KING OF THE MAJESTIC SIDESTEP
Jim Renwick was a Scots rugby icon when ordinary men played for love of the game and he beguiled fans with a trademark jink that made him...
THE ability to make important decisions in the maelstrom of international rugby was a hallmark of Jim Renwick. It was nurtured in his childhood and exhibited once and decisively in the mill, the other pressing arena of a Hawick life.
‘My mother told me: “You are going in the mills”,’ explains Renwick, now 67, recalling a moment of more than half a century ago.
‘I was taken around it and all I could hear was that noise of the machines. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. I told myself: “I am not working here.”
‘The boy who took us round told me I had the job. But I wasn’t going there. I got a job as an apprentice electrician with the electricity board and I was there all my life.’
Of course, it was not quite all of his life. Renwick found time to become one of the greatest rugby players. He also found the energy to become a father to seven children. ‘Aye, I’ve been busy,’ he says. ‘I don’t mind Father’s Day. I am no’ so keen on Christmas.’
He was the mercurial, marvellous centre in the Scotland days of Andy Irvine, Sandy Carmichael, Ian McGeechan, Alan Tomes, Alastair Cranston, John Rutherford, Roy Laidlaw and the rest. He played for the British and Irish Lions, the Barbarians and his country from 1972 to 1984.
His abrupt, dramatic sidestep was shown to good effect to avoid that looming career in a mill but it was just one of the many manoeuvres he employed to sustain a life in rugby that was imbued with talent, tradition and offered lessons he is keen to share, appropriately, in the Heart of Hawick, a café, theatre and office space.
Renwick has a game intelligence that is not restricted to the playing field. He is astute on how it was — and how it is now. He is philosophical about the differences. ‘I got help throughout my career,’ he says.
‘After the match, we went to the bar, where the older players would be talking to the younger guys.
‘You weren’t allowed to say a word for the first three years. But the older guys would take you through the game. Now if you say something to a player, they will say: “The coach doesn’t want us to do that”.’
He adds: ‘That’s fair enough. I never do it now. I suppose they will think that I am an old fool who played 40 years ago.’
There is no bitterness in this assessment, only a smile.
Renwick is buoyed by a deeplyheld faith. He believes he played rugby in the best place and time.
The Hawick team he enhanced was one of the greatest club sides of all time. The game he played was taking off in the world outside the town.
‘He says: ‘When I earned my first cap, Murrayfield wasn’t full. But soon there were more than 108,000 on the terracings. It was all on colour TV with Bill McLaren. Great times.’
He does not sidestep the issue of professionalism. There seems to be a party line among the veterans that they preferred being amateur. Renwick is typically clear-eyed.
‘Now, I wouldn’t have liked it as my job,’ he admits. ‘When it becomes that, then I don’t know if it would have done for me.
‘I always felt that, as amateurs, they didn’t have control over us. You trained on tour in the morning and had the rest of the day to yourself. But I know there is another view.
‘Big Billy Hunter, who played for Hawick, worked in the skin works. It was hard, smelly work, stripping skins from animals. When asked about being a pro, he said: “It would have been better than going in there”. And that’s fair enough.’
The amateur game did not make Renwick rich but it gave him fame, respect and a knowledge of the world.
‘I loved the tours,’ he declares. ‘My mother and faither never had a phone, never had a car, never owned a house.
‘Where have I been? New Zealand, Africa, Japan, Thailand. When we went, we saw the country. I don’t know if you can do that under professionalism.
‘We had a few pints, a game of golf. On the Lions tour, I was part of Bill Beaumont’s Sunday School.’
This august body was in thrall to the omnipotence of alcohol rather than the omniscience of an almighty deity.
Renwick also found time to investigate the surroundings.
‘I always remember on the Lions tour taking a walk down to the shore with big Toomba (Tomes) and there’s this fisherman, who tells me his story. He has a spear gun. He goes out, spears one big fish, comes in and sells it. That’s his day, his job. I liked that mentality.’
This appreciation for simplicity stretched into his rugby career.
‘The best coach I ever had was Derrick Grant,’ he says of the Greens and one-time Scotland coach. ‘There was nae nonsense.
‘It was a case of: “If you don’t want to do this, then that’s fine but off you go”.
‘You did what was expected of you. The coaching was: “This is what we are doing, this is why we are doing it, this is your job in the plan and that is all you have to do”.’
Renwick was imbued with a natural talent. He played cricket and football as a boy but, as he concedes: ‘In Hawick, it’s a’ rugby.’ He explains the intricacies of becoming one of the greatest
I wouldn’t have liked rugby as my job. As amateurs, they didn’t control us
centres ever. ‘There are three options; pass, run, kick,’ he explains. ‘You think it’s hard but it’s not. It is easy when you can do it, when you make the right choices. But some people find it easy to hit a golf ball 300 yards. I can’t do that. If you can dae it, you can dae it.
‘Are you given that? Does it come through your genes? Or do you pick it up?
‘I always think, for example, if you are dodgy under a high ball, then you might get better but you will never really get it right. The sidestep?
‘You can teach someone how to do it, but when (to do it) is the problem. Some go late, some go early. I don’t think you can coach that.’
He loved playing against and with such talents as Mike Gibson of Ireland and Gerald Davies of Wales.
‘Gibson kicked a ball through in one international and it bounced left sharply away from me and he touched down.
‘I told him at the dinner later that he was a lucky so and so. But he said to me: “Can you not make the ball bounce that way?”. He nearly had me for a moment.’
Renwick stayed on in rugby after ending his career with Hawick and the national team, playing on for five years until he was 40 with Hawick Harlequins. It taught him another lesson. He says: ‘The first Saturday, I could smell the drink in the dressing room.
‘The boys had been on the lash on the Friday night. I never said anything.
‘A couple of weeks later, we played Gala YM and lost in the last minute. The boys were all mumping and moaning.
‘I said: “Right boys, we didn’t lose the game today. We lost it because he didn’t come to training on Tuesday, because he is oot every Friday night, because he is no’ fit. You have to commit to this”. A couple of them started, then three or four joined in and the rest came aboard. The next season we won the league.’
Renwick did not fancy coaching. ‘I had a wee spell but it was not for me,’ he says. But he maintains his love of rugby.
He has just returned from a golfing trip with his pal Andy Irvine. And he has a story.
‘We noticed before a game against Wales that we could exploit the lack of space in the centre, he says.
‘Andy looked at the tapes and said: “We will play miss one and get the ball to me. Then miss two and get the ball to me. Then a double scissors with the ball to me and double dummy with the ball to me”.
‘I looked at him and said: “Here, I am missing oot all the time”.
‘He looks at me and says: “Jim, it’s not all about you”.’