Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend. Gregor Townsend
Читать онлайн книгу.
I had established contacts to join up with the Sydney-based team for a three-month stint.
Going to Warringah wasn’t just an opportunity to improve my rugby experience – it was also a chance for me to grow up on my own terms. Only 25 km away from the city, on Sydney’s northern coast, Warringah Rugby Club is close to many magnificent beaches and headlands. The club captain, Rob Blyth, and his wife Leanne provided me with a room in their house alongside the Kelso flanker Stuart Bennett. From Borders farming stock, Benzo kept his side of the room as tidy as a neglected pigsty, and our living space inevitably began to attract cockroaches and spiders as big as your hand. Benzo played really well for the club and gained respect for his combative approach. He was different to Aussie backrowers at the time in that he played the game much closer to the ground. He was always first to a loose ball and was much better than them at clearing rucks. Up against more physical players, managing to break into the Warringah first-grade team was a superb achievement.
Warringah organized jobs for its itinerant players – like Benzo and myself. First we were demolition men, but once the plagues of cockroaches grew too much for us, we were given the positions of groundskeepers at the rugby club. Our first task was to clear away the large rocks that were scattered around the outside of the pitch and car park. Feeling a little like Paul Newman on the chain gang in Cool Hand Luke, we set to work. Our Calvinist spirit drove us to clearing most of the rocks by midday, much to the horror of the head groundsman – this one job was supposed to take us three months. We soon slowed to the rate of a rock a day, playing games of cricket with our spades and the numerous golf balls that had been hit over the fence from the nearby driving range.
Warringah were known as the ‘Green Rats’, after the 9th Australian Division that defended Tobruk during the Second World War. Although they had never won a Premiership title, the team had a reputation for uncompromising rugby. They were coached by Steve Lidbury, a former backrower who been capped twice by the Wallabies in the Eighties before switching to rugby league. On a Thursday night after training we always went out as a squad to a pizza restaurant and Benzo and I used to make sure we sat near our coach. With his muscular frame and quick wit he always dominated conversation, and he was soon recalling anecdotes from his time playing for Warringah, the Wallabies and Canberra Raiders as well as stories from his other employment as a security guard. Despite having to retire after breaking his neck, he continued to play touch footy with us and was an astute coach. He must have been some player in his day.
I think Libbo liked me as a player, and he moved me into stand-off (or five-eighth as it was called over there) after two appearances for the club at outside-centre. For the first time in my career I had a coach that really appreciated my kicking game. Although I’d made a lot of improvements, this was probably more due to the fact that there was hardly any kicking in Australian rugby, which was in stark contrast to the situation at the time in the northern hemisphere. Watching paint dry was occasionally a better option than attending a British rugby union match in the early Nineties, as the ball very rarely got past two phases without someone kicking it in the air.
In contrast, it seemed that most coaches in Australia insisted on the ball being kept in play, as up-and-unders left too much to chance. My centres always wanted me to use them to set up another phase and the only kicks we tended to utilize were diagonals, which forced the opposition to kick to touch and give us the throw at the lineout.
Australia had won the World Cup two years before through some terrific attacking play, which was a credit to the standards and attacking philosophy of their club competition. In successive weeks, I encountered two of the driving forces of that World Cup victory – captain Nick Farr-Jones and record try scorer David Campese. My first match in the number 10 jersey was against Farr-Jones’ Sydney University side, which went well as I was voted man of the match in our home win. I could tell that Farr-Jones was a natural leader and organized his team from scrum-half. He impressed me not just with his ferocious commitment but also his goal-kicking ability that had kept his side in touch for long periods of the match.
Next up was an away fixture against Randwick – the most famous club in Australia. They were known for playing a quick-passing game, and their pancake-flat alignment was pioneering. The Ella brothers had once strutted their stuff for the ‘Galloping Greens’, as they were called, and they continued to deploy a similar attacking style. I remember seeing my opposite number, Lloyd Walker, arrive at the ground with his family at the same time as me. Walker had played several times for the Wallabies, but I fancied my chances against him that day. He looked old, overweight and I expected him to be slow off the mark. I was later shown a masterclass in how to play in heavy traffic, and how to make a defence open up for you.
Walker was so flat from scrum and phase ball that I could almost touch him. At first, I left him alone for my open-side flanker to deal with, as Randwick had some devastating runners out wide who posed much more of a threat. Walker’s lack of pace didn’t prove to be a drawback for him – he started so close to the advantage line he was soon getting in behind us, causing panic in our defence. When I later changed track and marked him directly, he began to deliver some deadly accurate wrist-passes to runners on either side of him. We never once managed to line someone up in the Randwick backline and knock them back in the tackle.
Out wide, Campese was a continual threat. I also noticed a tenacious edge to his game, which proved to me that you don’t get to the top unless you are mentally tough. Libbo had instructed me to test out Campese with some high balls, but to make sure they landed shorter than usual so that the pack got the chance to ruck the living daylights out of him. This we did on a couple of occasions. It all seemed to no avail, as Campo got back on his feet without complaint and played superbly thereafter. I realized he must have had to endure that sort of treatment right throughout his career.
During the previous season I had seen seasoned internationalists being laid-back, but it finally hit home in Australia that I needed to relax much more around game time. At Warringah, in the lead up to kick-off, the backs nonchalantly threw a ball around in the car park, chatting to each other as if they were about to go out to train, not play an important match. I loved this mindset – it implied that this was no different from training and there was no added pressure to worry about. Once on the field they were passionate and totally committed to the cause, effectively embodying the spirit of the club – never to give in, just like the Rats of Tobruk.
I used to live by a quote I’d read somewhere: ‘If you’ve never made a mistake, you’ve never made a decision.’ Now I was getting much better at recognizing the two benefits of failure: first, if you do fail, you learn what doesn’t work; and second, the failure gives you the opportunity to try a new approach. As the game was fought out on the gain line it was really high-pressure stuff, which brought out the best in me. Players were bigger, more physical and the pitches were hard and fast. I loved every minute of it.
We climbed up the table and I was playing consistently well – by far the best rugby of my career. Unfortunately I had to return to Scotland for my exams, which I had missed because of the Scotland tour to the South Seas in June. Warringah tried hard to get me to stay. They arranged to have the exam paper faxed out to a university in Sydney, and said I could fly home to Scotland and pick up anything I needed to help with my studies before coming back a couple of days later. In the local paper, the Manly Daily, Libbo had said, ‘I am going to block his way to the airport, handcuff him, anything to get him to stay.’
I was worried that Libbo might prove to be all too persuasive in terms of stopping me from returning, as I was reluctant to muck around Edinburgh University any more than I needed to. I’d cut a few corners already in the first two years of my course and I knew I would have been further distracted if I was to sit my exams in Australia. I left Warringah with two games still to play. Unfortunately, the club went on to lose the Grand Final. Looking back, I wish I could have stayed. However, at the time there was another reason I wanted to return home. The new club season in Scotland was just about to begin. First up for Gala was an away trip to arch-rivals Melrose – a game I didn’t want to miss.
We won 14–13 and I carried on my Warringah form, once more in direct opposition to Scotland stand-off Craig Chalmers. I was buzzing with confidence and played well the following week against Boroughmuir. We again won away from home, which meant that we had now beaten