Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography. Bill Beaumont

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СКАЧАТЬ of the game she was able to say that at least she knew the big guy with the number four on his back. Apparently he was quite impressed that she’d been chatting to an international rugby player but she couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about. Anyway, she told me later that she hadn’t been too impressed by my performance that afternoon because I hadn’t been running around doing spectacular things with the ball. It took me some time to teach her that forwards have a very different but equally important role and that beating Gloucester 31–3 was not something you did every day.

      My initial impression of Hilary was enhanced at our second meeting and I asked her out on a date. Unfortunately, I had forgotten the Lancashire trials so I had to hastily reschedule and, as it was, our first date coincided with Lancashire playing Cumberland and Westmorland in a warm-up game, fortunately at Fylde’s ground – a game in which the father of Sale Sharks wing Mark Cueto was playing for the opposition. I wore my England blazer to impress and took her for a drink at the Grapes pub in nearby Wrea Green, not realising that we would one day be married and living just around the corner.

      That was the start of a fine, if at times complicated, romance bearing in mind that rugby was tending to dominate my life and Hilary was a student in Manchester, preparing to become a French teacher. She shared a house with two other students and that’s where we did most of our courting. Although it was often a case of snatching a few hours together between work, training and Hilary’s studies we got engaged the following February. Fortunately, Hilary grew to love the game, which was just as well considering that, with three rugby-daft sons, it does rather dominate our lives. Instead of watching me play she now watches the boys and the only difference is that these days she has three times as many sets of dirty kit to wash and iron!

      Throughout the ups and downs of my career, both in rugby and in business, Hilary has been my greatest supporter, confidante and friend – in short, the love of my life – and without her I would never have achieved half the things I have achieved. We are both basically shy people who enjoy nothing more than spending a quiet time with our family and, in a way, we had to force ourselves to do things that were being demanded of me because of the high profile I had acquired. I’m fortunate that she was always there to encourage me. If she hadn’t been, there is a lot that would have been left undone. During the early years of our marriage she had to endure long separations that would have put a strain on many marriages but she coped with those well and has proved a wonderful mother to our children. She has held the ship steady during my absences and even now is involved in the business, becoming a director a few years ago. Since moving into household and upholstery fabrics, the feminine touch has been much appreciated and there is no problem when it comes to decision making because that is something we have always done together.

      For my sins, I became a Lloyds Underwriter in the 1980s and, like a lot of people from the world of sport, I lost a lot of money in that venture, but with Hilary’s help I worked my way through it. We were fortunate having the family business to fall back on.

      Our engagement coincided with England having an even more disastrous time in the Five Nations Championship and I’m just grateful that Hilary and I were better at selecting our partners than the England selectors were at picking a side that might actually win something. With John Burgess gone from the scene, England elevated their Under-23 coach Peter Colston into the hot seat and it really was a baptism of fire. Peter’s one saving grace was that we did manage to beat Australia, even if we lost everything else.

      At least I was picked to play for England in what was effectively a trial game against the North and Midlands at Leicester. (It would be interesting to discover just how many different permutations of trials the selectors devised during what you might regard as some of the bleakest seasons in England’s history.) The game at Leicester was hardly a confidence-booster because we were beaten by a combined divisional side led by Peter Wheeler. The selectors’ axes were not merely sharpened after that but used with bloody effect, and seven members of that side were dispatched. Thankfully, I wasn’t one of those beheaded, and I also survived a narrow victory over the South at Gloucester when three more changes were made for the final trial at Twickenham just before Christmas.

      I held my place as we won 39–21 and the selectors picked us en bloc to take on Australia. Sadly for Roger Uttley he had been forced to pull out of the trial through injury, his place taken by Andy Ripley. The team included three new caps: Barrie Corless, the Coventry centre; Mark Keyworth, my old team-mate at Ellesmere College who was playing for Swansea; and a scrum-half who appeared to come from nowhere and who almost as quickly went back there. Mike Lampkowski, who was of Polish extraction, played for Headingley and had been a member of the North and Midlands side that beat England in the trial game. He was a very powerful player and extremely committed. He could batter his way through all but the best defences but he lacked that one ingredient that is so necessary to a scrum-half: he couldn’t pass a ball quickly and accurately and, at international level, you aren’t afforded the luxury of time.

      As debut games go, Lampkowski’s wasn’t too bad. It can sometimes happen that a new boy gets an adrenalin rush and plays better than he will ever play again. Certainly, the lad played out of his skin, despite his limited repertoire, scoring a try, and many were left thinking we had unearthed a real find. For obvious reasons, we were very keen to beat Australia but it turned out to be a very different Aussie side, especially in terms of attitude. The only Test they in fact managed to win was against Ireland in Dublin. We recorded what, at the time, was the biggest ever victory over our Commonwealth cousins from Down Under. Even with Steve Finnane, Peter Horton and Stuart MacDougall in their front row the game passed without incident, although the 23–6 scoreline may have given us a false impression of just where we stood in the pecking order. In those days the Aussies were nowhere near the force they have been in the last decade.

      Having earned the first three of my four caps against Australia, it was great, from a personal point of view, to be given the chance to play against the other countries in the Five Nations Championship. Yet it was a campaign to forget as we suffered a whitewash that had more to do with the selectors than the guys out on the park. We were well beaten by Wales, but then Lampkowski and Martin Cooper were up against Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett so the first chinks were seen in the scrum-half’s armour. The difference in class was patently obvious and Lampowski’s form had reached crisis level by the time we had succumbed to Scotland 22–12 at Murrayfield. Alan Old had been drafted in to partner him but passes were flying all over the place and he made a number of suicidal breaks, which resulted in him spending much of the game under a pile of Scottish bodies. Panic set in but the selectors kept faith with Mike and, instead, dropped our key line-out jumper at the back of the line, Andy Ripley, and replaced him with Leicester’s Garry Adey, who was much smaller and never reappeared in England colours once the campaign finished. Dave Duckham was injured so my Lancashire colleague Mike Slemen won his first cap in the 13–12 defeat by Ireland at Twickenham and, that time, Lampkowski paid the ultimate price after another poor game in which his inadequacies were once again exposed. I must confess to feeling sorry for him. It wasn’t his fault and he was being asked to do a job that, quite clearly, he was incapable of doing. Nobody helped him to either improve his service or iron out some of the wrinkles in his game.

      While Mike stayed in the side we simply couldn’t set up our backs, and I couldn’t believe that the selectors could ignore the claims of Steve Smith. I know he was a mate but when you play alongside a player you discover what sort of contribution he is capable of making and there was no doubt in my mind at that time that Smithy and Alan Old made up the best half-back pairing in the country. They were ignored for too long and it is interesting that both played key roles in the tremendous success of the North side that so comprehensively beat the All Blacks at Otley in 1979. There is an irony about Smithy being forced out by Lampkowski. He had been told by the selectors at the trial stage to concentrate his efforts on getting the ball out to the backs quickly, which is exactly what he did. Then, when he was left out of the side, he was told that he hadn’t been taking defences on in quite the manner that Lampkowski had. If that wasn’t double-Dutch then I don’t know what is. Smithy was penalised for obeying instructions and СКАЧАТЬ