I had played alongside Tony for Lancashire, the North and England ever since I had broken through into the senior ranks and knew he was an enormously talented player. Peter Dixon was another badly treated by a succession of English selection panels although, under Sandy, they got it right that season by including him. As they also picked Roger Uttley as captain, England could have had a back row of Uttley, Dixon and Neary. They had to wait until Otley two years later to discover just what they had been missing: three great-thinking footballers and first-rate ball-handlers, who played Graham Mourie’s All Blacks off the park to record a memorable victory that, I suspect, still rankles with the New Zealanders.
We beat the Scots 26–6 at Twickenham and were almost getting giddy with excitement when we beat Ireland at a muddy Lansdowne Road. For the second successive game the English pack took control, although it was fly-half Martin Cooper who got over for the only score of the game following a good break by current broadcaster Alistair Hignell – another talented footballer whose fearless tackling provided much-needed solidity in defence. As a cricketer of county standard he also had good hands.
Nobody needed reminding that we were just two games away from a Grand Slam but our next outing was to be against the same French side that had demolished us twelve months earlier. We faced the same fearsome pack but, in 1977, we gave as good as we got and should have won the game, which ended 4–3 in favour of the French. Even then they were assisted by Alistair missing five out of six kicks at goal and further helped by a very dubious try scored by their centre François Sangalli after everyone other than the referee had been convinced that full-back Jean-Michel Aguirre had knocked on. The French boys admitted afterwards that they felt we had deserved to win.
Michel Palmie played in the French second row that day, as he had a year earlier, and we got to know each other quite well. At one stage we served on the European Cup committee together, and I soon learned that when he was present at the meetings held in Dublin it was not a good idea to stay overnight unless, of course, I wanted to get completely wrecked. He played for Béziers, and when Hilary and I went on a camping holiday in that region in the summer of 1978, I decided to give him a call. He came round to the site to take us back to his place and caught me doing the washing-up. I never lived that down and he demanded to know, ‘Why is a man doing the washing-up. What is a wife for!’ I won’t relate Hilary’s comments here, but he became a good friend and we rarely pass through that part of the world without popping in to share a glass or two – or maybe a few more – with Michel.
That defeat ended our Grand Slam hopes but I had other things on my mind because Hilary and I were married three days later, four days before I turned out to help Lancashire beat Middlesex in the county final. To say that Hilary was a very understanding young woman would be to understate the case but, by then, she had grown accustomed to the inconveniences of having an international rugby player as a partner. Fortunately, she had grown to enjoy both the game and the company, and had become part of the social scene at Fylde, doing her stint on the ladies committee and helping with some of the unglamorous work behind the scenes such as ensuring that numerous starving players didn’t go hungry after games.
Our honeymoon had to be put on ice until the end of the season. Or at least that was the plan. In the meantime we travelled to Cardiff to take on Wales for the Triple Crown and my one great regret is that I never played in a winning England side at the National Stadium. Even before the new Millennium Stadium replaced it, the old stadium had lost some of its aura, but when I was playing it was an intimidating venue. As you waited like Gladiators in the dressing room you would hear the biggest choir in the world giving full voice, and that was worth a few points start to the Welsh. The current England side isn’t at all intimidated by travelling to Cardiff, but Wales have been a very pale shadow of what they once were.
Wales won the game 14–9. We played badly and I didn’t perform well against Geoff Wheel, which annoyed me because I knew the British Lions party to tour New Zealand was due to be announced a couple of weeks later. Knowing that they would take four second rows, I had held on to the hope all season that I might just scrape in but Geoff Wheel got the call rather than me and was due to have Gordon Brown, Nigel Horton and Allan Martin as his travelling companions. Geoff withdrew from the party later. I heard the news on the car radio, and my heart almost missed a beat as I waited for the name of his replacement to be announced. When it turned out to be Moss Keane I couldn’t believe it. I had played against Moss on a couple of occasions and thought myself to be the better player.
The Lions were travelling without a specialist front-of-line jumper but that wasn’t the only piece of poor planning; I also felt the management team was wrong. The late George Burrell went as manager and though he was a nice bloke he was rather dominated by coach John Dawes, who virtually ran the whole show through Phil Bennett. John had captained the successful Lions in New Zealand in 1971 but he wasn’t the world’s best coach and I suspect he had pushed for Phil, who had captained Wales, to be given the job in New Zealand. Phil is a nice guy but rather shy and he lacked the personality of Willie-John McBride who had led the all-conquering Lions in South Africa three years earlier. Indeed, Phil was the first to admit that he shouldn’t have taken the job and, by the end of the tour, he had lost form and was homesick, something that seemed to afflict the Welsh lads more than the other nationalities.
Once I had heard about the inclusion of Moss Keane I was so brassed off that I booked a honeymoon in Majorca during the time when the Lions were away, and when the factory closed down for the annual Whitsun holiday, Hilary and I took ourselves off on a camping holiday to the Lake District with our long-standing friends Steve and Sue Braithwaite. In fairly typical Lake District fashion the weather was terrible. It poured down so, in the end, we packed up and returned home. We arrived back on a Monday evening and I suggested to Steve that we take the wet tents to the factory where they could dry out while the workforce were away on holiday. When I went into the office I took a telephone call from Malcolm Phillips, a Fylde member and Lions selector, telling me that Nigel Horton had broken his thumb playing against Otago and would be in plaster for six weeks. I was about to become a Lion.
Although I realised I was the Lions sixth-choice second row I wasn’t going to quibble, and I started hastily clearing the decks at work. The adrenalin at that stage was flowing and my first task was to ring Fylde secretary Peter Makin. I had been appointed captain for the following season but told Peter that, as I wouldn’t be starting the new season because of the tour, I wanted scrum-half Micky Weir to take on the role. Micky took on the responsibility and did a fantastic job – such a good job, in fact, that I never achieved my ambition of becoming club skipper. As I became even more heavily involved with England I decided to put the club job on the back burner until I stepped down from the international arena, but injury put paid to any such plan.
Micky and Peter came round to wish me all the best and speed me on my way, and Hilary travelled down with me, but it was a somewhat pensive William Beaumont who arrived in London to collect his gear and jet off to the other side of the world. Instead of feeling over the moon, I felt heartbroken. I remember wondering why on earth I had agreed to travel. I had just got married, my honeymoon had been postponed yet again and I experienced the same empty feeling that had marked my return to boarding school as