Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend. Gregor Townsend
Читать онлайн книгу.
on car doors, waved us through red lights and forced other traffic onto the pavement. That day, we must have made it to the Parc des Princes in record time.
The pulsating atmosphere in the stadium was the stuff of legend, and we experienced a taste of what was in store during our warm-up. There were traditional French bands all around the ground – drums were banged, trumpets and trombones blared and the deep rumblings of innumerable tubas seemed to vibrate through the pitch itself and up into our boots. It felt as if we were the headline act about to come out on stage at a rock concert. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the ball.
We had agreed that moving the ball wide was our only hope of success, but I wasn’t convinced that we would have the courage to start the game playing attacking rugby. However, events in the opening two minutes deprived us of any choice in the matter.
Even though we knew that the French loved to try little kicks ahead for their wingers to chase, we were powerless to stop France’s captain, Philippe Saint-Andre pouncing on Thierry Lacroix’s neat chip ahead. The game was seconds old and already we were a try down – and at a ground where no Scot had ever tasted success. You could say that, at the very least, this focused our minds! Gavin, who had been caught out of position for the try, rallied his team. And his performance from then on was flawless as he almost metamorphosed into the Scottish rugby equivalent of ‘Roy of the Rovers’.
Somehow, the early blow freed us of our inhibitions. We began to play like we had nothing to lose. I took some flat miss passes from Craig Chalmers and surprised myself that I was able to find space against the brilliant Philippe Sella, offloading the ball to Gavin on a couple of occasions. The second of these led our captain surging up-field into the French half. The move was continued through good linking work by our forwards and when we recycled I was standing out wide screaming for the ball. I could see there was a gaping hole in the French defence.
Ian Jardine’s pass almost didn’t reach me – I had to flick at the ball with my foot and, amazingly, it bounced up into my hands, allowing me to side-step the covering Philippe Benetton to score between the posts. Every aspiring young rugby player has sat at home imagining what it is like to score your first try for your country; very few actually get the chance, but in their dreams the sun is out, the ground is full and it is against one of the best teams in the world. When it happens it is as if time briefly stands still before suddenly going on fast forward. Relief and joy combine in one ecstatic moment. All the hours of toiling on muddy fields on dark evenings, the disappointments of injury – it all seems worthwhile. I tried to run back to my half of the pitch as nonchalantly as possible, pretending that the emotion of the moment hadn’t affected me. Inside I was bursting with pride. The stadium and even my own players were temporarily reduced to a blur of colour.
I couldn’t think of a better arena in which to score a try and I felt ten feet tall as I ran back to be with the rest of the team – that’s nine and a half feet taller than I had felt sliding around with my black brogues at our team run the previous day. With Gavin knocking over a huge penalty kick, by half-time we were in a position to go out and win the game. More importantly, we were all starting to really believe we could win. And, when you start believing you can win games, more often than not, you do win them.
I was enjoying the match and I was particularly focused on the various tasks an outside-centre has to perform. With a very dangerous French backline moving the ball at will, I was trying to track the movements of the full-back Jean-Luc Sadourny, and I was able to tackle him man-and-ball a couple of times. We were competing well and making it very hard for the French to get the upper hand in the set piece. However, we seemed to retreat into our shells whenever we nudged ahead on the scoreboard. It made for a decidedly close match.
The last ten minutes had more twists than a liquorice factory and must have been agonizing to watch for our supporters. Revelling amidst the colour, the noise and the sheer whirlwind intensity of the Parc des Princes, I was directly involved in the final two tries of the contest … Unfortunately the first of these tries went to France.
Having been responsible for Saint-Andre scoring an interception try at Murrayfield the previous season, I felt a depressing sense of déjà vu as he again crossed the line to touch down for what looked like being the clinching score.
With the game tied at 16–16 we had won phase possession in our half and, as Craig Chalmers was out of the 22 m, the call was ‘miss-one diagonal’. What this entailed was that Craig would send a wide pass to me at outside-centre, missing inside-centre Ian Jardine, and it was then my job to dispatch a clearing kick to the opposite touchline and into the French half of the field. However, for the only time in the game I was indecisive and failed to complete a fairly basic task.
Even though I started in the 22 when Craig moved onto Bryan Redpath’s pass from scrum-half, I was unsure whether I was still there or not when I caught his pass and prepared myself to kick. I decided it would no longer be safe to kick to touch as – if I had stepped out of the 22-m zone – France would be given a lineout deep in our half. Instead, I thought the best thing to do was to kick as far as possible into French territory. Frustratingly, I didn’t strike the ball as I wanted to. Saint-Andre had also dropped deep and my weak kick gave him the perfect opportunity to counter-attack.
Still, we should have been able to defend better than we ended up doing, as the French were more than fifty metres from our try-line. However, with only Gavin and Craig Joiner outside me when I kicked, the move had the potential to go wrong if I didn’t make touch. Saint-Andre and Sadourny easily exploited our lack of defenders. Gavin hadn’t come up in a line with Craig Joiner, and I compounded the error of not making touch by not following my clearance. In fact, I had barely moved after seeing the French run the ball back at us, frozen in the hope that Saint-Andre might somehow drop my misdirected punt.
Crucially, Thierry Lacroix missed the conversion, which left a glimmer of hope that we could still win the match. There was probably a feeling of inevitability among our supporters – here was yet another gallant defeat in Paris – and no doubt some of our players began to feel the same way too. However, the urgings and belief of our captain didn’t allow us to wallow in any self-pity. Gavin shouted at his troops, looking each of us in the eyes: ‘That’s it. From now on we run everything. We’re going to get back up the other end of the pitch, score between the posts and win this game. Okay?’
Finally, he looked directly at me. ‘Okay, Gregor?’ I nodded my assent. I was desperate not to disappoint my skipper and, with five minutes remaining, I knew there was still enough time for us to score a converted try.
We attacked the French with everything we had, but found it increasingly difficult to get out of our own half. I called for the ball wide and took a pass from Craig Chalmers just over the halfway line. With the French defence looking like they were drifting out to the touchline, I stepped back inside to try and find a gap between Thierry Lacroix and Laurent Cabannes. I was tackled by both of them but I managed to wrestle my right arm free in the hope that I could offload once more to Gavin. He had been a constant presence on my outside shoulder every time I had run at the defence, but on this occasion I heard him calling for the ball on my inside.
Gavin had sized up the situation in advance and was aware that a sliding French defence had left a gap. Although I couldn’t see him charging up on my inside shoulder, I knew I had to gamble and turn my wrist to send out a reverse pass. Only after letting go of the ball did I see Gavin – who looked more than a bit surprised – surge onto my pass.
In the few seconds that it took Gavin to sprint to the French goal-line he became a Scottish living legend. His angle wrong-footed Sadourny and there was no French player left to stop his run to glory. He still had to knock over the conversion, and showed that his confidence was even greater than normal, as he dummied his run-up to try to catch the French offside. My heart missed a beat when he did this, but he made sure of the two extra points to seal a momentous victory. It would be the only Scotland victory at the fabled Parc des Princes, with France moving to the brand-new Stade de France three years later.
In my old bedroom at my parents’ house there is a photograph of the instant the ball left my hand as I flicked the reverse pass that sent Gavin away on his match-winning run to the try-line. The movement became dubbed the