I was wrong to retire after captaincy snub
As is true in everyday life, rugby is all about taking your opportunities, however they may come about.
I’d literally just scored a try for Harlequins as our home game against the Army approached half-time when the club chairman, John Currie, ran onto the pitch at the Stoop and told the referee to stop the game. He then headed towards me and said he had Derek Morgan (an England selector) on the telephone wanting to know if I could play for England against Romania that afternoon.
At first, I thought it was an elaborate wind-up but eventually I realised he was serious, and I left the pitch and got into a car laid on by the RFU, with my boots still on. Back at the team hotel, I was given a quick fitness test and was cleared to play.
Despite playing nearly a half a few hours earlier, I managed to assert myself on the game and sufficiently impressed the England coach at the time, Dick Greenwood, to become his pack leader for the 1985 Five Nations. I kind of ran the side to be honest because Paul Dodge was a very quiet captain.
We drew with France, beat Scotland but then lost to Ireland – in a game that had been postponed from earlier in the year because of bad weather – before finishing with a defeat to Wales in which Jonathan Davies had a brilliant international debut.
We toured New Zealand that summer and, in the first Test, we had the All Blacks on the rack. We scored a great try through Mike Teague, from a back row move down the blindside, and Mike ‘Burglar Bill’ Harrison got another. New Zealand were there for the taking but, as always, they found a weakness and a way to win. In the second Test, they tied me in and they ran move after move into Stuart Barnes, and we fell apart.
I’d captained England in the game against Southlands and did so again on our return against a Mickey Steele-Bodgers XV. Everyone was writing me up for the captaincy, but I didn’t get it. Foolishly, I threw my toys out of the pram and decided to retire. It was the wrong decision – that Harlequins side under my captaincy was shaping up to be a very good one and went on to win the John Player Cup against Bristol a year later in 1988.
I think my outspoken views on how the game should move forward was one of the reasons for me being overlooked by England. Comments about how the game should become more professional and better organised made it into the Press, and I was summoned to a meeting at Twickenham. I was chastised and told in no uncertain terms that the game was strictly amateur, and I had to stop “promoting professional ideas of leagues and money for players”.
All in all I won 12 caps and a few more against non-recognised IRB countries such as Fiji, USA andCanada and was the last England international to come out of Haileybury School until Jamie George made his debut. I played alongside his dad Ian, a scrum-half, when Middlesex won the County Championship in 1985 (12-9 v Notts, Lincs & Derbys).
At Haileybury, I was coached by Danny Hearn, a real inspiration. Danny was destined to captain England but broke his neck putting in a crash tackle on All Blacks centre Ian McRae while playing for Midlands & Home Counties. It left him quadriplegic and he coached us from a wheelchair. Danny had this uncanny ability to get inside your head and mentally strip you down and build you up depending on how well you’d done. The only other coach I knew who could do that was Earle Kirton, the All Blacks fly-half, who was my coach at Harlequins for a couple of years.
Earle didn’t mess about, he once dropped me for being late for training. I’d gone on a surfing trip down to Newquay but broke down on the motorway on the way back. After that, I packed my board away and concentrated on rugby.
Quins lacked a certain mental toughness until Earle came in. You can be as physical and as fit as possible, and I prided myself on my fitness, but if you can’t mentally apply it on the field, then it holds you back. I was driven by a desire to be the best in my position and be in a side that was winning – and Clive Woodward, who had joined at the same time as me, felt the same. He left after one season and tried to persuade me to go to Leicester with him, saying that it was the best place to be, but I was a London boy through and through and stayed put.
I was the only Londoner in the
England squad when I progressed from the U23s to the senior ranks in 1979. I think I was looked at with a bit of disdain by the northerners in the squad who probably thought I was a Kings Road fancy-dan, and not tough enough. I had to prove myself, and I like to think I did that against Scotland – I put in a big tackle on their fly-half John Rutherford, bordering on being late, and it led to him dropping the ball and resulted in a try. Jim Telfer, their coach, spoke about how that tackle was the gamechanging moment of the match.
The Scotland game was my second cap, my debut had come down at Cardiff Arms Park a few weeks earlier. Tony Neary had retired, and he’d sent me the most amazing telegram, which I’ve still got, offering his support. One of the telling things he said was to be my own man and not to be brow beaten by the likes of Fran Cotton and Steve Smith – the big names from the 1980 Grand Slam team. But I did feel the pressure to be as good as the player I’d replaced – a British & Irish Lion.
To lose by two points to Wales was gut-wrenching. England hadn’t won in Cardiff since the Richard Sharp era, the days of black and white TV, and it was shaping up to be a great victory but Clive bought a dummy from their scrum-half, Brynor Williams and stepped offside, and they kicked a penalty in the last few minutes to win by two points.
Winters (Peter Winterbottom) came on the scene and having such a great player playing in the same position limited my opportunities. That said, we did play together, left and right, once on tour to Canada in ’83 and for the Barbarians and it worked really well. But the coaches of the time weren’t adventurous enough to try it in a Test match; they preferred a traditional burly No.6 on the blindside. When I retired, Dick Best asked me who Quins should get as a replacement. Winters was the obvious choice. They found him a job and brought him down.
Dick had been captain for two years before I took over in ’83 and the coaching at that time was really bad. He was a good player and a great motivator with a canny understanding of the game so I suggested to the committee that he became coach. He’d retired from rugby and was working for ITV so I arranged to meet him and asked if he’d consider being coach. He kind of laughed it off until he realised that I was serious, and that’s how it all happened.
When I look back, it was obviously disappointing missing out on the ’83 Lions tour, especially as I’d been reserve carded and came so close. But I don’t have any complaints really because I had a long career of 14 years, one without any major injury, and played with and against some great players in a brilliant era. There was a real brotherhood in the game and while that still exists, I don’t think it runs quite as deep in the pro era.
“RFU told me to stop promoting ideas of leagues and money for players”