Bill Beaumont: The Autobiography. Bill Beaumont

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СКАЧАТЬ my fellow pupils also came from abroad – the sons of servicemen, diplomats and businessmen who were based overseas – and I recall one boy staying with my family in Adlington for a month in the school holidays because he wasn’t able to join up with his parents. I suppose I did a lot of growing up at Ellesmere as well as involving myself in the usual pranks that healthy, energetic teenage boys get up to. We used to sneak out of school, I remember, to visit the local pub. Fortunately, it had three entrances, so we had our lookout and our escape route all worked out in case a master walked in and caught us supping ale. There was also a girls school not far away, which now and again joined ours for the occasional concert, but we tended to regard girls as though they had arrived from another planet. The problem with boarding schools in my time was that they were almost monastic in some respects. The interaction of a mixed-sex school is, I think, far healthier.

      I continued to concentrate rather more on my cricket than anything else but also played for the school team at rugby, usually at fly-half or full-back. There were no invitations to take part in county or international trials but I somehow don’t think I would have made the grade in the back division, so I’ve no grumbles on that score. But, since I have started to take note of what goes on, I can’t say that I have ever been greatly impressed by schoolboy selections. Some youngsters are pushed all the time by their masters, and if the latter also happen to be selectors you know who will get into the teams. I was interested to read in The Daily Telegraph how Ben Cohen, who has developed into a tremendous wing, played in England schoolboy trials but never got a look-in because he didn’t go to the right school.

      Some schools, invariably those in the independent sector, have a tradition of producing rugby talent and, over the years, some senior schools have offered scholarships to promising youngsters based on their sporting, rather than academic, ability. With regional and national selectors being drawn from leading schools, there was always a feeling that their own pupils had an unfair advantage in the pecking order. Today, fortunately, boys from schools that are not as well established in a rugby sense can still progress through the club structure now that we also have regional and national age-group sides drawn from clubs as well as schools.

      Selectors also seem to ignore the fact that some players are late developers, this being an aspect that worries me about the current academies, valuable though they are. Not everyone plays top-class schoolboy rugby and, despite what we achieved later, neither Fran Cotton nor I ever played for Lancashire Schools. Fran did make it to a trial in his final year at school but that’s as far as it went, although, knowing Fran as I do, I’m pretty sure this provided him with a goal to aim at. I have also found that some players peak early. They achieve a great deal at schoolboy level but can’t cope with not being top dog when they progress to the senior game, so they simply drift away. The door has always got to be open for players who don’t make it into the academies.

      At club level things have changed. When I played the game the county side was the avenue in the North towards national recognition, whereas in the Midlands clubs like Coventry, Moseley, Leicester and Northampton provided the route to international status. Now, however, international players are likely to be drawn from any of the 12 professional clubs in the Zurich Premiership, and, whereas clubs like Bath and Leicester dominated almost unchallenged for long periods, enabling them to attract the best young talent, there is now a far better spread of talent throughout the entire Premiership. Any player performing well in that competition is going to attract the attention of the national coaches and, with England selection being down to head coach Clive Woodward, there is none of the horse-trading that I suspect went on between selectors from different parts of the country in the old days.

      Since I was a youngster, much more has been done through the clubs in terms of developing players, largely through the introduction of mini- and junior rugby. That was essential because of the way team sport was discouraged at many schools simply because someone had the daft idea that life shouldn’t be about winners and losers. They didn’t want youngsters to feel either the elation of victory or the pain of defeat but, whatever they say, life is competitive and I feel sorry for those kids who will grow up with no real knowledge of the concept of team sports. I have a real passion for such sports because I believe they mould you for life generally. You learn how to work together, how to show humility in success and how to cope with setbacks. Regardless of what some of the politically correct brigade might desire, we are not all equal and never will be. And, wherever you go in life, there will always be someone in charge.

      I left Ellesmere when I was 17, with no inkling of what the future held for me. At that time I assumed I would work in the family business, play cricket for Chorley and perhaps play rugby at my father’s old club, Fylde. Occasionally I have to pinch myself when I think back to how I was suddenly pitched on to a rollercoaster ride that brought its share of joy and heartache but one that, despite the dips and the empty feeling in the stomach these brought, I wouldn’t have changed anything.

CHAPTER TWO

       Remember you’re a donkey

      My rugby future was being mapped out for me while I was still at Ellesmere College. Father sent a letter to Arthur Bell, the long-serving Fylde secretary, offering my services and pointing out that, although I had been playing full-back towards the end of my school career, I was a bit on the slow side and would probably end up in the pack. So it was with a considerable degree of trepidation that I set off for my first training session at the ground in St Annes, making sure that I arrived in plenty of time. I needn’t have worried because I was to find that not everyone displayed my enthusiasm for training.

      I quickly got used to the pattern of training twice a week and discovered that work and family commitments affected attendance levels. Only half of the team would bother to turn up on a Monday, when one of the lads would lead us in some fitness work and, when we reassembled on Thursday evenings, we would meet in the back bar at the club and mess about flinging a ball around until someone suggested that it might be a good idea if we actually went outside and got started; a decision that would be put off for as long as possible if it happened to be wet and cold, which it invariably was. Even then most of the discussion, if we were scheduled to play away from home, usually concerned whether or not we were staying at our host club and making a night of it. Coaches were unheard of in those days and it was invariably the captain who called the shots on the training pitch. Afterwards, the routine was to down a couple of pints, in some cases rather more than that, and then to eat as many portions of fish and chips as we could lay our hands on. Today’s coaches and nutritionists would have had a fit if they could have seen us but it was a very different game then. Had I played in the professional era, I somehow couldn’t see myself surviving on pasta and salad! When I was captain of England, my Friday-night routine would be to settle down at home with Hilary to a prawn cocktail followed by a steak and a bottle of wine, which I am sure would be frowned today.

      Training might have been somewhat haphazard in those days but the one thing there was in abundance was club loyalty. Today, away from the professional end of the game where players are tied to contracts, loyalty doesn’t seem to last from one week to the next. Well down the league system there are players who will move clubs simply because they are offered a few quid for doing so. I’m glad that I stayed faithful to Fylde throughout my playing career. We may not have been one of the biggest clubs in the business but we had a decent fixture list and rugby clubs then tended to have a strong family atmosphere. Many of my best friends are lads I played with in my early days at Fylde.

      Arriving for that first training session was rather like the first day at school. I was a new boy among men and the only player I knew was the captain, Mike Hindle, who also played at prop for Lancashire (I knew him because he was also in the textile trade). My father had introduced me to Mike and he had facilitated my club membership, but it was to be some time before we rubbed shoulders on the same pitch. I was picked to make my debut at full-back for Fylde’s sixth team against a Manchester junior side called Burnage СКАЧАТЬ