Flashback Townsend’s wonder pass
One flicked ball against France 23 years ago was enough to earn Scotland’s centre sporting immortality, writes Richard Bath
In the history of matches between France and Scotland there have been a host of dramatic incidents. There is the Jim Calder try that sealed Scotland’s Grand Slam at Murrayfield in 1984, Scotland’s remarkable five-try rout of Les Bleus in Paris on the way to winning the last Five Nations Championship in 1999, and Emile Ntamack’s last-minute try to beat Scotland in the 1995 World Cup in Pretoria.
Yet no moment is as etched on the minds of a generation of fans and players as a flash of genius from Gregor Townsend.
It was 1995 in the penultimate match at the Parc des Princes, and Scotland were trailing 21-16 with seconds left to play. The visitors were facing yet another dose of heroic failure in Paris when Scotland broke left, and Townsend, now the national coach but then playing outside centre, stepped off his left foot and broke between Thierry Lacroix and openside Laurent Cabannes. With the ball held high in his right hand, he offloaded out of the back of his hand into the breadbasket of the onrushing Gavin Hastings, who in the words of Bill Mclaren, “headed straight through a gap like a barn door for a memorable try”.
The Scotland players were in paroxysms and the kilted hordes behind the posts got down on hands and knees in the mock adulation “we’re not worthy” pose from Wayne’s World. In these days of outrageous Sonny Bill offloads, such manual dexterity may be common, but in 1995 it was like a play from another planet.
Immediately it was christened the “Toonie Flip”.
“I was on Gavin’s outside shoulder,” said Rob Wainwright. “You never knew what you were going to get from Gregor and I was just happy the ball went to Gavin, because normally those would bounce off you and make you look like a fool. I can’t remember who called it the Toonie Flip, but we were still on the pitch when it was coined and it just stuck.”
Townsend, of course, still bridles at the notion that his flourishes and sleight of hand were anything less than carefully rehearsed and always welcomed by his team-mates.
“I would have a different view of what is off the cuff,” he once said when asked about what was instinctive and what was practised as a player. “A lot of thought goes into an offload. Things do not happen by luck, they happen by learning, by experience.”
In the hours and days after that try, thousands of schoolchildren would practise the Toonie Flip in playgrounds across Scotland. Although younger fans may not be quite as familiar with it, some Scottish legends of the game retain an affection for the moment.
“That was my own personal favourite try,” says Hastings. “We finally managed to beat France in Paris. It had been 26 years since we won there and for once we put everything together over the course of 80 minutes and in the last few minutes I managed to scamper over. We hung on to record a pretty great victory.”
Hastings and Wainwright remember toasting the Toonie Flip “countless times” that night at the Ambassador Hotel. “We started off drinking 1982 Dom Perignon Champagne and pushed on till the only fizz left was Asti Spumante, and then eventually there was none left,” laughs Wainwright. “We left the team manager with a bill for £7,500.”
“It was one of the great nights and one of the great victories,” remembers Hastings. “To this day people still talk about it – but only in Scotland, of course.”