Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend. Gregor Townsend
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had left them fresh to play a high-octane brand of power sevens. We had reached the end of the road a long time before.
I remember chatting to Tony Stanger prior to the tournament about injuries – he had hamstring problems and missed the World Cup while I was struggling with a groin strain. But I couldn’t resist carrying on playing and I made myself available for the Scotland tour to the South Seas at the end of the season. Although we were due to play the Test sides of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, the SRU deemed that no caps would be awarded. The reasoning was understandable – with the Lions touring New Zealand and a spate of injuries, just three players in our tour party had played during the Five Nations.
Travelling in the South Pacific was a peculiar experience. The 180th meridian of longitude, which indicates where the western hemisphere comes to an end, passes through the Fijian island of Taveuni. Situated some 400 miles to the east is Tonga. However, the King of Tonga – more of whom later decreed that, geography notwithstanding, the 180th meridian would be stretched eastwards to embrace his kingdom and thus enable Tongan time to be thirteen hours ahead of GMT instead of eleven hours behind it. This meant that the Tongan people would be the first in the world to greet the new day, but caused us no little confusion as we toured the South Sea Islands. On one occasion, we boarded a one-hour flight from Tonga on a Tuesday night and arrived in Samoa – our destination – on the Monday night. Robin Charters, our jovial president quipped, ‘I haven’t had a drink since tomorrow!’
As with the West Indies and cricket, so with the Pacific Islands and rugby. Rugby – union and league – suits Polynesians, who enjoy the physical challenge. They thrive on making big tackles and running with the ball in hand. In addition, they tend to have oodles of flair and daring. Fiji have dominated sevens rugby for the last two decades and we’ve seen at a number of World Cups how good Samoan rugby is. This is achieved with little help for creating a professional structure in any of the three countries. Samoa once played in the Super 10 competition – a forerunner of the Super 14 – but have been largely ignored ever since the game went professional. It is a disgrace that the All Blacks have never played a Test match in Tonga or Samoa, but are quite happy to fly around the world for revenue-generating games at Twickenham. If rugby really has ambitions of being a global game then it must stop snubbing the Pacific Islands – and Argentina for that matter – and include them in international tournaments such as the Tri-Nations or the Super 14.
Being dropped seemed to be becoming a habit, as I didn’t make the starting line-up for our First Test match against Fiji. My performance in the opening game of the tour was patchy and my kicking was all over the place, despite us winning 51–3 against Fiji juniors. I thought the coaches might have taken into account the fact that I hadn’t started a fifteen-aside match for over three months and was understandably rusty. My battered confidence needed games, and I hoped I could play myself back to form. Certainly, I knew I had lost an edge to my game – a spot of soul-searching was inevitable.
I felt I was being forced to grow up too quickly and began having second thoughts about what direction my life was taking. With questions being raised about my future as a stand-off, I felt a long way from home. Coach Richie Dixon tried his best to put me at ease with the comment: ‘Gregor, we have belief in you and I know you’ll soon be back playing well. You’ve got to concentrate on playing your natural game – that’s when you’re at your best.’ This was a great help – although waiting a week on tour for a chance to prove yourself is a long time, especially in a barren place like Tonga where we were staying in the island’s only hotel. I knew my next game against a Tongan President’s XV, bolstered by many of their Test side, wasn’t going to be criticized for a lack of desire or concentration. I was determined to bounce back.
The match still ranks as one of the hardest games in my career, both in terms of the pressure to perform and in having to face such hard-tackling opposition. We were all wearing elbow and knee pads as in Dubai – this time because the grass pitch felt as hard as an airport runway. The Tongans were incredibly physical in the tackle, sometimes even if you had already passed the ball seconds before. We were fiercely competitive ourselves and battled to a 21–5 victory. I scored sixteen points (which included a try) and my confidence was restored. I remember calling my parents later from the hotel – I think we all felt relief and joy that I’d come through my toughest examination to date as a fledgling international.
I had always felt that I just needed another chance to show what I could do, and that I was capable of getting rid of the errors in my game from the previous week. But I knew deep down that this was a turning point in my career. I was determined to kick on from here. I had decided that I wasn’t going to pay heed to those who advised me to rest in the summer. Coaches, the medical staff and even some players had been questioning the wisdom of my intention to go and play club rugby in Australia after the tour, especially given my continuing groin pain, but the last month convinced me to leave Scotland and learn rugby away from perceived opinions. It was also a place where I knew I could play attacking rugby. Having won back my confidence, I couldn’t wait to play more rugby. I finished the tour in good form.
I was recalled to the Test side and we went on to beat Tonga 23–5. It was a much less intense match than that in midweek, and I think the experience of meeting royalty before the game may have slightly altered our focus. The seventy-five-year-old King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV (an absolute monarch who had been in power since 1965) was seated on a makeshift throne up in the main stand of the national stadium in Nuku’alofa, Tonga’s capital. The King wasn’t only famous for his longevity, but also his waist size. He had previously made international headlines when he entered the Guinness Book of Records as the world’s heaviest monarch, tipping the scales at a staggering thirty-three stone. We were made to walk up the steps to the King to shake his hand before the game could begin. For some strange reason he was wearing a motorcycle helmet – it was as if we had slipped into some surreal parallel world.
Tonga consists of 170 islands, but its population – at 100,000 – is less than that of the Borders. The locals seemed much more aloof than the ever-smiling Fijians, and there were times when they looked like real warriors surveying the enemy as they watched us walking about. This might have had something to do with the garish tour outfit we had been issued with: knee-length royal blue socks complemented grey shorts, white shirt and a royal blue blazer – it’s no wonder that the Tongans looked like they wanted to kill us!
Before we left for our final destination – Western Samoa – a few of the squad were asked to lead a training session at the former school of Australian backrower Willie Ofahengaue. They wanted to know what sequences to run from lineouts, so we showed them how to get quick off-the-top ball out to the stand-off. We explained that this was the easiest way to get a strike runner over the advantage line. Then I gave a flat ball to inside-centre Ian Jardine who was running at half-pace, trying to show the Tongan lads the best angle to attack the opposition line. Out of nowhere a fourteen-year-old schoolboy poleaxed him with a chest-high tackle. Jardie, struggling to get back to his feet, congratulated the lad on his defence and added that it wasn’t necessary to put in tackles against us. It was a reminder to never to let down your guard while in Tongan rugby circles.
Samoa – a tropical paradise – was my favourite destination. The people seemed to be somewhere in between those we’d met in Fiji and Tonga – friendly and welcoming but taking no prisoners on the rugby field. We lost the Test 28–11 but this was by no means a disgrace. After all, this was the same group of players that had made the World Cup quarter-final two years before and included future All Blacks Alama Ieremia and Junior Tonu’u in their line-up. In temperatures reaching 36°C – so hot in fact that before the game we had to move from the touchline into a shaded area to sing ‘Flower of Scotland’ – Samoa were too strong for our development side. A month later they pushed the All Blacks all the way, eventually losing 35–13 in Auckland.
Having just turned twenty, I had experienced a lot in two years of senior rugby, but it was being suggested in some quarters that my rugby career was faltering and that my game was characterized by errors. Learning over the summer could only help me improve – and doing it outside Scotland was likely to make it more pleasurable. A year previously I had wanted to stay out in Australia after the Scotland tour to play club rugby, but was forced to return to compete in the Students World Cup. Tony