No frills on Scots’ maiden voyage into rugby league
Graeme Thompson recalls humble beginnings 21 years ago
O describe it as rough and ready would be generous. This was supposedly rugby’s professional code but, just 21 years ago, every man among them, including some who were playing professionally, paid their £80 a head for the ferry journey, bus and youth hostel accommodation to be rugby league pioneers, representing Scotland in a first ever full international in Ireland ahead of that year’s Emerging Nations World Cup.
A narrow defeat was suffered but the man-of-the-match award was collected by Graeme Thompson, one of several who defied dire warnings to play both codes of the sport.
“The year before my mother got a phone call from Bill Hogg (then secretary of the Scottish Rugby Union), when a Scotland XIII played a North East XIII prior to the Scottish American Football final at Meadowbank and Hughie Waddell, who was a professional, was playing for the North East,” Thompson recalls. “Bill knew I’d been playing amateur rugby league and because someone on the opposition had been paid to play, the warning was that we might have been risking our amateur status. I was in New Zealand playing rugby union so I didn’t play and catch the professional disease.”
By the late summer of 1995 that was no longer an issue as union went ‘open’, and Thompson remembers that ground-breaking trip to the Dublin Showgrounds with affection, albeit he never took full advantage of his award.
“I was presented by the Irish president with a ‘voucher’ for £100 on Stena Sealink. It was the business card of somebody who worked for Stena Sealink with £100 written on the back of it in pencil or pen. I wasn’t convinced whether I would be able to cash it in so passed it on to someone else who said they could use it. I never found out whether they did,” he laughs.
They did enough to persuade one of the greats of Scottish rugby to join them at that Emerging Nations World Cup, though, little more than a year before Alan Tait made his fine return to rugby union with Scotland and the British Lions.
Tait had witnessed their efforts in Dublin first hand because that Ireland- Scotland international was a curtainraiser for his Leeds side’s Charity Shield meeting with Wigan. Furthermore he owed them a favour as a result because, having brought the wrong footwear for the Showgrounds mud, he had borrowed a pair of boots from Gavin Manclark, one of the Scottish players.
His arrival in the camp understandably generated excitement. “There was much conjecture about who would get to room with Taity,” Thompson recalls.
“It was allocated to Stu McCarthy, a cockney lad who never touched a drop of alcohol but was the life and soul of every party and their first meeting pretty much summed up the range of talents because he walked into their room and Taity said: ‘Hello . . . Alan Tait, Leeds and Great Britain,’ to which Stu replied: ‘Stu McCarthy, Canvey Island second XV.’”
Not that the decidedly un-starry Tait would be thrown by that, but he was when it came to rules governing team kit and the kilts that remain part of their uniform to this day.
“We’d had the team talk ahead of the first game in Featherstone and Billy Gamba, a real character from Aberdeen who was a stalwart of the Scottish Students team, brought a box with him and put it down beside the steps of the bus and said: ‘Anybody who is not wearing their kilt the proper way needs to put their underwear in there’,” says Thompson.
“Charlie McAllister, a big tough Kiwi wing [father of All Black Luke] could not believe that in these temperatures in Yorkshire in October/November, he had to go without his pants, but there was one other culprit who had obviously spent too long down in Leeds and that was Alan Tait who had to remove his and put them in the box as well.”
Which speaks to the ethos that Steve McCormack, the head coach, seeks to maintain when describing their number one rule in camp as being ‘no egos’.
Thompson’s career has taken him into elite sports management and while the biggest collisions he must worry about now are granite on granite as British Curling’s head of performance, he previously held the same role with Great Britain Rugby League during which, whisper it, he was appointed manager of the England team just as their captain Sam Burgess was breaking through.
Along with his role as a director of both the Rugby League International and European Federations he consequently maintains a keen interest in the development of the Scotland team and is encouraged by what he has seen ahead of the toughest challenge in their history as they prepare to take on world champions Australia tomorrow, before then facing England and New Zealand.
“I went to visit Steve (McCormack) at the Oriam Centre and spent an evening with him and his staff having a real good chat, reminiscing,” says Thompson. “They are pretty careful about the blokes they want to bring here and the way Steve brings them together. For all those professional players, wherever they come from, whether Super League, NRL or wherever, it’s a tough business and a long old season. He does his homework and puts a value on their commitment.”
They will be better prepared than the only previous occasion that Scotland met Australia, at the World Nines in Fiji when a team that included George Graham, another who would make a hugely successful return to rugby union, found itself up against a who’s who of the sport.
“Mal Meninga was coach, Glen Lazarus, their massive prop, Ricky Stuart and Wendell Sailor were playing, I think Andrew Ettingshausen was rested for the game which was good news, but I was lined up against Steve Renouf,” Thompson says, pulling a face. “He scored their opening try. Before doing so I did tackle him at my first attempt, but as we got up I almost re-tackled him to slow down the play, so I can say I tackled Steve Renouf twice. Admittedly the second one conceded a penalty and they scored off the back of it, but my CV says marked out Steve Renouf.”
A fair few of the current squad will have their CVs similarly enhanced by the time this Four Nations tournament is over and this will be the pinnacle of several careers.
Their real achievement has been in getting into this contest against the world’s best. The only remaining challenge is to live up to the spirit of their recklessly brave predecessors.
‘Hello . . . Alan Tait, Leeds and Great Britain’ to which Stu replied: ‘Stu McCarthy, Canvey Island second XV’