Читать книгу Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend - Gregor Townsend - Страница 10
ОглавлениеWe judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
On a clear day the Buenos Aires Sheraton has stunning views over the Rio de la Plata and beyond the river valley to the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo. Sadly, clear day or not, my room was positioned on the other side of the hotel. As I got out of bed I opened the curtains to gaze across the rooftops of the largest city in Argentina. Below me I noticed that the streets were crammed to bursting with emotional, flag-waving Argentines – just like a scene from Evita. I resisted the temptation to climb out onto the hotel balcony and deliver a song. Instead, I rushed downstairs to see what the celebrations were for.
In the hotel lobby, members of the Real Madrid team, who were also on tour in Argentina, were gathering. I met up with Bryan Redpath and Stuart Reid – two team-mates who were, like me, keen to join in with the carnival atmosphere on the streets of Buenos Aires. However, several Argentine policemen were blocking the hotel’s exit.
‘I’m sorry, you can’t go outside today. Or tomorrow. There is a demonstration being held in Buenos Aires.’
‘Surely we’ll be okay to go to the shops on the other side of the road?’
‘No – it is for your own safety.’
‘What about the Real Madrid players? Look – they’re joining in with the locals.’
‘Yes, but it is okay for them – they are not British. Don’t you know it is Malvinas Day?’
The penny finally dropped – the Malvinas, of course, are better known in English as the Falkland Islands. The policeman explained to us that Malvinas Day is officially titled ‘The Day of the War Veterans and the Fallen’ in the Falklands Islands. What the people were also demanding was the recovery of these islands.
I looked back at the crowds outside – the passion I had earlier seen in their eyes now looked a lot more like anger than celebration. Even though the Falklands War had ended over ten years before, it was clearly still an emotive subject for the Argentine people. And our hotel was situated right next to the focal point of their fury – a memorial for those killed in the conflict. We were more than happy to agree to police demands to stay in our hotel for the full forty-eight hours. Unfortunately Claudia Schiffer, who we had spotted a few times earlier that week, had just checked out, so as time passed we grew more and more frustrated and bored. Although I suppose it was preferable to being out on the streets.
Argentina was a tour I wish I could forget. My torment in trying to become an established Test player continued thousands of miles from home and I had to endure another character-building episode, just like in Tonga. Loss of confidence, loss of form, injuries and public criticism are the sporting equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I met all four on my own personal tour of hell.
Before the tour, I had squeezed so much playing and travelling into my first three years of senior rugby that at times I wondered whether I would ever have the chance to stop and reflect – not least on how lucky I had been. Luck, of course, will always run out at some point, and before I knew it, I had more than ample time to take stock as my career was halted by injury problems.
My time in Australia had taken my game to a new level and I was playing with confidence and verve on my return to Scotland. However, following my second match back for Gala, my wrist was in severe pain and I couldn’t really take a grip of anything without wincing. An x-ray showed that I had broken my scaphoid, which meant I was facing ten to twelve weeks on the sidelines. There is never a good time to get injured, but being struck down when you are in the form of your life is hard to take. I knew that getting back to that level wasn’t going to be easy.
During my time out, I did a lot of speed work with Charlie Russell, a local sprint coach. As I had a lightweight plaster on my arm I was able to run at close to 100 per cent. Pace has been, and always will be, the most vital component when it comes to beating a defensive line, no matter how organized and compact that line is. I was sceptical whenever I was told that I was quick, but I surprised myself when during the Scotland tour to Australia in 1992 I took on winger Iwan Tukalo over 100m and won. I’d always felt that my overall speed wasn’t that great, just my change of pace or acceleration. This is what I worked on with Charlie. As a favour in return, I agreed to run for him in the New Year Sprint at Meadowbank. A handicap race held over 110 metres, the Sprint has been staged in Scotland on or around New Year’s Day annually since 1870.
As it was my debut on the pro-circuit, I was given an arbitrary handicap of six metres. This meant that I was left with 104 metres in front of me. There was another runner with a handicap of 6 m, but the rest of the field started the race in front of us, the furthest being given a handicap of 25 m. Trying hard to go on the ‘B of Bang’, I managed to get pulled back for a false start. In professional athletics, you get docked a metre for jumping the gun, so I was now facing the daunting prospect of being the back-marker in my first ever professional sprint event. The other competitors suddenly seemed to be quite far up the track. I finished in sixth place, which I was told later was a reasonable first-time effort. Mind you, there had only been six people in the race! I was desperately hoping my return to rugby wasn’t going to be such an anticlimax.
I was lucky to have missed playing against the All Blacks, as they had rampaged their way through Scottish rugby – winning 84–5 against the South and 51–15 at Murrayfield against Scotland. I had a month to play my way into the selectors’ thoughts before Scotland’s first match of the 1994 championship, away to Wales. My form was nowhere like it had been before my wrist injury. However, after the desperate performance against the All Blacks, the Scotland selectors seemed eager to make changes.
While it was obvious that I had lost momentum following my lay-off, I was selected at stand-off for the A side against Ireland, only a few weeks before the Five Nations. We won the game comfortably and my own performance was composed, but lacking the attacking edge I’d developed in Australia. Despite this, the media began to raise the bar of expectations once again after I was picked in the number 10 jersey for the Blues team in the national trial. Craig Chalmers had been demoted to the Reds. At the time the SRU Director of Rugby, Jim Telfer, commented on the recurring theme of the media building me up, by saying: ‘You begin to wonder if we expect him to bring on the oranges at half-time on top of everything else.’
The trial game as usual was a torrid affair, but a small personal triumph for me – I notched up a try in our 24–14 win. The score involved a one-on-one with Craig Chalmers, which made it even more enjoyable. With only two weeks to go before the Welsh match, I was quietly confident that my first start for Scotland would be in my preferred position of stand-off. After all, if I had been selected there in the trial, which had gone well, surely the selectors would follow this through for the next match?
Regrettably, this wasn’t to be the case, although I did make the Scotland starting line-up for the first time – at outside-centre. As Scott Hastings was injured, the selectors opted for the experience of Craig Chalmers at stand-off and I was partnered in the centres with the hugely underrated Ian Jardine. The game was to be a disaster for Scotland – we were soundly beaten on the scoreboard as well as in the all-in brawl that had erupted early in the match. Given the terrible weather, our limited style of play and our poor performance, my first start in the Five Nations almost felt like a non-event.
I was by and large a spectator in the first half, and I didn’t touch the ball until the thirty-third minute, and even then it wasn’t from a pass. This wasn’t too much of a surprise in those days because Scotland tended to adopt a kick-and-chase approach to the game. Although I was itching to be involved, I didn’t let myself get frustrated and I tried to be positive when the ball eventually did come my way.
My involvement in the play increased tenfold when I was moved to stand-off after Craig Chalmers left the field injured in the second half. By that stage the match was beyond us, but at least we did try to chase the game as much as we could. I enjoyed my first taste of international rugby as a number 10 even though I now had the dubious distinction of having played three positions – stand-off, inside- and outside-centre – in what was only my second cap. Little did I know then that this was to be a recurring feature of my Scotland career.
I did my best to take the game to the Welsh and nearly got on the end of a chip-and-chase to score a try. I knocked over a drop-goal, although the referee, Patrick Robin, inexplicably ruled that it had fallen under the crossbar. Admittedly, it was a wobbly effort but the players on both sides knew that it had been good. Television pictures later showed that my drop-goal was a valid one and that I should have registered my first points for Scotland. Soaked to the skin, I tried my best to persuade Monsieur Robin that the ball had gone over the bar. My lack of French meant that I was reduced to playing a game of charades with the referee to explain my frustrations. Unfortunately, it was all to no avail, which really upset our hooker Kenny Milne, who was claiming a share in the drop-goal that never was.
Kenny had come to my aid before the match as I was facing an extremely embarrassing situation just before going out to win my first full cap. Trying to relax in the changing rooms at the Arms Park, I noticed that other players in the side were changing their studs for longer ones – the pitch had become a mud bath due to some torrential rain. My studs weren’t too bad but, being a student, it was ingrained in me not to turn down anything that was free. ‘I’ll take a handful of those, please’ I said to one of the forwards, who handed me a dozen shiny new studs.
I waited patiently for a pair of pliers, and then set about changing my studs. Obviously my technique wasn’t the best as I broke the insert on a couple of studs, thus making my boots quite unusable. This was potentially disastrous as the game was less than an hour away. The only player who had a spare pair of boots in their kitbag was Kenny Milne, so I was saved the mortification of running around in lopsided boots. The downside to wearing Kenny’s boots, though, was that they were a size 9, which was one size smaller than I normally took. It was a painful lesson that reminded me to be more organized in my match preparations.
The 29–6 defeat to Wales, which had followed on the heels of the hammering by the All Blacks, dealt a further blow to the confidence of Scottish rugby. The result in Cardiff, however, wasn’t the most important issue – rather the fact that we had been bullied up front and were unimaginative and leaden-footed in the backs. Next up was the Calcutta Cup game and there was much soul-searching and hand-wringing throughout the land as to how we could get back to winning ways against the Auld Enemy. And at a time of crisis, who better to turn to than a real live talisman – Gary Armstrong.
Gary had actually retired from the international game some nine months previously and had been playing at fullback and centre for his club, Jedforest, before being persuaded to make himself available once more for Scotland. He is a heroic figure to supporters and players alike and, having been named at stand-off for the first time, it was an honour to be selected as his half-back partner.
I remember in my first year at Edinburgh University going into a pub that was a local for the motorbike community and a small number of students who were attracted by the cheap beer, where the walls were covered with photos and newspaper cuttings of Gary who was obviously loved by the clientele. I don’t know if he was aware about this unlikely shrine to him, but it illustrates the high regard in which he was held by Scots from all walks of life.
The match was to be the most emotional fixture at Murrayfield since the Grand Slam game against the same opponents in 1990. Gary started the match as if he had never been away from the Test arena and was desperately unlucky to have a try ruled out early on for a double-movement. Fortunately, Rob Wainwright scored soon after this and our forwards began to get the upper hand in their battle with the hulking English pack. This was a remarkable transformation from the Welsh game and maybe had something to do with the rucking session that Jim Telfer had taken with the forwards at our hotel on the morning of the match. Officially, Jim wasn’t allowed to coach the team as he was now in the salaried position of SRU Director of Rugby. His appearance on the Saturday morning certainly focused the minds of our forward pack – he didn’t hold back during the intense session, which was all about keeping a low body position and flying hard into rucks.
However, I was disappointed with my own contribution as I was kicking most of the ball I received from Gary. This was, in fact, our game plan and at times it brought success – our try had come from an up-and-under – but I didn’t utilize the quick ball that came my way to run at the opposition. My role in the game could have been a lot more influential. The absence of conviction was due to a lack of confidence, which was probably the first time in my career I had felt this way. The events of the closing minutes very nearly erased from my memory my lack of attacking ambition, as we looked to have won the match in injury time.
England had clawed their way back into the game and led 12–11 going into the last minute of the match. According to a newspaper headline the following day, I was ‘A hero for sixty seconds’. From slow ruck ball wide on the left I managed at last to drop a goal for Scotland, following two earlier misses in the match and my disallowed effort against Wales. This time I was very grateful to the referee as I’d struck my kick very high and I wasn’t totally sure myself whether it had gone inside or outside the left upright.
As the game moved deeper into injury time, I was anxious that we might be denied our hard-earned victory. I had a vision of Rob Andrew dropping a goal just like he had done to win the World Cup semi-final 9–6 against Scotland in 1991. It was with this in mind that I sprinted out of defence to try and charge down my opposite number, as Andrew had positioned himself in the pocket to go for the winning kick. I lunged forward at the right moment and his drop-goal attempt crashed against my arms. When I saw Ian Jardine secure the loose ball I was now sure that we were going to win the match. Unfortunately, the referee had other ideas.
As we surged forward, the New Zealand referee, Lyndsay McLachlan, blew his whistle to award a penalty for handling in the ruck … to England! This was a stupefying decision, as we had recovered the ball – why would we have wanted to handle in the ruck for ball that we had just won? More importantly the ball came out on the English side, which meant that whoever had handled the ball on the ground had wanted to turnover Scottish possession.
A few days later, television pictures confirmed that an English hand had scooped the ball back from the ruck. The guilty party was Scotland’s nemesis, Rob Andrew. The only thing that could excuse the referee from his appalling decision was that England had navy cuffs on their white jerseys. But surely McLachlan was aware of this anomaly before his game-changing aberration? It was suggested that England would now be stitching green cuffs to their sleeves for their next match against Ireland.
Anyway, Jon Callard held his nerve and his successful penalty-kick gave England a 15–14 win. The referee blew the final whistle immediately after the ball sailed through the uprights. We were absolutely gutted and a nation was seething with outrage. Our captain Gavin Hastings even broke down in tears during a television interview after the match. This won him many more admirers and he told the squad the following week that he had received hundreds of letters of support – which even included one from my mum!
Despite the agonizing result, in what is always our most important fixture of the year, we had won back respect and confidence by the way we had played. However, the one-for-all unity of the amateur era wasn’t in much evidence when I read an article by Craig Chalmers in the Sunday Post the day after the game. He wrote that Scotland would have played much better if he had been selected at stand-off instead of me. It wasn’t the last time that he resorted to the tactic of criticizing his rivals in the media, and I kept his article to give me motivation in our fight for the number 10 jersey. I was determined to do my talking on the pitch, although I was disappointed by the selfish actions of a supposed team-mate.
I kept my place at stand-off for our next match away to Ireland but I knew there were a number of areas in my game that needed to improve; notably kicking, passing off my left hand and tackling. Above all, though, I was disappointed that the Scottish public had yet to see me attacking the opposition with ball in hand, the best part of my game. Now, in my third year of senior rugby, I had learned to stop breaking for the sake of breaking and was responding to situations more as they arose rather than forcing play. However, this had made me somewhat conservative in the match against England, which was probably the first game of my career that I hadn’t managed to break the advantage line at least once.
It is often said that the fear of failure is more stimulating than the reward of success and I’ve heard many coaches and players shout before a game: ‘We’ve got to be scared of losing today!’ I agree that losing sometimes hurts much more than the equivalent feeling when you win, but I don’t think it’s a good way to motivate players. A culture of fear leads to worry and anxiety, which is not a winning attitude. Being positive and concentrating on the process – not the end result – is a much surer route to success. I resolved to be free from worry and tried to express myself much more in Dublin.
We drew with Ireland 6–6 after having dominated the first half, in which we played into the teeth of a howling gale. Gary was monumental at scrum-half, despite playing for most of the game with a broken hand. The match was also my best performance yet for Scotland, as I made a couple of breaks and tackled well. It was our first time for almost a year that we hadn’t suffered a defeat, but we knew that it was the second game in a row that we should have won.
With Gary now injured, I lined up with Bryan Redpath at half-back for our final Five Nations match at home to the French. Although we only had five caps between us, I thought we would work well together. As it turned out, we didn’t have the immediate understanding I had hoped for and my own game was again as frustrating as it had been against England. To cap it all off, I threw an interception pass that gifted France seven points at a stage in the game when we still might have come back to win.
After the match Gavin tried to console me, saying that if my pass had hit its intended target we would have scored a try. The move was a simple miss-one loop, which had achieved its aim of committing the French midfield. With Gavin and Kenny Logan outside me, a clear overlap had presented itself. As we had predicted in our pre-match analysis, Philippe Saint-Andre rushed in from his wing to try and block my pass. Because of my poor execution, plucking the ball from the air was his reward for this ‘blitz’ style of defending, and he ran unopposed all the way to the try-line.
A lack of experience can only go so far in explaining my poor decision at throwing the interception pass. Just as in the England game, I had attempted a pass that I would never have tried in a club match. But when you are not confident in your actions, hope replaces certainty.
Normally, I would have relished the fact that Saint-Andre had come off his wing to pressure my pass. This is an ideal situation in which to hold onto the ball for as long as possible so that the defender has to make a decision as to what to do next. Because I was moving forward, Saint-Andre would have had to come in and tackle me or go out to tackle Gavin. Either way, at least one of our players would have been in space. However, instead of waiting for his actions to make the decision for me, I presented him with an opportunity by trying to pass the ball to Gavin as soon as possible. It was a 50–50 pass, which more often than not is punished at international level. We lost the match 20–12.
I suppose everyone in sport has to navigate a learning curve, but my problems had nothing really to do with either the opposition I was facing or the step up to Test level. The reason I hadn’t played to my potential was entirely to do with my state of mind. Although this was exasperating, I realized that it was probably much easier to remedy than a physical weakness or any problems coping with the speed and intensity of international rugby.
Two years later, Scotland coach Richie Dixon made the wise decision to introduce a sports psychologist, Dr Richard Cox, to work with the team. Dr Cox showed us an example of how the dangers of having doubts about your ability can have a direct affect on your performance. He produced a document that included quotes that were familiar to me. The text was in fact an interview that I had given to the Sunday Times a few weeks after the French game and the gifted Saint-Andre try. Dr Cox described it as an ideal example of the importance of self-belief in sport.
During our internationals at Murrayfield in 1994 I sometimes went for a pass when there would be no way I’d do that in a club game. I went in thinking that I must not make mistakes, but that meant not trying things. I was thinking I would be dropped if I made a mistake. Now, I realize I was thinking wrongly.
Getting over injury problems and trying desperately to balance the expectations of others had made me incredibly frustrated. Worryingly, this had also left me short of confidence. I viewed rugby as a game that I took enjoyment from and I had always tried to play without constraints. I knew I hadn’t been true to myself over the past few months in this regard, and was no longer doing things that had always come naturally to me.
After the Five Nations were over I managed to start taking pleasure in the game once again as I played sevens rugby for Gala. We had a superb group of sevens players – guys like Grant Farquharson, Jim Maitland and Ian Corcoran – and we won the Melrose and Jed Sevens, as well as our own tournament. We very nearly made it four wins out of the five spring tournaments, losing in the final at Langholm. Away from the glare of expectation at Murrayfield, I was smiling on a rugby field once again. I also went to the Hong Kong Sevens for the third time and did my best to enjoy my twenty-first birthday party, which was held in a student pub in Edinburgh.
However, it was whilst playing in the sevens circuit that my injury problems began to get close to unbearable levels. My wrist had been sore during the Five Nations but it was my knee that was more of a worry – it had given me constant pain since the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to take a break from rugby and I was again trying to fit in as much as possible.
To try and alleviate my knee pain, I adopted an unconventional recovery technique at the suggestion of the sprint coach I’d worked with the previous year, Charlie Russell. He said to me that the best thing I could do was to sit downstream in a river for ten to fifteen minutes after every training session. He said this had worked for a few players, citing as an example Kelso’s Eric Paxton, who had sat in a river after a hamstring tear and had been able to play the following weekend. Ice baths may be common rehabilitation practice nowadays, but this cold-water treatment was almost unheard of back in 1994. Although it wasn’t a pleasant experience, it certainly kept the swelling down a little, and provided some interesting viewing for one surprised Borderer.
For my outdoor ice bath I had been using the Caddon River on the edge of Clovenfords, which was a ten-minute drive from Gala. Late one night after a training session, I drove up there on my own to try to ease the pain in my knee. With my three jerseys and a waterproof jacket I was almost ready to sit in the water for fifteen long minutes. The finishing touch was to place a hot-water bottle under my jerseys to keep my heart warm as I sat down on the riverbed. It was a dark night, and I switched on my Walkman to try and think about something other than my freezing legs. I closed my eyes and hummed along with Kylie Minogue.
After ten minutes of sitting downstream, I thought I heard the noise of a dog barking which I found odd as I’d never heard it before in the song I was listening to. Something made me look around, and I nearly jumped out of the water when I saw a man standing above me on the riverbank. He was pulling back on his dog’s lead, which was excitedly barking at this strange person lying in the river below. There was no doubt that I’d had a shock at the sight of someone suddenly appearing out of the darkness, but I can only imagine how surprised the Clovenfords local was feeling stumbling across someone shivering and mumbling a song at ten o’clock at night while partly submerged in the burn below!
As I was trying my best to recover from my dual injuries, the summer tour to Argentina was looming on the horizon. Touring, I hoped, would give me an opportunity to become more consistent at international level. During the championship I had performed much better away from home than at Murrayfield. If I could overcome my knee and wrist problems, I aimed to excel in Argentina and enjoy the thrill of touring once again. To the wives and families of international players it may be a four-letter word but, in the amateur days, a tour was the absolute highlight of the season. Nothing else really came close.
Despite rugby being a minority sport in Argentina, it was a notoriously tough place to play, and there had only been a few teams in history that had managed to win a Test series there. In our first few days in Buenos Aires, we were soon aware of the dominance of football in the culture and daily lives of the populace. Locals were far more interested in Boca Juniors and River Plate than a touring rugby team from Scotland, and there were posters of Diego Maradona everywhere. Argentina’s major concern seemed to be if Maradona would be fit for the forthcoming football World Cup, not whether their rugby side could extend a proud home winning record.
We undertook the challenge with a severely weakened touring party, as most of our senior internationalists – Gavin Hastings, Scott Hastings, Gary Armstrong, Kenny Milne, Doddie Weir and Tony Stanger – had decided that their best preparation for the following season’s World Cup was a rest from the summer tour. At the time, there seemed quite a bit of logic in this, but looking back from an era where the game is much more physically demanding, it seems as if maybe a few of the players just didn’t really fancy a month of rugby in Argentina. In the weeks prior to our departure, injuries robbed us of more key personnel – Andy Nicol, Craig Chalmers and Derek Stark from the backs and Iain Morrison and Rob Wainwright from the forwards. The words ‘on a hiding to nothing’ hung over those of us who left for Argentina.
The spate of call-offs led to the appointment of the unlikeliest of captains – Andy Reed, our second-row from Cornwall. Andy had the rather harsh nickname of ‘Boring Bob from Bodmin’, but he didn’t seem to mind that players teased him about his rambling stories. In 1993 he had burst onto the international scene playing well and looking very much like a modern day second-row forward – physical but also able to get around the field. Although he had been a member of the much-criticized Scottish front five on that season’s Lions Tour to New Zealand, he had still kept up his good form for Scotland in the lead-up to Argentina.
The management obviously selected him because he was one of the few players that had made themselves available to tour and who had played well in the recent Five Nations. However, there are many more factors than just form involved in choosing a captain. Whether it was because of his Cornish accent or a lack of leadership experience, Andy found it a tough act to follow the likes of Finlay Calder, David Sole and Gavin Hastings as Scotland captain. Although he struggled at times with the role, he tried his best and was one of Scotland’s better players on tour.
Just as with the previous year’s tour to the South Pacific, prior to leaving I hadn’t played any fifteen-a-side rugby for a couple of months. I was determined to start the tour totally focused, as my rusty performance in the first match a year before in Fiji had cost me my place in the Test side. Despite increasing pain in my wrist and knee, I viewed the tour as the final opportunity of the season to boost my confidence before taking some time away from the game and resting my injuries. Unfortunately, this was to be wishful thinking – by the end of the tour I would have been happy never to touch a rugby ball again.
Things seemed to be very promising early on and I got off to a much better start in Argentina than I had done in Fiji. On a hot afternoon we played some good attacking rugby in our opening match against Buenos Aires. Only some decidedly dodgy refereeing decisions denied us a deserved victory as we were held to a 24–24 draw.
It was another ten days until the First Test against the Pumas, but most of the players involved in the Buenos Aires game were rested for the next two matches. We were constantly reminded that Argentina was one of the hardest places in world rugby to tour, but our first three outings against their best provincial sides hadn’t been that menacing. Our major problem had been the interpretation of the laws by the local referees in charge of our matches outside the Test Series.
The Argentine game plan was based on a strong scrummage, aggressive defence and a considerable amount of mauling by both backs and forwards. It wasn’t attractive to watch but has proved to be effective. The First Test was played in a hostile atmosphere at the FC Oeste stadium in Buenos Aires. The excitable spectators all seemed to have these long red horns, which annoyed my flatmates no end when I brought one back to Scotland. The horns created a noisy backdrop to the game, more like a football match. However, the game itself was nothing to shout about.
We weren’t able to control the play as we would have liked and we seldom strung more than two phases together. This was mainly because the Argentine midfield rushed up very quickly in defence and their forwards continually spoiled our lineout ball. Although it was an error-strewn match, it was clear that we had been the better side. That we lost the game 16–15 was largely due to our inability to finish good build-up work. Also, our goal kicker, Gala’s Mike Dods, obviously hadn’t borrowed his older brother Peter’s boots, having missed five attempts at goal.
I was frustrated with my own performance in that I hadn’t been able to rise above the general malaise and dominate proceedings. While I hadn’t done myself justice, I was more disappointed that as a team we didn’t perform and weren’t able to get an historic win in Argentina. This would have been even more memorable given the fact we were missing a number of established internationalists.
It was a gloomy scene in the changing room, but at least we knew we had the means to win the Second Test the following Saturday. I had just finished icing my aching knee and showering, when head coach Dougie Morgan came over to give me news that left me reeling: ‘Gregor, I’ve just spoken to the press and I told them that you had a shocker.’ How do you respond to that? For several moments he looked at me as if he wanted me to agree with him.
‘Cheers’ was all that I could say to fill the silence that hung between us. It was the end of our conversation. As soon as he walked away, I was angry with myself for not fighting my corner – to point out to him that I hadn’t been the only one.
‘Blamestorming’ is a term used in business for those sitting around in a group, discussing why a project failed, and who was responsible. I remember after international defeats at Murrayfield, the coaches and selectors used to stand in the middle of the changing rooms discussing quietly amongst themselves what went wrong. The players knew what was being talked about as we returned from the showers to get changed. If any of the selectors mentioned your name or turned to look in your direction it wasn’t a good sign. Still, it was preferable to the very public naming-and-shaming I received in Argentina.
I felt a shiver run right through me even though it was a warm evening in Buenos Aires. I was concerned with my coach’s view of the game, which was one I didn’t share. It would have been hard for me to argue that I’d played well, but there had been no glaring errors. Stand-off is at times an exposed position, especially when you have to lead the attack from slow-ball, as was the case in the First Test. I was finding out just what John F. Kennedy meant when he once said that ‘victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan’.
Criticism should be done in private with the aim of trying not to repeat mistakes and improve the player in question. Having just turned twenty-one, there were many areas I needed to work on and my performance in the First Test flagged up two or three that I needed to sort out very quickly. I have always been a harsh critic of my own game and, although I felt I had played badly, that had also been the case for the majority of the team. Only two or three players had played well. Naively, I thought that during the press conference Dougie had maybe gone on to say that more than half the team had been shocking too. I also hoped that he had been joking when he said that I’d had a shocker or that the press hadn’t taken him seriously.
I had previously got on well with Dougie despite the fact that he had dropped me from the Scotland Sevens team during the World Cup the year before. We would later have a very good relationship during his time as Scotland manager leading up to the World Cup in 2003. He was terrific in this role and the only member of the management that contacted me after my retirement from Test rugby, and I greatly appreciated his kind letter. However, back in 1994, when what he had said after the First Test began to sink in, I couldn’t envisage us ever being friends again.
Dougie’s comments about my performance became the story of the First Test. ITV, who had filmed the match, broadcasted Dougie’s comments, which were backed up by the tour manager, Fred McLeod. For the next couple of days I wasn’t really aware of the story that had blown up back in the UK, but I was miserable and started to feel a long way from home. I had been publicly criticized by our management and to make matters worse, there didn’t seem to be any attempts being made to remedy the situation. It didn’t take a genius to work out that I wasn’t going to be selected for the Second Test against Argentina.
My fears were confirmed when the midweek team to play Rosario was announced and I was named at centre – one of only two players to be selected who had played in the First Test. At training it looked obvious that Graham Shiel was being lined up to move from number 12 to stand-off, as he had already been given the goal-kicking duties ahead of Mike Dods.
With my knee and wrist injuries deteriorating, the last thing my body needed was to play another game just four days after a Test match. But on the other hand, lining up against Rosario, I was glad to be back out on a rugby field so quickly after my so-called ‘shocker’ and I was determined to show that the weekend’s events hadn’t affected my self-belief. I wanted to play as if I didn’t have a care in the world. It was frustrating that the coaches had selected me at centre, not allowing me the opportunity to prove what I was capable of in the number 10 jersey. Even though I didn’t get much ball, I managed to put on a decent pretence of being confident and found a couple of gaps. However, we lost 27–16 to Rosario, an Argentine side who had unexpectedly moved the ball wide.
The following day back in Buenos Aires, I bought a Times newspaper, which was now a few days old. Interestingly for me it included a match report from our game against Argentina. The headline said it all: ‘Townsend shocking in narrow Scots defeat’. The majority of the article was concerned with Dougie’s outspoken comments. I realized that it would have been an even bigger story in the Scottish press. Speaking to my mum and dad on the phone I tried to sound as upbeat as possible. They told me there had been debate in the media about Dougie’s criticism of me and that most commentators seemed to think it had been unmerited. There had even been letters of support for me printed in The Scotsman newspaper.
I am sure Dougie had made a heat-of-the-moment remark and later regretted what he said. This was maybe why he came to speak to me so soon after the press conference, but even though the manager Freddie McLeod sent me a courteous letter after the tour, Dougie never backtracked on his comments about my performance. I’m certain, however, that he hadn’t intended to create a story that was to dominate our build-up to the crucial Second Test. Dougie had been through a tough season already – no wins in seven games – and this had been another narrow defeat to go alongside the agonizing loss to England in the Five Nations. Perhaps my interception pass in our last championship match against the French was in his thoughts and he had finally lost patience with me. Nevertheless, there should be no scenario that justifies publicly hanging a player out to dry in what I believe is the ultimate team game. Coaches who do this deflect the criticism away from themselves and the team, whether or not that is their intention. There’s a great quote by American football coach Bear Bryant, who said: ‘If anything goes bad – I did it. If anything goes good – we did it. If anything goes really, really good – congratulations guys, you did it.’
Back in Buenos Aires I got a surprise by being named at stand-off for the Second Test – a strange change of fortune but I wasn’t complaining. It was the beginning of a volte-face in the management’s dealings with me. I am positive that this had much to do with the influence of the SRU Director of Rugby, Jim Telfer, who had flown out to Argentina to take in our final match. He talked me up to the press and was being very positive about my long-term international future. He even stayed behind after our final team run when I did some extra kicking, offering me encouragement and helping return the balls to me. Jim had never coached me up to this point and this treatment was a surprise, as he had a reputation for being a hard taskmaster, more used to shouting at his players. He was genuinely trying to help and I had always felt he rated me as a player. I was touched that he was going out of his way to get me in a better frame of mind for the following day’s match.
I played better, making some yards with the ball-in-hand and knocking over a drop goal, but in many ways it hadn’t been that different to my performance in the First Test. The team improved slightly, although we still couldn’t shake off the Argentine spoiling tactics and we suffered yet another narrow defeat. Our goal-kicking again let us down as it had done throughout the tour – our overall strike rate was a mere eighteen goals from forty-nine kicks. On this occasion, Graham Shiel and Mike Dods missed five attempts between them. In contrast, Argentina’s Santiago Méson had a 100 per cent return and we succumbed to a 19–17 loss.
We almost salvaged a win in the last minute, but a couple of bizarre incidents – or maybe fate – kept us from scoring. First, late in the second half Argentina tried to make a substitution but didn’t actually take anyone off and, for a few minutes, had sixteen players on the field. The illegal ‘replacement’, Leandro Bouza, was fast becoming my nemesis – he had charged down a clearance kick of mine to score a try two years earlier in the Students World Cup quarter-final. As luck would have it, he again got his hands to another kick, this time charging down my attempted drop-goal. Finally the referee noticed there was one too many Argentine players on the field and we were back to fifteen against fifteen going into injury-time.
As we progressed into the Argentine 22-m I called for the ball, seeing that we had an overlap to the right. However, calling for the ball on the left-hand side of the ruck was our ebullient hooker, Kevin McKenzie. He was probably the loudest member of our squad, and it was no doubt for this reason that Bryan Redpath passed the ball to him instead of his halfback partner on the right. Wee Kev then lined himself up for a drop-goal that would have made him an instant hero. However, infamy beckoned as he scuffed the ball tamely along the ground. He will be forever remembered not for having the guts to go for the winning kick, but as that Scottish hooker who nearly had a fresh air trying to drop a goal. It was an ignominious – yet fitting – end to what would remain the only tour that very nearly managed to do what I once would have thought impossible: destroy my enthusiasm for rugby.
