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azzuri · 'Our Scotland' Fossil Joined: 12 Sep 2005 Posts: 3777

see - http://sport.scotsman.com/rugby.cfm?id=333562006

We'll never see likes of this again

TOM ENGLISH

IT WAS quiet in the Scotland dressing room. Oh so quiet. Save for the Bruce Douglas Mix coming out of a stereo in the corner near where the forwards sat, there wouldn't have been any noise in the place at all when Alan Lewis entered, at a little before 5pm last Saturday evening.

From the second he walked in he knew the score. No small talk today. No "howrya Lewey?" No "how are things back in Dublin?" They weren't in the mood. Shooting the breeze with the referee wasn't part of the grand plan on this day of all days.

Lewis took his lead from the atmosphere around him and delivered his instructions deadpan. "Boom, boom, boom and get out of there." What was it he sensed? "Let's just say I came away with a strong impression that Scotland meant business. There was, how shall I put this, a feeling of eager anticipation in the air. You didn't need to be the Brain of Britain to figure out what kind of contest it was gonna be."

He crossed the hall and went to visit England. It was chilling in there, too. He called the captains out to the corridor for the toss of the coin and Martin Corry went first. "Heads!" he said, with certainty. The coin had barely hit the floor when Jason White piped up: "We'll take kick." You'll take nothing, sunshine, until we see the shrapnel, Lewis said to himself. It was tails. "We'll take the kick," White said again. "Okay, Jase, you got it."

Lewis returned to his changing room, where his touch judges, Stuart Dickinson of Australia and Carlo Damasco of Italy, were waiting. "Hey lads," he said. "Two pretty fired-up captains out there. This is gonna be interesting today."

MIKE BLAIR DOESN'T PUT HIS GAME FACE ON UNTIL THE last minute. He keeps it light at times like this. A joke, a smile, a read of the programme, a bit of music. Anything. Just don't tell him he's going out to face the world champions in front of an expectant home crowd in half an hour. Don't remind him of the family and friends watching in the stands, don't lay an emotional surge at his door.

Matt Williams used to go in for a ceremonial handing over of the jerseys. From time to time he'd get former greats in to present them, but Blair was never a fan of that.

Too much pomp and circumstance for the scrum-half.

"Everybody prepares differently. Myself, Chris Paterson, Marcus Di Rollo, we're kinda the same. Sean Lamont is even more chilled. He was on his mobile half an hour before one of the autumn internationals. Dan Parks is an outgoing fellow but he goes into himself. Andy Henderson does the opposite. He's quiet but his personality changes. He becomes more vocal as the minutes tick away.

"The forwards? Oh, I dunno about them. They sit the other side of the dressing room. I haven't a clue what they were like."

Ally Hogg: "Relaxed"

Al Kellock: "Nervous."

Dougie Hall: "Very nervous."

Simon Taylor: "Normal."

Scott MacLeod: "How did I feel? Well, this was my first start at Murrayfield and they don't come much bigger than Scotland v England, ken? I had a lot of my family at the match. About 15 steps away from the dressing room door there were 67,500 people screaming their heads off. There were crazy looking buggers with torches. Fireworks were about to go off and the national anthem was playing in my head. What you have to understand is that I'm a big softie. I'm emotional. So what was I doing in the dressing room before we went out? I was greetin'. I couldn't help myself."

England were now in the tunnel and on their way to the pitch. A thought occurred to Lewis. Six years ago, on the day Scotland last beat the English, the home team pulled a stroke that annoyed their visitors and embarrassed the officials.

"In 2000," said Lewis, "the Scots locked the door of their dressing room and left England waiting outside on the pitch in the freezing cold and the pissing rain. England went out on the field and then the officials went to get Scotland and the door was jammed shut. I was determined that none of that crap was going on. They said they wanted to appear for the second verse of the Highland Cathedral [their entry tune]. I said I didn't care what verse they come out to as long as that door stays bloody open."

Lewis need not have worried. At the appointed time the door almost swung off its hinges and the slow march began.

Jason White: "The crowd was pumped up. Before we even got to the running track we knew there was something special out there waiting for us."

Chris Paterson: "This was different, different to anything I've ever experienced."

Ally Hogg: "I was standing behind Jase, all you could see as you walked out the tunnel was just a little bit of the east stand and the highlanders all standing with their torches raised."

Bruce Douglas: "We walked into a wall of expectation."

Scott MacLeod: "It was a wall of emotion. I told the lads 'don't talk to me, say nothing, I need to sort myself out here'. Then Flower of Scotland started up. I was off again."

Ally Hogg: "It was awesome. I never heard anything like that noise and I never heard Flower of Scotland sung that way. The place was jumping and there was a smell of paraffin. Literally. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up and I thought those torches were gonna burn them right off."

THEY WERE WATCHING RIGHT AROUND THE WORLD. Wherever Sean Connery was he had a television in front of him for he phoned after the game to offer his congratulations. Frank Hadden thought it was a hoax. It took him a few seconds to realise that the voice on the other end of the line was James Bond and not Stuart Barton, the wisecracking physio. Hadden was moved. "Major wow factor," he said.

Matt Williams was moved, too. He got out of his bed in the middle of the night, Sydney time, to see it. In Ireland, Eddie O'Sullivan had a big screen brought into the team room at their base at the Killiney Court Hotel. One by one his squad drifted in and by the end it was standing room only. Brian O'Driscoll et al gripped by a resurgent Scotland.

In Northampton, an old dog sat watching in the comfort of his family. "I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a pang," said Tom Smith. "What's done is done but you always have regrets."

Scott Murray had a few of those. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday he had trained with the squad when the heavy work was being done. He became an honorary Englishman, competing as an opposing forward at the lineout drills and in all the defensive runs. "Cannon fodder," as he says himself.

By Thursday he had moved aside. Suspended for the game, he was of little use to Hadden now. He retreated into a frustrating regime of bike work and weights. "No glory and a lot of pain."

When Saturday came he only had a short walk to the ground from home. This was the day he would discover how the other half live. "My old man was in the army so I was brought up in Germany. We did a lot of travelling and by the time we came back to Scotland I was into basketball and football. Anything but rugby, really.

"The point is that Saturday was the first time I'd ever gone to see Scotland play as a spectator. When I was younger I didn't care for it and when I got older I was in the team, so this was unusual for me. I just live along the road from Murrayfield so I walked down with all the fans, heard all the banter, soaked it all up. I enjoyed it. This might not happen again for a while because when I finish I'm not sure I'll go to games. If I can't play I'm not sure I'll want to watch. It's just the way I am. But Saturday opened my eyes to what rugby means to people. Just walking down the road and observing the fans was a memorable experience. It brought a few things home to me."

FOR NATHAN HINES IT WAS A HOMECOMING OF SORTS. Last year he left Scotland for Perpignan, excited at the opportunities France offered but also frustrated at the real reason for going there. That was Matt Williams.

Hines had no respect for his fellow Australian, saw no future for Scotland with him in power and saw no great desire for change in the corridors of the SRU. He spoke of how Williams had beaten the team up emotionally, how he treated them like imbeciles, how he ground down their spirit. He couldn't take two more years of that.

So, he left and then he came back and couldn't quite believe how much things had changed. "I'd call it liberation," he said.

Alan Tait would agree with that. Williams fired Tait as Scotland's coach on defence just as soon as he arrived in the top job, the Australian believing he could run things himself, the way he'd done in his previous gig in Leinster. Tait disappeared back to the Borders. Scotland, meanwhile, disappeared down a black hole.

Last season, England put seven tries on his old team, Wales got six, Ireland five. Tait could see the problems, but was powerless to do anything about them.

"Defence is all about enthusiasm and working as a team," said Tait. "It's a team thing. If you've got two or three players saying 'I don't want to play for this guy anymore, I've had enough of him' then you're finished. And that's exactly what was happening.

"Scotland should never get beat by 40 and 50 points. Matt's stuff looked good on paper but having 21 starting points on defence is over-complicating it a little. You tell a player who's absolutely blowing out of his arse that he needs to go there, there and there and do this, this and this. It's just not possible what he was trying to do. Ireland, England and Wales destroyed us. I watched that Welsh game and thought 'aye, aye, there's a few guys out there not trying'. You can't pinpoint them but it's easy for a demotivated player to go missing. You just get yourself hidden away in the breakdown. Players know where to go if they don't want to get involved. They'd lost it with Matt. That was the end of the road."

Tait didn't know what was going to happen at Murrayfield last Saturday but he'd have staked his life on one thing. England would have to break their hearts in order to get one try, not to mind seven.

FRANK HADDEN HAD A THEORY AND HE WAS PRETTY sure it was on the money. "I knew that if we could get to 60 minutes and still be in the game then we'd win," he said. "I wasn't planning to light a cigar or anything but I knew our freshness would come through."

Hadden believed that the domestic season in England militated against the national team and it's not hard to see his logic. The weekend before the Calcutta Cup, all bar a handful of Hadden's squad had their feet up at home. Andy Robinson's men, meanwhile, had their faces stuck fast to the coalface.

Of the team that started at Murrayfield, Corry, Lewis Moody, Julian White and Harry Ellis all played in Leicester's narrow victory over Worcester a week before, a game described in one report as "nothing but ferocious". Andy Sheridan and Mark Cueto appeared in a "dogfight" for Sale against Leeds, Bath's Danny Grewcock and Steve Borthwick were at the centre of a "blood and guts" affair at home to London Irish while six days before facing Scotland, four of the Wasps in Robinson's 22 were embroiled in an attritional "one dimensional slog" at Bristol. "England were bound to spend the early part of Calcutta Cup week nursing bumps and bruises," thought Hadden. "We were going to have our hard work done early, they'd be doing theirs late. There was every chance that would hurt them in the end."

THERE ARE 23 MINUTES GONE AND IT'S 3-3. ALAN Lewis's hunch has been proved correct; this is, indeed, a game where every yard is gained only after thunderous collision. The hits are as big as Lewis has seen. In his years as a top-flight official he can't remember a Test match that out-did this one for sheer physical intensity sustained over such a long period. The breakdown has become a war zone. Already he's been in Hogg's ear half a dozen times. Hogg is part of a dominant Scottish back-row scavenging on the floor, playing it legally for the most part but unafraid of crossing the line if needs be. Lewis's message to him is played on a loop.

Hands off No.7!

Get out of there!

I won't tell you again, roll away!

England have all the ball but no lead to show for it. They try to mount the phases but they are smashed back. The tackles pile up, in singles and doubles. Scrags and full-blown thunderclaps.

In Dublin, the team room is filling up. There was a handful there to begin with but word has reached the Ireland players that something is afoot in Edinburgh and they want to watch.

Eddie O'Sullivan: "This is not a different team, it's the same team playing differently. It's hard to know what our Australian friend was trying to do the last few years. It hasn't exactly been rocket science playing against his team. We knew that if we could go through the phases the gaps would appear, the mismatches would be created and the tries would be scored. The heads would go down quickly. Once you got daylight on the scoreboard they weren't coming back. They didn't have the stomach for it. They do now. Jesus, the defence was excellent."

Grewcock was the first to crack.

Al Kellock: "He blind-sided me. Hit me from behind. I never saw it coming."

Alan Lewis: "All I heard was 'uhhhhhhhh' as Kellock hit the ground."

Jason White: "He landed beside me. I looked at Danny and looked at Lewey and said 'Ref?'"

Alan Lewis: "No hesitation. It was a cynical piece of foul play."

Al Kellock: "I thought it was harsh."

Alan Lewis: "He wouldn't say that if he was carried off with his ribs broken."

Scotland kicked the penalty to touch and then lost the lineout, their third of the half. It was a mix-up on the call, a communication problem between Kellock and White but who watching would have known that? In most people's eyes, Dougie Hall was at fault.

What's more, he knew people would blame him even though the c**k-up had nothing to do with him. He had previous after all. He'd been dropped after the France game, not just from the team but from the squad and his errant throwing was the root cause. Because of that he'd been anxious in the dressing room. Not the kind of mild, butterflies-in-the-stomach, anxious but genuine, unhealthy, concern.

"What was I gonna do? Get depressed? No. So many things can go wrong with a lineout and I felt each of those throws was good. You move on. You're no use if you don't."

THERE ARE 37 MINUTES GONE AND ENGLAND HAVE worked their way deep into the Scotland 22. They have cornered their prey and the kill is imminent. England are about to inflict death by scrummaging.

Gavin Kerr, 17st 10lbs, versus Julian White, 18st 8lbs

Dougie Hall, 15st 6lbs, versus Steve Thompson, 18st 1lb

Bruce Douglas, 17st 4lbs, versus Andy Sheridan 18st 10lbs

Chris Paterson: "When a team's been through hard times and has come out the other side you'll do anything to avoid going back there. That fear of going back, to not having the support, not winning, not enjoying it is a powerful thing."

Bruce Douglas: "Yeah, but he's a big lad, Sheridan."

Dougie Hall: "It's a monstrous front row, in fairness to them."

Bruce Douglas: "They were thinking pushover try. They saw what happened to us in Wales. If the Welsh could do it, no reason why they couldn't."

Alan Lewis: "You get moments like this. Everyone there knew the significance of it. 10-3 for England and they go in buzzing. Three-all and it's a whole new dynamic."

Eddie O'Sullivan: "That was the game. Everything hinged on those few minutes."

Alan Lewis: "First scrum, England got a nudge on, Scotland go down. Penalty."

Dougie Hall: "We were walking a fine line."

Alan Lewis: "Next one. More messing. Time to warn them now."

Dougie Hall: "We have to do something here."

Alan Lewis: "Scotland moving into very dangerous territory. There's a yellow card coming if they don't stay square."

Chris Paterson: "I was on the short side and every time they reset the scrum they kept edging in towards the posts where the better ground was. I thought 'Jesus, the space is getting bigger all the time'. "

Dougie Hall: "I'm thinking he's gonna give a penalty try any second now. We have to get out of here somehow."

Chris Paterson: "Another re-set scrum. More space for them to attack in. Not looking good."

Dougie Hall: "What do we do? If we go high we're dead because they'll drive us backwards. If we go low we risk collapsing. We knew the game could be decided there and then. We just shoved with every last drop of energy we had."

Simon Taylor: "I thought the front-rows just leaned against each other. Apparently not."

Dougie Hall: "England were rattled. You could see them thinking 'why isn't this working?' We were stubborn as hell but we were hanging on by our fingernails. Then they moved it. They had a nudge on but still they moved it."

Chris Paterson: "I'm sure Ben thought his pack was just going to rumble over. I'm not sure he was expecting that pass."

Dougie Hall: "I stood up from the scrum and heard this almighty roar. I looked across and I saw the ball bobbling in front of Ben Cohen."

Bruce Douglas: "I was too tired to think. I was knackered."

Dougie Hall: "Absolutely dead on my feet."

Mike Blair: "That was when I started thinking maybe it was our day."

FRANK HADDEN WAS A HAPPY MAN. ENGLAND HAD played well but Scotland were level at the break with no ball, a struggling lineout and an inferior scrum. What would happen if his team ever got some territory of their own?

"It was great to be 3-3. It was a super achievement. In my view we were well down the road to victory at half-time. The longer a game goes on the more desperate the chaser becomes." The coach thought again of his 60-minute claim. He was sure he was right even if Jason White wasn't. The captain reminded his team that in their previous two games England had finished like express trains, putting Wales and Italy away with a scoring barrage late on. But then this was an entirely different game. Strange things were happening out there.

Al Kellock: "Hugo Southwell put a kick down the right side of the park early in the second half and it looked like it was going to bounce infield but then it took two of the best and weirdest bounces I've ever seen - right and right again - and dribbled into touch. I remember thinking 'that's not something you see every day'."

Time was flying by. England jettisoned their captain, Corry, in the 66th minute. At home in Leicester, his club coach, Pat Howard, looked on in disbelief. "I think England would have won if Cozza had stayed on the pitch," he said. "You want a bloke for a crisis? He's the man for a crisis. He is a bright guy, who is very calm in those sorts of situations. I think he may have made some different decisions."

There are now 70 minutes gone. The score is 12-9. Scotland's tackle count has long since soared into three figures and they have become the dominant side. Hadden is right, but only up to a point. His team look full of running and England don't have the same stranglehold on the game they once had but there is a latent threat about them. They are still alive.

Hogg almost finishes them off. He has a chance in the left corner; he blasts over the top of Mark Cueto but is denied by a last-gasp hit by Sheridan. Paterson makes it 15-9 soon after. They're getting close now.

Mike Blair: "I didn't know what to think. At no stage did I think we were going to win. And at no stage did I think we were going to lose. It was weird."

Dougie Hall: "When I came off I just collapsed on to a ruck shield on the running track beside Scotty MacLeod. I told him I didn't want to believe it yet because I was afraid the victory was going to be snatched away. He didn't want to believe it either."

Mike Blair: "I headed for the stand when I was subbed and I sat in beside Scott Murray. With about five minutes left I said 'Christ, this is nerve-racking' and he said 'no, no, we've won this'. Now, I remember playing poker with Scotty ages ago and he was cleaning up, winning every pot and taking the piss. 'Ah, I just can't stop winning, lads,' he said - and he wasn't won a hand since. He put the kiss of death on himself so I wasn't too comforted by him telling me we had the win in the bag."

Murray knew what he was talking about, though. He's been around a lot longer than most of them and he recognised a beaten team when he saw one. In the 75th minute England were awarded a penalty within easy kicking distance of the posts. Six points down, they had a decision to make. Take the three points or gamble on five and maybe seven.

In Scottish minds that was no choice at all. Of course, England were going to go for the try. "With the strength of their driving maul, they had to go for it," said Kellock. "I thought they'd go for it," said White, "but there was confusion. They didn't seem 100% sure what to do."

They took the safe option and accepted three points. "When they went for the sticks that showed great respect for us," said Murray. "That was England admitting they wouldn't score a try.

"Our boys had put doubt in their heads. I just thought, the way that the guys were defending no way were England were going to score. So, yeah, with five minutes left, I was certain the job was done."

THE JOB WAS DONE. IT WAS OVER, PRETTY MUCH. Alan Lewis had 11 seconds on his watch and called for one last play. "I gotta be fair here," he said. "We have time for a lineout."

Chris Paterson: "I looked up at the clock at that stage. It was only then that I thought we'd done it."

Ally Hogg: "I was thinking of getting them to throw it squint, throw it ridiculously squint, throw it to Cus at scrum-half. So what if England get the scrum. There's no time."

Al Kellock: "We should have done it, but we didn't."

Ally Hogg: "We lost it at the front. F**k!"

Al Kellock: "Oh Jesus. This was a bad time to lose a lineout. Converted try, game over. No, no, no."

Alan Lewis: "The lineout was fascinating all day. There was always potential for a steal and you have to be prepared for it. How many times have England scored late tries in matches? Exactly!"

Al Kellock: "Not today they wouldn't."

Jason White: "It didn't matter. Nobody panicked. We'd defended hard for 79 minutes. We could do it for a few seconds more."

Lewis ended it just as soon as Chris Cusiter boomed the ball out of play, the spark for wild celebration and something approaching awe in the outside world. Scotland's tackle statistics were from another planet but there were a whole series of numbers that told you of the strides this team had made.

Number of tries England scored on the day: Zero.

Average number of tries England have scored in the last five Calcutta Cups: Five

Number of points England scored on the day: 12.

Average number of points England have scored in the last five Calcutta Cups: 38.

Number of times England have been held tryless in the championship in a decade: Two.

Number of tackles made to keep England tryless: a record 196.

England took it on the chin but their pain was severe. "It hurts like hell," said Corry. Sleep did not come easy to Josh Lewsey. "I haven't been able to sleep properly since Saturday," he said on Tuesday. "All that night, all day yesterday and all last night my mind was stewing."

The first of the faxes and emails started to hit Murrayfield in the hours after the final whistle. In Australia, a certain gentleman was about to go public on the debt he felt the nation owed him, a thought he expressed first in his column in Monday's Irish Times and which he re-iterated later in the week. Williams wrote: "They [Scotland] are showing signs of a team coming together into the third season of hard physical conditioning. Scoring points was never the problem, it was the defence. But two and a half years of work has brought them to required level of Test rugby."

Two and a half years?

Jason White: "He believes what he believes. Is there truth in it? I doubt it."

Nathan Hines: "It wouldn't be the first time he tried to take credit for other people's work."

Tom Smith: "I'm surprised he reared his head. Matt was the catalyst for this, but not in the way he thinks."

Dougie Hall: "What can you say? I just rolled my eyes when I heard. Shows you what kind of man he was."

Frank Hadden: "Best to say nothing."

On Saturday, the party raged into the night in Edinburgh but one of their number slipped away early. "It was a weird day for me," said Murray. "I went out with the lads for a little while afterwards and they were great. The spirits were incredibly high, as you can imagine, and they really went out of their way to get me involved. They said I was as much a part of this as them but it was tough. I was having a few beers but I felt that I'd done nothing to deserve them. I hadn't put the hard graft in. I hadn't earned the right to be there.

"So I disappeared a little early. I was gagging for a fish supper but there was a massive queue; loads of delighted Scottish fans giving it 'wahay!', so I said 'no, no, keep walking. We'll make some eggs when we're home'."

For Murray, tomorrow marks the end of his suspension and the conclusion of his nightmare. He has paid a heavy price for that innocent kick at the Millennium Stadium, for occasions like Saturday don't come around often.

Certainly, as the team soaked up the acclaim of a reborn Murrayfield, there was a feeling that it could be an awful long time before we see its like again.

_________________
"Every single person on this planet is unique. Just like everyone else..." - Random Guy in Edinburgh Pub

Possibly the funniest site in the world, 'The Daily Mash' - http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/

Morph · Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2006 1:01 am Post subject:

certainly inspiring
_________________
"An oppressive government is to be more feared than a tiger"

alik · Finding Ma' Way Joined: 16 Mar 2006 Posts: 3

Aye quality read.....great memories