Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography. Bill Beaumont

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ the ability to play it whichever way they wanted and was experienced enough, once on the field, to determine the tactics rather than adhere slavishly to whatever battle plan had been concocted in the dressing room.

      Even when the selectors finally turned to Smithy that season, having dropped Lampkowski, they still contrived to get it horribly wrong. Initially they paired Steve with Moseley’s Martin Cooper for the game against France in Paris but Martin was getting over an injury and, before we flew out on the Thursday, he was subjected to the most rigorous fitness test I have ever seen. If he had started out fit there is no way he would have been at the end, and, surprise, surprise, he was ruled out of the game.

      At that stage it was patently obvious to everyone involved that Alan Old, who had already been named on the replacements’ bench, was the player who should be called in at the eleventh hour. All except for the selectors who plucked another name out of the hat and Chris Williams, the Gloucester fly-half, was rushed out to the French capital to earn his one and only cap, while poor Alan sat and watched us go from bad to worse.

      When I think of how organised things are today in the England camp it is difficult even trying to comprehend just how chaotic it used to be. You really did have to be involved to understand how bad it was and I had sympathy for Chris because an international debut is tough enough anyway without it being made even more difficult by going in unprepared, and having to join a losing side that was very low on morale.

      France hammered us 30–9 and seven members of that side – Garry Adey, Bob Wilkinson, John Pullin, Peter Butler, Ken Plummer, David Cooke and Chris Williams – were never seen again. I had only been on one winning side in eight international starts but survived to fight again. It was little wonder we were so poor because the standard of selection was awful and too many of the players, myself included, simply weren’t playing at a competitive enough level on a regular basis. By that stage I had found club rugby pretty well pressure-free and it was only in the county season that the standard was high enough to be meaningful. Even then there was a big disparity in terms of the ability of the county sides and, with a side as strong as Lancashire had become, there were a limited number capable of asking serious questions of us. Gloucestershire would always do that and, in the northern region, Northumberland enjoyed a dominant spell with a side based largely on the successful Gosforth club. It has been very different since the game went professional and the best players have been confined to a smaller club elite, much though some in the game hate the thought of any form of elitism at club level. With top players scattered around a great many clubs, it was a mammoth, costly and time-consuming task for selectors to traverse the length and breadth of the country checking on form.

      The present England management not only has its senior squad available for training on a regular basis but is also able to monitor progress by taking in just six games every weekend. Very often those games are spread over three days and, even if Clive Woodward and his coaches can’t always get to games they have the facility of watching match videos. Nothing is left to chance and most countries now envy our domestic competition.

      The 1976–7 season dawned with me in good condition and spirits. I was due to get married, Lancashire were sweeping all before them, Fylde even had a good run in the John Player Cup, rugby’s equivalent to the FA Cup, and the British Lions were due to go on tour to New Zealand the following summer. My hope was that I might possibly be in with a chance of a Lions tour providing that I stayed in the England side and performed well. I thought my chances had been enhanced when a combined North and Midlands side crushed Argentina 24–9 at Leicester, just seven days before the Argies lost by a mere point to Wales in Cardiff. A lot of good it did me. England had a new selection committee, headed by the genial Sandy Sanders and including Mike Weston, Derek Morgan and Budge Rogers, and I was dropped down to the Rest side for the final trial. Not only was I fed up over my demotion, I also had to abstain from seeing in the New Year in traditional liquid fashion because the administrators, in their infinite wisdom, decided to play the trial game on New Year’s Day. The only saving grace was that I was in some fairly good company, with Steve Smith and John Horton at half-back and Dusty Hare at full-back. All three were with me when we performed the Grand Slam three years later. We dominated the line-out, largely through the efforts of Andy Ripley who had been given a roving commission at the line-out with me and the other second row, Barry Ayres, acting as decoys. At the interval the sides were level so Barry and I were promoted to the England team in place of Bob Wilkinson and Roger Powell and the seniors ran out comfortable 20–3 victors. That ensured that I was in the starting line-up when the Five Nations began but, even though selection improved that season, there was still a glaring omission – Tony Neary.

      I had played alongside Tony for Lancashire, the North and England ever since I had broken through into the senior ranks and knew he was an enormously talented player. Peter Dixon was another badly treated by a succession of English selection panels although, under Sandy, they got it right that season by including him. As they also picked Roger Uttley as captain, England could have had a back row of Uttley, Dixon and Neary. They had to wait until Otley two years later to discover just what they had been missing: three great-thinking footballers and first-rate ball-handlers, who played Graham Mourie’s All Blacks off the park to record a memorable victory that, I suspect, still rankles with the New Zealanders.

      We beat the Scots 26–6 at Twickenham and were almost getting giddy with excitement when we beat Ireland at a muddy Lansdowne Road. For the second successive game the English pack took control, although it was fly-half Martin Cooper who got over for the only score of the game following a good break by current broadcaster Alistair Hignell – another talented footballer whose fearless tackling provided much-needed solidity in defence. As a cricketer of county standard he also had good hands.

      Nobody needed reminding that we were just two games away from a Grand Slam but our next outing was to be against the same French side that had demolished us twelve months earlier. We faced the same fearsome pack but, in 1977, we gave as good as we got and should have won the game, which ended 4–3 in favour of the French. Even then they were assisted by Alistair missing five out of six kicks at goal and further helped by a very dubious try scored by their centre François Sangalli after everyone other than the referee had been convinced that full-back Jean-Michel Aguirre had knocked on. The French boys admitted afterwards that they felt we had deserved to win.

      Michel Palmie played in the French second row that day, as he had a year earlier, and we got to know each other quite well. At one stage we served on the European Cup committee together, and I soon learned that when he was present at the meetings held in Dublin it was not a good idea to stay overnight unless, of course, I wanted to get completely wrecked. He played for Béziers, and when Hilary and I went on a camping holiday in that region in the summer of 1978, I decided to give him a call. He came round to the site to take us back to his place and caught me doing the washing-up. I never lived that down and he demanded to know, ‘Why is a man doing the washing-up. What is a wife for!’ I won’t relate Hilary’s comments here, but he became a good friend and we rarely pass through that part of the world without popping in to share a glass or two – or maybe a few more – with Michel.

      That defeat ended our Grand Slam hopes but I had other things on my mind because Hilary and I were married three days later, four days before I turned out to help Lancashire beat Middlesex in the county final. To say that Hilary was a very understanding young woman would be to understate the case but, by then, she had grown accustomed to the inconveniences of having an international rugby player as a partner. Fortunately, she had grown to enjoy both the game and the company, and had become part of the social scene at Fylde, doing her stint on the ladies committee and helping with some of the unglamorous work behind the scenes such as ensuring that numerous starving players didn’t go hungry after games.

      Our honeymoon had to be put on ice until the end of the season. Or at least that was the plan. In the meantime we travelled to Cardiff to take on Wales for the Triple Crown and my one great regret is that I never played in a winning England side at the National Stadium. Even before the new Millennium Stadium replaced it, the old stadium had lost some СКАЧАТЬ