THE CORONATION OF A
BORDERS PRINCE
THE BORDERS INFLUENCE on Scotland’s first ever Grand Slam in 1925 was marginal at best. Only one player – Doug Davies – turned out in the team which made history and almost half of their number played their rugby in England. Yet, it was a measure of the dramatic shift in the balance of power, which occurred after the Second World War, that the Scots became increasingly dependent on their representatives from the South. By the time that Jim Telfer took over as coach in the 1980s, and implemented his radical policies, there was no longer any point in denying that the old days and old ways of cosy, cloistered public-school traditionalism were an outmoded luxury in an age when several countries, and most notably the All Blacks, were almost openly flaunting their professionalism when the latter word was still anathema among the home unions. The question was: what was to be done about squaring the circle between those who stuck to their belief in amateurism and those who argued the union code was adhering to an anachronistic ethos?
Sometimes, though, the sport provided less fractious and more positive matters on which everybody could sing from the same hymn sheet. One of these rare instances happened when Telfer’s personnel began their inexorable march towards the Grand Slam in 1984. One could query the philosophies and tactics of the different sides in this struggle for European supremacy, and endlessly debate the abilities of many of the tournament’s leading participants. But, in the final analysis, what was not up for discussion was the fact that John Rutherford was operating on a different stratosphere from everybody else. Even his opponents could scarce forbear to cheer at the insouciance and sublime free expressionism with which this Selkirk prodigy illuminated his pursuit.
Rutherford had never been anything other than a special talent, one of the few Scottish performers who could have waltzed into the New Zealand or South African ranks and blazed a majestic trail. He was first capped in 1979 and, straight from the outset, the partnership which he had forged, during their joint assignments as comrades on South duty, with the Jed-Forest scrum-half, Roy Laidlaw, ensured that both men intuitively knew what the other was planning. This meant they were able to devise attacking ploys with the strategic nous of chess grandmasters, while the relationship between them was almost telepathic. In the early days of his career, Rutherford absorbed valuable lessons from Ronnie Cowan, a former darling of the Souters, who had blotted his copybook – indelibly, in the eyes of the diehards – by switching codes to rugby league, sparking a slightly farcical situation where Cowan was treated like a leper in Selkirk, even while he was passing on tips to the young Rutherford from his family’s greengrocer’s shop. It was another reminder of the slightly absurd hostility which existed between the two codes, and the drain of talent from the Borders continued right into the late 1980s when the gifted Alan Tait of Kelso announced he was moving to join Widnes, prior to returning to the Scotland fold when union finally embraced professionalism in the mid-1990s.
Heaven only knows how much moolah Rutherford might have commanded if he had chosen a similar route, but there was never any chance of this happening because he had been transfixed by the 15-a-side code from an early age, as he told me.
It must have been about 45 years ago, when we were involved in this school tournament and I was a member of the Philiphaugh team, and we were having the time of our lives. We battled hard to get to the final, and eventually won the competition, and who should come over and congratulate us than Bill McLaren, who was already a bit of a legend in the Borders, and we were absolutely thrilled that he was taking the time to wish us well. It made everybody’s day, and there was a huge amount of interest in rugby at that stage. You could walk up the High Street of any of the towns in the region and you would see people carrying rugby balls and practising with them and either heading to a park or going to the local club for training. It never occurred to any of us not to play rugby and with people like Bill around, it just added that extra piece of inspiration.
Rutherford advanced almost seamlessly from the youth ranks into the Selkirk side, which provided him with the opportunity to start learning his craft at senior level. It actually assisted his development that he grew accustomed to performing behind a pack which offered him a limited supply of possession, in which circumstances, he quickly refined his decision-making and displayed a maturity when he was still in his late teens. There are precious few individuals who are blessed with sophistication, swiftness and sangfroid, but the young stand-off began making an increasing impact on the Border League and Scottish championship circuit and word spread about this immensely gifted player.
To his credit, Rutherford was never dazzled by fame or inclined to be cocky. If anybody perceived arrogance about the manner with which he routinely destroyed opponents, they were wide of the mark, because it would be difficult to meet a more humble person away from the grand rugby stages. When we talked during the preparation for this book, he repeatedly spelled out his conviction that he had been ‘lucky’ to have emerged in the era he did, and had been ‘fortunate’ that so many other talented performers rose to the challenge under the ‘magnificent leadership’ of Jim Telfer. In one sense, it was wonderfully refreshing to encounter somebody with such a manifest lack of prima donna-ism; on the other, one was left wondering how much Rutherford might have profited from the sport had he been born 15 or 20 years later, rather than in 1955.
It helped, of course, that he and Laidlaw built up such a remarkable bond once they combined, first for the South and then when Scotland came calling. Yet while both members of the duo possessed significant abilities and duly operated with the natural fluency of the best double acts, it was Rutherford who sparked most fear because he could kick wonderfully well – whether it was the garryowen, the grubber variety, or deft cross-field chips, whenever he was working with small, pacy back divisions – or weave his way beyond strings of would-be tacklers with a mesmerising nonchalance which was so bejewelled with class that it seemed inadequate to describe it merely as a change of pace. In all sports, the men and women who make the biggest aesthetic imprint tend to be those who always have time to spare or extra room in which to glisten, and Rutherford was no exception. And whether excelling with Scotland in their demolition of Wales in Cardiff in 1982, or being chosen for the ill-fated British Lions tour of New Zealand, where he was scandalously overlooked for the Tests, the Selkirk player never gave the impression he was doing anything other than loving his opportunity to shine.
How they treasured him at Philiphaugh! And the scale of the reverence was summed up by one of that club’s most famous supporters, Allan Massie, who watched and marvelled at the fashion in which Rutherford brought his majestic presence to the Test arena.
Tall (by the standards of Welsh fly-halves), fast, beautifully built and a finely balanced runner, John was, in the early days, completely uninhibited. But he still had to learn how to control a game, because he then lacked the attribute which all great fly-halves have possessed: the ability to put the ball where his forwards want it and to perplex and tantalise opposing full-backs. Realising this, he worked very hard on his kicking, until he became as good and effective a tactical kicker as Scotland and Selkirk have ever had. He was a master of every kick and nobody who saw it has ever forgotten his demolition of the England full-back, Dusty Hare, in the 1984 Calcutta Cup match.
Nevertheless, he remained by instinct and inclination essentially an attacking player and daring runner and, in all, he played 42 times for Scotland. It is easy to measure the scale of that achievement; before him, the most-capped Scottish stand-off was Gordon Waddell, with a mere 18 appearances. Since then, first Craig Chalmers and then Gregor Townsend have left John’s record behind them, but there are, of course, so many more international matches nowadays. You can play eight or ten games a year, and more when it is a World Cup one. The plain fact is that, from his first cap in 1979 to his last in 1987, John was never dropped. He was out of the team only when he was injured and Scotland lost all but one of the matches that he missed.
This latter statistic demonstrates the myriad qualities which Rutherford brought to his country’s cause. And they were rarely better highlighted than during his involvement with Scotland in the 1984 Five Nations Championship. Quite simply, if the previous year’s campaign had been a massive disappointment until the face-saving exercise at Twickenham, this was one of the winters where the cold and the snow seemed immaterial, at least for those who were transfixed by the oval ball. The Scots had absorbed lessons from their trials in New Zealand with the Lions, and they had noticed that their British rivals were deficient in some areas. They were coached by Telfer, a man who was ruthlessly determined to exorcise the demons of that trip, and he was in the final year of his tenure, so this was the ideal moment to set the record straight. And he had assembled a clutch of ferociously competitive and talented forwards, in the mould of David Leslie, John Beattie, Iain Paxton, Derek White and Jim Aitken, the latter of whom was a juddering bulwark in the front row for his country. Then there was Rutherford, restored to rude health, and, at 28, approaching his peak. It was a potent combination on paper and, mercifully, they were equally efficacious when they commenced their title bid. It culminated in one of the great chapters and towering campaigns in Scottish sporting history and much of it was a direct consequence of Border class and power.
As Rutherford told me, this was a year where all the components came together.
When you join up with the Lions and you’re Scottish, you tend to be a bit overwhelmed at the start of the trip and you don’t have the same confidence as the English and Welsh guys, but then, when you begin training with them, you discover that they aren’t actually any better than you. It took a wee while for that to sink in, but there were eight of us on the tour – and the likes of David Leslie didn’t even make the party – so we recognised pretty quickly that we didn’t have any reason to have an inferiority complex and I remember Roy [Laidlaw] saying to me, on the flight home, that he fancied Scotland’s chances in the 1984 championship. We didn’t make a big song and dance about it, but, no matter if we were underdogs, we knew – as a squad – that we were capable of beating anybody in the Five Nations and we had France and England at Murrayfield, which is usually the schedule which gives us the best chance of challenging for honours.
That said, though, we wouldn’t have won the Grand Slam without Jim Telfer being in charge and I have never strayed from that belief. When you played for Scotland and Jim was the coach, you always thought that you could win, because he worked on everything to the nth degree, he put a huge amount of effort into devising his tactics, and studied the opposition for signs of weakness, and even checked on the weather forecast, in advance of matches. Maybe we take these things for granted nowadays, but Jim was utterly meticulous and methodical and I think it does him a disservice to say that he achieved what he did purely because he was a great motivator. Yes, he was that, but he always drew up his plans astutely, got his message across to his players, and he could teach you about technical aspects of rugby and keep you interested and that was because communication was another of his strengths. Derrick Grant was a big influence on anybody who grew up in the Borders, and what he achieved should never be forgotten, but Jim had an aura about him, he was fearless in everything he did, and when he told you in his team talks that you could go out and beat England or France or whoever, you absolutely believed him 100 per cent. Not many coaches have that sort of drive and desire, but it was one of the cornerstones of our success during the whole of the 1984 championship campaign.
The Five Nations crusade commenced with a trip to Wales, who were still smarting from their comprehensive defeat of 1982, but it was one thing to be aggrieved, another thing entirely to translate that into a reversal of fortune. The Scots, buoyed by Telfer, knuckled down to their task with vim and vigour, ignoring the attempts of their opponents to needle them into losing their discipline. The visitors were altogether too potent for their hosts, who crashed to a 15–9 loss which was more emphatic than the result might suggest. The Scots controlled the forward exchanges, with such warriors as Iain Paxton and Jim Aitken scoring tries, although this was undeniably a case of the whole Scotland juggernaut contributing to a merited win. This was the third time in the space of five games that the Scots had dowsed the Dragons, which, considering that the Welsh had only lost three of these contests in the preceding 57 years, reflected the manner in which Telfer and his compatriots were battering down the doors of the status quo. But the SRU’s charges recognised that greater challenges lay in store. Next up were England, who could scintillate one day and plumb the depths the next, with their selectors almost constantly unsure of what their best XV was on any particular weekend.
Telfer was aware of the danger of his personnel being complacent. So were his Borders contingent, who numbered 12 out of 20 of the brethren who rolled up their sleeves and proceeded on the path to glory. Rutherford, for his part, a stellar figure in an ensemble which was dominated by belligerent back-row members beating the living daylights out of rivals, clung to his opinion that the Lions odyssey had illustrated that Scotland had nothing to fear from their northern hemisphere adversaries and gradually, bit by bit, he was vindicated in that judgement. This was the 100th meeting of the Auld Enemies, and England would clearly have to rely on their muscular pack, which featured the likes of Maurice Colclough, Steve Bainbridge and Peter Simpson. But it was also a period where their sides could change dramatically between Tests and Telfer appreciated that they were always capable of pulling rabbits out of hats. Rutherford, though, was more upbeat. ‘When you are up against a country which has ten or twenty times more players that you, there is never any room to be complacent. But we just thought we were better than them that season. It was actually nothing to do with the baggage which sometimes surrounded this match, but more the fact that we knew all about their players and the Lions tour had demonstrated to us that we were every bit as good as what they had to offer. You never take anything for granted, but we felt pretty optimistic.’
That assessment was amply vindicated by what transpired at Murrayfield. Rutherford, replete with classy touches, kicked with fiendish design; his partner in crime, Laidlaw, bossed, bullied and bothered his frazzled opponents and Telfer’s initiative in changing his tactics, given the soggy conditions, simply exposed the one-dimensional nature of England’s limited strategy. The Scotland coach opined:
We decided to use Roy and John to kick on to their full-back, Dusty Hare, and we recognised that our scrummaging would be the key in the wet. We played with the normal southwesterly wind in the first half at Murrayfield, and the first try was the result of a ball over the top of the line-out. Paxton hacked it on and David Johnston dribbled on and scored. The tactic of putting pressure on Hare obviously worked, because he missed six penalty goals out of eight.
Our second try is one that sticks out clearly in my mind, because it was an occasion when everything just came together perfectly. England took a 22 drop-out, and the Scots caught it, drove and rucked, then Roy chipped over the ruck and Dusty Hare was caught in possession. Jim Calder ripped the ball from him and the Scottish forwards, with David Leslie and Alan Tomes in the van, rucked perfectly, laid it back, and Roy passed to John, who took it off his toes, drew [Clive] Woodward, and gave a short pass on the burst to Euan Kennedy, who went in at the posts. We won 18–6, but unfortunately, both Euan and Bill Cuthbertson were injured, to be replaced by Jim Pollock, [who, sadly, is one of the forgotten men of that triumphal season] and John Beattie [who isn’t!].
Telfer was entitled to feel satisfied with the relative ease of this victory, particularly given the opposition. More tellingly, perhaps, Rutherford guessed that nothing had yet been achieved. And yet, the symbiosis between him and Laidlaw was usually worth the price of the admission money alone. I spoke to both these masters and commanders and they will hopefully forgive me for reproducing their comments in this fashion.
RUTHERFORD: There was pressure, of course there was pressure, because we had beaten two of the major countries in the championship, and suddenly the talk among the fans was all about us winning Triple Crowns and Grand Slams. But, as a player, you honestly never think any further ahead than the next match. Roy and I had built up this relationship and we understood each other and knew what we needed to do in any number of situations. We had the experience at half-back and, at that stage in rugby’s history, it was pretty simple. We got most of the ball, and we had to decide what to do with it. If we got it wrong, our team would normally lose, so you had to make the most of the possession. If we got it right, well, we always had a decent chance.
LAIDLAW: John and I had grown up in the Borders, we both had similar backgrounds – both of us had a parent from the West [of Scotland] and one from the Borders, and we were one of three sons – and we understood the other’s game from playing together for under-21 sides, from South matches and moving up to Scotland duty, so, by the time we got to 1984, there wasn’t much that we hadn’t experienced together. Neither of us was ever dropped and we just got on, almost as if we were brothers, and going after the Grand Slam was the sort of challenge which just got the juices flowing in both of us.
RUTHERFORD: What you have to appreciate is the quality of the players that Scotland had at that time. Jim [Telfer] had worked incredibly hard, as had Derrick Grant and Colin Telfer, to take us forward and, more importantly, Jim and the SRU got us into the habit of going on tough tours to the southern hemisphere and, although there might not have been too many results to get excited about on these visits, they sorted out the men from the boys and we knew we had a realistic chance of going all the way in 1984.
LAIDLAW: That was Jim Telfer’s master plan, and don’t let anybody say otherwise. The majority of the Scotland squad had been together since 1981 and we kept going close and producing the occasional good performance, but we knew we were capable of much better than just one or two wins every term. John was missing from most [three out of four] of the 1983 championship and Jim wasn’t there either, and yet we came really close in every match. You could sense that the frustration was swelling up in the squad and when we travelled to New Zealand with the Lions, it just made us even more determined. After all, I went away on that tour for three months with no wages and two young children at home and my family had to rally round to make sure I was able to concentrate on rugby. So you aren’t going through the motions in these circumstances.
Understandably, the Scots had built up a significant head of steam and their media profile heightened in the build-up to the meeting with Ireland in Dublin for the Triple Crown. Jim Aitken, the team’s grizzled skipper, was a pillar of common sense amid the hubbub and, together with Telfer, they shared the attitude that forecasting is for the foolish. Yet, if the mood in public was one of caution, there was an almost SAS-style approach to this contest in the Emerald Isle. For starters, the SRU’s squad switched hotel venues from their normal Dublin locale and stayed well away from the city, in the countryside: this fostered team spirit, increased the sense of mystery over which tactics Telfer might employ, and, according to Rutherford, allowed the players to concentrate on their task, without being waylaid by supporters, no matter how positive the latter might be.
Next up, Telfer pulled a masterstroke. On the day before the match, he showed his squad a video, not of Rocky or Chariots of Fire or anything else with a positive message, but rather an X-rated rugby exhibition, which involved the South being trounced 30–9 by the All Blacks during the previous autumn. This featured ten of the Scots who were in the lineup which would meet Ireland the following day, and the sight of their efforts being thwarted had the desired effect. Rutherford said later: ‘We knew that New Zealand were a tougher proposition than the Irish, but that was an extremely effective wake-up call by the coach. Looking back, it was typical Jim: he always wanted us to learn from our mistakes and the only way we could really do that was to confront them head-on.’
Screening that match was an insightful piece of reverse psychology. It might have backfired with the wrong type of player, but Telfer knew the mettle of his troops and reasoned that they would be inspired by comprehending the areas in which they had to improve. It worked! On a windy afternoon in Dublin, the Scots swept out of the blocks and the Ruther-ford-Laidlaw axis worked like the sweetest of dreams. The nimble little scrum-half scored a brace of terrific tries in the same corner of Lansdowne Road and duly made that part of the ground his own little piece of turf for posterity. In the midst of a swarming, all-pervasive attacking declaration of intent from the Scots, the referee, Fred Howard, awarded the visitors a penalty try and, almost miraculously considering the Scots’ normal anxieties on the road, they went in 22–0 in front at the interval.
The Irish could barely believe what had hit them and, perhaps understandably, the contest petered out thereafter, although Laidlaw had to retire with a head knock which meant that Gordon Hunter, the Selkirk scrum-half, took his place in the second period. But this merely accentuated the influence of the Borders of the Scottish team, because Rutherford was obviously au fait with his Philiphaugh colleague and the pair worked a treat together in the second period, while Scotland wrapped up a comprehensive 32–9 triumph which steered them towards touching distance of a hallowed Grand Slam.
Let’s just recap for an instant. Here was a Scotland XV, coached by a Borderer with more than half of the number in their squad similarly from the South. Pedants might point out that Jim Aitken was not born in Gala – even though he played for the Netherdale club – and Iain Paxton was originally from Fife, despite turning out for Selkirk, while David Leslie, a towering performer in these cauldrons of battle, hailed from Dundee. Yet, such considerations should not be allowed to detract from the massive influence which the Borders had on this lustrous team, and, as Rutherford told me, that close-knit camaraderie was pivotal to the sense of esprit de corps which Telfer and his assistants had built up. The only question which remained was whether they could repel a formidable French force, whose earlier performances had left the English hooker, Peter Wheeler, describing them as ‘unbeatable’. Well, the Titanic was talked up as being ‘unsinkable’.
As it transpired, the hype in the build-up might have come to naught, but for a couple of factors. Firstly, Rutherford, all style, substance and innocent bravado, was close to his immaculate best. Secondly, France, as they were prone to do on foreign assignations, fell foul of the referee, Winston Jones of Wales, who lost his patience with ‘Les Bleus’ once they began imagining that the laws of the sport only applied to the other side. The French still led 6–3 at the interval, courtesy of an excellent try from Jerome Gallion, but that slender advantage could and should have been more substantial than it was. And they had committed the cardinal sin of believing that they could beat officialdom. Even the more pessimistic souls in the Murrayfield crowd, men and women who had endured all manner of false dawns and hard-luck stories in past decades, gradually began to fathom that the visitors were spending more time searching for easy targets than focusing on their prime objective in a city where they had grown accustomed to adversity. And the French, once they slip into this frame of mind, can be as volatile as the Borgias on a bad night.
Predictably, they refused to learn the error of their ways. ‘Gallion went off with an injury and they just seemed a bit lost after that,’ said Rutherford. Telfer, too, had been thinking on his feet and ensured that his prized stand-off received greater protection as the tussle turned in Scotland’s favour. David Leslie, one of life’s indefatigable warriors, became an increasingly significant figure amid the hostilities and, with Peter Dods landing two penalties, the match was tied at 9–9 and the balance shifted towards the Scots. ‘Serge Blanco, the French full-back, was caught under a high ball and driven some way back downfield,’ said Telfer, whose analytical skills should not be allowed to disguise how much this game mattered to him. ‘The impetus that gave us was crucial and we scored from more or less the next line-out.’
His description rather ignores the frenzy and chaos which surrounded the try, with Colin Deans’ put-in gathered by Paxton as the prelude to an ecstasy of fumbling before Jim Calder seized the touchdown. But ultimately, all that really mattered was that the Scots had seized the initiative and the reliable Dods stretched the lead with his fifth penalty, despite having a badly swollen eye, to make sure that there were no twists in the tale. Scotland had won 21–12 and their personnel marched into the archives with a sinewy refusal to buckle and a Telfer-inspired controlled aggression. It was not the prettiest of victories, but this was never a day for fancy-dans.
What it did amount to was a resounding triumph for the leading figures in Borders rugby. Because, whether in the heroics of Dods or Keith Robertson or the cherished halfback pairing of Rutherford and Laidlaw, through to the combatants in the boiler room such as Aitken, Leslie, Colin Deans and Alastair Campbell, Scotland’s first Grand Slam for 59 years was a towering affirmation of gritty resolve and collective spirit, allied to intermittent shafts of sparkle and improvisation. A dozen of the Scottish heroes were from the South, and all of the clubs which then comprised the Border League, with the exception of Langholm, had players in the mix. To be fair, there were other stalwarts from outwith the Borders who were a significant part of the success, and it is impossible to do justice to what this squad of players achieved without paying homage to the likes of Iain Milne, Bill Cuthbertson and David Johnston. Yet neither is there any doubt that this prize would not have been secured without the immense contribution of the Borderers, not least Telfer, who was surely entitled a (brief) smile or two, even while he prepared to exit the coaching scene at Murrayfield and return to the educational sector.
From Rutherford’s perspective, it was a collective enterprise and this self-deprecating Selkirk man still believes there were more complete displays than those which marked the 1984 success. ‘We probably needed to show that we could tough things out when it was necessary and, don’t get me wrong, it was fantastic when we beat the French and the whole nation seemed to go crazy for the next few days,’ recalls Rutherford. ‘But there were other days where we played a lot better. I remember the Calcutta Cup match in 1986, when it was a beautiful afternoon at Murrayfield and everybody in our side – except “The Bear” [Iain Milne], who preferred the conditions to be wet and muddy – relished putting England to the sword [by a record 33–6]. That day, we produced some wonderful rugby, the opposition were overwhelmed by the finish, the crowd was going crazy, and it just made your heart race to be involved in such a spectacle. We didn’t win any Grand Slams or Triple Crowns that season, because we lost in Cardiff, but I reckon we produced an awful lot of entertaining, exciting rugby. And that is important.’
This is a prevalent theme with those who were part of Telfer’s tribe. Rutherford, one of his country’s most stellar performers, was eventually forced to retire through injury at the inaugural World Cup in New Zealand in 1987 and one can only speculate as to the impact which somebody with his gifts would have made in professional rugby. Yet when I asked both him and Laidlaw whether they had ever wondered how their lives might have unfolded if they had been born 25 years later, the two men were typically honest.
‘I’ve thought about quite it a bit in recent years and yes, I suppose that it would have been nice to have made some money from the sport to pass on to my family, but, on balance, the truth is that I loved my time in the game, you can still meet up with former players from all around the world and there is a real rugby family out there, and you simply can’t put a value on that,’ said Rutherford, while his old partner, Laidlaw, commented: ‘I never thought about making money from something I loved. John and I were obsessed with rugby and the question of money never entered my head. Did I feel I missed out on anything? No, not even when I returned to Jedburgh, after Scotland had played the French in Paris, and had to rewire the public toilets on the Monday. People think it was after Scotland had won the Grand Slam, but it wasn’t. If it had been, I probably wouldn’t have had to listen to so many people telling me where the Scots had gone wrong!’
That response neatly encapsulates the practical attitude of these serried performers, but there is little doubt that Rutherford, in particular, was a singular maestro, one of the few performers whose presence on the team sheet was sufficient to add a couple of hundred extra fans to the attendance at Philiphaugh, even on the filthiest of January afternoons. As somebody who grew up in an environment where the mention of Hughie McLeod or Derrick Grant or Jim Telfer elicited growls of approval from the most hard-to-please fans, he knew that he had to keep ploughing away on his private quest for perfectionism, but Rutherford has always been one of Scotland’s proudest ambassadors.
In which light, it was fitting that ‘Rudd’ bowed out of rugby with an avalanche of tributes, including, as Allan Massie declared, some from the furthest corners of the globe:
By the middle eighties, John Rutherford was unquestionably the best fly-half in the northern hemisphere and his reputation was such that the name of Selkirk was recognised wherever rugby was played. When he retired, the former England scrum-half, Steve Smith, wrote that he bracketed him along with Barry John and Phil Bennett as the best of the British Isles fly-halves of the 1970s and 1980s.
But John was first and foremost a club man and it was fitting that, almost twenty years after his playing career was ended by injury, Selkirk should celebrate his 50th birthday [in 2005] with a dinner, attended by his old club-mates and former international team-mates and opponents. Tributes poured in from every rugby-playing country, all contributions testifying not only to his great skill and achievement on the rugby field, but also to his quality as a man. One of the best was almost a throwaway line from the New Zealand legend, Stu Wilson.
‘The All Blacks knew that John Rutherford could be a big pain in the bum if you let his talent cut loose, so he was always given extra attention.’ When New Zealand give an opponent ‘extra attention’, then you know he is really good.
Rutherford has never lost touch with his origins, nor his old allies from the Grand Slam vintage. As one of life’s gentle souls, he was never going to end up taking pot-shots at patsies in a newspaper column and he still dedicates himself to spreading the gospel among the youth in his community. He might be justified in his assertion, uttered with a quiet authority, that the halcyon days of Borders rugby are in the past, because of simple arithmetic. ‘The cities have the players and the universities and more and more of our youngsters are heading up there and – this is the important part – they are staying there. So they have the numbers and, in the end, you can’t really compete with that.’
Perhaps not. But when this fellow was in his prime, anything seemed possible. With a twinkle and a twist of bravado, allied to the ability to unlock the most solid opposition defences and parade his full repertoire of talents in front of 750 people or 75,000, Rutherford was somebody with genius in his boots. He really was that good.