It's February a week away from the Calcutta Cup, the start of another Six Nations and all over rugby memories are flooding back. It's always this way with England versus Scotland, the oldest rugby international, but this time – thanks to Covid and lockdowns – it feels different. Special and a relief that there is some international rugby to lighten this depressing world.
Former internationals (or “internationalists” if you live north of the border) recount tales of rugby experiences from famous victories to kicking the old cup along Princes Street and, as usual there is the added ingredient of what might be. Stuart Hogg and the Scots say they are quietly confident; from the England headquarters comes the usual cocktail of mind-games but this time with an added ingredient.
George Ford, it seems, has something up his sleeve – The Spiral.
Not to be confused with the French detective series which has just finished, this is a kick to throw panic into any rugby defence. Given its' full title The Spiral Bomb, it has recently undermined at least one international. According to the Times, Anthony Watson one of the regulars in Eddie Jones's back three and wing this Saturday was, a month ago, so unnerved by the threat from the heavens that Leicester, inspired by the England fly half, came from 14-0 down to win 36-31, profiting from the chaos created by Ford’s aerial bombardment.
Ford, rather modestly, after what the Times called a “kicking masterclass” confessed: “A few of these kicks I’ve managed to hit are honestly a nightmare to deal with.”
Why? Well what might look like any other punt sent skywards, the Spiral Bomb has a mind all of it's own when it comes to returning to earth, swerving this way and that and rooting any would-be catcher to the spot, afraid to jump and therefore ward off potential tacklers, lest they make a fool of themselves, grabbing at thin air in a different postal district from where the ball actually lands.
“You think you’ve got it, then in the last one or two seconds it goes in a completely different direction,” said Ford stoking England hopes of this new secret weapon. Secret? I think not because the Bomb was causing embarrassment as long ago as the early 90s, even if only to frustrated fathers of would-be professional sportsmen.
Back then, when Rob Andrew (remember him?) was still England's fly-half, the then coach Dick Best, a man who somehow got sacked despite leading England to 13 victories with only two defeats, called up Dave Alred, a former American footballer, to help with England's kicking game. It wasn't something which found favour with the blazers (Will Carling's “old farts”) who then ran Twickenham. Alred wasn't even allowed tickets to see the results of his labours and had to coach from the tarmac alongside the Twickenham pitch, prevented from stepping on the hallowed grass.
Quite separately Alred was also giving private lessons to Andrew, as he later did for kickers around the world including Jonny Wilkinson and Johnny Sexton before turning his mind to golf and devices by which Francesco Molinari might later win the 2018 Open.
Many Sunday mornings Andrew and Alred could be found at the Bristol Grammar indoor cricket nets, honing the skills which the kicker used in over a decade with England and the Lions during 76 Tests, before retiring to first run Newcastle at the start of the professional era and then Twickenham during the turbulent transitional years which followed. And alongside them was my son - Jamie, later to become a professional with Bristol and Gloucestershire, having won Oxford Blues at both rugby and cricket.
However, back then he also learned as Alred taught Andrew, helping as bit-part player when Alred made a kicking video for Nike or Adidas; I forget which. It might not have registered in the annals of Test rugby, but it did have a searing effect on a not-so-pushy father.
I'd already been burned by Jamie's talent, driven from the crickets nets by his pace after an ill-judged return to cricket. Foolishly I thought we might play for the same club side for at least a season. Me after a long retirement, him as a mid-teens quick who was already causing ripples in local senior club cricket.
In short, he hit me on the left thigh (unguarded by a mixture of arrogance and lack of protective equipment) and then hit me in precisely the same spot again when I suggested that far from his speed of delivery, which was rapid, I'd merely “lost” the ball in the dark background. Wounded, I really should have known better when invited to “field” a few kicks learned from Alred and Andrew.
The place of torture was to be Cleeve Rugby club, on the outskirts of Bristol, then a thriving club with a history; now a housing estate, the club having moved on.
Such was Cleeve that there was always someone at the ground to “enjoy” training sessions and the like, even if they were merely dog walkers. So, dressed in a rather too tight and rather too flashy track suit borrowed for the occasion there was an audience of sorts as I awaited my first experience of the Spiral Bomb.
As explained to me (and refreshed this week by a graphic in the Times headlined “How Ford deploys his new weapon”) the kicker holds the ball at 45 degrees and then, by “kicking through” the angled ball causes it to spiral and wobble. The Times graphic said it “makes catching it hard”, possibly one of the greater understatements for a father who had played more football than rugby in a sporting youth cut short by becoming a journalist.
Anyway, time after time the ball went up into (and I hate to admit it) a windless sky and time after time it zeroed down on to someone once proud of his ability to catch a cricket ball no matter whether in the slips or at deepest long-on. To go through each individual agony would be tedious even if I had not expunged them from a mind now in its 75th year. Simply, I can't recall fielding a ball cleanly all morning.
Within touching distance it either veered left or right, over my head or fell so short that outstretched fingertips were still way short of contact and those dog walkers and groundsmen who had bothered to watch had long departed, their sniggering silenced by my embarrassment.
And that was that for my rugby playing. There was one final game – a charity match involving the long-retired and overweight and young greyhounds lacking respect for their elders – and then a lifetime of watching, either as a proud dad or as someone who, late in professional life came out of retirement to both report on the game all over the world and enjoy the company of fellow journalists like Higgy (Alastair Hignell ).
Contributed 1 February 2021
Memory added on February 22, 2021
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