SCOTLAND HOOKER ROSS FORD PROVES THERE IS LIFE IN THE OLD DOG YET...
‘There’s an excitement about what this team can achieve. Why would I walk away now?’ ‘We all felt if we’d won, with the way we played, we could have taken on anyone in the semis’
ROSS FORD has spent a career striving for success i n Scottish rugby in vain so, now that there is a rosy glow on the horizon, the hooker is not about to walk away. Ford will turn 32 at the end of the forthcoming RBS Six Nations Championship, will be 35 by the time the next World Cup meanders its way to Japan and will have more than 15 years of professional rugby under his belt by then. He believes, however, that the next few years could bring more tangible prizes than any period since he left Kelso Harlequins as a back row and debuted for Scotland as a hooker.
Having been a model professional renowned for his fitness work, and with few serious injuries, it was no surprise that he gave a hefty shoulder dunt to questions on retirement after Scotland regained pride lost i n 2011 with their performance, albeit in defeat, in the World Cup quarter-final against Australia.
‘No plans,’ he said, with a wry smile. ‘I’ll go as long as my body holds up and as long as somebody wants to pick me. I love playing for this team. Why would I walk away?
‘There’s an excitement here and I want to be part of that and see where we go. There is a good core group of boys, young boys and older ones as well, who won’t just be for this World Cup; they’ll be there for ones further down the line.
‘We’ve got youngsters who will, hopefully, be there for a long, long time, but you need experience, too, and I am enjoying my rugby for club and country right now — when you’re happy, you just want to play.’
Happiness did not come easy this week, however, and he was not, as in past autumns, knocking at the door of the Edinburgh coach and demanding a swift return to club duty.
Ford was controversially withdrawn from pro games in 2011, along with Allan Jacobsen, Richie Gray, Al Kellock and John Barclay, when then Scotland coach Andy Robinson insisted that the medics had diagnosed ‘over-training syndrome’.
This time it is mental more than physical as he, Greig Laidlaw, Stuart Hogg et al try to forget the turmoil of believing that, with two minutes to go, they were heading into today’s semi-final with Argentina only for a lost line-out, knock-on and refereeing mistake to combine to explode the dream in a matter of seconds.
‘That was the hardest thing — just to lose in that way,’ he said, ‘especially when the boys put so much effort in to get us to the point where it looked like we had it in the bag. To lose it in that way is tougher to take.
‘The changing room afterwards… the place was like a morgue. We all felt if we’d won, with the way we had played, we could have taken on anyone in the semis.’
Ford had only played after a threematch ban was overturned on appeal, bizarrely, after it was decided the original panel had wrongly judged his and Jonny Gray’s tackle in the Samoan win to be dangerous. He was told the night before he would be starting but felt for Fraser Brown and Tim Swinson, who were selected and then dropped.
‘The way it worked out was rubbish for the boys who went onto the bench,’ added Ford. ‘There’s a lot of words for the circumstances… but those lads dealt with it really well, just wanting the best for the team.’
To then suffer through another error, referee Craig Joubert publicly ‘outed’ by the same World Rugby body for getting his late penalty call wrong, brought a new level of torture.
Coach Vern Cotter had tried to repair some of the damage by sending both Brown and Swinson on long before the line-out at the death that David Denton failed to grasp, which led to the John Hardie knock-on and penalty that never was. Denton explained afterwards that Richie Gray was the obvious line-out target, but so obvious that Australia surrounded him with jumpers and left Denton totally unmarked.
Ford agrees that it was not a bad switch to call as Denton had no challengers and it should have been an easy take, had the lift been a fraction later, but he was also quick to point to a string of errors by made by Scotland throughout the entire match.
‘It (line-out) was talked about in the showers straight after we came in. The crowd were noisy and there were timing issues,’ he continued. ‘Dents said that he would have been able to take it if the timing had been spot on, but just with the incredible noise and everything, it was a fraction out.
‘And small things like that and that (refereeing) decision made a big difference in the outcome of the game.
‘The boys played some really good rugby at times. Maybe we failed to stop their maul as much as we should have — that gave them an “in” to the game, and a bit more possession and territory in our half.
‘If we’d been better at that, it might not have been quite so close at the end of the match.
‘You look at everything. Everyone was gutted and everyone has to deal with it their way. As an experienced player, I try to help as much as I can. But there’s not much you can do.
‘Vern said: “You remember these games, they get logged in your brain and it’s not easy to forget. Just go away, keep it there and work hard because of it, so it never happens again”.’
Where Ford is perhaps different to players who have retired after World Cups is that many of them have looked ahead and seen nothing but more of the same, the underdog battles, the rollercoaster ride, the shame of wooden spoons.
Ford sees a different picture emerging now, and stated that amidst the wreckage of deflation, tears and sore bodies at Twickenham, the squad agreed to a man that Australia had not taken away their optimism.
‘When I look back at it, when we got the ball in their half, we really went after them and played some good stuff,’ he said. ‘It gives us heart that we came up against a Southern Hemisphere team, and one playing the way Australia have been, and we went out to win it and nearly did.
‘It’s of little consolation to the boys now, but it’s something we can keep with us for the Six Nations, start to look forward and get better still.
‘The whole group has worked hard to get to this point. There are no egos. We all knuckle down, work hard and take the p*** out of each other. It’s a great group of boys to work with and I enjoy it.
‘There was a vibe in Scottish rugby at the end of last season, with Glasgow doing well and Edinburgh getting into the Final of the Challenge Cup, and it has carried on to the start of this season with the national team showing we can come out and play, score tries from anywhere and take games to the best in the world.
‘We are obviously bitterly disappointed about losing to Australia in the way that we did but, on the whole, Scottish rugby is in a good place just now. We need to make sure we keep that going.’