Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend. Gregor Townsend
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can only imagine how surprised the Clovenfords local was feeling stumbling across someone shivering and mumbling a song at ten o’clock at night while partly submerged in the burn below!
As I was trying my best to recover from my dual injuries, the summer tour to Argentina was looming on the horizon. Touring, I hoped, would give me an opportunity to become more consistent at international level. During the championship I had performed much better away from home than at Murrayfield. If I could overcome my knee and wrist problems, I aimed to excel in Argentina and enjoy the thrill of touring once again. To the wives and families of international players it may be a four-letter word but, in the amateur days, a tour was the absolute highlight of the season. Nothing else really came close.
Despite rugby being a minority sport in Argentina, it was a notoriously tough place to play, and there had only been a few teams in history that had managed to win a Test series there. In our first few days in Buenos Aires, we were soon aware of the dominance of football in the culture and daily lives of the populace. Locals were far more interested in Boca Juniors and River Plate than a touring rugby team from Scotland, and there were posters of Diego Maradona everywhere. Argentina’s major concern seemed to be if Maradona would be fit for the forthcoming football World Cup, not whether their rugby side could extend a proud home winning record.
We undertook the challenge with a severely weakened touring party, as most of our senior internationalists – Gavin Hastings, Scott Hastings, Gary Armstrong, Kenny Milne, Doddie Weir and Tony Stanger – had decided that their best preparation for the following season’s World Cup was a rest from the summer tour. At the time, there seemed quite a bit of logic in this, but looking back from an era where the game is much more physically demanding, it seems as if maybe a few of the players just didn’t really fancy a month of rugby in Argentina. In the weeks prior to our departure, injuries robbed us of more key personnel – Andy Nicol, Craig Chalmers and Derek Stark from the backs and Iain Morrison and Rob Wainwright from the forwards. The words ‘on a hiding to nothing’ hung over those of us who left for Argentina.
The spate of call-offs led to the appointment of the unlikeliest of captains – Andy Reed, our second-row from Cornwall. Andy had the rather harsh nickname of ‘Boring Bob from Bodmin’, but he didn’t seem to mind that players teased him about his rambling stories. In 1993 he had burst onto the international scene playing well and looking very much like a modern day second-row forward – physical but also able to get around the field. Although he had been a member of the much-criticized Scottish front five on that season’s Lions Tour to New Zealand, he had still kept up his good form for Scotland in the lead-up to Argentina.
The management obviously selected him because he was one of the few players that had made themselves available to tour and who had played well in the recent Five Nations. However, there are many more factors than just form involved in choosing a captain. Whether it was because of his Cornish accent or a lack of leadership experience, Andy found it a tough act to follow the likes of Finlay Calder, David Sole and Gavin Hastings as Scotland captain. Although he struggled at times with the role, he tried his best and was one of Scotland’s better players on tour.
Just as with the previous year’s tour to the South Pacific, prior to leaving I hadn’t played any fifteen-a-side rugby for a couple of months. I was determined to start the tour totally focused, as my rusty performance in the first match a year before in Fiji had cost me my place in the Test side. Despite increasing pain in my wrist and knee, I viewed the tour as the final opportunity of the season to boost my confidence before taking some time away from the game and resting my injuries. Unfortunately, this was to be wishful thinking – by the end of the tour I would have been happy never to touch a rugby ball again.
Things seemed to be very promising early on and I got off to a much better start in Argentina than I had done in Fiji. On a hot afternoon we played some good attacking rugby in our opening match against Buenos Aires. Only some decidedly dodgy refereeing decisions denied us a deserved victory as we were held to a 24–24 draw.
It was another ten days until the First Test against the Pumas, but most of the players involved in the Buenos Aires game were rested for the next two matches. We were constantly reminded that Argentina was one of the hardest places in world rugby to tour, but our first three outings against their best provincial sides hadn’t been that menacing. Our major problem had been the interpretation of the laws by the local referees in charge of our matches outside the Test Series.
The Argentine game plan was based on a strong scrummage, aggressive defence and a considerable amount of mauling by both backs and forwards. It wasn’t attractive to watch but has proved to be effective. The First Test was played in a hostile atmosphere at the FC Oeste stadium in Buenos Aires. The excitable spectators all seemed to have these long red horns, which annoyed my flatmates no end when I brought one back to Scotland. The horns created a noisy backdrop to the game, more like a football match. However, the game itself was nothing to shout about.
We weren’t able to control the play as we would have liked and we seldom strung more than two phases together. This was mainly because the Argentine midfield rushed up very quickly in defence and their forwards continually spoiled our lineout ball. Although it was an error-strewn match, it was clear that we had been the better side. That we lost the game 16–15 was largely due to our inability to finish good build-up work. Also, our goal kicker, Gala’s Mike Dods, obviously hadn’t borrowed his older brother Peter’s boots, having missed five attempts at goal.
I was frustrated with my own performance in that I hadn’t been able to rise above the general malaise and dominate proceedings. While I hadn’t done myself justice, I was more disappointed that as a team we didn’t perform and weren’t able to get an historic win in Argentina. This would have been even more memorable given the fact we were missing a number of established internationalists.
It was a gloomy scene in the changing room, but at least we knew we had the means to win the Second Test the following Saturday. I had just finished icing my aching knee and showering, when head coach Dougie Morgan came over to give me news that left me reeling: ‘Gregor, I’ve just spoken to the press and I told them that you had a shocker.’ How do you respond to that? For several moments he looked at me as if he wanted me to agree with him.
‘Cheers’ was all that I could say to fill the silence that hung between us. It was the end of our conversation. As soon as he walked away, I was angry with myself for not fighting my corner – to point out to him that I hadn’t been the only one.
‘Blamestorming’ is a term used in business for those sitting around in a group, discussing why a project failed, and who was responsible. I remember after international defeats at Murrayfield, the coaches and selectors used to stand in the middle of the changing rooms discussing quietly amongst themselves what went wrong. The players knew what was being talked about as we returned from the showers to get changed. If any of the selectors mentioned your name or turned to look in your direction it wasn’t a good sign. Still, it was preferable to the very public naming-and-shaming I received in Argentina.
I felt a shiver run right through me even though it was a warm evening in Buenos Aires. I was concerned with my coach’s view of the game, which was one I didn’t share. It would have been hard for me to argue that I’d played well, but there had been no glaring errors. Stand-off is at times an exposed position, especially when you have to lead the attack from slow-ball, as was the case in the First Test. I was finding out just what John F. Kennedy meant when he once said that ‘victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan’.
Criticism should be done in private with the aim of trying not to repeat mistakes and improve the player in question. Having just turned twenty-one, there were many areas I needed to work on and my performance in the First Test flagged up two or three that I needed to sort out very quickly. I have always been a harsh critic of my own game and, although I felt I had played badly, that had also been the case for the majority of the team. Only two or three players had played well. Naively, I thought that during the press conference Dougie had maybe gone on to say that more than half the team had been shocking too. I also hoped that he had been joking when he said that I’d had a shocker or that the press hadn’t taken him seriously.
I had previously got on well with