A HERO FOR THE21ST
CENTURY
HOW DOES ONE define professionalism? Is it a case of strutting into the spotlight, playing a starring role for a small club, and automatically aspiring to move elsewhere for better terms and conditions, in a winning team, as soon as the opportunity arises? Or is it a state of mind, a relentless quest for self-improvement and constant practice on the filthiest of nights, even when the rest of your peers have decamped to the comfort of the changing room or the bar? It cannot simply be the former, otherwise a teenage David Beckham, dreadfully homesick, but nonetheless determined to make his mark in football, would never have persisted with working incessantly on his free kicks, even as he held back the tears in Manchester. But it cannot solely be the latter either because, if it was, then anybody with enough guts and commitment would have the wherewithal to forge a successful career in sport when reality dictates that only a tiny percentage actually achieve that ambition.
I ask these questions because I have just been talking to Chris Paterson about his rise to the highest ranks of Scottish rugby and, as we flicked back to the 1980s when the youngster was growing up in Galashiels, the thought occurred: has there ever been a more self-effacing, down-to-earth customer in his nation’s sporting history than this 33-year-old, who has created his own piece of fame by becoming the first Scotsman to gain 100 international caps in rugby? Given his litany of record-breaking exploits, his surpassing of the points tallies accrued by such legends as Andy Irvine and Gavin Hastings, and the fashion in which he became, for a lengthy period, the most prolific kicker on the planet, Paterson could surely be forgiven a trace of hauteur, or a tinge of solipsism, following a career which has been replete with honours. But no! He may have become a poster boy for Scott’s Porage Oats and modelled new Scotland kit, but his feet have never left terra firma, even as he has travelled to the southern hemisphere, South America and Europe, either with Scotland or Edinburgh (or briefly at Gloucester), or in his early days as a teenager, turning out for his local club in Galashiels. All that has mattered is rugby and doing his utmost for his team. Personal glory has never entered the equation, not even when he was being messed around by a variety of Scotland coaches in a tempestuous decade which saw Paterson placed on the wing, or at full-back, relegated to the bench or left out of some squads altogether … and this without him ever thinking about following Kris Boyd’s example and walking out on his country in the huff.
Perhaps his background in the Borders shaped and moulded him to the most significant degree. Or maybe it was his family and their encouragement in the early days. At the outset, there were bounce games with his elder brother, Davie, while the fledgling Chris heeded the quiet advice passed on by his uncle, Duncan, who was an altogether more aggressive and voluble presence in the Scotland stand-off berth during his ten-cap career in the late 1960s and 1970s. So too, he joined Gala and became a regular on the periphery of the action, patrolling the sidelines, as he told me, and learning from the greats.
When I was growing up, the attitude in the Borders was that you looked after your own first, so I went to Netherdale and I was a ball-boy at league matches and, soon enough, I was being inspired by different players; Peter Dods, Derek White, Ian Corcoran [who won just one cap, but made a big impression on Paterson] and the great thing was that you weren’t just close to the Gala players, but you also got to see the stars from the other clubs as well. I remember being impressed by John Jeffrey and saw, at first hand, how much work he put in, and that showed me what you had to do to succeed in rugby.
My brother was always keen on the game and I just joined in when I was old enough. Everybody played in those days, and that was another terrific thing about the Borders; the sense that everybody you met was keen on the sport and there were always places to play, chances to practise and people who wanted to help, whether it was at school, or in the park, or whenever I went down to the Gala club. You never actually thought twice about it. It was just natural that I should play rugby, because I was surrounded by it. It is part of the Borders culture and it always will be. There was just this tradition, this awareness, that a lot of people had come from these small towns and they had gone on to play at Murrayfield and Twickenham and all those places. That made it real for me, the same as being a ball-boy did: you saw all these high-profile players a few yards away from you, and you could relate to rugby in a way that you never could with football.
These were the days, in the late 1980s and early 1990s when it was simply taken for granted that the Borders was the place to make your name in rugby. The national team won more matches than they lost, the Scots were on the brink of a Grand Slam in 1990 and a semi-final place at the World Cup 18 months later; Melrose were poised to commence a sustained period of dominance, following on from Kelso’s success on the club championship circuit; and even at school, Paterson received coaching from the likes of Rob Moffat, and occasional tips and motivational speeches from Jim Telfer. Of course, these figures belonged to another generation, but Chris was also in thrall at Galashiels Academy to one of the senior boys, a teenager whose burgeoning talent and instinctive skills were already the talk of the town. The name was Townsend, Gregor Townsend, and he had a licence to thrill on his meteoric rise from Netherdale into his country’s ranks in 1993, during which period the normally matter-of-fact Paterson began to regard him with a sort of hero worship. ‘He was an icon to me, and he couldn’t have been nicer,’ said Paterson, adding the important rider: ‘People will always have opinions about Gregor because of the way he played the game, but he was brilliant to me.’
Basically, Townsend, on any given afternoon, could dazzle and dismay spectators in the space of a few moments. Much of what he did was off-the-cuff, sublimely spontaneous, and the thought often occurred that if he did not know what he was going to do next, how on earth could the opposition possibly twig what was passing through his mind? The downside was that when his improvisation unravelled, so did his poise and, too often, the genius was accompanied by a gaffe or two, which cost his side dearly. In Paris in 1995, for instance, people marvelled at the ‘Toony Flip’, which allowed Gavin Hastings to run, unmolested, under the French posts in the last minute. They tended to forget that it was Townsend’s erratic kicking which had gifted his opponents a way back into the match in the first place.
Yet, from Paterson’s perspective, his Galashiels confrère was a rugby-style Lochinvar, a lustrous knight of the oval ball milieu, and although people nowadays might associate Chris more with metronomic kicking, fantastic cover tackling such as the efforts which repulsed Ben Foden and Luke McLean during the 2011 Six Nations Championship, and all-round steadiness, we are inclined to forget that he, too, was a master of the unexpected when he started weaving his magic for Gala, such as when they marched to the final of the Scottish Cup at Murrayfield and beat their Border rivals, Kelso, 8–3 in 1999.
Indeed, if ever there was an illustration of the fashion in which Paterson clung to his roots and retained his allegiance to the Borders, it happened on that afternoon when his inspirational solo try and drop goal were the only points his side mustered, and yet they proved sufficient to guarantee victory. Even now, as he told me, the recollection of that special occasion obviously has a resonance for Paterson, because, although he had already made a positive impact with Scotland’s under-18, under-19 and under-21 sides, some of them as captain, that final was different. This one was for Galashiels.
It perhaps sounds a little bit twee, but that was a fantastic day and one of the reasons was the fact that the whole town was behind us and thousands of them came to Edinburgh to cheer us on. The game itself was tense, and, predictably enough, Kelso made us fight for our win, but a lot of our former players were in the crowd and we weren’t just doing it for ourselves, we were doing it for the whole community, and that has always been part of the key to the success of rugby in the Borders. Basically, you realised that when the club was going well and the results were positive, the town felt better about itself.
I can remember driving down the A7 back to Galashiels later that night and some of the supporters’ buses had stopped at various pubs on the journey, and you could barely believe your eyes. Our fans had got right into the fancy dress lark and the A7 was lined with penguins, parrots, whatever you care to mention. It was quite surreal, but it summed up the emotions which were flying about at the end. I will never ever forget that day.
If these were precious memories, Paterson experienced mixed fortunes during the next decade, as did Scotland, whose infernal and protracted difficulties in coming to terms with professionalism hardly helped. When he made his debut, against Spain in the 1999 World Cup, it was in the full-back position, and his side romped to a 48–0 victory in Edinburgh. But that was the 21-year-old’s only appearance in a tournament which finished, like so many others, in defeat to New Zealand. That climaxed a year where the Scots had produced some wonderfully compelling displays, most notably in burying the French in Paris, but life was rarely to taste as sweet again for a long time. Part of the problem was that the selectors were never really sure what to do with Paterson and the player himself scarcely made their task any easier, because he was so damned versatile. Townsend, an effective and dynamic attacking threat in 1999 when partnered by two quality midfield enforcers in the shape of Alan Tait and John Leslie, cut a much less menacing figure in the 2000 championship, not least as a consequence of the tough-as-teak Tait having retired at the conclusion of the World Cup campaign. But when Ian McGeechan could have handed Paterson his opportunity in the No 10 berth, instead, he persevered with Townsend in the role during the losses to Italy (34–20) and France (16–28) before switching him to centre and picking Duncan Hodge in the ensuing three matches. These brought further reverses against Wales and Ireland before, against all the odds, the Scots regained the winning habit against previously all-conquering England on a filthy day in Edinburgh with Hodge proving the hero of the hour in his team’s 19–13 success.
Perhaps, with hindsight, that victory was something of a mixed blessing. If the Scots had landed the wooden spoon, one doubts if McGeechan could have stayed so loyal to his troops and he might have been forced to tear up the script and begin afresh. Whereas, with the RFU’s finest despatched back to London with their tails between their legs, the Scottish coaching team acted as if the rest of the Six Nations had been a series of aberrations, rather than acknowledge the more plausible explanation that a complacent English line-up had sauntered into Murrayfield and their overconfidence had been exposed in conditions which were a great leveller. McGeechan had plenty of time to reflect on the matter in the build-up to the summer tour of New Zealand, but it was evident to the majority of us who had watched the Six Nations that Scotland were a pale shadow of the side which had dazzled briefly in the spring of 1999. And all their deficiencies were brutally exposed when they were thrashed by the All Blacks over the course of two Tests, which highlighted the fact that life had moved on in leaps and bounds since the Scots used to acquit themselves well on these torrid southern hemisphere trips.Paterson was involved in both matches and, despite scoring his maiden international try, was as shell-shocked as anybody by the scale of the 69–20 trouncing in Dunedin and subsequent 48–14 pummelling in Auckland. But although he turned out at stand-off in one of the midweek fixtures on the tour, it did not signal his belated move to No 10. Instead, and this was at the point where some of us seriously began to question whether McGeechan was losing the plot, the need to fit Paterson and Glenn Metcalfe into the same team saw the Borderer moved to the wing in 2001, where he applied himself as manfully as ever, but was patently not in his best position. Yet, conscientious as ever, and simply thankful that he was gaining the chance to wear the thistle, Paterson rolled with the punches, kept his head down and practised relentlessly on improving his goal-kicking. There was something quietly heroic about the manner in which he transcended the rising clamour among many supporters and sections of the media for him to be picked at stand-off. If he had been more of a prima donna, he might have won the argument. But if he had been more of a prima donna, he would not have been Chris Paterson.
However, this did not mean that he was not thinking about the question. As a teetotal non-smoker with a consummately professional attitude, he was ready to wear any number on his back, but Paterson later admitted that he had indulged in thoughts of what might have been. ‘In all honesty, I do wonder how I would have developed as a stand-off. If I played consistently at international level, looking back, there’s a “what if” scenario in the back of my mind,’ said Paterson last year. ‘On the other side of that, I wouldn’t have had as many caps, probably wouldn’t have had as long a career. But yes, there is a “what if”. There are some unanswered questions in my own mind, but I don’t feel as if I have played in the position long enough to compare myself to the guys that are there.’
Perhaps we should merely consider the most telling piece of evidence, which arrived in the midst of an otherwise depressingly pedestrian display from Scotland at the World Cup in Australia in 2003, where there were rumours of dressing room unrest, allied to some pretty awful performances in the early stages. Paterson grabbed a brace of tries during the otherwise drab 32–11 victory over Japan, and kicked all their points in the dismally one-sided 51–9 loss to the French at the Telstra Stadium in Sydney, and these results meant that Scotland needed to beat Fiji to avoid missing out on the quarter-finals for the first time in their history. By this stage, it was pretty clear that Townsend’s old ability to serve up champagne rugby had gone flat and thus, in what was a make-or-break situation, Paterson was asked to take over in the No 10 berth, oblivious to the fact that he had played in that position only three times since turning professional in 1999. With other individuals this would have constituted a massive gamble, but not with Chris, whose steely resolve was one of the few positives to emerge from that World Cup of woes.
Quite simply, he was outstanding, both in his defensive chores and in marshalling his troops round about him. For a while, the Fijian sledgehammer, Rupeni Caucaunibuca, threatened to beat the Scots on his own, scoring two barnstorming tries, and giving his side a potentially crucial advantage. And yet time after time, Paterson kept kicking the Scots back into contention. He scored five penalties, which meant they only trailed by a few points when the Pacific Islanders might already have been out of sight. As the climax arrived, his team were still in arrears, but eventually, the redoubtable Tom Smith managed to score a try in the dying moments and Paterson slotted the conversion for a 22–20 victory which had been as fraught as it sounds. Surely now, the debate could cease, and the Gala man could settle into his new berth on an extended basis?
Er, that would be a no. Or at least, not any longer than it took Matt Williams, the coach who was tasked with orchestrating a revival at Murrayfield in the aftermath of that miserable World Cup – the Scots were swatted aside 33–16 by the Australians in the quarter-finals – to find somebody else who could step into the breach during one of the most turbulent and troublesome periods in Scotland’s recent history. In his defence, the Australian mentor could probably counter that Paterson did not exactly set the heather on fire in 2004, but nor did anybody else for that matter during Williams’ ill-starred tenure. Then, of course, there was another vocal critic of Paterson’s displays at No 10.
And that man was Paterson himself, as he told Alasdair Reid in the Sunday Times.
It’s nice when people say good things about you, but during the World Cup, I wasn’t really noticing such things. To be honest, I wasn’t very happy with the way that I played against Australia and I made a lot of mistakes against Fiji and a lot of mistakes all the way through the tournament. In any case, what you read and what you believe are two entirely different things. It’s flattering to know now that good things were being said about me, but that can all change so quickly, so you know you shouldn’t dwell on it. At the end, I actually found the talk of disarray in the squad to be quite ironic because the only effect of it was to bring us all closer together.
In many ways, these remarks embodied Paterson’s inner being and his outlook on life. He fully understood how swiftly bouquets could turn to brickbats and it was his misfortune to be appointed Scotland captain for the following season of what turned into a winter of unrelenting gloom. I use the word ‘misfortune’, but he would never describe it in these terms. On the contrary, and regardless of the fashion in which 2004 developed into a long season in hell and the hapless Williams proved to be the opposite of King Midas in that everything he touched turned to dross, Paterson kept putting on a brave face amid the wreckage. His debut as skipper yielded a 23–10 defeat at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, and there were subsequent heavy losses to England (who won 35–13 at Murrayfield) and Ireland (who breezed to a 37–16 success in Dublin). The French waltzed into Edinburgh and won 31–0 and the Italians triumphed 20–14 in Rome, which did not simply earn the Scots a wooden spoon, but highlighted so many problems that it was painful to quiz Williams about these results. Paterson, in contrast, kept his head held high, refused to be dragged into talk of despair, sought positives from the worst of these displays – even the English and French debacles which left supporters in urgent need of antidepressants – and although there was to be no swift recovery, or not until Williams had finally been put out of his misery, this was a Borderer, bloodied but unbowed.
That image has stuck with me for the last seven years. In the interim period, Paterson has been involved in some excellent victories – including the wins over France and England in 2006 and the Scots regaining the Calcutta Cup, as well as beating Argentina in 2008 – and he came off the bench to land a splendid drop goal, which helped his compatriots defeat Australia for the first time in 27 years in the autumn of 2009. Nobody could possibly quibble with his kicking record; he converted a remarkable sequence of 36 consecutive goals for Scotland between August 2007 and June 2008 – not missing a single attempt during the 2007 World Cup or the 2008 Six Nations Championship – and he has continued in that vein while overtaking all the old records held by Gavin Hastings. But it was a sign of his refusal to swagger or glory in these milestones which made him as much of a hero with the supporters as it left him uncomfortable in the spotlight.
Nonetheless, by the stage that Paterson prepared to gain his 100th cap – against the Welsh in Cardiff last year – nobody could question his commitment, nor training zeal, nor unstinting desire to make the most of his qualities and keep pushing himself harder. Indeed, one of the most welcome sights in Scottish rugby throughout the previous decade had been the spectacle of ‘Mossy’ preparing to add to his tally of Test match points. There has never been anything flash in his approach, but his marksmanship, composure and appetite for constant practice had reaped a fantastic dividend and yet there was still the nagging issue of whether Scotland had got the very best out of him. Having started 33 matches at full-back, 45 on the wing and only 11 at stand-off – he had come off the bench on the other occasions – Paterson had remained stoical about this chopping and changing and done his nation proud, whether in his kicking, or robust tackling and effective attacking. He had led the Scots during two stints, firstly during the Williams fiasco, and secondly after the incumbent skipper, Jason White, was ruled out of the 2007 Six Nations with injury. Yet, despite his heroics at Edinburgh, where he had grafted tirelessly to nurture a winning mentality among his younger charges, or in the thick of battle with Scotland, where his exertions had shone like a beacon through a largely lacklustre decade, it was a reflection of the dilemma which surrounded Paterson that, even on the eve of his 100th cap, many people asked whether he had been messed around.
The player himself could do little about that speculation. But his preparation for the Welsh contest explained a lot about his longevity and sustained hunger for the fray.
I have never, ever, looked back and been happy with what I have done. I think that is the main reason why I am still here. In my own mind, I have never reached anywhere near where I have wanted to reach in my own performance. I have been massively lucky, but I don’t feel as if I have got these many caps. I feel that I want another one, and another one, and I want to keep going. Yes, there will come a point where I will get to the end, and my major aim is that when I get there, I can sit back and say I am proud of what I have achieved, really proud, and I couldn’t have done any more. But I am almost embarrassed that I have been lucky enough to amass this many. I feel really quite uncomfortable talking about it. Every time there is a new Six Nations Championship, I feel as if I am starting from square one. I am getting older and everybody is expecting me to drop off a bit, but that knowledge drives me on. I want to be the fittest in training. That sounds like a physical thing, but mentally, it is probably more important.
This incessant drive was admirable, but it could not prevent his 100th cap from unravelling into a traumatic experience which was nearly ruined by tragedy. In pure sporting terms, the Scots threw away an excellent position to lose 31–24 after leading by ten points with as many minutes remaining. But that was rendered almost superfluous when their winger, Thom Evans, sustained a life-threatening injury which forced him to be stretchered from the pitch, as the prelude to having major surgery on his neck during two operations. Within a few minutes of the match finishing, a former Scotland great – whose column I was ghosting – phoned to tell me, ‘I’ve heard that Thom’s neck is broken’, and suddenly, the details of who had won or lost, missed a penalty or been yellow-carded, seemed very trivial. Paterson, too, had finished up in Cardiff ’s University Hospital after sustaining painful bruising to his kidney. Mercifully, there was no permanent damage to either man, although Evans, to nobody’s surprise, later announced that his rugby career was over.
For months afterwards, as the Scotland coach, Andy Robinson, led his charges to some impressive results, including a first ever southern hemisphere series win in Argentina and a 21–17 win against South Africa at Murrayfield, it appeared that Paterson, too, might not gain many further opportunities to illuminate the Test stage, although he did make a brief appearance as a replacement in that latter triumph.
But nobody should have been in any doubt about the severity of his problems in Wales. He expanded:
Now I know that I am a hell of a lot better, I am able to look back and it was touch and go. The rugby medics hadn’t come across anything like that before, but when they got me to hospital, they explained it was an injury that was quite common in car crashes. It looked at first as if I was going to have to lose my kidney, because it was torn in two places. So I was lucky the way it healed. That first night in hospital, there were a lot of tests and, fortunately, there were signs that it was healing. So, looking back, there was a high possibility that my career could have been over, but I was well looked after. Playing professional rugby with one kidney is maybe something you could have done if you had grown up with it, but losing it at 31 would have been different.
By this juncture, one began to suspect that Andy Robinson was preparing to let Paterson slip quietly into retirement without an excess of fuss or sentiment, because there was no sign of the Gala man when the Scots marched into the 2011 Six Nations Championship, with what now seems like a remarkable degree of misplaced confidence. The visitors, bolstered by a spectacular individual display from Richie Gray, produced some moments of genuine class despite slipping to a 34–21 loss at the Stade de France and, in the build-up to the next tussle with Wales at Murrayfield, there was an incredible amount of confidence in Robinson’s charges gaining revenge for their late collapse of 12 months earlier. This was another problem with Scotland – the fashion in which the team swithered between lumbering pedestrianism and occasional shafts of spark and splendour – but that late afternoon turned into one of the most anticlimactic showings from the Scots in recent memory and the optimism vanished like the air in a burst balloon as the Welsh, no great shakes themselves, sauntered to a comfortable 24–6 victory. That night, as I walked back from Roseburn to Haymarket, I heard the same refrain a dozen times, albeit in differing stages of sobriety, from the Saltire-clad throng. ‘Why are they still playing [Dan] Parks? Where has Chris Paterson gone? Christ, we need him back.’
The answer, of course, was that Paterson had gone nowhere, and was continuing to apply himself for Edinburgh, kicking points and tackling rivals with the juddering intensity of a man who knew that he might be required if Hugo Southwell or Rory Lamont – or both – suffered injuries, which is precisely what materialised. A month before his 33rd birthday, he was as desperate to add to his cap tally as ever, and offered a further explanation of his approach to these contests by spelling out that what his country needed in rugby was a solid base and gradual improvements rather than dramatic switches between one set of tactics and another. Indeed, he did this with such clarity it reinforced the impression that Paterson will become a pretty decent coach when he finally hangs up his boots.
He was, after all, speaking from experience and the knowledge that the Scots had only scored 61 tries during the previous decade of Six Nations activity. Predictably, England and France had fared substantially better, with 169 and 138 touchdowns respectively, while Ireland were on 133 and Wales on 107. But the statistic which really provided food for thought was the one which confirmed that the Italians, so often perceived as a one-dimensional unit with scant ability to break down rival defences, had managed 62 tries, despite losing the majority of their fixtures and often by heavy margins. Surely, in these circumstances, there was a mental block in the Scots’ collective psyche? Yet, typically down to earth, Paterson responded that he and his compatriots could not control what had already happened, but they could resolve to improve on their execution, sharpen up their killer instinct, and master their basic professionalism in the future. This, he added patiently, would not be achieved by flinging the ball around like headless chickens, but by making sure there were support runners if somebody orchestrated a break, and that players were trusted to make the correct decisions in the heat of the moment. ‘You don’t go from 0 to 100, you go from 0 to 10, to 20, to 50,’ he told the excellent writer, Tom English, in Scotland on Sunday, prior to adding: ‘You do it in blocks. Wales and Ireland did it the last two years. I’ve played against these guys and I have known them for years and I am jealous. It’s not about ambition or glory, it’s just wanting to have that experience. I would love to be involved in scoring tries. And you almost envy those teams who run in a lot of them. We can do it too. But we just haven’t proved it.’
The words underlined a couple of important points which Paterson had always stressed throughout his own career. Firstly, you do not gain any sustained success or lay the foundations for the future by indulging in quick fixes. Even as a pupil at Galashiels Academy, the teenager had watched and learned from the fashion in which the best coaches persevered with the boys who had talent; one or two mistakes at that embryonic stage of their development were never going to make or break a career. Secondly, there was no value in the Scots attempting to copy anybody else, whether it was the All Blacks or the Argentinians; they had to develop their own rhythm, and settle into a pattern which suited their personalities. This was what had happened in Paterson’s early days at Netherdale and the lessons from that auspicious period had never been forgotten.
We had the core of a good squad and we worked really hard for each other. Gary Parker was coaching at the time and he had this great confidence, which just rubbed off on everybody else. We developed a style of play where we just enjoyed what we were doing, having a go, scoring tries and winning games. Playing with Edinburgh, I have gone through some bad spells, when the harder we tried, the harder it seemed to be to have success. Sometimes, it makes sense to step back a little, and take things a little easier, because the more tension there is, the harder it is to perform to your best.
More than a decade later, Paterson was ready for the call and Robinson duly summoned him back into the Scotland squad for their third match of the 2011 campaign against Ireland at Murrayfield. This eventually yielded a close-fought 21–18 defeat – against opponents who subsequently played England off the pitch in Dublin – and it was as if Paterson had never been away, whether in the precision of his kicking or the solidity which he brought to an otherwise creaky defensive performance from the Scots, who lost three ties to nil, and continued to create openings without making opponents pay. Still, the afternoon illustrated that the ‘P’ words – Paterson, passion and professionalism – were still inextricably linked. And although there was to be no joy once again when he and his compatriots ventured to Twickenham in March, the visitors at least battled hard before succumbing 22–16 and one of the most memorable incidents in the contest occurred when Paterson, somehow or other, tracked back to thwart what appeared a gilt-wrapped try-scoring opportunity for his English counterpart, Ben Foden, who felt the full weight of a slab of Borders beef while being bundled into touch. This vignette was screened repeatedly in the aftermath, and yet, to his credit, Paterson refused to focus on an isolated act of derring-do. Instead, there was visible frustration that the Scots had been edged out in another close Six Nations fixture and, once again, were reduced to scrapping with the Italians to avoid the unsought wooden spoon. It was a script which had become wearily familiar and especially to somebody such as Paterson, who had made his international debut before the Azzurri had even entered the European tournament.
In the event, with the Borderer winning his 104th cap and frequently demonstrating that his powers had not diminished, allied to the Scots finally breaking their drought at Murray-field with tries from Nick De Luca and Nikki Walker, Italy were repelled 21–8 and could have few complaints about finishing bottom of the heap after squandering a glorious opportunity to beat the Irish in Rome earlier in the tournament. They might have run the Scots closer but for another piece of defensive brilliance from the senior man of the back line, with Paterson crunching into Luke McLean when the latter looked destined to cross for a try. And even if, in the final analysis, this was another mediocre crusade by Scotland, whose professional teams had equally struggled to make any serious impact on either the Magners League or Heineken Cup in the 2010-11 season, there remained a few reasons to be cheerful, whether in the powerful showings of warriors such as Gray, Al Kellock and Kelly Brown, or the attacking threat of Max Evans and youthful vim of Ruaridh Jackson, allied to the knowledge that Duncan Weir was sparkling in the wings and awaiting his chance.
However, any optimism had to be tempered by results; the only currency which counted for those who plied their trade on the professional rugby circuit. Anybody who has ever encountered Paterson would swiftly appreciate that he has no interest in stats for stats’ sake – even though he has now accumulated an incredible haul of 783 points and will be confident of passing the 800 mark at the 2011 World Cup in New Zealand. Yet he has the requisite dedication, relish for training and ability to roll with the punches to suggest that he could become the rugby equivalent of Ryan Giggs or David Weir and continue his career at the highest level even as he approaches his fifth decade.
And that was the message which resoundingly came across when Paterson looked forward at the climax of another season. In May 2011 he had this to say:
I have no plans to stop playing. Your body dictates a lot, of course, but at the moment, I feel good, I want to improve, and I am as enthusiastic as ever. I’m a great believer in dealing with what is in front of you. Other people than me have adapted successfully. Take Jim Telfer, who has been involved in 40 years of rugby coaching and think of the developments that there have been there, particularly in the sport developing from an amateur to a professional game. Plenty of others played for Scotland and I came in, right at the end of the amateur era, although I was first capped, effectively, out of Gala. You have to adapt and be flexible and one of the ways of doing that is by using the advice of people around you.
This talk of Telfer and Gala and of Paterson’s continuing pursuit of excellence brings us right back to where we started, in celebrating the constant ability of men (and women) in the South of Scotland to nurture and nourish generations of rugby talent. In which light, it seemed appropriate that I should ask Chris about the future for the region whence he originated, and also his message to youngsters who might want to try rugby.
I think it is as brilliant a game now as when I was first picking up a rugby ball at primary school and we were watching Gala every weekend and listening to the commentaries of Bill McLaren whenever the Five Nations Championship came around every year. Rugby teaches you about competition, about playing as part of a team and, basically, you get out of it what you put into it. So if you train hard and show a bit of discipline, you will learn the basics and you’ll come to realise how much fun the game can be.
The top players are also still accessible to their communities. I know that I always want to hear how Gala have done and you can come to Murrayfield and we’ll be glad to say hello and pass on a few tips, because that is how I started, when I was a ball-boy and people like Rob [Moffat] and Jim [Telfer] came along to Galashiels Academy and made it clear to us that they were interested in anybody who wanted to learn about rugby.
As for the Borders, well, there will always be rugby at the core of these towns, because there are too many people who care about the game for it to be otherwise. I have been to a lot of different countries, and I have seen how much rugby matters to people in New Zealand, for instance, but I also know, from my own experience, how much it means to people in the South of Scotland. And that isn’t going to change any time soon.
The rest of Scotland might be fixated with football, and remain preoccupied by a pursuit which has, in the last few months, brought shame to Scotland’s reputation, amid lurid stories, in banner headlines, of a manager being sent bullets in the post and being attacked during a game; and of the Old Firm being dragged along to Holyrood to explain exactly what they proposed to do to tackle the cancer of sectarianism. Rugby, in contrast, has never been more accessible to communities, to both genders, and to people of all ages, and while the sport has problems, it also has achievements to celebrate.
Much of this is down to the vision and the dedication of so many people in the Borders, for whom rugby continues to be an activity of beautiful noise and passionate intensity, and who have passed that message on from one generation to another. One trembles to think where the sport would be without that special distillation of Southern Comfort.