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Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend
Gregor Townsend
Gregor Townsend is one of rugby’s true greats. The most capped Scotland international of all time, a captain of his country and a winning British Lions tourist, Townsend’s time in the game has spanned continents, cultures and the amateur and professional eras. Always worth the admission money, his own story provides a unique perspective on rugby.The game of rugby has taken Gregor Townsend from the Scottish border town of Galashiels to the great playing fields of the world: Twickenham, Stade de France, Newlands, Stadium Australia and Eden Park. No current player can provide as comprehensive and objective a perspective on rugby culture as Townsend.‘Frustratingly mercurial,’ says one expert commentator of Scotland’s most celebrated fly-half. ‘He can empty bars with his brilliance,’ waxes another in contrast. But no-one can question his commitment as a pioneer of the cosmopolitan rugby life.From year-round seasons playing for both Gala and Australian side Warringah, he joined the Ian McGeechan revolution at Northampton – alongside England greats Matt Dawson, Paul Grayson and Tim Rodber – becoming a fan’s favourite. He has featured in some of the biggest matches in the sport – Grand Slam showdowns with England in 1995 and 1996, World Cup quarter-finals in 1999 and 2003 against New Zealand and Australia, British Lions Test victories, and European and French Cup Finals.Along the way, Townsend recounts his experiences of working alongside some of the greats of the world game – Gavin Hastings, Clive Woodward, Martin Johnson, Jonny Wilkinson, Jim Telfer, Ian McGeechan, and many more.He reveals how a team-mate tried to persuade the entire Scottish XV to sign up for rival Kerry Packer’s professional league. He details his shock at being omitted from the 2001 Lions squad, and the infamous 1994 Scotland tour to Argentina where he was blasted for his performances and almost gave up the sport. And he discloses for the first time the controversial circumstances behind his enforced international retirement.From his candid descriptions of the fierce political battles of selection to the events leading to professionalism that almost destroyed union, Gregor Townsend shows what it has meant to have experienced a lifetime playing, thinking and living rugby.
Copyright (#ulink_09362a83-093e-5b78-9d6b-942d46fbbf67)
HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in 2007 by HarperSport an imprint of HarperCollins London
© Gregor Townsend 2007
Gregor Townsend asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN 9780007251131
Ebook Edition © MARCH 2015 ISBN: 9780008140663
Version: 2015-03-13
Dedication (#ulink_7b017b07-c953-528d-8cda-22d8d879b8f5)
Dedicated to rugby in the Borders, and the hope that it can rise again.
Have you ever stopped and wondered why
Border rugby is so strong
I’ll tell you how it started, just listen to my song
How the Reivers wrought disorder
And the rule of law was lame
And the Bonnie Scottish Borders became
The Kingdom of the Game
Frae Gala, Hawick and Melrose
The Gospel quickly spread
The magic of its spell rose
Frae Selkirk don tae Jed
Frae Kelsae doon on Tweedside
Tae the muckle toon they came
And they fought tae find the best toon
In the Kingdom of the Game
Their features carved in granite
Their hearts as stout as stone
They won the ball and ran it
They made the game their own
Now many Border Callants
Bring honour and great fame
Tae the heartbeat of the Nation
Tae the Kingdom of the Game
‘The Kingdom of the game’ (Henry Douglas)
Contents
Cover (#u8448f285-773e-536e-9955-db68aff3d1ec)
Title Page (#uf5054192-1a57-530a-beeb-f5cdce884563)
Copyright (#ulink_605b8962-ee4a-523b-a25c-e31985f1c563)
Dedication (#ulink_b823956e-783a-5712-8a99-a63da924ea1f)
Preface (#ulink_49d7938b-c60d-551b-8711-6f6c1d758513)
1. Borders Crossing (#ulink_e296b472-029a-5528-a9ed-fdfac9b183cc)
2. Odyssey (#ulink_6fb82ab3-40b1-5dfe-982c-9b6c748a6a90)
3. Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina
4. Breakthrough
5. Rebels with a Cause
6. Last Orders and First Steps
7. Pride of Lions
8. Recurving
9. Vive la différence!
10. Le beau jeu
11. Feeling Blue
12. Full Circle
13. Spirits Lifted: Rugby World Cup 2003 Diary Part 1
14. Breaking Point: Rugby World Cup 2003 Diary Part 2
15. Farewell to All That
16. Swimming with Sharks
17. State of the Union
Career Statistics
Acknowledgments
Photo section
About the Publisher
Preface (#ulink_371736ba-6197-5a5d-9e52-bbb0a0ffcd15)
Happiness isn’t something you experience; it’s something you remember.
Oscar Levant
15 September 2006
I suppose we are never angrier than when we feel ourselves to be at fault. In only the third game of this season – my final season – I played as badly as I’ve ever done in my career. I was playing for the Border Reivers down in Wales, and we succumbed to another defeat – this time against the Ospreys. However, my own disappointment was much greater than that of my team-mates. This wasn’t entirely to do with my error-strewn performance. The match also forced me to admit an undeniable truth – my rugby career was all but over.
Throughout my career, I would set myself goals of getting into club, Scotland or Lions teams, but my real focus was on trying to improve every time I got my hands on a rugby ball, trying to play the perfect game. A few months previously I had announced publicly – and set as a goal – that I was going to retire at the end of the season. It wasn’t the most positive of targets and for the first time in my career, I began to feel demotivated. Now, showing signs of being unable to reach the standards I had set for myself, I feared that I’d lose the respect of others, never mind my own self-respect.
Professional sportsmen never know when the best time is to retire. The preferred option is to ‘go out at the top’, when you are still at the height of your powers. I couldn’t see the logic in that – surely you would want to achieve as much as was possible? Another option is to wait until injuries force you out of the game. My body had been crying ‘enough’ for some time – a broken ankle, torn shoulder ligaments and a cortisone injection in my neck were some of the things I’d faced in the previous two years – but I couldn’t resist working myself back to some sort of match fitness and playing once more. In the weeks following the Ospreys game, I realized just when the right time to take your leave was – when you start to feel that rugby has become a job. When the exciting becomes mundane and challenges mere chores, then it is time to call it a day.
My last two years back in Scotland have had precious few highlights, as the overriding memories are of recovering from a stream of injuries and of striving to just make it through the day, whether it was a weights session, rugby training, video analysis or rehab work. At times I was getting by on the bare minimum, and I knew it. It’s not a sentiment I want to associate with the sport I love, especially as I’ve felt blessed at the opportunities that rugby has given me.
For the past seventeen years I have been playing, thinking and living rugby. It has taken me from the Scottish Borders to the great playing fields of the world: Twickenham, Stade de France, Lansdowne Road, Stadium Australia and Eden Park. I have crammed in eighty-two Tests for Scotland and two more for the British Lions and I have been in a privileged position to witness the incredible changes that have taken place in the game over the last two decades, as rugby has transformed into a fully professional sport. I have also been in the unique situation of playing club rugby in five different countries, and my experiences in France, South Africa, England, Australia and Scotland have not just helped my rugby but enriched my life.
Rugby has given me so much and has had a hold over me for over half of my life. I’ve found the game compelling and, if given a choice, I wouldn’t have wanted to play any other sport. I believe that, at its best, there isn’t another sport that comes close in terms of excitement, commitment and spectacle. Rugby demands bravery from its players and can contain unforgettable moments of individual brilliance and equally momentous passages of immense team effort. What is it that gives rugby its special qualities? For me it’s no single thing, but the sum of its wonderfully diverse parts – its history, its personalities and its camaraderie.
One of the best quotes I’ve heard about rugby was from a TV interview with Philippe Sella I saw when I was playing in France. He said that to be a true rugby player you have ‘to take the game, but not yourself seriously’. Most of the people I have met during my rugby career would fit this description, although it seems to be less of a prerequisite now that the sport has been chiselled down from a fun-loving amateur game to a hard-nosed, image-conscious professional sport.
Throughout the book you will see that I am an avid collector of quotes. I can only apologize for borrowing from others so much, but as Michel de Montaigne once said, ‘I quote others only the better to express myself.’
My rugby career has been a series of experiences and lessons and it has been the main source of my misery and joy. I’ve had highs and lows, triumphs and disappointments and through playing for Scotland and the Lions I have experienced the whole range of sporting emotions. The spine-tingling combination of fear and excitement before an international match is something you don’t experience in other walks of life. There is a sense of adrenaline and anticipation that is the equivalent of arriving at church on your wedding day; the moments before you turn over an exam paper; and attending a job interview – all rolled into one. It is something I will yearn for each year come the Six Nations.
There have been times when I’ve been able to step out of the moment and see that rugby has taken me to the pinnacle of sporting intensity and achievement. These are memories that stay with you forever, private recollections that make you realize how lucky you are. Standing facing an All Black ‘Haka’ with hundreds of camera flashes going off around the stadium made me aware how far-reaching the game had become. And I’ll never forget standing arm-in-arm with my Lions colleagues at Newlands Stadium in Cape Town as we approached kick-off time in the First Test. It was a balmy evening and there was a gentle breeze in the air. I was incredibly focused, but I felt myself become an onlooker as the crowd began to sing the new South African anthem ‘Nkosi Sikelel’ iAfrika’. It is a beautiful, mesmerizing song and I couldn’t help but hum along with the thousands of proud supporters as I realized that this was going to be one of the most significant nights of my life.
In addition to the memories, it is the people you meet over your career that make it all the more special. There are too many to mention but rugby seems to have so many ‘good guys’ – people like Derek Stark, Neil Jenkins, Tabai Matson, Jason Leonard, Anthony Hill, Carl Hogg, Tony Stanger, Francois Duboisset, Lisandro Arbizu, Semo Sititi and A. J. Venter. This book is a tribute to these and the many others that have helped me over the years. In putting this book together, I’ve been reminded of just how many people have been involved in my journey, and I would like to thank those, especially my family, who have shared in and contributed to the many wonderful times I’ve experienced.
There will no doubt be many occasions in the future that I will be wishing I was still part of a squad on tour or preparing for a Test match somewhere, but the thing I’ll miss most is the vision of a scrum-half fizzing a pass through the air into my outstretched arms, and the thrill of running on to that ball with a world of possibilities stretched out in front of me.
CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_035553fe-ff29-5a06-af46-a0cf5da52402)
Borders Crossing (#ulink_035553fe-ff29-5a06-af46-a0cf5da52402)
Inspiration starts with aspiration.
Mary Lyon
Craig, my brother, was inconsolable. He was trying hard to hold back the tears. I asked him what had happened.
‘Someone’s called off – I’m going to have to tell the others we can’t play.’
For the previous month he’d been organizing a team to enter the Ward Sevens – the highlight of the rugby calendar for any Gala youth. He had managed to recruit six of his mates from the ‘ward’ we lived in – a ward being a designated area of the town – but he had just found out on the morning of his big day that one of the team was down with the flu. He couldn’t enter a side with six players and so his hopes of winning the 1980 Under-10 trophy seemed lost.
I saw an opportunity and I wasn’t going to let it pass me by.
‘Dad, if I play then there would still be a team.’
‘No chance – you’ve never played a game of rugby before.’
‘But I’ve run about with Craig’s friends lots of times.’
‘No.’
Since the age of five I had been going to mini-rugby sessions on a Sunday morning and had joined in with the older boys who played touch rugby in the dead-ball area of Netherdale after Gala matches had ended. I knew I would be fine in my brother’s team. For the next ten minutes I pleaded with my parents to allow me to take part. I had just turned seven years old and they were obviously very reluctant to let me play. However, faced with two screaming kids, it wasn’t long before we persuaded them to change their minds. Craig was given instructions that I was to be picked as a winger and only involved in play as a last resort.
As I ran out on the Netherdale pitch on a sun-drenched afternoon, the day’s events flashed by. My mum said it was comical – it looked like everyone else was a foot taller than me. I only received two passes throughout the day, but she said I got a huge cheer both times I touched the ball. We went on to win the tournament and I remember spending the evening taking the trophy round the houses in our ward. And so, in the same weekend that Mount St Helens erupted in North America, my love affair with the game began.
I was brought up in the town of Galashiels (or ‘Gala’ as it is better known locally), which is situated right at the very heart of the Scottish Borders. It is a busy town on the A7 road from Edinburgh to Carlisle and lies in the bottom of the steep-sided valley of the Gala Water, a mile upstream from its confluence with the River Tweed. Other Borderers from rival towns sometimes disparagingly call Gala people ‘pail mercs’. This refers to us being – allegedly – the last town in the Borders to get indoor plumbing, thus leaving ‘pail mercs’ (local dialect for ‘bucket marks’) on the backsides of those using the outside toilets. I have myself been abused as a ‘pail merc’ – (amongst other things) at Mansfield Park in Hawick.
