, complete with church, pub and houses surrounding the village green and duckpond. The captain of the village cricket team was my neighbour, Richard Wilson, and he persuaded me to turn out for them even though I protested that I hadn’t swung a bat in earnest for years. When I dug out my old bat it seemed about half the size of everyone else’s and the same could be said for the kit, which was so tight it almost gave me a squeaky voice, although I did just about manage to squeeze into the flannels! (There was, however, one memorable occasion when I split my trousers and had to nip home for running repairs, holding up play for about 15 minutes. Then it started to rain so the lads claimed they would have won the game if I hadn’t forced the fabric!) It may have been beginner’s luck but I took a catch in the gully off the third delivery of my ‘trial’ game and took another later when fielding at deep midwicket. We lost the game but I made 51 not out and they thought they had discovered another Ian Botham! The Grapes pub served as the clubhouse and, in the euphoria of getting a few runs – and a bravado fuelled by a few pints – I signed up to play for the team on a regular basis. Unfortunately, I never played quite so well again but at least I could walk to the ground from home … and the clubhouse was always a considerable attraction! My playing days, apart from in the garden and on the beach, are definitely over now but I enjoy watching our youngest, Josh, playing for the Under-lls side. Golf is more my game these days although I don’t profess to be very good. I got into the game because that’s how rugby players traditionally pass the time when they’re away on tour and aren’t involved in training. Even now, it’s a good excuse to get away with my pals for a few days, although when it comes to competitions I leave Josh to represent the family. As I said earlier, he is something of a natural with a golf club in his hands and won the Royal Lytham Under-17s Championship when he was only ten. Daniel and Sam are also good golfers, so I never have any shortage of partners, though that proved costly when I played in a competition with Daniel last year. He wanted a car and I had been planning to buy him a very basic model. Young men have their own ideas, however, and he was keen to have one of the new breed of Mini. As I was pretty confident that my pocket wouldn’t be at risk, I wagered him that he could have the Mini if he beat me in a club competition. My pre-round confidence evaporated on the sixth hole when it took me 12 shots to get out of a bunker. Unsurprisingly, Daniel ended up with the Mini. To my pals at the golf club that sand trap is now known as Mini Bunker! My interest in soccer developed through being taken by a neighbour to watch Blackburn Rovers, and my first major sporting outing was to Wembley to watch England beat Scotland in the days when the two nations met on an annual basis. It is a pity that the old cross-border rivalry isn’t given an airing on the field of play these days, as it is in rugby union, but I suppose the opportunity for rival fans to cause mayhem is a good enough reason to have called a halt. Even though my father had played for Fylde, my main interest in rugby as a boy, living in Lancashire, was limited to rugby league. Wigan was just a few minutes away so I was more interested in the feats of Billy Boston than in what was going on at Twickenham, although we did watch the internationals on television and I also have a vague recollection of being taken to watch Fylde. While in my final year at Cressbrook, in 1964 I was also taken to Edinburgh to watch England play Scotland at Murrayfield, though I little thought at the time that I would one day lead England to a Grand Slam at the same venue. For all of us it was just a great weekend away from the confines of the school. Sport provided me with many opportunities to escape the academic life. I was a typical lad in many respects, and lazy when it came to school-work. Deep down, I expected to end up working in the family business, so there was no academic incentive, despite the efforts of my grandparents when Alison and I went to stay in their bungalow in Blackpool for the summer holidays. They had turned the front room into a small classroom, complete with three desks, and they gave private lessons. I remember being there one summer when Sir Stanley Matthews’ son, who developed into a good tennis player, was having lessons. For some reason the family also had the habit of staying at Blackpool’s Norbreck Hydro for three days every year; a massive treat, because it had an indoor swimming pool. My father would travel with his garden spade in the boot of the car and we would take it on to the beach and spend all day building dams. Those breaks were always over far too quickly, and then it would be back to Kirkby Lonsdale and the school routine. Initially, soccer was the winter sport at Cressbrook, and I played in goal. I suppose it linked very well with my wicketkeeper role when playing cricket. I don’t think we won many matches but I was just happy to be involved, preferring the sports field to the classroom. We weren’t allowed to neglect our studies but I had little thought of cap and gown at that stage in my development. So it was perhaps a little ironic that I ended up, much later in life, with two honorary degrees – one from Manchester University and the other from the University of Central Lancashire. I couldn’t help wondering as I received those what my father would have thought could he have seen me standing, resplendent in gown and mortarboard, before 500 students and their parents, while someone delivered a eulogy outlining why Bill Beaumont was being honoured with a degree! After initially concentrating on soccer we switched to rugby at Cressbrook and, although I started out at prop, I quickly made a dramatic move to fly-half. They didn’t have anyone else and I fancied my chances because I had quite a good boot on me. I wasn’t that big in those days, only starting to grow rapidly from my mid-teens, but I can’t claim to have been the quickest fly-half in the business. I did have my moment of glory, however, shortly before leaving Cressbrook, when I dropped a goal against a school side that hadn’t conceded a point for two years. I was quite proud of that! Most of my contemporaries when they left Cressbrook went to Sedbergh, Will Carling’s old school, but my father had other ideas. The plan had been for me to go to Repton, but that was a soccer school so father opted instead for Ellesmere College in Shropshire, where the headmaster was Ian Beer, who had been at Cambridge University with him. Ian, of course, had a distinguished rugby career and represented Cambridge on the RFU committee for many years, being honoured with the Presidency in the 1993–94 season. From Ellesmere he went eventually to Harrow, where Roger Uttley was the rugby master. I spoke at a dinner in Ledbury for Ian many years later, and when he introduced me he dwelt more on my lack of academic achievement than on my sporting triumphs. In response, I observed that this didn’t say a lot for the teachers. Touch?. By the time I moved to Ellesmere College I was used to life as a boarder but it still came as something of a shock because I switched from being a big fish in a little pool of 90 pupils to a small fish in a sea of nearly 400 boys. Most of them were older and bigger than I was. Ian Beer’s later comments on the study front were fully justified because I found academic life a real drag and simply couldn’t be bothered with learning unless it was a subject in which I had a particular interest – which usually meant one involving a ball! I enjoyed my rugby at Ellesmere although I had no thought initially of pursuing it seriously. If I indulged in boyhood dreams, they involved opening the batting for Lancashire at Old Trafford. Indeed, I took so little interest in rugby that the only name that meant anything to me was Richard Sharp, the England fly-half. Yet I knew all I needed to know about our leading cricketers and also vividly remember watching England win the soccer World Cup in 1966. Apart from Fylde I wasn’t aware of other rugby union teams but was always keen to discover how Blackburn Rovers and Blackpool had fared in the Football League. The sporting facilities at Ellesmere were excellent and that helped me through my school years. If you are into sport then, wherever you are – at school, college or just generally in the community – you will always have mates, and in my time at the college we were a pretty mixed bag. Because we were very close to the border there, quite a few of my rugby mates came from Wales and one of those was Mark Keyworth, who played his club rugby with Swansea and got into the same England team as I did in 1976. We suffered a whitewash in what was then the Five Nations Championship and that was the end of Mark, unfortunately. Those were the bad old days of English rugby when players came and went, often without trace, with frightening regularity. A lot of my fellow pupils also came from abroad – the sons of servicemen, diplomats and businessmen who were based overseas – and I recall one boy staying with my family in Adlington for a month in the school holidays because he wasn’t able to join up with his parents. I suppose I did a lot of growing up at Ellesmere as well as involving myself in the usual pranks that healthy, energetic teenage boys get up to. We used to sneak out of school, I remember, to visit the local pub. Fortunately, it had three entrances, so we had our lookout and our escape route all worked out in case a master walked in and caught us supping ale. There was also a girls school not far away, which now and again joined ours for the occasional concert, but we tended to regard girls as though they had arrived from another planet. The problem with boarding schools in my time was that they were almost monastic in some respects. The interaction of a mixed-sex school is, I think, far healthier. I continued to concentrate rather more on my cricket than anything else but also played for the school team at rugby, usually at fly-half or full-back. There were no invitations to take part in county or international trials but I somehow don’t think I would have made the grade in the back division, so I’ve no grumbles on that score. But, since I have started to take note of what goes on, I can’t say that I have ever been greatly impressed by schoolboy selections. Some youngsters are pushed all the time by their masters, and if the latter also happen to be selectors you know who will get into the teams. I was interested to read in The Daily Telegraph how Ben Cohen, who has developed into a tremendous wing, played in England schoolboy trials but never got a look-in because he didn’t go to the right school. Some schools, invariably those in the independent sector, have a tradition of producing rugby talent and, over the years, some senior schools have offered scholarships to promising youngsters based on their sporting, rather than academic, ability. With regional and national selectors being drawn from leading schools, there was always a feeling that their own pupils had an unfair advantage in the pecking order. Today, fortunately, boys from schools that are not as well established in a rugby sense can still progress through the club structure now that we also have regional and national age-group sides drawn from clubs as well as schools. Selectors also seem to ignore the fact that some players are late developers, this being an aspect that worries me about the current academies, valuable though they are. Not everyone plays top-class schoolboy rugby and, despite what we achieved later, neither Fran Cotton nor I ever played for Lancashire Schools. Fran did make it to a trial in his final year at school but that’s as far as it went, although, knowing Fran as I do, I’m pretty sure this provided him with a goal to aim at. I have also found that some players peak early. They achieve a great deal at schoolboy level but can’t cope with not being top dog when they progress to the senior game, so they simply drift away. The door has always got to be open for players who don’t make it into the academies. At club level things have changed. When I played the game the county side was the avenue in the North towards national recognition, whereas in the Midlands clubs like Coventry, Moseley, Leicester and Northampton provided the route to international status. Now, however, international players are likely to be drawn from any of the 12 professional clubs in the Zurich Premiership, and, whereas clubs like Bath and Leicester dominated almost unchallenged for long periods, enabling them to attract the best young talent, there is now a far better spread of talent throughout the entire Premiership. Any player performing well in that competition is going to attract the attention of the national coaches and, with England selection being down to head coach Clive Woodward, there is none of the horse-trading that I suspect went on between selectors from different parts of the country in the old days. Since I was a youngster, much more has been done through the clubs in terms of developing players, largely through the introduction of mini- and junior rugby. That was essential because of the way team sport was discouraged at many schools simply because someone had the daft idea that life shouldn’t be about winners and losers. They didn’t want youngsters to feel either the elation of victory or the pain of defeat but, whatever they say, life is competitive and I feel sorry for those kids who will grow up with no real knowledge of the concept of team sports. I have a real passion for such sports because I believe they mould you for life generally. You learn how to work together, how to show humility in success and how to cope with setbacks. Regardless of what some of the politically correct brigade might desire, we are not all equal and never will be. And, wherever you go in life, there will always be someone in charge. I left Ellesmere when I was 17, with no inkling of what the future held for me. At that time I assumed I would work in the family business, play cricket for Chorley and perhaps play rugby at my father’s old club, Fylde. Occasionally I have to pinch myself when I think back to how I was suddenly pitched on to a rollercoaster ride that brought its share of joy and heartache but one that, despite the dips and the empty feeling in the stomach these brought, I wouldn’t have changed anything. CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9f18eead-400c-5cad-8064-7d513dd54cac) Remember you’re a donkey (#ulink_9f18eead-400c-5cad-8064-7d513dd54cac) My rugby future was being mapped out for me while I was still at Ellesmere College. Father sent a letter to Arthur Bell, the long-serving Fylde secretary, offering my services and pointing out that, although I had been playing full-back towards the end of my school career, I was a bit on the slow side and would probably end up in the pack. So it was with a considerable degree of trepidation that I set off for my first training session at the ground in St Annes, making sure that I arrived in plenty of time. I needn’t have worried because I was to find that not everyone displayed my enthusiasm for training. I quickly got used to the pattern of training twice a week and discovered that work and family commitments affected attendance levels. Only half of the team would bother to turn up on a Monday, when one of the lads would lead us in some fitness work and, when we reassembled on Thursday evenings, we would meet in the back bar at the club and mess about flinging a ball around until someone suggested that it might be a good idea if we actually went outside and got started; a decision that would be put off for as long as possible if it happened to be wet and cold, which it invariably was. Even then most of the discussion, if we were scheduled to play away from home, usually concerned whether or not we were staying at our host club and making a night of it. Coaches were unheard of in those days and it was invariably the captain who called the shots on the training pitch. Afterwards, the routine was to down a couple of pints, in some cases rather more than that, and then to eat as many portions of fish and chips as we could lay our hands on. Today’s coaches and nutritionists would have had a fit if they could have seen us but it was a very different game then. Had I played in the professional era, I somehow couldn’t see myself surviving on pasta and salad! When I was captain of England, my Friday-night routine would be to settle down at home with Hilary to a prawn cocktail followed by a steak and a bottle of wine, which I am sure would be frowned today. Training might have been somewhat haphazard in those days but the one thing there was in abundance was club loyalty. Today, away from the professional end of the game where players are tied to contracts, loyalty doesn’t seem to last from one week to the next. Well down the league system there are players who will move clubs simply because they are offered a few quid for doing so. I’m glad that I stayed faithful to Fylde throughout my playing career. We may not have been one of the biggest clubs in the business but we had a decent fixture list and rugby clubs then tended to have a strong family atmosphere. Many of my best friends are lads I played with in my early days at Fylde. Arriving for that first training session was rather like the first day at school. I was a new boy among men and the only player I knew was the captain, Mike Hindle, who also played at prop for Lancashire (I knew him because he was also in the textile trade). My father had introduced me to Mike and he had facilitated my club membership, but it was to be some time before we rubbed shoulders on the same pitch. I was picked to make my debut at full-back for Fylde’s sixth team against a Manchester junior side called Burnage and that was my one and only appearance in the club’s back division. The following week I was in the back row forwards and, never having had any rugby ambition other than to play the game, happily settled into the routine. I may well have stayed at that level for ever because there was a tendency for the lower sides to hang on to anybody who was as prepared as I was to run around like a mad young thing for 80 minutes. However, a selector called Roy Gartside turned up to watch the sixth team, and even though my team-mates somehow contrived not to give me the ball, Roy must have spotted some talent since I was eventually picked to play for the third team at Percy Park in the North East, probably because some of the regular team members didn’t fancy the trip. So off I went – having told my mother to expect me home about 10 p.m. – all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clutching a one-pound note, which constituted one-third of the weekly allowance I received from my father. It was the first time I had ever travelled any real distance with a senior side and I was an innocent abroad. The game went well and, although I found senior rugby harder physically, it was played at a pretty pedestrian pace after what I’d been used to at school. Only afterwards did I realise that I had a lot to learn about club rugby. We went into the clubhouse for a pint of beer and a bite to eat and I asked one of my new team-mates what time the coach would be leaving for home. It came as a surprise when he told me we were on a ‘stopper’ and wouldn’t be leaving until midnight. I was 17, wasn’t used to drinking – not more than a couple of pints anyway – and we ended up in a pub called The Jungle near the docks in North Shields, where I found myself surrounded by the local clientele, who all seemed to have had their faces stitched at some stage in their careers. A few years later I was battling it out with All Blacks, Wallabies and Springboks, but at that stage in my development I was a young lad straight out of public school and I was crapping myself. I was absolutely petrified and determined not to make eye contact with any of them in case they took exception to my scrutiny and decided to ‘fill me in’. My pound didn’t last very long either but I was subsidised by the older players and gradually started to get into the swing of things. I was even chirpy enough to ring home from a transport caf? at Scotch Corner to tell the folks that I would be home later than planned. It was after 2 a.m. when my mother answered the call, handed the telephone to my father and told him, in no uncertain terms, that I wouldn’t be playing rugby again. I stumbled into the family abode at about the same time as the milk arrived on the doorstep, having discovered the delights of rugby touring. The ‘choir’ sang most of the way home on the coach, and as the vehicle didn’t have an on-board toilet we had to hang out of the door to relieve ourselves until one bright spark decided it would be a good idea to lift the floorboards and pee down the hole. The only problem with that was that our offerings merely hit the drive shaft and sprayed all over the place. At the same time that I joined Fylde, I started a textile technology and business studies course at Salford Technical College and, not surprisingly, gravitated towards the college rugby team. I played in the back row alongside a former England Schoolboy, Richard Jazwinski, who was playing club rugby at Broughton Park. He was a very good player and went on to represent Lancashire, and, during that time, I played against Nigel Yates, who was a centre at Sale and went on to become a senior referee. I graduated to the second team at Fylde and also made the move into the second row, but at the start of the following season it was felt that I was too small for the position in which I was later to make my name, so I was demoted back to the third team to learn how to prop. It was in that position that I made my first-team debut against Waterloo in November 1970, when the team were short, but I afterwards returned to the position I was to occupy for the remainder of my career and, a year later, had established myself in the first team. The only time I was ever dropped by my club was at Christmas during that season, when Roger Uttley, who was studying at university in Newcastle and playing for Gosforth (now the Falcons), returned home for the holidays and was picked ahead of me for the Boxing Day game against our oldest rivals, Preston Grasshoppers. I wasn’t very happy to see this total stranger, to me anyway, suddenly walk in and take my spot, and I had a quiet chuckle to myself when ‘Hoppers’ won. Looking back it is quite incredible how my playing career has interwoven with Roger’s over the years, our rivalry extending over a considerable time. When I started playing in the second row for Lancashire he was playing for Northumberland and was already an established international. I owe my England debut to Roger because I was called into the side when he had to pull out through injury. He also captained England ahead of me – I then took over the captaincy from him, only to lose it back again later. We were intense rivals, and I think we both felt more comfortable when I was fully established as captain and he came back into the national side in 1980 as a flanker. I had made my mark and the selectors weren’t going to bring Roger back as captain again. I think we always respected each other and we have been good mates ever since. Hilary and I thoroughly enjoy his company – and that of his wife Christine. My elevation to the second row at Fylde had again only come about because they happened to be short in that position one day, but once in the engine room of the pack I never looked back. Having worked my way through to the first team, I made my senior debut at second row against New Brighton; a side that, like Fylde, was more of a force in those days. Certainly, the side I played in would beat the current Fylde team without too much difficulty. Brian Ashton was at scrum-half and he was a class player with a good understanding of the game, as has been proved since with his coaching success at Bath and with England. He currently has the vital task of looking after the country’s Academy players who are being groomed for the national side. He toured Australia with me in 1975 when he was really on top of his game and he would surely have been capped had he been able to stay Down Under, but he had to return home to be with his wife after she had miscarried the baby they were expecting. It is a tragedy that he never won his cap because he then went to live and play for a time in Italy and so was largely lost to us. When he finally returned it was to move into coaching, where he has played a considerable role in helping to change the way English backs play. He was not just a top player but is a bloody good bloke too and he is ideally suited for the development role he has taken on. Another Fylde player who came close to representing his country during my playing days was wing Tony Richards. He and Brian were my regular travelling companions and Tony was Lancashire’s wing for many years, playing in England trials but without getting the call he wanted. Despite the passing years, I still see quite a bit of Tony because he is an enthusiastic worker for The Wooden Spoon Society, the rugby charity. By the time I had established myself in Fylde’s first team I was starting to take the game very seriously and I did find it frustrating that not everyone in the side had the same approach to training and preparation. The difference in attitude became more apparent when I started playing for Lancashire. Suddenly I was in the company of players of international calibre and it didn’t take long to work out why. They were a dedicated and very single-minded bunch. Coming second best was not on their agenda and you never had to worry that anyone might be slacking on the field. Still, Fylde had a reasonable fixture list, which provided me with the opportunity to play against powerful clubs, none stronger than Coventry in those days. They could almost field a side of internationals and when I picked up a match programme and saw the quality of the opposition I started at last to acquire real ambition. I remember playing against Moseley at The Reddings one day and their side included England half-backs Jan Webster and John Finlan, John White and Nigel Horton. On that occasion I had an excellent game against Nigel and decided that I rather liked the game of rugby union. He clearly had a long memory because, a year later, he smacked me at the first line-out and gave me a hard time generally. I was suddenly made aware that this rugby business wasn’t as easy as I had been starting to think it was. Lancashire would run a series of trial games, and I played in these in the hope of breaking up the experienced second row combination of Mike Leadbetter and Richard Trickey. Both played in the North West Counties team that became the first English provincial side to beat the All Blacks – at Workington in 1972, during which I stood on the terraces to cheer them on. Mike did win an England cap but only in a 35–13 defeat against France at Stade Colombes in Paris. Under the scoring system then, that was quite a hefty thumping but England were hardly front-runners in the Five Nations during that particular era. There was a lot of chopping and changing and Mike wasn’t the only one-cap wonder by any means. Richard was travelling reserve that day in Paris – they didn’t have replacements at that time and you were only there in case someone was taken ill before the game – and that’s as close as he got to a cap. That was a pity because he certainly deserved one – the old Sale warhorse taught me a great deal. He was limited in ability and not the purest of line-out jumpers but you couldn’t fault him for commitment. He was the fittest bloke I had ever encountered and was a massive influence on my career. At that time he was working as a sales representative and he would get up at 5 a.m. every day in order to get all his calls done by 2 p.m. so that he could devote the rest of the day to his punishing training routine. He could literally run all day and was ultra-competitive. The lads at Sale tell how, after he had retired and taken up coaching, he would race against them, claiming he had beaten them all, despite his age. On investigation, you discovered that he only won the last of a series of 50 sprints, by which time the players were hardly capable of standing, let around galloping 100 metres! In 1972, just three days after the aforementioned victory over the All Blacks by the North West, I made my county debut alongside Richard because Mike Leadbetter had taken a knock in that game. Richard made more than 100 appearances for Lancashire and he soon handed out advice that ensured I didn’t get ideas above my station. In his gruff, forthright way, he told me, ‘Don’t try anything fancy. No sidestepping or selling dummies or trying to drop a goal – just stick your head up the prop’s backside, shove like a lunatic and contest every blasted line-out no matter where the ball is meant to be thrown. We’ve plenty of prima donnas in the backs to provide the tricks as long as we provide the ball. Just remember you are a donkey, and behave like one.’ As a young man who was already awe-stricken at finding himself in company with players like Fran Cotton and Tony Neary, not to mention ‘Tricks’, I nodded my head vigorously in accord. I certainly wasn’t prepared to try debating my role with him. The game was against Cumberland and Westmorland, now rebranded Cumbria, and I soon realised just how fit Richard was when I saw the speed with which he arrived at the breakdown ahead of me. I fared all right at the line-out but the pace of the game was a new experience and one and that made me determined to put in even more work on my fitness. Fortunately, I enjoyed training and even turned a corner of the factory into a gymnasium so that I could work out during my lunch break. I wasn’t picked again during that campaign but I was selected for the following season’s opener at Durham and found myself sharing a room with Richard. It seemed that I still had a lot to learn from this iron-willed man with an equally iron constitution. It was freezing cold but off went the central heating and the windows were flung wide open. Stuffy hotel rooms were not to his liking so I shivered and didn’t argue – I was still in awe of the man. Then there were the mealtimes. I enjoy a good trough as much as the next man, but I have never seen anyone eat quite like Richard. He gorged his way through a mammoth meal in the Royal County Hotel, dragged me off to a back-street pub for a few pints and then, while watching the midnight movie, demolished an enormous plate of sandwiches in the room while I tried to sleep. The following morning he was full of beans, metaphorically speaking, and dragged me, bleary-eyed, down to the restaurant for the sort of breakfast that would have rugby’s modern-day nutritionists slashing their wrists in anguish. He walked it off by frogmarching me up the hill to the cathedral, apparently some sort of ritual for him and one that I continued in the following years. The walk seemed to have the desired effect because not only did it help him to walk off breakfast, it also gave him an appetite for lunch! In the Lancashire camp they tell the story of how Richard and Fran Cotton attempted a monster meal the evening before once again taking on Durham. As coach John Burgess wasn’t due to arrive until the day of the game because of business commitments in Russia, there wasn’t the same control over what the players ate. Normally it was a set meal but the players this time were allowed to tackle the ? la carte menu instead and both Richard and Fran had ordered so much food that their meals could only be accommodated on two large platters – each – and the unbelieving waiters actually carried the platters around the room so that other diners could see what was about to be attempted. I wasn’t there but I’m told Fran retired hurt while Richard sent clean platters back to the kitchen. If Burgess had known about it then their overworked guts would have been had for garters. John Burgess was not a man to fool with. When I first made the Lancashire squad I was petrified of him. He was a bit of a control freak but I had the greatest admiration and respect for him. In many ways he was ahead of his time because his organisational skills were second to none and he really thought about his rugby at a time when sides tended to go through well-tried motions. Before every Lancashire game he would provide each player with a dossier on the opposition and he had newspaper cuttings of all their previous matches. Goodness knows how he found the time to do it all and run a major engineering company at the same time. He knew exactly what everyone had to do in every corner of the field and nobody in the Lancashire camp argued with him, not even the top players. A great motivator, he also had tremendous pride in his county and country, although his experience of coaching England wasn’t a happy one. I suppose that when he reached that level he probably needed more than motivation, organisation and set-piece plays. Sadly, there were those in the England camp who regarded him as someone from a different planet. I’m certain that he was far more comfortable with players such as Cotton and Neary, who thought the world of him, as indeed I did. He more or less transformed northern rugby after it had slipped into something of a backwater. We weren’t a force in the land by any means but Burgess changed that, in no small part due to his honesty, which invariably shone through. As a player the last thing you want to hear is that you haven’t played well but he would certainly let you know if he thought you had had a bad game, and it didn’t matter if you were a many-times-capped international either. He was a massive influence on all our playing careers and I don’t think many of us would have achieved what we did without him. I for one owe him a great debt of gratitude. I played for the county throughout the 1973–74 championship campaign but injured my Achilles’ tendon and had to withdraw for the final against Gloucestershire – a game we lost and that sparked a sequence of three successive title wins for the West Country side. Battles with Gloucestershire were always pretty memorable because both counties took the championship very seriously and, in some respects, it is sad that this particular element has gone out of rugby. When I played it was imperative that you figured in a successful county side because that was the best route to an international cap, considering the strength, or rather weakness, of club rugby in the north. Injury kept me sidelined for three months but there was something to look forward to. Lancashire were due to tour Zimbabwe (Rhodesia as it was then) and South Africa in the summer and I was fairly confident of being included in the squad. I had succeeded in forcing out Mike Leadbetter and there was no serious challenger so far as I could see, so I assumed that I would be renewing my second row partnership with Richard Trickey. I had yet to meet a player who later proved capable of challenging the very best – Maurice Colclough. He was a complete stranger then but was destined to become my partner in an England Grand-Slam-winning team and on a British Lions tour. Maurice, a big, redheaded student from Liverpool University, was poised to have a memorable tour but for all the wrong reasons. That he enjoyed a drink was never in dispute and he would have made his Lancashire debut earlier but for the fact that he had to withdraw because of a judicial appearance he had to make in Dublin. In his youthful exuberance he had apparently stripped off in order to swim across the River Liffey and I can only assume that this didn’t go down too well with the local garda?. Maurice was picked to play in Lancashire’s second tour game in Bulawayo but after a heavy night of carousing he was not really in the best state to sally forth into battle. He tried to fortify himself with a glucose drink, but whilst that provided the propulsion for a wonderful break out of defence it obviously wasn’t too easy to digest because he threw up spectacularly the minute he hit the deck after being tackled. That didn’t endear him to a management that took its rugby very seriously. He had a lot to learn about our Lancashire rugby culture. CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f017dd05-7913-5992-b2ef-67335176ae82) Your country needs you (#ulink_f017dd05-7913-5992-b2ef-67335176ae82) Touring clearly suited me because I always seem to return from my travels a better player. That probably had something to do with playing in good company, and very often against more demanding opposition. The trip to Zimbabwe and South Africa, from a purely personal point of view, had gone very well and I was ready, on my return, to make a determined effort to break through into the England side, knowing full well that this would probably mean renewing my rivalry with Roger Uttley. Tonga paid a visit to the UK during the autumn of 1974 and played against the North at Birkenhead Park just four days before they were due to take on England Under-23s at Twickenham. I was involved in both games, teaming up with Gosforth’s Terry Roberts in a North side that also included my Fylde pals Brian Ashton (who had joined Orrell), Tony Richards and fly-half Ian McDonnell, and I was subsequently included on the replacements’ bench by England. As I had already taken Monday and Tuesday off work to play for the North, I telephoned Twickenham to ask if it would be in order if I turned up on the Friday rather than Thursday, on the grounds that I didn’t want to push my luck – family business or not. They said that this was all right but assumed I would be in London in time for the Friday-afternoon training session, so I suspect I wasn’t the most popular guy in town when I actually arrived during the evening, having done a full day’s graft at the factory. My punishment was to be dragged from my warm and comfortable bed very early the following morning to practice line-out work with skipper John Raphael, who was also the hooker. I was such an innocent abroad that I didn’t even possess a tracksuit, so I went through the line-out ploys in the car park clad in a pair of jeans and a sweater, relying on one of the other lads to lend me a tracksuit to wear that afternoon so that I wouldn’t look completely out of place sitting on the bench. Twickenham was an entirely new experience for me and I couldn’t get over the size of the dressing room. I was used to the cramped boxes that seemed to be the norm at a lot of clubs so it took some time to adjust to the luxury of space and the sight of rows of individual baths rather than the traditional communal bath. The top players, I decided, as I settled down on the bench to watch the match, were very cosseted. I wasn’t too concerned when Trevor Cheeseman, who was playing at number eight, had to leave the field suffering from concussion early in the second half. Coventry flanker Mai Malik, who later took over Rugby Lions, was the back row replacement so I fully expected him to be sent on to fill the gap. You can imagine my surprise, and delight, when they switched Neil Mantell from the second row and sent me into the fray. In the excitement of it all I forgot the line-out calls that I had been hastily trying to take on board in the car park that morning but I still managed to perform well in that department, helped by scrum-half Steve Smith, who let me know when the ball was coming my way. I was also reasonably busy in the loose in the time remaining, so felt pretty pleased with myself when the final whistle sounded. And I had my first England jersey, albeit not the one I really coveted. The important thing was that I was ‘in’. I had been involved in an England team and it was down to me to prove to the selectors that I was worthy of consideration for the senior side. Things are very different today because there is no selection committee, and I am sure that in days gone by deals were done at times rather than the best 15 always being selected. Now responsibility rests with one man, Clive Woodward. In the 1970s, however, England still relied heavily on a series of trials and I found myself picked alongside Roger Uttley in a North side that took on the Midlands at Headingley’s old ground at Kirkstall. Roger was just back from the British Lions tour to South Africa and that was the first time we had appeared together. It looked as though I would be up against Nigel Horton, who jumped at four, because Roger was a recognised front-jumper. But Fran Cotton, who skippered the side, asked Roger to take on Horton and allow me to jump at the front. Roger was already an established international and hardly needed to prove his credentials but it was still a magnanimous gesture when he agreed to the switch without a moment’s hesitation. I was quite surprised after the game when the Midlands hooker, Peter Wheeler, walked past and said, ‘Hello Bill.’ I didn’t think he would have a clue who I was so I was chuffed that established players seemed to be aware of me. There was another surprise in store when I told Fran Cotton that I hoped he would have a good Christmas and he responded that he would wish me seasonal greetings the following weekend when we travelled to Twickenham for the final trial. I would, he assured me – and you don’t argue with Fran – definitely be involved in that game. And he was right. Roger Uttley and I found ourselves on opposite sides rather than as partners. He was picked to play for England and had been due to partner Chris Ralston, while I packed down alongside Nigel Horton for the Rest, but Nigel was elevated when Ralston pulled out and my new partner was Bob Wilkinson from Bedford. As you only meet up just before the game you are never really sure what the team is going to be and there was no time to work out line-out drills. To give you some indication of what it was like, our skipper – Bristol’s Dave Rollitt, who was a bit of a character to say the least – approached me in the dressing room and enquired, ‘And who the hell are you, may I ask?’ Hardly a vote of confidence when even your skipper hasn’t a clue who you are, but he did add that, since I had been selected for an England trial, I couldn’t be ‘completely useless’. I grew to enjoy Dave’s caustic brand of humour and soon discovered what a good bloke he was. I certainly felt a little inadequate and our preparation was such that I had worked out the opposition’s line-out signals long before I had sorted out our own. Hardly surprising then that we went down 38–22 but I wasn’t too disheartened because I had made one or two useful contributions in the game, and I did have the familiar faces of Tony Richards and Steve Smith in the side. Trial games were always difficult games to play in because sides often comprised players who knew little about each other and it wasn’t easy developing an understanding on the field. That’s why I was able to work out the opposition’s line-out signals before our own. Indeed, the games were often such a poor indicator of ability that it wasn’t unusual for experienced internationals to find a convenient injury to avoid having to play in them. Some of the established players took the not unreasonable view that it was better to rely on past reputation rather than subject themselves to trial games – many of which were messy and disjointed affairs. It was normal practice to stay down at Twickenham after the final trial for a squad training session and, after Christmas, I was one of 30 players called back for another session. I was really made up just to be there and was determined to shine and prove a bit of a nuisance to the senior players. Conversely, when I was England captain, I just wanted the rest to stop being a nuisance! In trials and squad sessions it’s possible to look out for your mates. I remember how Fran Cotton and Mike Burton in scrummaging practice seemed to work a little routine. Fran had been at tight-head with Stack Stevens at loose-head and they swapped over so that Fran was up against Burto. They made it look as though Fran was murdering him, with the result that he was kept at loose-head, which ensured that Burto got in at tight-head. In the end it was all in vain because, before they were due to play for England, Burto was sent off in a county championship game by Alan Welsby, the Lancashire referee – that being the occasion when he bowed to the crowd as he walked off. The result was that Stack returned at loose-head with the versatile Fran moving back across the front row. England were due to open their Five Nations Championship campaign against Ireland in Dublin on January 18 and I was starting to take more than a usual interest in the deliberations of the selectors. On the day that I knew the team would be announced, I was on business in London with my uncle Joe, and I bought the first copy of the Evening Standard I spotted as we walked to our hotel. I somewhat feverishly scanned the sports pages and could hardly contain myself when I saw that I had been named as one of the six replacements. Needless to say, work was put on hold while Uncle Joe and I went for a couple of beers to celebrate. As I had expected, Roger Uttley had been named as the front-jumper, with Chris Ralston as his partner rather than Nigel Horton, who had been alongside him in the final trial. Back in the 1970s the team was traditionally announced almost two weeks before the game and, in the case of a first cap, it was usual for the lucky player to stand down from his club side that weekend. I suppose that was done partly to ensure the player didn’t miss his big moment by getting injured seven days before his international debut but, as I had only been named on the bench and because I just loved to play at whatever level, I turned out for Fylde against Nuneaton. So you get some idea of the enormous jump in standard players often had to make those days, whereas now the standard is so high in the Zurich Premiership that the step up to international level isn’t quite so daunting. Two years earlier England had gone to play in Dublin in spite of warnings from the IRA that there would be dire consequences if they did so. Their reception that day had been rapturous because both the Scots and the Welsh players had refused to travel to Dublin after receiving death threats, purportedly from the IRA. After the Nuneaton game I saw John Elders, an England selector who had formerly coached Northumberland, talking to Arthur Bell, the Fylde secretary. Arthur was holding a letter he had received from the IRA warning the supporters and I not to make the trip. The IRA needn’t have bothered because not even a charge of the Light Brigade would have prevented me from travelling to Lansdowne Road. Admittedly I was only due to sit on the bench and might not even get on to the field, but I wasn’t prepared to take the chance of missing out. The rest of the England squad responded in the same way and, once again, we were given the warmest of welcomes by the Irish, as I have always found to be the case – except when dealing with rugby politics. Whether you are playing, or just travelling as a spectator, Dublin is a wonderful place to be on a rugby international weekend. I was entering new territory and didn’t know anything of the protocol of playing international rugby. So I telephoned Tony Neary, who was working as a solicitor in Manchester, to find out what the procedure was and, as a result, joined him on the train from Manchester to London on the Thursday morning, having walked from my home to Adlington station, humping my bag, to catch the local train – a far cry from today when players very often fly to training sessions. On the way down I pumped Tony for information on the etiquette of playing for England and he was very helpful, being an old hand at that sort of thing. There was a surprise awaiting me when we arrived at the Stoop for the training session. Robin Cowling, the Leicester prop, dropped a hint that I could be in the side, which was subsequently confirmed by Alec Lewis, the chairman of selectors. Apparently Roger Uttley had knackered his back eating an apple pie on the train – which just goes to show how sensitive his back was! – so I was to take his place in the training session. I may have resented Roger taking my place in the Fylde side when I initially got into the first team but, one way or another, he seemed hell-bent on helping my career thereafter through his own misfortunes. Alec said they hoped Roger would recover in time to play but thought I should partner Chris Ralston during the session to see how things went. Alec is a lovely guy but I think he should have turned to an established guy like Nigel Horton or a more experienced player like Nick Martin. After all, I was just 22, had hardly ever played outside the north of England and had just one England trial to my credit. Having said that, I would have been massively disappointed if they had brought someone else into the squad and I suspect that John Burgess, who was coaching the side then, had pushed for my inclusion. I had established myself in the Lancashire team and had done really well on the county’s tour of Zimbabwe and South Africa, so that may have led the selectors to believe that I was ready. Roger wasn’t at the team’s hotel so he was obviously receiving treatment elsewhere and I faced an anxious wait to see if he was going to recover in time. The answer to that question came at the crack of dawn on Friday morning when Alec awakened me to announce I was definitely playing. Offering his congratulations, he shook the hand of a very bog-eyed William Blackledge Beaumont who was still trying to come to terms with what day it was. It was like a dream come true but – perhaps because I was so na?ve – I don’t think I grasped the full significance of the occasion as I should have done. I did relay the news to my parents but, because it was such a last-minute thing, they weren’t able to get across to Dublin in time to watch the game live. We flew to Dublin and stayed at the Shelbourne Hotel along with the Irish side. It is highly unusual for the rival teams to stay under the same roof but at that time it was common practice in Ireland for security reasons. Each side stayed on different floors of the hotel and I remember finding myself in the lift at the same time as Irish hooker Pat Whelan, who was also making his international debut. He asked me if I had any spare tickets for the game. There was me thinking we had to be kept apart like caged animals until the first whistle! For security reasons we weren’t encouraged to leave the hotel and go walkabout, so we spent Friday afternoon and evening playing cards. When I ended up winning what was then quite a lot of money, Steve Smith said, ‘You lucky bastard. You’re not only getting your first cap but you’ve won ?50 as well.’ Not surprisingly, I was pretty worked up about the next day’s match, but I found myself sharing a room with Chris Ralston and he was so laid back that he was almost horizontal. He would lie on his bed quietly smoking a cigar, and the last thing I saw as I went to sleep, as well as the first thing I saw when I awoke the following morning, was the red glow of its tip. The bedroom was a fog of cigar smoke. Chris wasn’t keen on John Burgess, both he and Andy Ripley were of the opinion he had arrived from an entirely different planet. They particularly didn’t enjoy being hugged and kissed by him, but players like Fran, Tony Neary and myself were used to his ways and knew just how passionate he was about everything. He drove Rippers mad, but Chris would just stand and look on in disdain as he had the forwards going through different forward moves with players flying off in different directions. Chris didn’t get picked to tour Australia at the end of that season and some time later, when he was playing at Richmond, he said, ‘If you see that bastard Burgess, tell him I’m still playing top-class rugby.’ It was Fran Cotton’s first game as skipper, Tony Neary was at open-side and Steve Smith was on the bench, so there were one or two familiar faces around. Peter Dixon and Andy Ripley completed the back row, with John Pullin and Stack Stevens joining Fran up front. Jan Webster and Alan Old were the half-backs, Peter Preece and Peter Warfield were in the centre and David Duckham and Peter Squires were on the wings, with Peter Rossborough at full-back. We had a police escort to Lansdowne Road, where I found the dressing rooms were horrible, dark and dank, and I was so nervous I spent about half-an-hour in the loo. I didn’t know anything about Ireland but I knew quite a bit about the player I would be up against – Willie-John McBride. He was winning his sixtieth Irish cap that day and was a hero after leading the British Lions on an unbeaten tour of South Africa the previous summer. He and I have met many times since and we have regularly spoken at dinners together. There is a tremendous aura about the man and I could understand why he was such a great captain and respected player. I don’t think he was the world’s best second row but he was a very impressive guy and I could imagine the impact he would make when he walked into the dressing room. It was his final season, and probably a journey too far for him. In the dressing room Fran, who had great respect for the Irishman, told me not to worry because he considered McBride to be past his best. I wish I had felt as convinced at the time. Players have little superstitions and I liked to take the field last – something I was unable to do for much of my career except when I was playing for my club – so Dave Duckham, who in fact liked to do the same, kindly told me I could bring up the rear as it was my first international. I wasn’t quite prepared for the wall of noise that hit us as we ran out, and the actual match passed by in a complete whirl. I remember the first Irish line-out. Willie-John glared at me and I was petrified because I didn’t want to make a mistake. Whelan threw the ball to him at the front and the great man clambered all over me to win it. Fran delivered a quick pep talk and, at the next Irish throw, I managed to beat him to it and palm the ball back to Jan Webster who found touch farther downfield. I felt a lot better after that, I grappled with Willie-John after Ireland had taken a short penalty, and we ended up with a scrum when he was unable to release the ball. At least, after that, I felt I had got involved but I’m the first to admit that my contribution wasn’t great. Our hooker, John Pullin, didn’t throw the ball to me even once at the line-out, a tactic that I suspect had been planned beforehand in a bid to keep the pressure off me as much as possible. We lost the game 12–9 with Billy McCombe proving the match-winner for Ireland, but we had murdered them up front, where Ralston gave Moss Keane a very hard time in the second row and Andy Ripley got the better of Willie Duggan, who I later came to know as quite an entertaining tourist. I know I’m not the first player to say that his international debut went by in a flash but that’s exactly how it seemed, the sheer pace of the game taking me by surprise. That may explain why I wasn’t able to make the impact in the loose that I had always endeavoured to do since moving into senior rugby. Largely through the efforts of the pack, we actually led 9–6 with time running out, but our full-back, Peter Rossborough, slipped as he went to take a pass from scrum-half Jan Webster and McCombe swept up the loose ball to score and add the conversion. I remember slumping on to the bench in the dressing room afterwards and bursting into tears in sheer frustration as I tried to sort out in my mind what I might have done wrong or could have done better. From the team’s point of view I believe England would have been better served if, instead of me, the selectors had opted for Nigel Horton or any one of several other decent second rows who had been around rather longer than I had and, as a result, were more experienced. I suppose common sense prevailed in that I wasn’t picked for any of the remaining games that season, but even though my debut hadn’t been the outstanding success I had hoped for I was happy to have joined what I saw as a very exclusive club and determined to work even harder at my fitness and to learn from the experience. John Burgess consoled me in the dressing room afterwards and I soon perked up because I was about to embark on the real business of a rugby weekend in Dublin. The feet that I can’t remember anything of what happened after the dinner, a very sociable affair as you might expect knowing what good hosts the Irish are, is neither here nor there. There were, I was assured, not just players but also thousands of fens experiencing what you might call ‘lost-weekend syndrome’. My abiding memory of that dinner is noting the affection with which Willie-John was so obviously held when he stood up to make his traditional speech. He had long been my idol and, having played against him and experienced the remarkable presence of the man, I was more determined than ever to make it as a rugby player. Roger Uttley had recovered from his back injury so was able to resume instead of me when England played France at Twickenham. I had expected nothing less but at least I was named on the bench so I assumed I couldn’t have done too much wrong in Dublin. For a moment towards the end of that game it looked as though Roger, having provided me with my first cap, would provide my passport to a second, as he was led from the field with blood gushing from a gash on his ear that later required 18 stitches. I was dispatched to the players’ tunnel to prepare myself for combat but found the team doctor, Leo Walkden, busily taping Roger’s head before sending him back into the fray. England lost that game, too, 27–20, and that led to changes that didn’t help my cause as the selectors frantically tried to avert a whitewash. Andy Ripley was left out and Roger Uttley moved into the back row. Although that left a vacancy in the second row they brought back Nigel Horton to partner Chris Ralston and, with a second row now in the back row, England needed a back row player rather than a second row like myself on the bench. In those days England had an appalling record against Wales in Cardiff and 1975 was no exception. We were beaten 20–4 and that led to the axe swinging once more with Horton, Peter Wheeler and John Watkins the victims. Fran Cotton was ill, so Mike Burton was brought in to replace him and, in typical Burton fashion, he asked if he was also taking over the captaincy. There’s nothing like cheek, but it was Tony Neary who took on that responsibility for the first time. Scotland were on for a rare Triple Crown when they travelled to Twickenham for the final game of a disappointing English season and they should have won the match. Dougie Morgan missed two simple penalties late in the game and England hung on to win 7–6 – hardly the best preparation for a summer tour to Australia. By that stage I had increased my training schedule, having acquired a rather better understanding of what was required to play consistently well at the top level, and I went back to enjoying my club rugby at Fylde. There was also greater recognition, because I was picked to play for the Barbarians on their traditional Easter tour to South Wales, travelling down in my maroon Austin Maxi along with Tony Richards, Dave Robinson – a tough Cumbrian farmer who played for Gosforth and later became an England coach – and my old partner Richard Trickey. We partnered each other again in the opening game against Penarth. I wasn’t included against Cardiff but was back in the side for what proved to be a very hard game against Swansea. That’s when I came up against Geoff Wheel for the first time. Swansea had a decent side at that time and we had to play well to win but I was convinced that my own game was improving all the time, having started playing against the best second rows in Britain. I was also keen to be seen playing well because I was desperate to earn a call-up for the tour to Australia. My reasoning was that England had experienced a poor season and that a tour was the ideal vehicle for bringing on one or two young players. When the touring party was announced it was just one of many botch jobs by the selectors and it is not difficult to see the wisdom of having one man responsible for picking the side, as Clive Woodward, England’s head coach, does now. He has other experienced coaches he can talk to, but at the end of the day it is his decision and, in the case of failure, his neck that is on the block. I always felt that selection by committee was flawed and that too many good players were denied an opportunity because of wheeler-dealing, one selector supporting a player from a different region in return for securing support for a prot?g? of his own. That is hardly the way to mould a successful side. Nowhere has bad practice been more apparent than in schoolboy rugby, where the old-school-tie network still works today. While I had been confident that the selectors would give one or two young players an opportunity, including me, I hadn’t expected them to go overboard. Far too many experienced players were jettisoned and it wasn’t difficult to work out why I was in the touring party when I saw that the experienced Chris Ralston and Nigel Horton were being left at home. Of the four half-backs in the party only one had actually won a cap, Bedford fly-half Neil Bennett having made his debut against Scotland in the final game of that season’s Five Nations Championship. Alan Wordsworth, the other fly-half, and scrum-halves Brian Ashton and Peter Kingston, didn’t possess a cap between them. I found it absolutely staggering that they had completely ignored what I regarded as the best half-back pairing in the country, Steve Smith and Alan Old. Peter Rossborough and Tony Jorden had both played at full-back that season but were ignored, while the untried Peter Butler and Alistair Hignell were called up. Of the four second rows Roger Uttley was clearly very experienced but I had just one cap and the other two, Bob Wilkinson and Neil Mantell, were uncapped. Perhaps the selectors had decided on a very experimental approach because Australia had performed poorly on their last visit to the UK but, as I was to discover, Australians are tough nuts to crack in their own backyard. I felt sorry for our coach, John Burgess, because he soon found himself condemned to making what he could of a thoroughly bad job and the tour was to end his dream of turning England into a major force in world rugby. Before transforming the fortunes of Lancashire and the North West, Burgess had spent hours picking the brains of former All Blacks coach Fred Allen and studying the way the best side in the world went about its preparation. He had so much to offer England but was denied the opportunity by ludicrous selections and undisguised hostility in certain quarters. Players like Fran Cotton, Tony Neary and I knew what John was about. We knew what made him tick and what he was trying to achieve but I suppose he was considered by some to be nothing more than an uncouth and loud-mouthed northerner. Yet, he never threw in the towel and, although his coaching ability was never allowed to blossom at international level, he did become a leading administrator in the game before being honoured with the Presidency of the RFU. The opening game against Western Australia was a bit of a cakewalk but we lost the second game, against Sydney, 14–10. I almost lost more than the game because, for no apparent reason, I was clobbered by Steve Finnane, Sydney’s international prop, as we ran across the pitch following the action. It was a mindless and unprovoked attack that left me out cold. There is no place in the game, at any level, for such behaviour but Finnane had a reputation for that sort of thing. During the same game he flattened Mike Burton and Steve Callum, a mystery player who suddenly appeared in the touring party from Upper Clapton but was barely heard of again. Two years later Finnane broke the jaw of Graham Price during a Welsh tour of Australia, so the guy built up quite a history of violent behaviour. When I eventually came round from Finnane’s pile-driver, I was persuaded by Tony Neary to leave the field and was joined on the treatment table – thankfully not literally, considering the size of the pair of us – by Fran Cotton. He had trapped a nerve in his back and was unable to take any further part in the tour. As we were to lose Tony Neary with damaged ribs in the first Test you could say that some of our heaviest artillery had been put out of commission. Not all the Aussies were out of Finnane’s mould, there being some guys you would happily have a drink with. One of those was a guy who became chief executive of Foster’s Lager. I met him during the 2001 British Lions tour to Australia and he told me he had made his debut for Sydney that day and had subsequently watched my career with interest. I was more than happy to enjoy a few beers with him, but I have never had any desire to socialise with people like Finnane who go around whacking people off the ball when they don’t know it’s coming and are in no position to defend themselves. My chances of a Test place seemed to have diminished because I wasn’t involved in the 29–24 win over New South Wales, figuring instead in a surprise 14–13 defeat at the hands of a New South Wales Country XV. A place on the bench was the best I could hope for and that’s what I ended up with for the first Test in Sydney, and what an unpleasant game that turned out to be. The Aussies were capable of playing some breathtaking rugby so I couldn’t understand why they picked abrasive characters like Finnane who seemed more intent on intimidating than playing rugby against us. Tony Neary injured his ribs midway in the first half and I was sent on to the battlefield. From a personal perspective it went quite well because I ended up front-jumping against a guy called Reg Smith and won my fair share of ball at the line-out. Though I say it myself, I had my best game of the tour in the loose and, after helping England to victory over Queensland in midweek with Bob Wilkinson as my partner we were picked as a pair for the second Test. So I won my third cap on merit instead of as a replacement, although I wish it could have been a more auspicious occasion. If we thought the first Test was bad then I am afraid we had seen nothing. The Aussies launched themselves at us with all the ferocity of caged animals that hadn’t been fed for a long time, and I had trouble believing what was going on. Barry Nelmes, the Cardiff prop, won the ball at the kick-off but was tackled and, while he was on the floor, a pack of Aussie forwards raced in and started kicking him. Nowadays two or three players would have walked for that. The first line-out was just as bad. Mike Burton, never short of a quick riposte, said something to one of the Aussie forwards who was then heard saying ‘Burton’s got the biff on’ to his team-mates who immediately piled into us. About four of them waded into me and I ended up needing stitches. My boys watched the incident on a Brian Moore video nasty that we somehow acquired recently and they thought it was absolutely hilarious that Dad had been unable to fight his way out of the situation. It was quite a long hike down the corridor to the dressing rooms at Ballymore and, as I was having the stitches inserted, I could hear studs clomping towards us. The next minute Burton walked in and slumped on to a bench, and when I asked what was wrong with him he told me he’d been sent off. Nowadays a replacement prop would have been sent on as cover, with a flanker having to drop out to make way for him. Things were different then and sides had to cope as best they could. I should have stayed off but I thought bollocks to that, I’m going back on. I didn’t want to be replaced in the first international I had actually been selected to start in. As a result I raced back to the pitch and joined John Pullin and Barry Nelmes in the front row. I was well fired up, but I had played at prop previously, albeit at nothing even approaching that level, and coped all right, losing only one put-in against the head all afternoon. One scrum did collapse and I reckon my opposite number, Ron Graham, who is now an Australian rugby administrator and a good guy, could have killed me had he been so inclined. That he didn’t seemed rather odd, considering all that had gone on before! I discovered later that Burton had delivered a late, late tackle on Doug Osborne, the Aussie wing and after the earlier fracas there was only one way he was going … and that was off. Mike took it badly, feeling he had let everyone down. I felt particularly for John Burgess because, through no fault of his own, everything was going wrong. Perhaps with a more experienced side things wouldn’t have got quite so out of hand but the Aussies did have something of a reputation at that time and they had one or two players who just appeared to go looking for trouble. Sledging, as favoured by their cricketers, is one thing but unprovoked violence is a different matter and it is a wonder that nobody received a serious injury. Steve Finnane had already shown his colours but their flanker Ray Price and hooker Peter Horton could also put it about to some tune. What I couldn’t understand was that Horton was actually English and a teacher to boot. He was into Pom-bashing big-style and I only hope his language was rather better in the classroom. Price was a very talented player and turned up in England to play rugby league at Wigan. I met him at Central Park one day and with tongue in cheek said, ‘I remember you Bill. You cut easily.’ It had been a disastrous tour and, even though I had collected my third England cap, I still hadn’t played on a winning side. Although I had made my debut the previous season England had only managed to win one Five Nations game – by a solitary point – and worse was to come. John Burgess resigned as national coach and, in the following season, England suffered a whitewash. A time of gloom and doom for English rugby but it wasn’t all bad news for me because I met my wife Hilary. Just before the start of the following season I was invited by a friend of mine to a girl’s twenty-first birthday party but I declined, saying that it didn’t seem right to attend when I didn’t even know who she was. The following day I did attend a pre-season barbecue in St Annes that had been organised by one of the lads at Fylde, and ended up chatting to the attractive young lady whose party I had decided I couldn’t possibly have attended the previous evening. Had I known it had been Hilary’s birthday party I’m pretty sure I would have been first on the doorstep. We got along fine but it wasn’t long before I was ensconced in a corner chatting about rugby with the lads and I didn’t notice her again. Not that I was seeing too well by the end of the evening because one of the lads had been messing around with a golf club and a ball hit me in the eye. That forced me to withdraw from the club’s two opening games against Coventry and Cheltenham, so I was not exactly a happy bunny. The first game I was able to play was a home fixture against Gloucester, a side packed with quality players and captained by Mike Burton. John Watkins, John Fidler, Peter Kingston, Peter Butler and John Bayliss were also in the line-up but I was determined to do well because I had trained hard during what had been left of the summer and wanted to get my season off to a good start. Fylde would usually settle for any sort of victory against a side of Gloucester’s quality but we really got the bit between our teeth and beat them 31–3. I remember that we scored a try in the last minute of the game and then caught the restart and ran it back at them to score again. It was that sort of day and was about to get better. In the bar afterwards I bumped into Hilary who had gone to the game with her sister and brother-in-law. She didn’t know anything about rugby but her brother-in-law was quite keen and when I ran on to the field at the start of the game she was able to say that at least she knew the big guy with the number four on his back. Apparently he was quite impressed that she’d been chatting to an international rugby player but she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Anyway, she told me later that she hadn’t been too impressed by my performance that afternoon because I hadn’t been running around doing spectacular things with the ball. It took me some time to teach her that forwards have a very different but equally important role and that beating Gloucester 31–3 was not something you did every day. My initial impression of Hilary was enhanced at our second meeting and I asked her out on a date. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the Lancashire trials so I had to hastily reschedule and, as it was, our first date coincided with Lancashire playing Cumberland and Westmorland in a warm-up game, fortunately at Fylde’s ground – a game in which the father of Sale Sharks wing Mark Cueto was playing for the opposition. I wore my England blazer to impress and took her for a drink at the Grapes pub in nearby Wrea Green, not realising that we would one day be married and living just around the corner. That was the start of a fine, if at times complicated, romance bearing in mind that rugby was tending to dominate my life and Hilary was a student in Manchester, preparing to become a French teacher. She shared a house with two other students and that’s where we did most of our courting. Although it was often a case of snatching a few hours together between work, training and Hilary’s studies we got engaged the following February. Fortunately, Hilary grew to love the game, which was just as well considering that, with three rugby-daft sons, it does rather dominate our lives. Instead of watching me play she now watches the boys and the only difference is that these days she has three times as many sets of dirty kit to wash and iron! Throughout the ups and downs of my career, both in rugby and in business, Hilary has been my greatest supporter, confidante and friend – in short, the love of my life – and without her I would never have achieved half the things I have achieved. We are both basically shy people who enjoy nothing more than spending a quiet time with our family and, in a way, we had to force ourselves to do things that were being demanded of me because of the high profile I had acquired. I’m fortunate that she was always there to encourage me. If she hadn’t been, there is a lot that would have been left undone. During the early years of our marriage she had to endure long separations that would have put a strain on many marriages but she coped with those well and has proved a wonderful mother to our children. She has held the ship steady during my absences and even now is involved in the business, becoming a director a few years ago. Since moving into household and upholstery fabrics, the feminine touch has been much appreciated and there is no problem when it comes to decision making because that is something we have always done together. For my sins, I became a Lloyds Underwriter in the 1980s and, like a lot of people from the world of sport, I lost a lot of money in that venture, but with Hilary’s help I worked my way through it. We were fortunate having the family business to fall back on. Our engagement coincided with England having an even more disastrous time in the Five Nations Championship and I’m just grateful that Hilary and I were better at selecting our partners than the England selectors were at picking a side that might actually win something. With John Burgess gone from the scene, England elevated their Under-23 coach Peter Colston into the hot seat and it really was a baptism of fire. Peter’s one saving grace was that we did manage to beat Australia, even if we lost everything else. At least I was picked to play for England in what was effectively a trial game against the North and Midlands at Leicester. (It would be interesting to discover just how many different permutations of trials the selectors devised during what you might regard as some of the bleakest seasons in England’s history.) The game at Leicester was hardly a confidence-booster because we were beaten by a combined divisional side led by Peter Wheeler. The selectors’ axes were not merely sharpened after that but used with bloody effect, and seven members of that side were dispatched. Thankfully, I wasn’t one of those beheaded, and I also survived a narrow victory over the South at Gloucester when three more changes were made for the final trial at Twickenham just before Christmas. I held my place as we won 39–21 and the selectors picked us en bloc to take on Australia. Sadly for Roger Uttley he had been forced to pull out of the trial through injury, his place taken by Andy Ripley. The team included three new caps: Barrie Corless, the Coventry centre; Mark Keyworth, my old team-mate at Ellesmere College who was playing for Swansea; and a scrum-half who appeared to come from nowhere and who almost as quickly went back there. Mike Lampkowski, who was of Polish extraction, played for Headingley and had been a member of the North and Midlands side that beat England in the trial game. He was a very powerful player and extremely committed. He could batter his way through all but the best defences but he lacked that one ingredient that is so necessary to a scrum-half: he couldn’t pass a ball quickly and accurately and, at international level, you aren’t afforded the luxury of time. As debut games go, Lampkowski’s wasn’t too bad. It can sometimes happen that a new boy gets an adrenalin rush and plays better than he will ever play again. Certainly, the lad played out of his skin, despite his limited repertoire, scoring a try, and many were left thinking we had unearthed a real find. For obvious reasons, we were very keen to beat Australia but it turned out to be a very different Aussie side, especially in terms of attitude. The only Test they in fact managed to win was against Ireland in Dublin. We recorded what, at the time, was the biggest ever victory over our Commonwealth cousins from Down Under. Even with Steve Finnane, Peter Horton and Stuart MacDougall in their front row the game passed without incident, although the 23–6 scoreline may have given us a false impression of just where we stood in the pecking order. In those days the Aussies were nowhere near the force they have been in the last decade. Having earned the first three of my four caps against Australia, it was great, from a personal point of view, to be given the chance to play against the other countries in the Five Nations Championship. Yet it was a campaign to forget as we suffered a whitewash that had more to do with the selectors than the guys out on the park. We were well beaten by Wales, but then Lampkowski and Martin Cooper were up against Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett so the first chinks were seen in the scrum-half’s armour. The difference in class was patently obvious and Lampowski’s form had reached crisis level by the time we had succumbed to Scotland 22–12 at Murrayfield. Alan Old had been drafted in to partner him but passes were flying all over the place and he made a number of suicidal breaks, which resulted in him spending much of the game under a pile of Scottish bodies. Panic set in but the selectors kept faith with Mike and, instead, dropped our key line-out jumper at the back of the line, Andy Ripley, and replaced him with Leicester’s Garry Adey, who was much smaller and never reappeared in England colours once the campaign finished. Dave Duckham was injured so my Lancashire colleague Mike Slemen won his first cap in the 13–12 defeat by Ireland at Twickenham and, that time, Lampkowski paid the ultimate price after another poor game in which his inadequacies were once again exposed. I must confess to feeling sorry for him. It wasn’t his fault and he was being asked to do a job that, quite clearly, he was incapable of doing. Nobody helped him to either improve his service or iron out some of the wrinkles in his game. While Mike stayed in the side we simply couldn’t set up our backs, and I couldn’t believe that the selectors could ignore the claims of Steve Smith. I know he was a mate but when you play alongside a player you discover what sort of contribution he is capable of making and there was no doubt in my mind at that time that Smithy and Alan Old made up the best half-back pairing in the country. They were ignored for too long and it is interesting that both played key roles in the tremendous success of the North side that so comprehensively beat the All Blacks at Otley in 1979. There is an irony about Smithy being forced out by Lampkowski. He had been told by the selectors at the trial stage to concentrate his efforts on getting the ball out to the backs quickly, which is exactly what he did. Then, when he was left out of the side, he was told that he hadn’t been taking defences on in quite the manner that Lampkowski had. If that wasn’t double-Dutch then I don’t know what is. Smithy was penalised for obeying instructions and not playing his natural game. In any case, he had the ability to play it whichever way they wanted and was experienced enough, once on the field, to determine the tactics rather than adhere slavishly to whatever battle plan had been concocted in the dressing room. Even when the selectors finally turned to Smithy that season, having dropped Lampkowski, they still contrived to get it horribly wrong. Initially they paired Steve with Moseley’s Martin Cooper for the game against France in Paris but Martin was getting over an injury and, before we flew out on the Thursday, he was subjected to the most rigorous fitness test I have ever seen. If he had started out fit there is no way he would have been at the end, and, surprise, surprise, he was ruled out of the game. At that stage it was patently obvious to everyone involved that Alan Old, who had already been named on the replacements’ bench, was the player who should be called in at the eleventh hour. All except for the selectors who plucked another name out of the hat and Chris Williams, the Gloucester fly-half, was rushed out to the French capital to earn his one and only cap, while poor Alan sat and watched us go from bad to worse. When I think of how organised things are today in the England camp it is difficult even trying to comprehend just how chaotic it used to be. You really did have to be involved to understand how bad it was and I had sympathy for Chris because an international debut is tough enough anyway without it being made even more difficult by going in unprepared, and having to join a losing side that was very low on morale. France hammered us 30–9 and seven members of that side – Garry Adey, Bob Wilkinson, John Pullin, Peter Butler, Ken Plummer, David Cooke and Chris Williams – were never seen again. I had only been on one winning side in eight international starts but survived to fight again. It was little wonder we were so poor because the standard of selection was awful and too many of the players, myself included, simply weren’t playing at a competitive enough level on a regular basis. By that stage I had found club rugby pretty well pressure-free and it was only in the county season that the standard was high enough to be meaningful. Even then there was a big disparity in terms of the ability of the county sides and, with a side as strong as Lancashire had become, there were a limited number capable of asking serious questions of us. Gloucestershire would always do that and, in the northern region, Northumberland enjoyed a dominant spell with a side based largely on the successful Gosforth club. It has been very different since the game went professional and the best players have been confined to a smaller club elite, much though some in the game hate the thought of any form of elitism at club level. With top players scattered around a great many clubs, it was a mammoth, costly and time-consuming task for selectors to traverse the length and breadth of the country checking on form. The present England management not only has its senior squad available for training on a regular basis but is also able to monitor progress by taking in just six games every weekend. Very often those games are spread over three days and, even if Clive Woodward and his coaches can’t always get to games they have the facility of watching match videos. Nothing is left to chance and most countries now envy our domestic competition. The 1976–7 season dawned with me in good condition and spirits. I was due to get married, Lancashire were sweeping all before them, Fylde even had a good run in the John Player Cup, rugby’s equivalent to the FA Cup, and the British Lions were due to go on tour to New Zealand the following summer. My hope was that I might possibly be in with a chance of a Lions tour providing that I stayed in the England side and performed well. I thought my chances had been enhanced when a combined North and Midlands side crushed Argentina 24–9 at Leicester, just seven days before the Argies lost by a mere point to Wales in Cardiff. A lot of good it did me. England had a new selection committee, headed by the genial Sandy Sanders and including Mike Weston, Derek Morgan and Budge Rogers, and I was dropped down to the Rest side for the final trial. Not only was I fed up over my demotion, I also had to abstain from seeing in the New Year in traditional liquid fashion because the administrators, in their infinite wisdom, decided to play the trial game on New Year’s Day. The only saving grace was that I was in some fairly good company, with Steve Smith and John Horton at half-back and Dusty Hare at full-back. All three were with me when we performed the Grand Slam three years later. We dominated the line-out, largely through the efforts of Andy Ripley who had been given a roving commission at the line-out with me and the other second row, Barry Ayres, acting as decoys. At the interval the sides were level so Barry and I were promoted to the England team in place of Bob Wilkinson and Roger Powell and the seniors ran out comfortable 20–3 victors. That ensured that I was in the starting line-up when the Five Nations began but, even though selection improved that season, there was still a glaring omission – Tony Neary. I had played alongside Tony for Lancashire, the North and England ever since I had broken through into the senior ranks and knew he was an enormously talented player. Peter Dixon was another badly treated by a succession of English selection panels although, under Sandy, they got it right that season by including him. As they also picked Roger Uttley as captain, England could have had a back row of Uttley, Dixon and Neary. They had to wait until Otley two years later to discover just what they had been missing: three great-thinking footballers and first-rate ball-handlers, who played Graham Mourie’s All Blacks off the park to record a memorable victory that, I suspect, still rankles with the New Zealanders. We beat the Scots 26–6 at Twickenham and were almost getting giddy with excitement when we beat Ireland at a muddy Lansdowne Road. For the second successive game the English pack took control, although it was fly-half Martin Cooper who got over for the only score of the game following a good break by current broadcaster Alistair Hignell – another talented footballer whose fearless tackling provided much-needed solidity in defence. As a cricketer of county standard he also had good hands. Nobody needed reminding that we were just two games away from a Grand Slam but our next outing was to be against the same French side that had demolished us twelve months earlier. We faced the same fearsome pack but, in 1977, we gave as good as we got and should have won the game, which ended 4–3 in favour of the French. Even then they were assisted by Alistair missing five out of six kicks at goal and further helped by a very dubious try scored by their centre Fran?ois Sangalli after everyone other than the referee had been convinced that full-back Jean-Michel Aguirre had knocked on. The French boys admitted afterwards that they felt we had deserved to win. Michel Palmie played in the French second row that day, as he had a year earlier, and we got to know each other quite well. At one stage we served on the European Cup committee together, and I soon learned that when he was present at the meetings held in Dublin it was not a good idea to stay overnight unless, of course, I wanted to get completely wrecked. He played for B?ziers, and when Hilary and I went on a camping holiday in that region in the summer of 1978, I decided to give him a call. He came round to the site to take us back to his place and caught me doing the washing-up. I never lived that down and he demanded to know, ‘Why is a man doing the washing-up. What is a wife for!’ I won’t relate Hilary’s comments here, but he became a good friend and we rarely pass through that part of the world without popping in to share a glass or two – or maybe a few more – with Michel. That defeat ended our Grand Slam hopes but I had other things on my mind because Hilary and I were married three days later, four days before I turned out to help Lancashire beat Middlesex in the county final. To say that Hilary was a very understanding young woman would be to understate the case but, by then, she had grown accustomed to the inconveniences of having an international rugby player as a partner. Fortunately, she had grown to enjoy both the game and the company, and had become part of the social scene at Fylde, doing her stint on the ladies committee and helping with some of the unglamorous work behind the scenes such as ensuring that numerous starving players didn’t go hungry after games. Our honeymoon had to be put on ice until the end of the season. Or at least that was the plan. In the meantime we travelled to Cardiff to take on Wales for the Triple Crown and my one great regret is that I never played in a winning England side at the National Stadium. Even before the new Millennium Stadium replaced it, the old stadium had lost some of its aura, but when I was playing it was an intimidating venue. As you waited like Gladiators in the dressing room you would hear the biggest choir in the world giving full voice, and that was worth a few points start to the Welsh. The current England side isn’t at all intimidated by travelling to Cardiff, but Wales have been a very pale shadow of what they once were. Wales won the game 14–9. We played badly and I didn’t perform well against Geoff Wheel, which annoyed me because I knew the British Lions party to tour New Zealand was due to be announced a couple of weeks later. Knowing that they would take four second rows, I had held on to the hope all season that I might just scrape in but Geoff Wheel got the call rather than me and was due to have Gordon Brown, Nigel Horton and Allan Martin as his travelling companions. Geoff withdrew from the party later. I heard the news on the car radio, and my heart almost missed a beat as I waited for the name of his replacement to be announced. When it turned out to be Moss Keane I couldn’t believe it. I had played against Moss on a couple of occasions and thought myself to be the better player. The Lions were travelling without a specialist front-of-line jumper but that wasn’t the only piece of poor planning; I also felt the management team was wrong. The late George Burrell went as manager and though he was a nice bloke he was rather dominated by coach John Dawes, who virtually ran the whole show through Phil Bennett. John had captained the successful Lions in New Zealand in 1971 but he wasn’t the world’s best coach and I suspect he had pushed for Phil, who had captained Wales, to be given the job in New Zealand. Phil is a nice guy but rather shy and he lacked the personality of Willie-John McBride who had led the all-conquering Lions in South Africa three years earlier. Indeed, Phil was the first to admit that he shouldn’t have taken the job and, by the end of the tour, he had lost form and was homesick, something that seemed to afflict the Welsh lads more than the other nationalities. Once I had heard about the inclusion of Moss Keane I was so brassed off that I booked a honeymoon in Majorca during the time when the Lions were away, and when the factory closed down for the annual Whitsun holiday, Hilary and I took ourselves off on a camping holiday to the Lake District with our long-standing friends Steve and Sue Braithwaite. In fairly typical Lake District fashion the weather was terrible. It poured down so, in the end, we packed up and returned home. We arrived back on a Monday evening and I suggested to Steve that we take the wet tents to the factory where they could dry out while the workforce were away on holiday. When I went into the office I took a telephone call from Malcolm Phillips, a Fylde member and Lions selector, telling me that Nigel Horton had broken his thumb playing against Otago and would be in plaster for six weeks. I was about to become a Lion. CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2f1355f2-2269-5402-9594-f44edb29806d) Lion cub (#ulink_2f1355f2-2269-5402-9594-f44edb29806d) Although I realised I was the Lions sixth-choice second row I wasn’t going to quibble, and I started hastily clearing the decks at work. The adrenalin at that stage was flowing and my first task was to ring Fylde secretary Peter Makin. I had been appointed captain for the following season but told Peter that, as I wouldn’t be starting the new season because of the tour, I wanted scrum-half Micky Weir to take on the role. Micky took on the responsibility and did a fantastic job – such a good job, in fact, that I never achieved my ambition of becoming club skipper. As I became even more heavily involved with England I decided to put the club job on the back burner until I stepped down from the international arena, but injury put paid to any such plan. Micky and Peter came round to wish me all the best and speed me on my way, and Hilary travelled down with me, but it was a somewhat pensive William Beaumont who arrived in London to collect his gear and jet off to the other side of the world. Instead of feeling over the moon, I felt heartbroken. I remember wondering why on earth I had agreed to travel. I had just got married, my honeymoon had been postponed yet again and I experienced the same empty feeling that had marked my return to boarding school as a youngster. I had to meet John Lawrence, secretary of the Four Home Unions Committee, at a Club in London in order to be measured up for my Lions blazer and flannels, so we set off a little late to drive to Heathrow to catch the flight to Auckland which, just to stop me getting bored, was dropping in at Los Angeles, Hawaii and Fiji en route. If I had mixed feelings about having to leave Hilary to join the Lions, I felt all the more like turning around and going back home when a crash in the underpass on the approach to Heathrow effectively brought traffic to a standstill. There was nothing else for it. I had to grab my kit-bag and my new Lions outfit and leg it through the tunnel to the check-in desk at the terminal, arriving only just in time for the flight. It was a very hot day and I was saturated in perspiration, so I felt sorry for the poor devil who had to spend all those hours sitting next to me on the aircraft. It seemed like forever before the plane touched down in Auckland. I had been told to wait in the arrivals hall where I would be met by a New Zealand rugby official who would ensure I was placed on the correct onward flight to Christchurch on the south island, the Lions’ next port of call after travelling from Invercargill, where they had beaten Southland. By that stage, with the first Test approaching, they had chalked up eight straight victories. I was handed a bundle of Auckland newspapers to hand over to a guy called ‘Doc’ Murdoch. He was a great guy: a Kiwi who was travelling with the Lions as a sort of physiotherapist-cum-baggage man. Quite apart from working on our bodies he also had responsibility for moving mountains of kit around the country. He had worked with the Lions in 1971 and was chuffed that they asked especially for his services again. As a mark of respect for someone who was popular with the entire party, we ended up paying for him to travel to Fiji with us at the end of the tour. When I arrived in Christchurch, feeling shattered from having spent more than 30 hours squashed into an aircraft seat in the economy section, I was met by crisp, frosty weather and Russ Thomas, the New Zealand official who later managed the All Blacks side that the North beat so memorably at Otley two years later. Russ took me to meet my fellow Lions, and I remember Willie Duggan, the Irishman, saying to me, ‘If you have any bloody sense you will get on the next plane back home.’ As I was to discover, that particular tour was marred by atrocious weather and it was usually a case of mud, glorious mud. The photograph of a bedraggled Fran Cotton became the company logo when he set up Cotton Traders with Steve Smith and people still walk around with the picture on the front of their tee-shirts. It didn’t take me too long to work out that it was a far from happy tour. Some Lions tours have been noticeable for a wonderful spirit, whereas others have all but fallen apart; this one definitely fell into the latter category (to some extent, the 2001 trip to Australia wasn’t exactly a bundle of laughs either). In the end it all comes down to good, firm management, and that’s something they had in abundance in South Africa in 1997 when Fran went as manager and had Ian McGeechan and Jim Telfer as a well-balanced coaching team right out of the ‘good-cop, bad-cop’ mould. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/bill-beaumont/bill-beaumont-the-autobiography/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.