Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend

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.

CHAPTER 4 (#ulink_5b24dd03-058f-551f-90cd-a595eaf76359)

Breakthrough (#ulink_5b24dd03-058f-551f-90cd-a595eaf76359)

Courage is the ability to get up when things are getting you down, to get up and fight back. Never to know defeat, let alone accept it; to have principles, be they of fitness or morality, and stick by them; to do what you feel you must do, not because it is the popular thing to do but because it is the right thing to do. Courage is skill, plus dedication, plus fitness, plus honesty, plus fearlessness.

Bill Shankly

At the end of the tour to Argentina my left knee was injected with cortisone to try to put an end to the pain I’d suffered throughout the season. It had been a difficult twelve months and I was desperate for a change of scene. Along with my close friend and fellow Scotland cap Derek Stark, I set off to Florida for five weeks. As our trip coincided with the football World Cup in the US, we spent our time watching the round ball game and avoiding thinking about rugby.

My knee didn’t improve, despite the injection. Also, something wasn’t right with my wrist – I winced whenever we did any weight training (or when Derek coerced me into being his beach volleyball partner). When I returned to Scotland I had to undergo two operations. The first was on my knee to clean out my patella tendon. Then, after a precautionary x-ray on my wrist, it was revealed that my scaphoid had broken once again, the fracture probably occurring during Scotland’s Five Nations campaign. The next step was to have a pin inserted in my wrist with some bone grafted from my hip to keep it sealed. It was late summer, I hadn’t touched a rugby ball since the Argentina tour and had to face being out of action until Christmas.

Even though I endured two bouts of invasive surgery, I wasn’t as disappointed as perhaps I should have been. The pain in my knee and wrist had troubled me so much the previous season that I knew that something had to be done if I was going to be able to play anywhere near my capabilities again. Normally injuries are incredibly frustrating but in this instance they allowed me to take some time away from my problems at handling the expectations of others and my lack of assertiveness at international level. Argentina had convinced me that an extended break from rugby could provide me with some much-needed relief.

I was also thankful that I hadn’t been involved with Scotland in their solitary Test match in the autumn. They were beaten 39–10 by South Africa at Murrayfield – a ninth match without a win. I returned to full fitness in December, playing first for the South then a few games at stand-off for Gala. My form was good, but more importantly I was hungry, confident and keen to express myself.

The time I spent out of the game made me realize that the thing I missed most was actually playing matches. It was what I was good at and it was a part of my life that filled me with joy. I knew that the window on a rugby career wasn’t open for too long and my injuries had sharpened my focus to attempt to play without inhibition and fear of making mistakes. They say that ambition is enthusiasm with a purpose and this was exactly how I felt coming back from injury. Less than a month later I was selected at outside-centre for Scotland in a Five Nations warm-up match against Canada.

It wasn’t an enjoyable game for the outside-backs – the ball remained a stranger to us for almost the full eighty minutes. However, on this occasion I couldn’t blame stand-off Craig Chalmers as the weather was atrocious in Edinburgh. By the second half, sleet had turned to heavy snow and the intrepid supporters that had turned up at Murrayfield must have wished they had stayed at home – although at least they could say they had witnessed a Scotland victory. Despite narrow losses to England and Argentina, the best we had managed throughout 1994 was a draw against Ireland. Canada was my first ever win in a Scotland jersey. It wasn’t much, but at least it sparked a tiny bit of hope going into the following week’s Five Nations Championship.

We followed the victory over Canada by winning our opening match at home to the Irish. This boosted the squad’s confidence considerably and saw the criticism of our coach, Dougie Morgan, quieten down. Our much-maligned captain, Gavin Hastings, also experienced an end to what had been months of sniping from the media. He would never again be criticized in what was the final season of his playing career.

Big Gav was an inspirational figure for the squad, especially to the younger players like myself, Kenny Logan and Craig Joiner. Having your full-back as captain usually means that you intend to play fluid, open rugby. Although we weren’t there yet with this Scotland team, Gavin always encouraged the backs to move the ball and have a go at the opposition. As he stressed to the squad, this would be the only way we could play if we were to win our next match, which was against France.

Paris in the springtime was full of romance, in rugby terms at least, and provided me with a wonderfully memorable day. Scotland hadn’t managed to win in Paris for 26 years and had never recorded a victory at the famous Parc des Princes, a bowl of a stadium that reverberated with constant noise. Back in 1969, a certain Jim Telfer had scored the winning try at the Stade Colombes, which had been Scotland’s last away win against the French. We were determined to replace the black-and-white images of Jim powering over the try-line, which were always shown on the eve of France–Scotland games.

However, I didn’t make the most auspicious start to what ended up being the breakthrough game I’d been searching for. As we boarded the bus for our final team run the day before the match, the manager, Duncan Paterson, called me over. I could tell that he wasn’t happy and he showed his disgust by pointing to my shoes: ‘Gregor, where do you think you’re going with those on?’

‘Erm, on the bus with the others?’

‘Not with those trainers on you’re not. Get them changed or you can’t do the team run.’

‘But I’ve only got my kilt shoes I brought for the dinner tomorrow night.’

‘Well, that’s what you’ll have to wear for not bringing your Nike trainers then, won’t you?’