White Gold Page 3

  For many, trying to replace a man like Gwilliam would have been a daunting task. Gwilliam’s successor, E.B.A. Edwards, certainly found it so and after two years of poor results Ralph Barlow, the school warden, handed the reins to Greenwood. Fortunately for the new man, he wasn’t short of rugby pedigree himself.

  Born and bred in Dunfermline, Greenwood had read English at the University of Edinburgh before joining the RAF for his national service, during which time he played for Harlequins, the RAF and Eastern Counties. Although he played for the university as a student, he was dedicated to Dunfermline rugby club and then, once he started working at Glenalmond, to Perthshire Academicals. He was selected to play for Scotland against France at Murrayfield in January 1952, which resulted in a 13–11 defeat. He was dropped for the rest of the tournament and didn’t gain his second cap until 1955.

  The early 1950s was a dark period for Scottish rugby. In 1951 the side recorded a spectacular 19–0 victory at home against, coincidentally, John Gwilliam’s Grand Slam holders. But between that glorious afternoon and the corresponding fixture in 1955 Scotland suffered an ignominious run of seventeen consecutive defeats, scoring just eleven tries, six conversions, and four penalties in five years for a paltry total of fifty-four points, and endured humiliation at the hands of the Springboks in 1951 – going down 44–0 in what became known as the ‘Murrayfield Massacre’.

  Greenwood, a fast and athletic 6ft 2in back-row forward, was recalled once again to face the French for the opening game of the 1955 Five Nations. This time the game was played at French rugby’s fortress at Colombes – and he was named as captain. Although Scotland lost 15–0, Greenwood had been a revelation. In the next match, against Wales at Murrayfield, he was equally impressive as he led his team out of the darkness of that losing run to record a 14–8 victory, which was backed up by a 12–3 victory over Ireland at Murrayfield and then a narrow 9–6 loss to England at Twickenham.

  His form in the 1955 championship earned him a place on Robin Thompson’s 1955 Lions tour to South Africa, where he established his playing legacy for all time. Although selected as a No.8, he was converted to flanker and played in sixteen of the twenty-five matches on the tour. Crucially he scored tries in the First and Fourth Tests against the Springboks and was instrumental in securing the 2–2 series draw and the reputation of that touring squad as one of the finest ever to leave the shores of Britain and Ireland.

  Warden Barlow had been more than a little reluctant to allow Greenwood the time off from Glenalmond to tour, but when the Lion returned his influence and charisma shone like a beacon for all the pupils at the school.

  As one of his former colleagues recalled, ‘He was a bachelor, as many of us were at the time, and was absolutely inspirational as a teacher. He had great personal charm and was never a rugby bore – in fact, I don’t ever remember him talking about rugby in the common room unless we really pressed him. He had some wonderful stories from his time with Scotland and in particular his time with the Lions in South Africa, but you had to coax them out of him. At a time of conventionality, he was fairly unorthodox in his teaching methods. If it was a fine day he would take his class for a walk and would often take boys out of school for jaunts without telling housemasters. There was nothing sinister about it, he was just a free spirit who felt strongly that there was more to life and to teaching than could be learnt cramped up in a school room. Another colleague of ours, Peter Adam, always enjoyed telling the story about the time he had to make a dash down to Edinburgh just hours before an international match because Jim had left his rugby boots behind in his room in Patchell’s. That was Jim – an inspirational man and thinker, with the odd flash that would remind us that he was still human.’

  Greenwood smiled softly as the group of boys thundered across Hockey Ground, their hair plastered to their foreheads, arms a ruddy pink, legs splattered with mud. They were all working hard – the older boys vying for supremacy, the younger ones fighting to keep up and prove themselves to their elders. In a few hours they would be out there again, only this time under his tutelage. He loved those hours out on the rugby field with a group of players with minds completely open to his ideas, who would run around with unbridled abandon, lost in their love of the game. It was rugby at its purest.

  He turned back to his desk. Piles of jotters were stacked all around his ink blotter, where a fat notebook heavy with scribbles and annotated drawings lay open beside a cup of steaming Ovaltine. He sat down and picked up a pen.

  The simplest way to characterise team strategy is to specify the channel and manner in which players have been prepared for their first-phase strike. Once this model has been established, you have criteria for every practical aspect of team preparation. It brings coherence and purpose to all that you do.

  He wrote for another ten minutes then put aside his pen and left his office. He didn’t have a class for over an hour, so he changed into his running gear and set off through the mist into the glen.

  Years later his Lions teammate, Phil Davies, would recall sitting in their room in South Africa in 1955 and hearing from Greenwood about his training regime. ‘He was years ahead of his time, Jim. He would sprint alternate telegraph poles down the glen and back. No one trained like that – certainly not in the UK. Probably not anywhere in the northern hemisphere. You would hear stories about some of the South African farmers on the high veld working the land and then going on these great long training runs, or of New Zealanders who would run around the hills and lift tree trunks and so on. Jim was like that – but also different. Even before sports science had ever entered rugby he was training like a sports scientist would approach the game. He would run until his lungs were on fire, but it wouldn’t be a mindless dash across the wilds, he would do things that were relevant to rugby – changes of direction, hitting the ground and getting back to his feet at once, back-pedalling, sprint acceleration, the works. Everyone trains like that now, but not then. Jim was doing these things before anyone else. And he thought about the game.’

  Three years later, in 1959, Greenwood left Glenalmond to take up a position at Cheltenham College before moving on to Tiffin School in Kingston upon Thames where, in 1967, he decided that the time had come for him to do something with all his scribbled notes on rugby. The journal that he had been writing in his second-floor room in Patchell’s had become two, then three, then four volumes. His thoughts on the game were prolific and it was sometimes a battle to transfer them all from his excited mind to paper. But it was a battle well fought and his first publication, Improve Your Rugby, was the result.

  It was a period of contrasts in British sport. The year before, a ten-year-old Clive Woodward had watched in rapture, along with half of the world, as the England football team had lifted the World Cup at Wembley. While that tournament was taking place, however, the Lions were enduring a torrid time in New Zealand.

  The tour was a hotchpotch of disasters from the outset. Scotland’s Mike Campbell-Lamerton had been chosen as captain and, even though he was well regarded by those that knew him, he was far from the outstanding choice at lock – and the basic requirement for any Lions captain is that their Test place should never be in doubt. The coach was John Robins, a Lion on the 1950 tour to New Zealand and a lecturer in physical education at Loughborough College. Although experienced and clever, he was sidelined by Campbell-Lamerton, who felt that running training, leading the team and performing all manner of off-field duties should remain the captain’s responsibility.

  The tour began well with a run of six unbeaten matches against Australian provincial sides and two resounding Test victories over Australia in Sydney and Brisbane, but the fate of the 1966 Lions spiralled dismally once they crossed the Tasman and arrived in New Zealand. They were soundly beaten in all four Test matches, becoming the first Lions side to be whitewashed in a series.

  The tour wouldn’t have registered as even a blip on young Woodward’s radar, but it hurt Greenwood deeply to see the Lions so humiliated. They had p
layed poorly and with little intelligence save for the odd creative spark from players like Mike Gibson and David Watkins. The style they adopted was the complete antithesis of his own rugby philosophy. But why sit there and complain about it if he wasn’t going to do anything to try to advance matters? Improve Your Rugby was the first step – if he could get even a handful of players to change their attitudes on how to play the game, to look for space and to try to exploit it, then at least he had made something of a difference. Even if it was just at the grass-roots level. Because the way the game was being played at that time was killing rugby union.

  The following year he left Tiffin and life as a schoolteacher and moved into higher education. He took up a position as an English lecturer at Loughborough – where he would become a colleague of John Robins – and with it he took charge of rugby at the colleges. Although no one would have foreseen it at the time, it was a move that would change rugby union throughout the world.

  *

  HMS Conway’s 1st XV were playing Birkenhead Grammar at home. After a messy line-out on Birkenhead’s 25-yard line there was a ruck in midfield and the ball was then shipped to the Birkenhead full-back, who cleared it downfield with a thumping kick. But his aim was poor and instead of the ball drifting out of play over the touchline, it held its line infield and was caught cleanly by one of the Conway centres who had read the situation as the ruck was forming and had dropped back deep to cover the kick.

  Those watching on the sidelines held their breath. Whenever this particular player touched the ball in open play like this, spectators would look on admiringly and think, ‘This boy’s different’; this long-limbed youth who glided around the pitch, who had no appreciation for the traditional structures of a game. He didn’t understand the patterns of play – or at least the patterns of play that had been ingrained into his teammates’ minds by years of coaching. He would gather the ball from a clearance kick like this deep in his own half and traditional tactical thinking dictated that in such a situation he should hoof the ball back upfield into opposition territory. But this boy took the catch, looked up, scanned the field and saw space – as a footballer would. While his teammates were equipped with blinkers, his vision stretched to the peripheries. He saw the whole pitch, could sense the congested channels, the pockets of space and could anticipate the movement of both the opposition and his teammates – all in just a few infinitesimal moments. It was an instinct born out of his obsession with football and the perpetual motion of the protagonists in that game. When he transferred that instinct to rugby, opportunities unfolded before him like no other player in his side – and he had the pace to exploit those opportunities. Off he would dart, his long legs carrying him easily across the turf. At times his speed could take him all the way, at other times he would jink and swerve, change pace and direction or, if the need arose, extend a long, sinewy arm and keep a would-be tackler far enough away from making solid contact to either ease through a gap or buy enough time and space to offload the ball to a support runner. He was poetry in motion.

  But that wasn’t to say that Clive Woodward couldn’t kick either. Again, the fundamental principle of his first sporting love meant that he had a kick like a siege gun – and a pinpoint accurate one at that.

  He was slightly built but could also hit hard in defence. If he had his way he would always have the ball in his hands or at his feet, but if the need arose to make a tackle, he wouldn’t be found wanting. All the frustration at his lost dreams, all the railing that he would do in the privacy of his dorm room at the unfairness of his situation, all would explode out of him as he dipped his shoulder and clattered into an opposition runner.

  He could also make mistakes, of course. That was only to be expected of a player so new to the game, whose natural thinking was aligned with an entirely different sporting discipline, and for someone who liked to play as daringly as he did. Overenthusiasm, thinking ahead of those around him, challenging the perceived wisdom and the supposed basic tactics of the way rugby should be played. These were traits that would both inspire and dog his playing career, and they were traits that would define his professional life thereafter.

  And so it was that the boy who would never have chosen to play rugby found that rugby was a perfect fit for him, even if it took him years to admit it. The game wasn’t his dream but it would become absolutely central to his life.

  He was small but fast and had at first been placed in the scrum-half position, but his ability to break tackles and avoid contact thanks to his blistering speed meant that, after a brief spell playing fly-half, he was moved out into the centres.

  When he was in his second-last year at school he was made first-team captain and held the role for two seasons. It was a testament to his abilities that this new boy to rugby was so readily accepted by his teammates and coaches.

  It was a talent that was not only recognised at Conway. In February 1974 he was selected for a trial in Cardiff for the Welsh Schoolboys side. He was the only player from North Wales to get the call that year; it was a moment of genuine pride for both Woodward and Conway, but it would soon become a memory that would live long in his psyche for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘One of my North Wales coaches drove me down to Cardiff for the trial. I played for the Possibles. The Probables, who we were up against, had some players who would go on to have stellar careers – the half-back combination of Terry Holmes and Gareth Davies alone went on to be greats of Welsh and Lions rugby. But even though I was only in the Possibles, I had a good game and the selectors took me aside for a chat afterwards. It was clear that I had impressed them, but things went cold as soon as they asked where I was from and I told them that I was from North Yorkshire. As soon as I said that, the conversation was over. I was English and they weren’t going to play an English boy in their team.’

  Years later, a Welsh journalist brought up the trial and asked why it was that Woodward had not played for the Welsh Schoolboy side.

  ‘I said that I had to withdraw because of injury. I didn’t want to make a fuss about it in the press. But the real reason gave me a special, private motivation which I used whenever I faced Wales – both as a player and a coach. It may sound bitter but that whole experience had a profound effect on me at the time. I was young and I was angry. And I carried that anger with me for a long time.’

  The whole situation was unusual and would never happen now. In the modern game, particularly in the northern hemisphere, club and regional selectors care not a jot for a player’s country of birth; if they are good enough and are committed to the cause, they are in. The same is often true of international selection – if a player makes the grade, all that matters is their desire to play for the national side and that they are qualified to do so (by birth or through the birth-place of one of their parents or grandparents, or through a three-year uninterrupted residency in the country they wish to represent). But it was a different time and the episode left its mark on Woodward.

  Another unusual element was that he had been allowed to go to the trial at all. Conway had often prevented its pupils from attending local representative trials or from appearing for representative teams, as it would mean too much time away from the school. But Conway’s days were drawing to a close. In the summer of 1972 it was announced that the school was to close in July 1974, at the end of Woodward’s final year. As the processes for decommissioning began and the staff members started to contemplate life after Conway, many of the old strictures were relaxed – and so it was that Woodward was allowed his shot at playing for North Wales and his trip south for the Cardiff trial was given the go-ahead.

  At the end of the year Woodward took his leave from the school and as the old doors closed behind him, they did so for the last time.

  It had been a torrid few years but Ronald Woodward had got his wish. His son had buckled down and got on with his schoolwork. Even if he might not have admitted it at the time, playing rugby had taught Clive valuable lessons about leadership, group responsib
ility and about the value and importance of teamwork. Rugby had come easily to him and even the pain and anger caused by the Welsh Schoolboys fiasco had taught him to always keep his feet on the ground and his head up. Above all, Conway had taught him how to roll with the punches.

  He left school with three A-levels and applied to Durham University to read law. He felt that he had done well in his exams but his results weren’t enough to gain him a place on the course. He was at a crossroads. Did he wait for clearing and try to get in in the second tranche of applications? Did he defer for a year? Did he resit his exams? Or did he try something else altogether? He spotted an advert in a newspaper one morning and, on a whim, applied for a management traineeship at NatWest Bank in London. He was accepted.

  He moved down to work in the Richmond branch of NatWest in September and, a short time later, turned up at Harlequins. They were one of the founding clubs of the Rugby Football Union back in 1871 and their ground, the Stoop, stood in the shadow of Twickenham, the home of English rugby. Woodward was an unknown quantity when he arrived for his first training session one bright September evening, but his style of play was a natural fit for the club. Harlequins had a tradition, known globally, for champagne rugby both on and off the field. They played an expansive, fast game and the social scene was legendary. They had strong ties to the financial centre in the City and they attracted both a wealthy and gregarious type of player. Rugby was all about fun at Harlequins; in the face of the attritional style of rugby so prevalent throughout English rugby at the time, the free-flowing play encouraged at Quins was a breath of fresh air – particularly to players like Woodward.

  There were a number of England internationals in the Quins ranks at the time. The captain, Nick Martin, had been capped by England in 1972 and although he would play only once for his country, he was a hugely influential figure at the club. His full-back, Bob Hiller, was the incumbent England No.15. Hiller went on to win a total of nineteen caps and had toured with the British & Irish Lions in South Africa in 1968 and in New Zealand with the legendary side of 1971, who became the first (and so far only) Lions tour party to win a series against the All Blacks. Also playing was centre David Cooke, who was selected for England’s tour to Argentina in 1973 (only for the tour to be cancelled after concerns about the players’ safety) and was eventually capped in 1976. Adding to this wealth of experience was the coach, former All Blacks fly-half Earle Kirton.