Selectors also seem to ignore the fact that some players are late developers, this being an aspect that worries me about the current academies, valuable though they are. Not everyone plays top-class schoolboy rugby and, despite what we achieved later, neither Fran Cotton nor I ever played for Lancashire Schools. Fran did make it to a trial in his final year at school but that’s as far as it went, although, knowing Fran as I do, I’m pretty sure this provided him with a goal to aim at. I have also found that some players peak early. They achieve a great deal at schoolboy level but can’t cope with not being top dog when they progress to the senior game, so they simply drift away. The door has always got to be open for players who don’t make it into the academies.
At club level things have changed. When I played the game the county side was the avenue in the North towards national recognition, whereas in the Midlands clubs like Coventry, Moseley, Leicester and Northampton provided the route to international status. Now, however, international players are likely to be drawn from any of the 12 professional clubs in the Zurich Premiership, and, whereas clubs like Bath and Leicester dominated almost unchallenged for long periods, enabling them to attract the best young talent, there is now a far better spread of talent throughout the entire Premiership. Any player performing well in that competition is going to attract the attention of the national coaches and, with England selection being down to head coach Clive Woodward, there is none of the horse-trading that I suspect went on between selectors from different parts of the country in the old days.
Since I was a youngster, much more has been done through the clubs in terms of developing players, largely through the introduction of mini- and junior rugby. That was essential because of the way team sport was discouraged at many schools simply because someone had the daft idea that life shouldn’t be about winners and losers. They didn’t want youngsters to feel either the elation of victory or the pain of defeat but, whatever they say, life is competitive and I feel sorry for those kids who will grow up with no real knowledge of the concept of team sports. I have a real passion for such sports because I believe they mould you for life generally. You learn how to work together, how to show humility in success and how to cope with setbacks. Regardless of what some of the politically correct brigade might desire, we are not all equal and never will be. And, wherever you go in life, there will always be someone in charge.
I left Ellesmere when I was 17, with no inkling of what the future held for me. At that time I assumed I would work in the family business, play cricket for Chorley and perhaps play rugby at my father’s old club, Fylde. Occasionally I have to pinch myself when I think back to how I was suddenly pitched on to a rollercoaster ride that brought its share of joy and heartache but one that, despite the dips and the empty feeling in the stomach these brought, I wouldn’t have changed anything.
My rugby future was being mapped out for me while I was still at Ellesmere College. Father sent a letter to Arthur Bell, the long-serving Fylde secretary, offering my services and pointing out that, although I had been playing full-back towards the end of my school career, I was a bit on the slow side and would probably end up in the pack. So it was with a considerable degree of trepidation that I set off for my first training session at the ground in St Annes, making sure that I arrived in plenty of time. I needn’t have worried because I was to find that not everyone displayed my enthusiasm for training.
I quickly got used to the pattern of training twice a week and discovered that work and family commitments affected attendance levels. Only half of the team would bother to turn up on a Monday, when one of the lads would lead us in some fitness work and, when we reassembled on Thursday evenings, we would meet in the back bar at the club and mess about flinging a ball around until someone suggested that it might be a good idea if we actually went outside and got started; a decision that would be put off for as long as possible if it happened to be wet and cold, which it invariably was. Even then most of the discussion, if we were scheduled to play away from home, usually concerned whether or not we were staying at our host club and making a night of it. Coaches were unheard of in those days and it was invariably the captain who called the shots on the training pitch. Afterwards, the routine was to down a couple of pints, in some cases rather more than that, and then to eat as many portions of fish and chips as we could lay our hands on. Today’s coaches and nutritionists would have had a fit if they could have seen us but it was a very different game then. Had I played in the professional era, I somehow couldn’t see myself surviving on pasta and salad! When I was captain of England, my Friday-night routine would be to settle down at home with Hilary to a prawn cocktail followed by a steak and a bottle of wine, which I am sure would be frowned today.
Training might have been somewhat haphazard in those days but the one thing there was in abundance was club loyalty. Today, away from the professional end of the game where players are tied to contracts, loyalty doesn’t seem to last from one week to the next. Well down the league system there are players who will move clubs simply because they are offered a few quid for doing so. I’m glad that I stayed faithful to Fylde throughout my playing career. We may not have been one of the biggest clubs in the business but we had a decent fixture list and rugby clubs then tended to have a strong family atmosphere. Many of my best friends are lads I played with in my early days at Fylde.
Arriving for that first training session was rather like the first day at school. I was a new boy among men and the only player I knew was the captain, Mike Hindle, who also played at prop for Lancashire (I knew him because he was also in the textile trade). My father had introduced me to Mike and he had facilitated my club membership, but it was to be some time before we rubbed shoulders on the same pitch. I was picked to make my debut at full-back for Fylde’s sixth team against a Manchester junior side called Burnage and that was my one and only appearance in the club’s back division. The following week I was in the back row forwards and, never having had any rugby ambition other than to play the game, happily settled into the routine. I may well have stayed at that level for ever because there was a tendency for the lower sides to hang on to anybody who was as prepared as I was to run around like a mad young thing for 80 minutes. However, a selector called Roy Gartside turned up to watch the sixth team, and even though my team-mates somehow contrived not to give me the ball, Roy must have spotted some talent since I was eventually picked to play for the third team at Percy Park in the North East, probably because some of the regular team members didn’t fancy the trip. So off I went – having told my mother to expect me home about 10 p.m. – all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, clutching a one-pound note, which constituted one-third of the weekly allowance I received from my father.
It was the first time I had ever travelled any real distance with a senior side and I was an innocent abroad. The game went well and, although I found senior rugby harder physically, it was played at a pretty pedestrian pace after what I’d been used to at school. Only afterwards did I realise that I had a lot to learn about club rugby. We went into the clubhouse for a pint of beer and a bite to eat and I asked one of my new team-mates what time the coach would be leaving for home. It came as a surprise when he told me we were on a ‘stopper’ and wouldn’t be leaving until midnight. I was 17, wasn’t used to drinking – not more than a couple of pints anyway – and we ended up in a pub called The Jungle near the docks in North Shields, where I found myself surrounded by the local clientele, who all seemed to have had their faces stitched at some stage in their careers. A few years later I was battling it out with All Blacks, Wallabies and Springboks, but at that stage in my development I was a young lad straight out of public school and I was crapping myself. I was absolutely petrified and determined not to make eye contact with any of them in case they took exception to my scrutiny and decided to ‘fill me in’. My pound didn’t last very long either but I was subsidised by the older players and gradually started to get into the swing of things. I was even chirpy enough to ring home from a transport café at Scotch Corner to tell the folks that I would be home later than planned. It was after 2 a.m. when my mother answered the call, handed the telephone to my father and told him, in no uncertain terms, that I wouldn’t be playing rugby