The first ten minutes were a blur – I ran about in a daze unable to control my movements, and certainly not any movements associated with tackling. This was no doubt due to trying to work out what to do at inside-centre and also due to an element of being self-conscious in front of 70,000 people. It was as if I was running around with my eyes closed. Unfortunately, the opposition ran towards me on a couple of occasions with the ball. It really seemed like I couldn’t remember how to tackle and I was as effective at stopping them as a speed bump is at stopping a car.
Martin Bayfield was one of two players who ran through me and when I later joined him to play at Northampton he thanked me for my efforts in getting him selected for the Lions Tour in 1993. In fact there is a photo from the match in the clubrooms at Northampton of me poised to tackle him. Luckily the photo wasn’t half a second later as ‘Bayfs’ strode on to make what was undoubtedly his longest break of his international career.
If Geech had been thinking of the players that might become Scotland regulars, I’m sure he must have already put a line through my name. However, I got my act together after twenty minutes and by the second half I was desperate for the ball, enjoying the atmosphere instead of being intimidated by it. England had hit a purple patch where they ran us a bit ragged, but we were much more competitive after this. Considering our midfield after Scott Hastings went off injured was Graham Shiel at stand-off, myself at inside-centre and Tony Stanger at outside – all three of us playing out of position – we had done well to keep the score down to 26–12.
We drowned our sorrows at the after-match dinner – an event that seeks to destroy those that have just won their first cap. A tradition at the time was that new caps had to finish whatever was in their glass each time someone came over to them with a drink. Predictably, this happened quite frequently. To make matters worse, I was forced to drink port because the red wine on the table wasn’t deemed strong enough. I soon became very drunk, and was back in my hotel room with my head in the toilet before midnight. Mind you, I fared better than when lock Ian Fullarton won his first cap in New Zealand in 2000. He didn’t even make it to the toilet and has the memory to tell his grandchildren that he was sick all over the shoes of Jonah Lomu, who had been sitting beside him.
In the midst of trying to win my first cap, I had been involved in the build-up to the inaugural World Cup Sevens. In November, I was part of the Scotland team that went to Dubai and shocked everyone by winning the tournament. There were maybe only a handful of international sides present, but we had beaten France, Queensland, Natal and England along the way. The setting was as far removed as it was possible to be from anything we could have experienced back home in Scotland – we played in extreme heat and the pitch consisted of tightly packed sand. I had imagined that playing rugby on sand would be much the same as running on a beach, but this was very different and very painful. It was as if a thin layer of sand had been put on top of concrete and even though we wore knee and elbow pads, we still ended up having our skin lacerated every time we hit the ground.
Two days after my first cap at Twickenham the next leg of our sevens preparations took me to Australia, Fiji and Hong Kong. Known at the time as the ‘debacle’, the best we achieved in the three tournaments was a quarter-final appearance in Hong Kong against Western Samoa, the eventual winners. Our win in Dubai, where we had mixed a kick-and-chase game with traditional Borders sevens rugby, had led us down a cul-de-sac. Sevens rugby was evolving very fast and the best exponents were those that had a physical edge to their play. We had opted for stamina over explosiveness and weren’t in the same league as the leading nations. Samoa’s performance in Hong Kong and later England’s triumph at Murrayfield demonstrated that the abbreviated game was now all about power. Despite our poor results and some punishing bouts of endurance training, the sevens tour was very enjoyable – we only had a squad of ten players and we became quite a close-knit group. Also, our time in Fiji was terrific, as none of us had experienced anything like it before.
As soon as we had boarded the bus at Nadi airport and on the three-hour trip south to the Fijian capital Suva, we saw people playing rugby wherever we went. Usually in bare feet, in fields sometimes having to dodge past trees, Fijians were out throwing a ball around. There can’t be another country in the world where rugby is so popular. On the morning of the tournament, all the teams were driven in open-top buses through the streets of Suva. The parade brought out thousands of exited locals, many of whom mobbed our bus, but their interest wasn’t in any of the players. Our assistant coach, John Jeffrey (‘JJ’), got the locals very animated and we could hear them saying excitedly ‘White Shark’ over and over to each other.
The Fiji tournament was another disappointment as we failed to qualify from our group – just like the previous week in Australia. However, the skill on show from the local village sides was amazing. Six out of the eight quarter-finalists were Fijian – having consigned Australia, the All Blacks and us to the Plate competition. That the Fijian national team turned out to be the eventual winners was solely due to the presence in their team of one man – Waisale Serevi.
I had always wanted to call my first born after my favourite rugby player. David Campese was my rugby idol for years but by 1993 the two potential options were Zinzan or Waisale. I don’t think I would have persuaded my future wife with either of these choices. Waisale Serevi, known as ‘the wizard’ by his team-mates when he later played for Leicester, was the instigator of the Fijian wonder try of the 1990 Hong Kong Sevens which is one of my all-time favourite sporting moments. Under pressure from a strong All Black defence, Serevi took a low pass and instinctively passed it between his legs to Noa Nadruku who, as he was being tackled, flicked it on to the captain Tomasi Cama. Cama then sprinted fifty yards – hitch-kicking all the way – to score the tournament-clinching try. Serevi was a magician and I had seen him close-up in the 1991 Gala Sevens and the 1992 Hong Kong Sevens where he danced through the mud to win yet another sevens trophy for Fiji.
While in Fiji, I think I had bored my team-mates senseless eulogizing about Serevi. I felt it was justified when he proceeded to produce a master class of sevens rugby on the final day of the competition. Unknown to me, JJ had spoken to Serevi and told him that I was his biggest fan. So, between them they decided to have some fun at my expense. As I was watching one of the ties I got a tap on my shoulder from none other than Waisale T. Serevi.
‘Hello Gregor. Can I have your autograph?’
‘Well, y-y-yes. Erm, of course.’
Although somewhat surprised, I thought I couldn’t turn him down and it wasn’t until I started to sign my name that I noticed JJ laughing with the rest of the team. I’d been stitched up.
In Fiji, the rugby-mad public treated Serevi like royalty. He was married the weekend before we arrived in the country, and the national paper devoted almost all of its pages to cover the event. I remember a local rugby supporter raving about Serevi and a try he had scored at a recent sevens tournament. It involved him flicking up the ball with his feet as two defenders were chasing him. I wish I had seen it.
It was probably with this in mind that I tried to do something similarly outrageous in the World Cup Sevens that were held at Murrayfield in March. As I went back to cover a kick that had been put in behind our defence I could sense that there was an Argentine player very close to me so, instead of diving on the ball, where I would inevitably be tackled as I tried to get back on my feet, I chose the element of surprise and back-heeled the ball past the oncoming defender. With Serevi as my inspiration I had tried the most unlikely of options and it had worked. Unfortunately as I was in the process of picking up the ball, I got smashed by another Argentine player.
The back-heel was to be my only good memory from the World Cup as I suffered the ignominy of being dropped. I watched the action from the bench for the next two days and it was obvious that our three-week tour had drained our energy levels and belief. Although I wouldn’t have said so at the time, being a replacement was probably no bad thing as Scotland ended up in a dismal eighteenth place.
A number of players who had taken part in our many squad sessions and the three-week tour had since been dropped or were out injured. The attrition rate had been horrendous, and for those left standing, there was little left in the tank. Just to rub salt into the wound,