Talk of the Toony: The Autobiography of Gregor Townsend. Gregor Townsend

the weekend and I was quite relaxed when I met up with the SRU’s doctors, Jimmy Graham and Donald Macleod.

      An arthroscopic scan revealed that I had completely ruptured my posterior cruciate ligament, which equated to a best-case scenario of three months’ rest and rehabilitation. I was dizzy with shock as it meant that I was now ruled out of the World Cup. The whole timing of the news was the thing that fazed me at first. Missing the World Cup felt like a repeat of missing out on my first cap. On top of my wrist and knee problems from the year before, I started to ask myself whether I was jinxed or, even worse, injury prone.

      On the way back from the hospital I tried to change my disappointment and anger into goal setting. I decided then that I would return to Australia in three months time when I was due to be available to play again. I also very nearly convinced myself that there were a number of positives to take from my injury. For the first time in four years I would be able to sit my university exams at the same time as everyone else. I was glad to have my student life to fall back on. There followed a lot of sleeping in the university library, getting over late-night studying and regular drowning of sorrows.

      Also my daily physiotherapy at the Princess Margaret Rose Hospital in Edinburgh kept my disappointment in perspective. A three-month injury didn’t seem so bad when compared to some of my fellow patients. Many had massive operation scars and had recovery periods of over a year. One man even told me that he had already torn his cruciate ligaments on five separate occasions and he didn’t play sport of any kind.

      Rehab work is a frustrating and seemingly endless repetition of strengthening exercises, but the tedium at least made me determined that I must make the most of the rugby talent I had been blessed with. I had spent the best part of the previous two seasons playing with or recovering from injuries and it was conceivable that the rest of my career could be more of the same.

      My rugby mates were great at helping me deal with the trauma and frustrations of missing out on the game’s biggest occasion. I met up regularly with Derek Stark, Andy Nicol and Sean Lineen and I remember us all watching Scotland take on France through a drunken haze in the notorious Edinburgh student pub Oddfellows. Our former team-mates put on a tremendous show and were desperately unlucky not to win the match. If they had, they would have met Ireland in the quarter-finals – a match they would have been favourites to win. As it was, Scotland met the All Blacks with Jonah Lomu et al. and they crashed out of the tournament, despite having played well in all of their games.

      The 1995 World Cup was a watershed moment in rugby union and all of a sudden it looked as if the game was poised to turn professional. I put it down to wishful thinking and continued to apply to financial institutions in London, hoping I could work there after the summer. It may seem strange, but I was never envious when I looked around at other sports and saw the money involved. Playing international rugby in front of 80,000 crowds was a privilege and I did not feel it was my right to expect money – the sheer experience seemed payment enough.