Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography

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 blasé 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.