REALITY BITES AND SHARK
TALES
ONE OF THE FEW consistent features of Scottish rugby through the decades has been the national team’s tendency to flirt with Kipling’s twin impostors on a frequent basis. There have been instances where the future has looked bright, only for a saturnine gloom to transcend the optimistic forecasts, and other times when SRU collectives have entered contests as underdogs and performed out of their skins in achieving remarkable wins. It all adds up to the sense that you never really know what to expect from the Scots, and that unpredictability has led to some giddy highs and, more often, depressing lows.
What, for instance, would any forensic analyst make of the period between 1984 and 1986, when a wondrous Grand Slam was immediately followed by a deflating wooden spoon in the following Five Nations Championship, as the prelude to a new breed of Scots casting off their inhibitions and producing some terrific displays in 1986? Or, for that matter, how does one explain the rationale behind the fashion in which a steely group of Borders players defeated the touring Australians in Hawick in 1984, only for many of these same individuals to finish up on the receiving end of an emphatic thrashing when the Wallabies confronted the hosts at Murrayfield? For Saltire-waving spectators, who had long since learned that it is better to travel in hope than expectation – unlike in England and Wales, where victories are demanded by supporters every time their national sides walk out on to the pitch – these fluctuating fortunes simply reflected that the Scots were on a white-knuckle, roller-coaster ride and most fans chose to cling on and relish the journey. But, from a coach’s perspective, it must have been as frustrating as getting home early and discovering you have left your keys back in the office, 20 miles away.
During this topsy-turvy period, one could offer a variety of compelling reasons for the Scots’ inconsistency. It was a serious blow when Telfer, the architect of so many positive achievements during his four-year tenure, decided to stick by his decision to stand down at the end of the 1984 campaign, while the team was weakened by the retirement of their captain and master motivator, Jim Aitken. These were massive shoes to fill and perhaps, in the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that Colin Telfer – no relation – found himself on the receiving end of some close-fought encounters, while his troops finished bottom of the heap in the championship. It was not that Scotland had suddenly become a bunch of patsies overnight, as the scores highlighted, with them losing their away matches to France and England by 11–3 and 10–7, while the two home tussles with Ireland (15–18) and Wales (21–25) were tight affairs, which could have gone either way with a bounce of the ball here or a lucky deflection there. Yet, in the final analysis, rugby union, whether some of the purists liked it or not, was increasingly becoming a results-driven business – and the inaugural World Cup was looming on the horizon – and thus there was little surprise when Derrick Grant and Ian McGeechan succeeded Telfer.
The latter individual had not been helped by Australia’s overwhelming 37–12 victory at Murrayfield in the autumn of 1984. This was in the period before the Wallabies were regarded with quite the same reverence as their southern hemisphere counterparts in New Zealand and South Africa, but it was also a visit which illustrated the emergence of a new generation of wonderfully exciting, spellbinding athletes in the mould of the incomparable David Campese and Mark Ella, Michael Lynagh, Nick Farr-Jones and Matthew Burke, all of whom glistened throughout their trip to Britain. They beat all the home nations, with 19–3, 16–9 and 28–9 victories over England, Ireland and Wales respectively, before they conjured up some amazing feats in Edinburgh, with the elusive Ella, the trickster Campese and the ubiquitous Farr-Jones scoring tries. It was no disgrace for the Scots to capitulate under this onslaught, given the relentless fashion in which their opponents flourished on the power of their personnel and the mastery of Andrew Slack’s leadership, they demonstrated that it was no longer the All Blacks who held the copyright to serving up mesmerising interplay between backs and forwards. But there again, Scotland had defeated the Aussies only two years previously Down Under, so it looked as if a significant gap had developed within a very short time. In which event, it is usually the coach and not his players who cops the majority of the flak.
Yet if it was a dispiriting contest in some ways, the match at least afforded an international debut to a man who subsequently became one of the most famous, and instantly recognisable, figures ever to pull on a Scotland shirt. John Jeffrey, another proud Borderer, whose face was familiar even to those who never watched a rugby match from one Five Nations to another, immediately discovered the difference between excelling for Kelso in the Border League and ascending the ladder to Test rugby. But if this was a steep learning curve, Jeffrey absorbed the message quickly and was soon marauding around opponents with the intensity which had first caught the eye of his country’s selectors. He had already garnered his nickname following a trip to the West Indies, where his compatriots all developed tans in the sweltering heat, apart from one of their number. ‘Everyone was black, except me, of course,’ recalls Jeffrey, a fellow with roots in the Borders soil, who is also possessed of a sharp brain, quick repartee, and keen business acumen. ‘We were all swimming in the sea and, when I was coming out of the water, somebody shouted out: “Hey everybody, here comes the White Shark.”’
There was no need for John Williams’ famous musical accompaniment whenever Jeffrey was in the vicinity – he has always been a genial, self-deprecating man away from the pitch – and, despite his torrid baptism to the Test circuit, the versatile back-row forward had thrust himself into the spotlight during the South’s triumph over the Wallabies at Mansfield Park. Once again, this contest reflected the adventurous nature of the Border selectors, the majority of whom believed in the truism, ‘If you’re good enough, you’re old enough.’ They could have chosen such Grand Slam stalwarts as Iain Paxton and David Leslie to meet the tourists, but instead they plumped for a back trio of Jeffrey, Sean McGauchey and Eric Paxton, who boasted three caps between them at that stage (and the latter pair would never play for Scotland again). Yet, if it was a gamble, it never felt like that to Jeffrey, who relished the opportunity, not least because, almost incredibly, it was the only time in his senior career that he had tasted victory at the Hawick ground.
The Aussies were reaching the climax of what had been an all-conquering tour for them and this was the only occasion they lost on a Saturday, and it showed what the South could do when they put their minds to it. It was a huge challenge, because Scotland B were playing their Irish counterparts across the water on the same afternoon, and the selectors went with a few pretty untested players, both in the front row and the back row. But it was an awful day, one of those Scottish winter afternoons where the rain keeps pelting down, and our tactics were pretty straightforward: we were to avoid any fancy stuff and launch an aerial bombardment towards [the Australian full-back] Roger Gould and see if we could put him and his team-mates under pressure. We eventually edged it with Peter Dods kicking three penalties, in response to a couple from Gould, and I had a try disallowed because I was offside – for the first and last time in my career!
Basically, there was a tremendous sense of pride among the Scots and we kept battling all the way to the finish and you should have heard the cheers from the Borders crowd. It maybe wasn’t a flamboyant performance – and I can remember one instance where Andrew Ker passed to Jim Renwick, when everybody else was screaming at him to kick it up the field. Well, Jim dropped the ball and you should have seen the look he gave Andrew. There was no more passing after that! But the game plan worked, we won the match and there was a tremendous feeling of satisfaction at the end of a contest like that, because the Australians were a terrific side, full of big powerful forwards and backs with magic in their hands and feet, and they were going flat out to beat us at the end.
So it was a pretty memorable afternoon for the team. Looking back, perhaps it seems surprising that I never won again at Mansfield Park, because Kelso were a successful side whilst I was involved with them – we won the Border League in the 1985–86 season and the Scottish championship in 1988 and 1989 – but it was always incredibly difficult for Border sides to travel to Hawick and come away with a victory, and it didn’t seem to matter who was in their side, they just knew what to do to cross the winning line. That was one of the things which I admired most about them: their sheer, intense competitiveness.
Jeffrey was crafted in that same indomitable mould and despite having to battle for his international place at the outset of his Test career, the period between 1986 and 1991 yielded a string of honours, both on the domestic circuit and alongside his compatriots on the wider stage. Yet, in terms of his success with Kelso, it commenced in slightly surreal fashion when the Poynder Park organisation seized the Border League title from under the noses of their Hawick rivals, when the latter lost a must-win match against Melrose at the Greenyards by 18–9. That outcome must have been singularly unexpected, because the Green Machine had left the championship trophy back at their own ground, which meant there was no immediate opportunity for Jeffrey and his Kelso colleagues to get their mitts on the prize which had eluded their club for the best part of the previous 50 years.
Nor indeed was the handover completed until the following Monday in slightly surreal circumstances. ‘Two days after the presentation should have been made, a van drew up outside the offices of M & J Ballantye in the Sheddon Park Road and a man was seen carrying a large piece of silver in a plastic bag,’ reported one of the local newspapers. ‘It could have been a Co-op bag. We can now state that this was the Border League trophy and it arrived in a way that not a single Kelso supporter could ever have wished to see happen again.’ Wags might retort that this was not the only occasion when Jeffrey had trouble with silverware in his time, but although Kelso had to wait, that simply made the celebrations all the sweeter when a clutch of the survivors from the 1936–37 squad convened with the new champions and the champagne flowed into the night.
These were fevered, frenetic fun times for Scottish rugby and, 25 years on, one can occasionally glance back and wonder about the effervescence and spontaneity which used to exist in the sport, prior to the arrival of professionalism and players being sent on expensive media training courses to learn how to send journalists to sleep. Jeffrey, for instance, luxuriated in the sort of work schedule which would have taxed Hercules, yet, whether toiling assiduously on his farm, reporting for international duty at Murrayfield with a mustard-keen enthusiasm, or helping his club confrères to retain their Border title following a hectic schedule during which seven of their number participated in three matches (against Selkirk, Jed-Forest and Langholm) within the space of four days, there was never any talk of ‘burn-out’ among these fellows. Instead, it was a case of seizing life by the collar with the same devil-may-care philosophy which exemplified their performances in the boiler room of the back row. ‘We had gone through a bit of a lean spell in the 1970s, but we probably peaked in the mid-1980s, when we were runners-up twice in the Scottish championship, in addition to what we achieved in the Border League, and although we eventually realised our goal of winning the national competition, we were probably reaching the end of the road by the time we managed it,’ said Jeffrey.
His Kelso colleagues included fellow internationalists Andrew Ker, Alan Tait – who was shortly to depart to rugby league – and the irrepressible Gary Callander, whose dry-as-Nevada response to any difficulties obviously made a big impression on the White Shark:
Gary was one of the deepest thinkers on the game I ever met. As captain, he went on to do most of the coaching at Kelso, and he has probably forgotten more about rugby than I know. He was a big influence on me, but then, there were so many people working hard on the club circuit at that time, either as trainers, or volunteers, or the folk who gave up their Sundays to help out with the youth teams, or 100 other tasks. The players gained the glory, but we recognised that it wouldn’t have happened without the efforts of so many other people and I loved that about rugby in the Borders. The supporters, in turn, relished the fact that we were scoring bucket-loads of tries at Poynder Park, but the main stumbling block for so long was, you’ve guessed it, Hawick. We just couldn’t get the better of them, and when we finally did, it was a big weight taken off our backs.
At Scotland level, meanwhile, the new coaching partnership of Derrick Grant and Ian McGeechan presided over a significant upsurge in their team’s fortunes during the 1986 Five Nations Championship, which was significant for so many reasons. The first was the dawn of a bright new generation of caps, including such luminaries as the Hastings brothers, Gavin and Scott, David Sole and Finlay Calder, who made their debuts together in the narrow victory over France at Murray-field and who would all – with the exception of Scott – subsequently go on to captain their country. With memories of the ’84 Grand Slam still fresh in the supporters’ memories, the SRU’s finest were not far from repeating that achievement, recording one-point victories over both the French and the Irish, and famously thrashing England by a record 33–6 margin. The only blemish was the 22–15 loss in Cardiff and even there, the visitors scored three tries to one and might have amassed more if the officials had enjoyed access to modern technology on two occasions when the relentlessly effective Sole seemed to have burrowed over the Welsh line.
It was a positive campaign, nonetheless, but, as usual with the Scots, any semblance of sustained success proved as illusory as the eponymous village in Brigadoon. During the next 18 months, they stuttered in the Five Nations, beating Wales and Ireland at home, but coming a cropper on their travels, albeit narrowly in a 28–22 thriller with the French, and in disappointingly anticlimactic fashion, with a poor performance against a far from vintage England side, who prevailed by 21–12. I was at the latter match, surrounded by a group of beer-swilling Sweet Charioteers, whose noisy antics may have jaundiced my memory of the contest, but one thing did shine through the fug of cigarette and pipe smoke which wafted around me, and that was the home fans’ grudging admiration for the incessant work rate of Jeffrey and Calder, who sniped at their rivals and snaffled possession in the most inauspicious of circumstances, though ultimately to little avail. This set the tone for future tussles between these Auld Enemies, with both teams apparently as determined to stop the other playing, as they were concerned about their own performances. And though the English eventually tired of bumping into warriors in Jeffrey’s mould and accused them of being ‘scavengers’, this was surely a case of pots and kettles, considering their own lumpen tactics and one-dimensionalism.
In any case, JJ did not require anybody else to appraise his qualities. An honest individual – when he was not pushing the offside law to snapping point – he refused to get carried away by the 1986 results and genuinely seemed more disappointed with the Scots’ campaign in the following year’s tournament. ‘We never thought that we had missed out on anything, because we lost our second game [against Wales] and I think most of us knew we had been a bit lucky to beat the French, so three wins out of four was probably as much as we deserved in 1986,’ said Jeffrey. ‘It was a bit different in the season after that, because we believed we had it in us to win a Triple Crown. But we got our build-up wrong against England and it didn’t help that we met them in April rather than January [the original fixture was cancelled, because of heavy snow]. All in all, we were frustrated with how we played, because we knew that we were better than we showed.’
It was, though, an important year for another reason: at last, the union authorities had laid the foundations for a global competition and the inaugural World Cup took place in New Zealand. Once again, frustration reigned among the Scots, as they endured a now-familiar pattern of flirting with success before being eliminated by New Zealand, who went on to lift the prize for the first and, thus far, only time in the All Blacks’ history.
There were several mitigating circumstances for their problems. John Rutherford, who was still the team’s pivotal influence and talismanic figure, seriously injured his knee during an unofficial tour in Bermuda, and despite recovering to start the match against France, broke down during the first quarter of an hour of that encounter and bade adieu to his Test career. Earlier in the year, John Beattie, a marauding presence whose pacy power might have been ideally suited to the hard pitches of the southern hemisphere, had been crocked amid the Twickenham debacle and several of the Scots who did make the journey to the Land of the Long White Cloud, including the illustrious Hawick duo, Colin Deans and Alan Tomes, had reached the last few miles of the long and winding road.
Yet when the Scots drew 20-apiece with France, Gavin Hastings missed a last-minute conversion from the touchline which would have avoided his side meeting the All Blacks in the quarter-finals and these hard-luck stories kept afflicting Scotland for much of the next two years: a period which saw Jeffrey and Dean Richards take the Calcutta Cup for an impromptu tour of Edinburgh, as the prelude to the Kelso man receiving a draconian six-month ban from the sport. That incident prompted much tut-tutting and tabloid titters, but it was an irrelevance in the grand scheme of things and even nowadays, when many internationalists sip mineral water at their post-match dinners, there still remain others who are not happy unless they are driving golf buggies down the wrong motorway lane. At worst, what Jeffrey and Richards did was damage an old cup. Richards, who escaped with a slap on the wrist, has gone on to commit much more serious damage to rugby’s reputation amidst the ‘Bloodgate’ saga, whereas Jeffrey is one of the straightest arrows anybody will ever meet.
Even in the midst of the controversies and regular teddies-out-of-prams tantrums between the Auld Enemies, Borderers were at the centre of the action, for better or worse. In 1989, Keith Robertson, one of the heroes of the Grand Slam five years previously, courted headlines of a different variety when he was the only Scot to participate in a so-called ‘rebel’ tour of South Africa, designed to celebrate the centenary of that country’s rugby governing body. Critics accused him of lining his own pockets and offering a balm to apartheid, while the player himself – and he was not the only Caledonian icon to be approached – argued that his career was approaching its end and he had never been to the Republic, so where was the harm in him joining up with a band of mostly English personnel for a few meaningless matches? Moral considerations did not matter any more to the participants than they did to Mike Gatting and his fellow England cricketers, who embarked on a similar trip, which turned into a disastrous public relations exercise for both the players and the beleaguered South African regime, whose racist policies were already beginning to disintegrate under the weight of isolation and international pressure. Interestingly, though, another Scot, who later gained iconic status as a member of the 1990 Grand Slam team, told me when the news broke about Robertson: ‘Oh, the Springboks have been in touch with me as well. They offered me £35,000 to take part, but I told them it wasn’t enough. They would have to double that amount or pay my mortgage to persuade me to get on the plane to South Africa.’ It was another time, another place.
Jeffrey, who emphatically was not that person, served his ban and returned with his trademark bonnie brio mercifully intact, even as he and a string of other Border stalwarts were included in the Lions party which journeyed to Australia in 1989, under the captaincy of Finlay Calder, in what developed into another watershed experience for Scottish rugby. The squad featured nine Scots, including the precocious Borders halfback pairing, Craig Chalmers of Melrose and Gary Armstrong of Jed-Forest, and there were also places for Gala’s Peter Dods and Derek White and Jeffrey, next to the Hastings siblings, Sole and Calder. Looking back through these pages, one of the refrains which struck me was how many members of the South contingent, including some of the greatest of their or any other generation – individuals in the mould of John Rutherford and Colin Deans – had spoken about their feelings of inferiority or dearth of confidence, in comparison with their English and Welsh rivals. Yet, when I asked Jeffrey about this phenomenon, he told me matters had changed in the build-up to that Lions odyssey.
Maybe it used to be true that the reputations of some of the great Welsh and English players meant they had an intimidating presence on those around them, who weren’t as accustomed to winning all their matches and battling for Triple Crowns and Grand Slams every season. But, by the time of the ’89 Lions trip, we had the two Hastings brothers and Chalmers and, believe me, these guys never felt inferior to anybody on a rugby field in their lives. When we went to Australia, with Finlay in charge, we knew we had every bit as much right to be there as anybody else from the other home nations and, if anything, the way the tour panned out, with Finlay doing a terrific job in rallying his team after they lost the first Test [30–12 in Sydney], and helping us win the next two [19–12 in Brisbane and 19–18 in Sydney] proved that the Scots were capable of succeeding at the highest level – and the Australians in 1989 were very close to being at the highest level, and they would go on to lift the World Cup just two years later. We had a debrief at the end of the campaign and we came to the conclusion that we were as good as any of the others on the tour and we probably had a better work ethic than the rest. It made us, if not confident, then certainly positive, [and we felt that] we could make an impression in the next championship.
Sensibly, there was little ballyhoo or bravado from Scotland in the build-up to the 1990 Five Nations event; the Scots, let’s not forget, have always preferred the tactic of guerilla warfare to invasions. And yet, there were qualities and special ingredients mixed through the team, and the Borders influence was conspicuous, from the callow potential of the twin 21-year-olds, Chalmers and Tony Stanger, through to the 23-year-old pocket battleship in the scrum-half berth, otherwise known as Gary Armstrong, the gnarled experience of the Selkirk winger Iwan Tukalo, and the back-row brigade, in the formidable shape of Jeffrey, Derek White and Derek Turn-bull. Only 16 Scots took part in the whole championship and seven of them hailed from the South of the country, with another three – Paul Burnell, Chris Gray and Damian Cronin – based in England. When you throw into the equation the return of Jim Telfer, tutoring and terrorising in equal measure, it becomes clear that this was a Grand Slam written large in Border blood.
It probably helped, as well, that the bookmakers fancied Will Carling & Co for the title in advance of the competition. As Allan Massie wrote in The Scotsman:
Nobody expected great things of the 1990 side. There were doubts about the quality of the front five in the scrum, although Sole was an outstanding player in the loose. Moreover, it seemed certain that England would be the team of the season. They had an immensely powerful scrum, and dangerous backs, among them Jerry Guscott, the outstanding attacking centre in Britain, and Rory Underwood, soon to become England’s record try-scorer. Scotland won their first three matches [defeating Wales, France and Ireland by 13–9, 21–0 and 13–10 respectively], however two might as easily have been lost. In contrast, England seemed masterful in their three victories [and demolished Wales and Ireland 34–6 and 23–0 in the process], so they came north for the Grand Slam decider as firm favourites.
But, of course, that counted for naught once the hostilities had commenced. During the last 20 years I have spoken to all the Borderers who played their part, and what shone through was their inner conviction that they could seize the day. Armstrong, the quiet bulldozer, noticed the English players’ wives being interviewed on television. ‘They were just so confident that they wouldn’t just win, but win easily.’ Chalmers, who never lacked self-belief, observed England’s pre-match preparations and noticed that, however outwardly confident they might have appeared, there were signs of jitters for those who cared to look. Jeffrey was working on his farm in the build-up and lost count of the number of people who stopped to wish him and the team good luck. ‘The match definitely caught the public’s imagination. But all the pressure was on England, because of the way they had hammered opponents in the previous games.’ Tukalo and Stanger, the wingers, knew they would be facing men with more glittering reputations, but that merely stiffened their resolve. ‘I just wanted the match to begin I was so excited,’ said Stanger, whose Hawick upbringing had brought him close attention from Bill McLaren. And, as for Telfer, the contest was being staged on his 50th birthday. What better way for him to celebrate than by recording another slice of history for the chronicles, in tandem with McGeechan, his ally through thick and thin as the years rolled by?
Even at this distance, the memories are indelible of the Scots’ slow, purposeful march into the frenzied Murrayfield cauldron, of the manner in which they charged at their opponents like Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York, of Chalmers, cool-as-you-please, pushing his side into the lead with a brace of penalties, of Guscott momentarily sparking panic in the home rearguard, of Armstrong feeding on to Gavin Hastings as the prelude to the latter hacking ahead and Stanger touching the ball down, of the frantic English efforts to retrieve the situation, of Jeffrey and Calder running themselves into the ground. By the last few moments, it was almost unbearable to keep watching and yet utterly compelling at the same time. And then, it was over; the Scots had triumphed 13–7 and the rest of the evening passed by in a blur of strangers across Edinburgh and the rest of Scotland toasting a victory which was as deserved as it was unexpected.
Ever since it happened, the revisionists have had a field day. Brian Moore, the so-called ‘Pitbull’, recently claimed that hatred for Margaret Thatcher and the Poll Tax had fuelled the Scottish performance, which was news to those of us who were actually there. His remarks elicited a mixture of incomprehension and laughter when I put them to the likes of Craig Chalmers, who simply described it as an exercise in straw-clutching. So too, the English duly inflicted their revenge, both in the following year’s semi-final of the World Cup at Murray-field, where Hastings missed a sitter of a short-range penalty in the closing stages, raising the question of why Chalmers was not still taking these pressure kicks, and in every meeting between the two countries for the remainder of the decade.
Surely it was more logical to scrutinise the hotbed of rugby in which men such as Chalmers, Armstrong, Jeffrey and Stanger grew up and learned their craft, and reach the conclusion that an occasion such as the 1990 Grand Slam decider was precisely the sort of environment where Border players would thrive. After all, whether they hailed from Hawick or Kelso, Gala or Melrose, these fellows had been pitched into battle with their local adversaries week in, week out, in a milieu where missing a tackle or spilling a pass could earn them the derision of their communities and their Border rivals for the rest of the season or, in a few extreme cases, the remainder of their lives. Competitiveness was in their DNA and that desire to scale fresh heights and pursue new challenges was much more relevant to their success in 1990 than any cooked-up conspiracy theories about Thatcherism or the alleged negative lyrics of ‘Flower of Scotland’, which preoccupied the likes of Carling, Guscott and Moore for too many years.
Telfer, a proud socialist with no particular fondness for the Scottish anthem, summed up the reason for his compatriots’ victory and it essentially boiled down to the collectivism and crunching self-sacrifice of the body which they had exhibited on that manic March day, more than any non-rugby issues. ‘The first thing that registered with me, and it is still a great memory, was Fin Calder taking a free kick near the halfway line, and driving straight into the English: classic position, what I called number-one position – ball gripped under the arm, legs strong, staying upright, holding off the English,’ declared the seasoned coach. ‘The whole Scottish pack came in behind him and they drove the English back 15 to 20 metres. And whoof! The crowd noise just lifted into the sky, the hair went up on the back of my neck, and Scotland were on the move.’
Jeffrey was similarly combative, determined not to countenance a single backward step, and the frustrations which had built up on all those unsuccessful trips to Mansfield Park with Kelso and Twickenham with Scotland simply made him doubly committed to the cause. There was never a trace of anything underhand or devious in his make-up: on the contrary, from the moment Jeffrey made his debut in 1984 to the match where he bowed out – following a hard-fought 13–6 defeat to the All Blacks in the World Cup third-place play-off in Cardiff in 1991 – he was somebody who could be relied upon to offer everything he possessed for the thistle. As a farmer, he was also acquainted with the cyclical nature of things, and appreciated that there would be more days where the Scots lost than won, so they were entitled to enjoy their triumphs all the more.
In the modern era, as Jeffrey continues to serve his country at the IRB, and rugby is in danger of becoming sterile attritional fare, it is an attitude with an added resonance.