The 1989/90 season was my last as a player at Bedford, retiring that year aged 32. My 1st team days were, I thought, long behind me and by then I had generally confined myself to trotting out for the ‘limited training required’ option of the 3rds.
On a cold wet January Wednesday night, having been picked for the 3rds as per plan, inexplicably I did turn up for training. Within half an hour I’d been elevated to the 2nds and by the end of the session I was getting a tap on the shoulder from my dear old friend, the late great Mark Howe, who was skippering the 1st team at the time. “Brucie, he said, “I need you to do me a favour and fill in for injuries on Saturday: Bath away – we need an experienced head in a young backline”.
Well, I couldn’t say no to my mate, could I?
So off we trundled to Bath. After a local Friday night stopover the team headed for the Rec. There was a palpable sense of nervousness etched on many of my young teammates’ faces on a very quiet team bus. In an effort to raise spirits I said to our number 8, Tim Clarke, “don’t look so worried Tim, I’ve got a good feeling about today”. Tim has never let me forget that I said that because what happened that afternoon was that we were on the end of a 76-0 thumping.
As the scoreline demonstrates, it was a total mismatch – Bath were in their pomp and we had fluked our way into the topflight for that season with a largely young and inexperienced squad. Bath put out 14 internationals on the day (yes, 14!), with a backline that included: Callard, Swift, Halliday, Guscott, Barnes and Hill. Quite a handful! And the biggest handful of the lot was the young Jerry Guscott, who had recently burst onto the international scene. Playing at centre myself, I had to deal with him, or try to anyway.
He was just too hot to handle – all pace and guile; gazelle against donkey. In my younger days I hadn’t exactly been a slouch [poetic licence claimed] and I’d enjoyed quite a bit of success in adopting the defensive technique of showing the ball carrier the outside space then closing him down as he tried to get round me. I tried that once with JG that afternoon and he was through the gap before I could even think about saying “he’s yours” to my man outside. By comparison, the more direct approach of Halliday was something of a doddle!
It was a humbling afternoon but despite the hammering, looking back on it, I was glad to have shared a rugby pitch with such class players.   
Memory added on April 20, 2021
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