AS some of the more influential members of Scotland’s 1990 Grand Slam winning team became prominent among those campaigning for rugby players to be properly financially rewarded for their efforts, sage voices warned that they had better be careful what they wished for.
Amateurism had, they advised, protected the Celtic nations from English might to that point in the sport’s history. Professionalism would benefit the world’s best resourced rugby nation more than any other.
The consequences are all too plain to see. Scotland’s Grand Slam in 1984 came immediately after what remains the last victory at Twickenham in 1983, while the 1990 success was preceded by the last time defeat was avoided at English rugby’s headquarters – the drawn match of 1989.
In between times, Scotland registered a best ever performance against the Auld Enemy when a new-look team that had begun the season with six new caps and boasted a blend of the two completely different Grand Slam winning teams, took England apart when registering a record 33-6 win.
From a Scottish perspective the system was not broken so it did not need to be fixed but, as demonstrated when its secretary announced that the sport would never go open just a few months before it happened, the Scottish Rugby Union had no meaningful say in the matter.
In reality, with trust funds having been set up for international teams, while players were being offered non-jobs by rugby-friendly companies in order to be able to train full-time, the process was underway even before that happened in 1995 and we had already begun to see why those who understood the implications had such concerns about how much the change would play into English hands.
As a rugby power, England had previously always undermined itself because of faction fighting which meant that any sort of failure tended to bring changes in key positions as the balance of power swung with results.
As a consequence, however talented their individuals may be, they invariably lacked the cohesion of the Celtic countries that had to rely upon much smaller talent pools so had little choice but to be consistent in their selections, thereby generating team understanding.
A tale well told by the great Scottish lock Gordon “Broon frae Troon” Brown, perhaps best exemplified England’s problem.
Part of the Scotland team that had defeated England at Twickenham in 1971, having done likewise the previous year at Murrayfield, he went to shake hands with his gigantic opposite number Nigel Horton who duly informed him that he was going to kill him the following week when the sides were due to meet again in the specially arranged Centenary Test at Murrayfield.
Broon spent much of the rest week fearing the worst, since Horton was a formidable figure, until the English team was announced and Horton had, of course, been dropped and Scotland duly won again.
That all changed in the nineties when Geoff Cooke was appointed England manager and professionalised the back-room set-up. Rather than be spooked by their shock defeat in the 1990 Grand Slam decider, they instead used the experience as motivation for the years to come.
What was essentially the same team ground out a victory over Scotland at Twickenham on the way to the first of their back-to-back Grand Slams the following year, then did so again in the World Cup semi-final at Murrayfield later that year.
Those who believed the spirit of Bannockburn had been evoked in 1990 were instead witnessing the rugby equivalent of Falkirk Muir,
a victory in a battle which was to galvanise the superior power.
The past three decades are consequently unprecedented in the history of the world’s oldest international fixture, with little prospect of that changing.
On a few occasions some cussed resistance has caused brief embarrassment, but there were 10 years and 10 English wins between the 1990 Grand Slam success and Scotland’s shock win in 2000 when simultaneously avoiding a whitewash and denying the opposition a Grand Slam.
Another 10 years and 10 encounters have now elapsed since the last Scottish victory. In between times two heroic repulsions of sieges in
2006 and 2008 preceded the one real missed opportunity when Scotland should have won in 2010 but lacked the attacking nous to accrue the points their play deserved.
In historic terms the only comparable period to either of these decades of failure was a 13-year run between 1951 and 1963 during which Scotland failed to win a match, but that period also included three drawn matches, while Scotland gave at least as good as they got either side of that run.
Where any Celtic victory in those amateur days would generate in-fighting among England’s amateur cavaliers, professionalism has seen round-headed pragmatism win the day, as epitomised by the recruitment of a first foreign coach following their disappointment when hosting the 2015 World Cup.
The payment of players has, then, come at a high price for Scottish rugby in every sense and, for all that hope can always be generated ahead of individual fixtures, every indication is that English rugby, which could, this season, tellingly celebrate a third successive outright championship win for the first time ever, will become ever more dominant as we move forward.
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