Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend

Probably because I played more football at primary school and then went on to play on a weekly basis in Edinburgh, I was much more committeed to football than to any other sport. I loved playing for Hutchison Vale and went with them on a tour to Holland, although I never really felt part of the football scene as all my team-mates were from Edinburgh and I couldn’t make the midweek training sessions. Moving to Gala Academy meant that there were now weekly games of rugby to get stuck into and although I still harboured dreams of being a dual international for Scotland, I knew something would have to give. The following season saw the end of my football career as the games changed from Sundays to Saturdays and I had to decide which sport I would have to sacrifice. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make and probably the correct one – I had started at Hutchie Vale as a striker but ended up as a defensive midfielder, running all day but not possessing enough skilful touches to make it as a professional.

By that stage I was also a huge fan of the Scotland rugby team. I had first been to a Murrayfield international in 1982 – there had been a record crowd that day and my dad had to hold me above his head to avoid the crush outside the stadium. Being a Rangers supporter as well, I’d been to Tynecastle to watch them play Hearts and also to Hampden to see them play Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup Final. Whilst it was great to see my heroes like Ally McCoist and Davie Cooper close up, there was an unpleasant edge to watching football games at the time. The atmosphere was very threatening and was probably one reason why my dad had bought us tickets for the Aberdeen end at Hampden. However, the Aberdeen supporters were just as abusive as the raucous Rangers fans packed into the other end of the ground, and what made matters worse was that I was too scared to celebrate any of Rangers’ goals when they went on to win the match on penalties.

Having spent my youth watching Scotland win two Grand Slams in the space of six years, it is something of a disappointment to have been a member of the Scotland team for eleven years and not to add to this total. I suppose playing in the side that were crowned the last-ever Five Nations champions in 1999 is a pretty good recompense, but that year’s narrow defeat at Twickenham grates a little more with each passing year. However, I remain convinced that I helped Scotland topple the French in 1984.

With France leading 6–3 at half-time and their key players like captain Jean-Pierre Rives, stand-off Jean-Patrick Lescarboura and full-back Serge Blanco growing in influence, a Scottish Grand Slam was looking less and less likely. Sitting in the schoolboys enclosure, I repeated a prayer throughout the second half. I urged God to grant my wish of a Scotland victory, and I wrote ‘Scotland win’ and ‘Scotland Grand Slam’ over and over again with my finger on the wooden bench upon which I was perched. My prayers were answered as Jim Calder scored the decisive try, diving over at a lineout after the French failed to control the ball. The media later described the score as a brilliant piece of instinctive play by Calder. I still think there was an element of divine intervention involved.

The year 1984 was an inspirational one for Scottish rugby supporters and I had been hooked all that season as the team worked its way to the Grand Slam. The 32–9 hammering of the Irish was their best game of the championship, with my favourite player, Roy Laidlaw, scoring two tries. As two Gala players were at the heart of that season’s successes, it resonated even more. Captain Jim Aitken scored the match-winning try in Cardiff and full-back Peter Dods kicked seventeen points in the win over the French. A couple of days after the decider against France, just after I had started that morning’s paper round, I remember seeing Peter Dods in the dark, an electrician by trade, also beginning his working day. This was a fairly normal occurrence – such was the nature of the amateur game and also the number of internationalists living and working in the Borders.

The abundance of rugby knowledge in the area was plain to see and I was lucky that I had been able to come under the influence of some very astute teachers. After being invited to attend a summer sports school, I had sessions from Jim Telfer and Jim Renwick, one of the best ever Scottish players. He showed us how to use a hand-off and how to accelerate into the tackle – advice that I still draw on to this day. I also tried to watch and imitate those who played in my position, which is the best and fastest way to learn a sport. Although I had started as a scrum-half, I was now certain that stand-off was the best position to play. Watching the 1984 Grand Slam video, I noticed that when he was kicking to touch, John Rutherford placed his right hand underneath the ball, not on top as I had been previously taught. This adjustment, and later copying how Craig Chalmers struck his drop kicks, helped my kicking game immeasurably. I remember getting up in the middle of the night with my dad and my brother to watch Scotland play France in the opening game of the 1987 World Cup. As well as desperately hoping for a Scottish win, I was also starting to imagine myself running out in the future as a Scotland player.

I played sufficiently well to be selected for Scotland Under-15 against Wales Under-15 in 1988. I know it might sound clichéd, but the first time I wore the Scottish jersey was a hugely uplifting experience: something about the blue jersey made me swell up with pride. My performance in the game itself wasn’t anything special, and we lost 23–6 in front of a large Borders crowd. I hadn’t exactly frozen on this elevated stage, but I hadn’t done anything that suggested I’d attain any higher honours in the game.

It wasn’t until a year later that I convinced myself I could make it to the highest level. And on top of that, this epiphany came during a match in which I was on the wrong end of a fifty-point hammering. I managed to get picked for the South Schools team at the end of that season and even though Midlands Schools beat us heavily, I knew then that playing against better players only improved my own game. My build may have been more akin to the gable end of a crisp, but I played really well and scored two tries, one of them a longrange effort.

That season had seen a major improvement to my game, mainly because I was playing two, sometimes three, matches every weekend. Most people will probably agree with the maxim that being grown up isn’t half as much fun as growing up. This is certainly true in terms of my rugby career. The pressures, frustrations and emotional swings involved in professional rugby were not evident back when I was fifteen years old. Although my limbs were usually aching by the time I clambered into a bath on a Sunday night, I couldn’t wait to play the following weekend. On a Saturday morning I was now turning out for the senior side at the Academy and the following day I played for the Gala Red Triangle, which ran an Under-16 team. After a couple of months of the season, Craig asked me if I would be interested in also playing for the Under-18 side, the Gala Wanderers, who played on Saturday afternoons. The last time I had played with my brother was eight years previously and my parents had feared for my well-being. This time around they let me decide if I was ready. I soon became a regular and playing alongside my brother was a thrill, especially when we won most of the sevens tournaments at the end of the season.

These early games for Gala Wanderers were an essential part of my rugby education. Physically inferior to the other players, I had to use pace and evasion to get past opponents. There was also a much rougher edge to youth rugby than I’d been experiencing at school – my first game against Selkirk Youth Club ended up in a mass brawl that even involved some of our replacements on the touchline. It showed me that you could never afford to take a backward step in rugby. I also received some excellent guidance from our coaches, Johnny Gray and Arthur ‘Hovis’ Brown.

Enthusiasm is a crucial characteristic for any successful coach. This is even more the case when coaching youngsters. Johnny and Hovis had this in spades, and it was such a joy to train and play for them. They are real characters, full of banter and proud Gala men. Being coached by them made you feel you were part of something much bigger. I used to love hearing their stories. They also knew the game inside out – Johnny having coached the South to victory over Australia in 1984, and Hovis being full-back for Scotland in the Seventies before Andy Irvine came on the scene.

We were never dictated to or told to play in a certain way and I’m sure this freedom was a major help in enabling us to win the Scottish youth title at Murrayfield the following season. We had some really promising players like Mark Ballantyne, Greig Crosbie, Alan Bell and Alan Johnstone, but our antics must have driven the coaches mad at times. One night after a heavy snowfall they still wanted us to train – instead we went outside and built a snowman and then pelted them with snowballs. I’m sure Johnny was wishing he was still preparing to play the likes of Mark Ella and David Campese.

Like anyone else in Scotland, on 17 March 1990 I was celebrating the fact that we had beaten England to win the Grand Slam. Everything about that day at Murrayfield was a credit to the values of Scottish rugby at the time: humility, passion, graft and togetherness. Four days later I felt very privileged to run out on the same ground to play in the Schools Cup Final against St Aloysius. In fact during the next month I played on five occasions at Murrayfield. I had made it into the Scotland Schools side and we played three matches at the ground, together with a match against Ireland at Lansdowne Road. Unfortunately, all four games were lost.

The Schools Cup Final had also ended up in a defeat and left me with an embarrassing reminder each time I returned to the home of Scottish rugby. Before the match we were in the home dressing room, a vast area underneath the old West Stand. As was the tradition at the time, we had a pre-match ‘psych up’, which involved slapping our legs and faces then grabbing someone and wrestling with them. With memories of David Sole leading out his troops the previous Saturday, we were all pumped up. On the way out, in a rush of adrenalin, I kicked the door to the changing room. Unfortunately, my boot went right through the plywood, leaving a sizable hole. Each time I returned over the next few weeks, I was racked with guilt. Just as well the West Stand has now been replaced or I think the SRU would probably come looking for some compensation!

Following the success of Gala Wanderers in winning the national title at Murrayfield, I came under the radar of the Gala selectors. This I know, because my dad was still one of the selectors at the time. He had told me they wanted to give me a run at the end of that season, when I was still sixteen years old, but both he and my school coach, Rob Moffat, were not keen on the idea so it never happened. I had enjoyed an outing for Gala in the Kelso Sevens a few months later, but I presumed my final year at the Academy would be spent once again playing for the school in the morning and the Wanderers in the afternoon. That was how things were panning out until we broke up for the October holidays.

For a Borders youngster with a talent for sport, rugby was seen as the only true way to express your natural abilities. I grew up in the golden age of Borders rugby. We had some great ambassadors for the area – people like Gary Armstrong, Roy Laidlaw, John Jeffrey and John Rutherford – all of whom successfully blended courage, modesty and skill. The Scottish League officially started in 1973, the year I was born. Between then and 1990, the year I made my debut for Gala, there was only one occasion when a non-Borders team won the championship. So, when I was asked if I would be available to play for Gala in their league match away to Stirling County, I jumped at the chance.

A club’s tradition and history are what make it special. If the club is also your home town, it makes it something to aspire to be a part of. Even though it had been a few years since Gala’s run of three championship titles in the early Eighties, at the start of the Nineties the side still had a reputation of being a tough team to play against. They invariably finished in the top half of the table. One key difference that separated Gala from the likes of Hawick or Melrose was that they lacked a ruthless streak and a sizeable forward pack. However, Gala possessed many talented individuals. Players like Ian Corcoran, John Amos, Mark Moncrieff and Mike Dods were some of the most skilful in the country and were on the fringes of the Scottish squad. However, it was the more experienced players like Hamish Hunter, Peter Dods and Dave Bryson that I turned to as I prepared for my first match at that level.

Brideghaugh, Stirling’s home ground, was almost completely waterlogged after some torrential rain, but the game went ahead. We went on to lose 12–10, but I’d put in a decent enough performance. I relished the step up in intensity and the fact that everyone was taking things seriously. There had been times when I felt that there weren’t many of my teammates at school or youth level who cared that much about rugby. This time, however, I could see the guys were visibly upset at not coming away with a win. The Gala players had been great with me and were already talking about next week’s fixture as if I’d be playing.

Although Gala’s traditional rivals had always been Hawick, it was Melrose – just four miles away – who had emerged as the team we most desperately wanted to beat. Melrose set the benchmark in Scottish club rugby, and would go on to repeat the feats of Hawick who had dominated the championship in the Seventies and early Eighties. Well marshalled by their inspirational coach Jim Telfer, they were aggressive and relentless up front and had halfbacks who knew how to control a game. One of those half-backs was Scotland standoff Craig Chalmers, who had played for the Lions and won a Grand Slam in the previous eighteen months. I was due to face him on his home turf in only my second game for Gala.

Against the odds, we defeated the reigning champions 19–15 in a game that was much more open than it had been at Stirling. I had a pretty mixed game, making some good breaks but also missing tackles and struggling with my restarts. I once read in a coaching manual that the biggest room in the house was the room for improvement and that definitely applied to my game – I knew I had many things to work on. That was why I had already decided I would return to play for the school team the following weekend. I thought it would be a better way to work on my basic skills, as well as offering a chance to finally win the Scottish Cup after two Final defeats in a row.

Later, some said that my return to schoolboy rugby had been bad for my game. They said that as I had continued to dominate games bad habits had developed. For years I would have argued with this sentiment. I worked very hard on my kicking and passing under the expert eye of Rob Moffat, often spending lunch hours during the week out on the pitch. I also achieved my goal of captaining the Scottish Schools team and leading Gala Academy – finally – to a Scottish Cup success. However, my form a year later, when I became established in the Gala side, was not as good as I expected. Part of the reason was a frustration borne from being unable to find holes as easily as I had done at Under-18 level. Throughout my career I have always felt my game has improved every time I’ve had to make a step-up to a better standard of rugby, but it wasn’t immediately obvious that I had made real progress in my first season of senior rugby. Although my last season at school was very enjoyable, maybe I should have decided to stay with Gala after the win at Melrose.

Near the end of the season, I managed to play the odd game for the club and made it into the side for the 100th Gala Sevens, which attracted international teams such as Canada and Fiji. Despite incessant rain, thousands turned out at Netherdale and they were treated to a wonderful exhibition of sevens rugby from the South Sea Islanders. The annual sevens season in the Borders is the region’s rugby heartbeat, and the five spring tournaments are still an established part of Borders life. The abbreviated form of the game was the brainchild of Ned Haig, a butcher from Melrose, where the first ever sevens tournament took place in 1883. Melrose Sevens today draws crowds of up to 15,000 and it was a pity and a mistake that the SRU did not give the town the right to host the Scotland leg of the IRB Sevens circuit.

The 1991/92 season – my first full season with Gala – was delayed because of the Rugby World Cup. This coincided with my first weeks at Edinburgh University where I’d enrolled to study history and politics. The season started well as we got our revenge on Stirling, winning 31–9. I made a break that led to a try and featured Kenny Logan falling for an outrageous dummy that was shown on the BBC’s Rugby Special as part of their intro for the next few years, much to Kenny’s irritation. Gala were undefeated going into December as we prepared for the biggest game of the season, at home to Melrose. This was one of two matches in a month that got me a reputation for being brilliant one minute, lousy the next.

It was a bitterly cold day and the pitch was barely playable from an overnight frost. This hadn’t deterred 5,000 supporters turning up at Netherdale. Melrose made a dream start to the contest, galloping away to a 28–3 lead after only twenty minutes. Apart from a try from their hooker Steve Scott, the other three Melrose scores all came from mistakes by yours truly. I learned some harsh lessons as a bout of nervousness led to two fumbles and a loose pass. A paralysing feeling had enveloped me but I came back to score a cracking try late in the first half. We lost 28–16 and, although I was devastated by the start I had made, I knew that once I had recovered my composure I had played really well. James Joyce once remarked that mistakes are the portals of discovery – I discovered that day that temperament is a key factor in achieving sporting success.

I thought that the Melrose game might have dampened down the expectations that had been building up around my play, but less than two weeks later and after only three months of senior rugby, I was selected to play for Scotland ‘B’ against Ireland. At eighteen years old, I was set to become the youngest ever B cap. I spent a week giving press interviews and being photographed for the Scottish papers. I remember one dodgy photo I had to have taken with my dad, which for some strange reason involved us both cleaning my golf clubs.

An article appeared in the Daily Telegraph that had the headline ‘Scot set to rival Barry John’. It quoted John Jeffrey as saying I was Scotland’s ‘outstanding hope for the future’. The Telegraph had even managed to get in touch with Barry John himself: ‘I have only seen him on video and heard rumours. Although I wouldn’t want to burden the boy with unnecessary expectations, there is clearly no limit to what he might achieve.’ While flattering, I found it daft and I believed that it was both a reflection of the state of the game (which at the time was dominated by kicking) as well as a lack of rugby stories since the end of the World Cup.

It was nice to hear illustrious people say such things, but all I wanted to do was play and improve – expectations weren’t in my control. There’s a quote from Henry Ford that you can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do. I wanted to be judged on how I was performing in the present, not on whatever potential I had. All I could do was remind people that I hadn’t done anything to justify this talk, remind them of my mistakes; and together with the media I helped build up my image of being ‘prone to errors’. The irony is that I spent the last few years of my career trying to tell them I wasn’t prone to errors after all.

For the B international we stayed in Edinburgh’s opulent Balmoral Hotel, which was in a different world to the room I had been given that year in the university halls of residence in the same city. My room was G1 – something I wouldn’t forget in a hurry. G1 meant the first room on the ground floor, situated next to the main entrance of the halls. This frequently meant I’d get a restless sleep as drunken students arrived back at various times through the night talking loudly or singing. This wasn’t as bad, though, as the times I would hear a knock on my window, followed by the request, ‘Could you open the main door? Sorry, I’ve forgotten my key.’ It drove me mad. I lapped up the luxury of the Balmoral and felt that this was a much better way to prepare for a game.

A few of the Scotland team were congregating in the hotel lobby as I wandered about after dinner.

‘Toony, you want to come for a walk along Princes Street with us? It’s a tradition the night before a big match, and it’ll help you sleep later.’

One of the others suppressed a laugh at this, but I couldn’t see what the joke was. I agreed to join them for a leisurely walk. We were a group of around half-a-dozen, all from the Borders, which was comforting to me – not just the fact that I knew the other players, but in that I presumed that Borders rugby guys would know how to best prepare for a match.

After making it to the end of Princes Street we skirted by the Castle on our way to the Grassmarket. Up ahead, my Gala team-mate Gary Isaac shouted back to me, ‘We’re stopping at the next pub for a drink, before we turn back to the hotel. It’s just a lemonade – you coming with us?’

‘Of course’, I replied.

I didn’t want to walk back on my own and everyone else seemed keen to get into the pub, in fact they seemed to start walking more quickly than before.

We had walked up a hill at the end of the Grassmarket into darker territory. We stopped and were now facing three pubs, all of which did not look the most salubrious of establishments. What I later realized was that we had been drawn into Edinburgh’s ersatz red-light district – affectionately known by locals as the ‘pubic triangle’. This had not happened by coincidence. Within seconds of entering the bar, most of my teammates were seated next to the stage where a stripper was well into her routine.

Like any hormonal teenager finding himself surrounded by half-naked women, I was initially in a state of shock. I tried my best to relax, and after ten minutes it’s fair to say my mind was no longer on the fact that I was making my debut for Scotland B the following day. Just then the door to the bar swung open and in walked the three members of the Scotland management team. We had been busted and thoughts were running through my head that we’d be sent back to our clubs for a lack of professionalism. However, it turned out that the Scotland management had arrived not on a search and rescue mission, but clearly with more personal agendas. We quickly made our excuses and left, although we couldn’t shout to one of our team-mates at the other end of the bar. We left him stranded, beer in one hand, stripper in the other. Curiously, neither players nor management ever mentioned the incident again.

The next day I played a game that was almost the reverse of my performance for Gala against Melrose. On this occasion, I played some of my best rugby to date for the first sixty minutes. I don’t think I had ever kicked as long and as accurately, and my half-back partnership with Andy Nicol was going very well. However, just after the hour mark I committed an absolute howler, which saw the Irish take the lead for the first time.

From a scrum near the halfway line I called a pretty standard backline move called ‘Dummy rangi, rangi’. This may sound like something that is shouted at a toddler’s birthday party, but all it involved was that I ran across the field with my inside-centre dummying the outside centre before I finally gave the ball to the full-back on a scissors pass. However, for whatever reason, full-back Mark Appleson stayed out wide as I took off on my lateral run. In attempting to show him that he was supposed to be running towards me, I stuck out the ball in one hand. Irish centre Martin Ridge didn’t need a second invitation and stole the ball from my fingertips to run in unopposed from fifty yards. In hindsight, this was not my wisest career move to date. Just to rub salt in the wound, I dropped a ball close to my goal-line near the end of the game – another mistake which resulted in an Irish try. We lost the match 29–19.