STUART HOGG
Stuart Hogg admits he got too big for his boots after the 2013 Lions tour. Four years on, the Scotland full- back has a more mature approach
HANGING AT Stuart Hogg’s house in the East Dunbartonshire village of Bearsden, effectively in the Glasgow suburbs, is a framed jersey with a particular relevance to the odyssey he’s embarking on in New Zealand. It’s all black and has the number 15 on the back. In the autumn of 2014 it was the shirt worn by his opposite number, Ben Smith, when New Zealand beat Scotland 24-16 at Murrayfield. Every day when he comes down the stairs for his breakfast he eyes that jersey, belonging to a man he describes as the “best full-back in the world”.
On that day in November almost three years ago, Scotland wore red. “I have his jersey but I can guarantee you that Ben Smith doesn’t have my
“I’m not goIng there to hold pads–I want to have the bIggest Influence I can have”
red one hanging on his wall at home,” smiles Hogg. “I’ve huge admiration for him. He’s an unbelievable player. At times he’ll make a tackle on the left wing and then what seems like seconds later he’ll be putting somebody away on the right wing. World class. I look at his jersey and it makes me want to do better every day.”
Hogg is doing just fine the way he is – a second Lions tour at the age of 24 with 53 Scotland caps already to his name and 16 tries plus back-to-back Six Nations Player of the Year awards. It’s not a bad haul while still having his best years ahead of him.
So much has changed in his life since he was the youngest member of Warren Gatland’s touring party in Australia 2013. He’s got two children now – his little boy Archie and his baby Olivia, born in the week of the Italy game in this year’s Six Nations.
“Archie is up and walking now. He’s tanking about the place. It’s funny. Gill (his wife) and the kids were away in Hawick for a few days a while back and I came in from training and immediately stuck on one of the children's channels on telly. I just did it automatically. It’s routine. I’m sitting there watching
Paw Patrol on my own and eventually I go, ‘Hang on, why I am watching this? Archie’s not here’. You enter a whole new world when you have kids. You start impersonating Daddy Pig from Peppa Pig and singing songs from Moana. Ryan Wilson, a big and tough back-row forward, has kids and he comes into training singing songs from television programmes and then I join in. Life has changed a lot.”
He has different expectations as well. Four years ago he was wide-eyed and just glad to be there. He only had 15 caps at the time. He was under no pressure to make the Test squad and just went with the flow, playing a bit at 15, a bit at ten. That’s not the case now. Making the squad was an honour but making the Test team is what he’s about.
That’s not the only change. Hogg’s self-analysis can be brutally hard. When he documents what happened to him after the Lions tour four years ago he may as well take a stick out and start beating himself with it. In saying how “above himself” he got, he doesn’t spare the lashes.
“After that Lions tour in Australia I was a bit of a nightmare,” he begins. “I always wanted to be the best I could possibly be and, selfishly, it became all about me. I was trying to take on the world and I lost a lot of people. People judge you on the first time they meet you and back then I wasn’t giving off a true reflection of the person I am.
“I thought I was better than what I was. I was a bit above myself because everything came that quick to me. I’ve always been confident but there’s a fine line between confident and arrogant and I probably crossed the line. A Lion at 20. That’s great but I thought I’d made it. I had zero involvement in the Tests but I believed I’d arrived. I came back to play for Glasgow the following season, picked up an injury and the next thing I was struggling to get back in the team. I was thinking, ‘Why the hell is this happening to me?’ I should be playing.”
There was the red card in the Six Nations as well, a grim day for Hogg and for Scotland as they went down by 50 points to Wales in the full-back’s absence. A few months later, May 2014, Gregor Townsend put him back in the Glasgow team for the final game of the regular Guinness Pro12 season. Glasgow were already guaranteed a semi-final slot before that home match against Zebre and Hogg saw it as an opportunity to force his way back into the side. Peter Murchie was wearing 15 back then.