A Glasgow pub may seem an unlikely setting for a defining moment in English rugby history but The Drum and Monkey, in the city centre, will always be associated with England negotiating our way back into the Six Nations Championship after being unceremoniously kicked out of the competition four years ago in a dispute that was as stupid as it was damaging. It was a major bust-up over money – television money in this case – that reflected badly on everyone concerned and went a long way towards destroying trust between England and our immediate rugby neighbours.
Over the years I fought many battles in England’s cause, having the scars to prove it, so I wasn’t prepared to stand by and watch us turfed out of a marvellously compelling tournament, even though there were some at Twickenham who had been doing their best to extricate England from the Six Nations in a deluded belief that our interests would be better served by aligning ourselves with the big three from the southern hemisphere: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Which is why I took the bull by the horns, jumped into my car and drove north to thrash out a compromise deal over what the media, in their colourful way, called ‘a pie and a pint’.
That last bit wasn’t entirely true but I see no reason to spoil a good story and the media made the most of the combatants sealing a new accord over refreshments in The Drum and Monkey. The hard negotiating had actually been concluded in the Glasgow office of Allan Hosie who, as chairman of the Five Nations Committee, had announced our banishment to a startled rugby world 24 hours earlier. With the media pack in attendance, we simply retired to the pub – I was driving so had to settle for shandy – to wind down, the ‘early doors’ trade considerably boosted by our entourage!
Being banned from the championship wasn’t exactly a new experience. It had happened three years earlier after England had broken with the tradition of collective bargaining and negotiated its own television deal with BSkyB without involving Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The difference then was that the ban had taken effect in the summer, leaving plenty of time for common sense to prevail before the competition could have been affected. In 1999 we were on a very different timescale as our banishment came as Clive Woodward was preparing his England side to face Scotland in the Five Nations Championship.
The fixture was scheduled to take place less than three weeks later. England had sold all their tickets for the game. Lucrative hospitality and sponsorship deals with the business world were in place and thousands of ordinary fans had bought tickets for the game. Yet, when the Rugby Football Union Council held an emergency meeting to discuss the possibility of a ban, days before Allan Hosie’s public pronouncement, members were talking about challenging the move in the courts. We were given legal advice that England would be able to resist a ban and the mood seemed to be that it wouldn’t happen anyway, that the other nations were bluffing, and that we should leave it to the lawyers to sort out.
I stood up at the meeting to urge my colleagues to forget the legal route and use dialogue to extricate ourselves from a ban that would have had serious financial implications, not just for England but also for the other leading European nations because revenue from international matches is essential for the health of the game at large. I’m not suggesting that England shouldn’t have been seeking a bigger slice of the financial cake from any television deal for coverage of international matches and I still argue our case on this issue on the Six Nations Committee, but we had gone about things in the wrong way. We are often, wrongly I believe, accused of arrogance but in this case I suspect there were those in the England camp who felt that we were bigger and better than the other home countries and therefore entitled to take advantage of the financial rewards on offer.
Some might suggest that doing the Drum and Monkey deal, instead of taking the other countries to court, cost England millions of pounds in television revenue. We will never know but I have always taken the view that problems can best be solved if people are prepared to sit down together and debate contentious issues sensibly. I told the Council that we owed more to the game than simply winning a legal argument – assuming we would have won – especially as bad feeling would have increased rather than diminished. We had to think about all those people, predominantly members of rugby clubs throughout the country, who had been going to Twickenham for the last 20 years or so to support the national team and who would have been perfectly justified in kicking us all out for the mess we had created.
My message to the other countries was not to give up on us. There were some at HQ, in particular personalities like Graeme Cattermole, RFU Chairman Brian Baister and Fran Cotton, who were doing their best to sort out the whole, sorry mess. Even so, it came as a shock when, a few days later, Allan Hosie told the world that England had been kicked out of the championship. I heard the news as I was driving home from work and decided to act very much on my own initiative, especially after Allan had been quoted as saying he thought he could still avoid disruption by sitting down with someone like myself and going over the various contentious issues. I rang Brian Baister and told him, ‘I’m going to Glasgow tomorrow so get yourself up there and we’ll sort it out together.’
I felt it important to have Brian with me because he was Chairman of the RFU and his views on the issue were very much in line with my own. I drove to Glasgow but Brian flew, Allan Hosie picking him up from the airport. We all met in Allan’s office and, because I had told officials at Twickenham what we were doing, the telephone lines had already been working overtime. In the end we found enough common ground for Allan to reverse a decision that I felt should never have been made. I had known Allan a long time and disagreed with him on that occasion, believing his action to have been a bit over the top. I suppose the powers that be wanted to force the issue by banning us; they certainly succeeded if that had been the intention.
As a result of our deliberations we had to make concessions and didn’t end up with as big a slice of the financial cake as I felt we were entitled to as the biggest rugby-playing nation in the competition. In that situation it wasn’t equitable to have equality. That may sound double-Dutch but our share of television money has to be spread much farther because we have many more players and clubs to support than the other nations. Also, more television sets are switched on in England than anywhere else when the Six Nations swings into action and I will continue to fight for a better deal in future although I will do so sitting around a table rather than taking to the trenches.
So, a form of peace prevailed, although the whole thing could have been handled rather better by all concerned. Whilst the episode didn’t reflect well on England, it didn’t reflect too well on our neighbours either at a time when the leading nations in the northern hemisphere should have been pulling together to turn Europe into the dominant force in world rugby rather than continually hanging on to the coat tails of the only three nations to ever win a World Cup: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
From a personal perspective I’m delighted that my initiative helped to keep England in the Six Nations without a courtroom battle that would have lined the pockets of the lawyers if nobody else, although I did see a certain irony in finding myself in the role of peacemaker for an organisation that had once kicked me into touch too.
Being banned had become something of a habit because, under the archaic amateur laws that prevailed until recently, my reward for leading England to a first Grand Slam in the Five Nations for 23 years, back in 1980, was to be outlawed for having had the audacity to retain the proceeds of a book written after injury had forced my premature retirement as a player. I joined a long line of well-known players who were denied the opportunity to put something back into the game because they had cashed in on their fame, to lesser and greater degrees, after hanging up their boots. Some, who had sacrificed so much during their playing careers, hardly benefited at all financially but still paid a heavy price by being outlawed. Many, like myself, felt very hurt at being treated in that way. I’m sure I speak for most when I say that we never even thought of being paid to play for our country. It was deemed a great honour to be selected and I would have paid the RFU for the privilege of donning the England shirt and taking the field at Twickenham, walking all the way from my Lancashire home if necessary.
Fortunately, the wind of change finally blew through rugby union and players like my friend Fran Cotton