Spurrell saved me from a real kicking
WE SPEAK WITH A NUMBER OF WELL-KNOWN RUGBY FIGURES ABOUT THE CLUB THEY CALL THEIR OWN. THIS WEEK IT’S THE TURN OF DAVID TRICK WHO TERRORISED DEFENCES IN THE BLUE, BLACK AND WHITE OF BATH FROM 1979 TO 1991
Often stood with hands on hips waiting for the ball to arrive out wide so that he could strut his stuff, ‘just give the ball to Tricky’ was an oft-heard cry among the Bath faithful.
“I was lucky, the crowd were on my side very early on, after I’d scored a hat-trick at home against Bristol,” he says. “It was useful as well because later in my career, when they never gave me the ball, it meant I had someone to talk to!
“I’d scored two in my debut game against South Wales Police, two away at Bedford and then in my third game, the Bristol game, I went one better. I never thought much about it at first because I was used to scoring lots of tries in school matches.” The Bath Chronicle had other ideas though, as Trick explains.
“I’d been allowed to stay overnight in Bath for the first time (from Bryanston School in Somerset) after the Bristol game – what a mistake that was!
“I’d been holed up in the (Bog) Island Club until 2am and ended up sleeping in the boot of a car.
“The following morning I wandered down to the train station and picked up a newspaper. With my name and me scoring a hat-trick, it was a headline writer’s dream.
“I came to realise that scoring three tries against Bristol was quite a big deal.”
Trick never
came across as a player who was zealously passionate for the cause, such was his relaxed demeanour, it was the likes of Roger Spurrell who were prepared to spill blood in the heat of the battle. However, his will to win was as strong as any of his team-mates and he came to understand what it mean to be part of ‘the Bath family’. “I had no thoughts of playing rugby after school, never once did it cross my mind. My housemaster, a guy called Peter Fale, played for Bath in the 50s and he had a couple of contacts at the club and said to them, ‘we’ve got this kid at school, he’s not bad, you might want to take a look at him’. “When it came to my last year, the school picked out five games they wanted me to play in and they made me available to Bath for all the rest.
“I didn’t think too much about it until I walked into the changing rooms and the first person that greeted me was little Johnny Horton.
“He used to sit on the bench to the right of the changing room door, and he stood up, put his hand out and introduced himself and said, ‘Welcome to Bath, I hope you enjoy your time here’. All I could think was crikey, I saw you on the telly playing for England two weeks ago – he was the one person who didn’t need to introduce himself ! In many respects, it was just a great welcome.
“After that it was a no-brainer that I was going to play rugby and play rugby for Bath.
“At the time I didn’t have a wife or kids and playing rugby kind of becomes your life, everything you did revolved around it and the club.
“The old buzzword at Bath was ‘family’ and to be perfectly honest I didn’t subscribe to that for quite a while because I knew who my real family were, and I thought it was just … urgh.
“That changed though after a year or so when we played Gloucester away in an evening match.
“I remember it so vividly. They put a big kick over my head, and I’ve run back and fallen on the ball. Just before eight hairy-arsed Gloucester forwards could jump on me Roger Spurrell knocks me to the ground and lands on top of me and they kicked lumps out of him instead.
“Afterwards, he got up and turned to me, with that stupid big smile of his, and said, ‘I thought you were a bit young for that’. From that moment, I subscribed to the family notion.”
Word of Trick’s pace spread as far north as Oldham where the Rugby League club put in a substantial bid.
And, much closer to home, Bristol tried to tempt him away on several occasions.
“For five consecutive summers they phoned me to ask if I’d join them,” he reveals. “They’d always get the players that knew me to do it. I told them I was genuinely flattered but I struggled to make Bath’s training ground let alone theirs.
“I realised the first summer that they didn’t call that I mustn’t be as good as I used to be.”
With his knockabout humour, Trick doesn’t strike you as an obvious choice for the role of club president, but the honour was bestowed to him not once but twice. It was only recently that he stepped down from his second term to hand over the baton to another club legend, John Hall.
As self-deprecating as ever, Trick admits the move into ‘higher office’ came as a bolt out of the blue – like many of his try-scoring runs.
“It was never on my radar, never in a million years did I think I’d end up being club president,” he says.
“When I first did it the position was voted on and one of the people who had a vote was Jack Rowell.
“I bumped into him at a home game and he said, ‘is what I’m hearing right. Are you going for club president?’
“I said, ‘well, yes, can I count on your vote?’ He looked at me and said, ‘it might not be a bad call’ before taking a big pause and adding ‘given the dearth of talent that has put itself forward.’
“I was the best of a really bad crop in his eyes.”
“I came to realise that scoring three tries against Bristol was quite a big deal”