Things can only get better for Russell... I can remember my own run-ins with management
AS the Six Nations draws closer, the big news in the last week or so has been about Finn Russell.
Scotland boss Gregor Townsend has explained that Russell was dropped from their squad after missing training last Monday following a drinking session in the team hotel.
After being told he wasn’t going to play against Ireland, he left the camp and returned to his club in Paris.
There are a few things to get straight here.
It’s rule number one and it has always been the same: If you go out or have a few drinks, you have to perform well the next day.
You make sure that it doesn’t affect your performance and that you train to a really high standard. That’s a bit of an old school rule.
But to not turn up to training – that’s very, very bad.
Then he decides not to stay after being told he won’t be picked for the first game – again, that’s poor.
But all is not lost for Russell. I say that as someone who knows what it’s like to get on the wrong side of a coach.
One thing to acknowledge is if you do have a couple of drinks, you’re putting yourself under massive pressure.
You know you have to perform even better in training because there is any easy excuse for coaches.
It’s also an easy stick for other players who want your position to beat you with. So, you simply have to perform.
But everybody messes up from time to time. Nobody is perfect... apart from Sam Warburton!
What Russell needs, to be honest, is for Scotland to do really badly at the weekend and that will help him.
I don’t know the guy and it’s tough to comment because we haven’t heard his side of the story.
But it looks like he needs to put his hands up and apologise to his coach and his team-mates. Then if he gets back into camp, he needs to get his head down and perform well.
I do feel a little bit sorry for him. I never like to see all this sort of stuff playing out in public.
There were a couple of instances when I made mistakes and had to hold my hands up throughout my career.
When I was really young, I was stupid, but you have to learn from those experiences.
You’re kept in a bubble and you don’t realise that people will recognise you.
At the end of the day, professional athletes are just normal people and sometimes you just don’t realise that you have such an effect on people.
I got blamed for a lot and by the end, sometimes I’d had enough of it and I would deny everything.
After one game, a few of us went to Bristol. We’d just lost, but we had a rest week coming up.
Apparently I’d been spotted and the management were annoyed that some of us – I won’t mention names – had gone out.
I denied that one and in the end I won the battle because eventually our old team manager Alan Phillips – a great character – said: “I thought it wasn’t true because somebody said you were only drinking cranberry juice!”
I remember Rob Howley having a go at me once for having a burger in my room when I was supposed to be in bed.
He had a go at me for this nonsense and wanted to know what other players had been having one, too.
Howlers was onto me all week, but then we went on to beat England by 30 points, scupper their Grand Slam and win the Six Nations Championship ourselves.
And that was the key. I would never let anything jeopardise my performance or my team’s chances of winning. I always made sure I was at my best during training and on the field.
Gats was good at handling me. I lost it in training a couple of times with coaches and I had to apologise to him once.
We were doing something about ball presentation and safe to say I didn’t agree with it! I lost it, starting shouting and screaming.
I apologised to him afterwards and he was totally fine. I knew I was in the wrong, but the best coaches don’t mind seeing that from time to