I went to a reunion last summer. I don’t normally do reunions, ever since I went back to a school open day to meet an English teacher I worshipped. The man was captivating. He made every set text relevant to the self-indulgent crises we were experiencing as teenagers. Once, when a dyslexic friend of mine misread a passage in a Shakespeare play as “pubic places” instead of “public places”, that teacher used the barely suppressed giggles as an opportunity to explore language, alienation and humanity in a glorious period-long discussion, which I can still remember 40 years later. At the end of the lesson he thanked my dyslexic friend for inadvertently raising those issues. My mate glowed, the initial embarrassment expunged.
I thought I had bonded with that teacher, thought we had something special going on. But as I approached him at that open day three years after I had left, it was clear that the connection was mine, not his. It took a while for him to recognise me, and the brief, stilted conversation that followed had none of the dynamism it once had. He had changed, too. The Brylcreemed quiff that once looked so cool was flecked with dandruff, and the stitches on the leather elbow patches of his jacket were coming apart. Reunions do that sometimes. They pollute the special memories.
So it was with some trepidation that I attended the 25th anniversary of the 1989 Lions tour last summer. All those fleshy, grey-haired blokes, many of whom I had not spoken to or met since arriving at Heathrow, having flown out economy but been upgraded to business on the way back on account of the series victory. What would we talk about? Would the old rivalries — you try being friendly with a guy fighting for the same spot in the international team — still simmer?
And what about the potential for degradation? I didn’t want those recollections shattered too. These were men I respected, men in the prime of their sporting lives who had done something no Lions team have done before or since: lost the first game of a three-match series yet come back to win the series. They were special people.
I needn’t have worried. The dinner went well. Those ancient, testosterone-fuelled animosities had faded, but the thing that struck me most was the quality of most of that squad. I don’t mean as rugby players. None of us had too much interest in that subject, if I’m honest. But as people.
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The Scots fascinated me most because, compared with the bunch who England face at Twickenham today, they were hugely successful. Nine Scots — Gary Armstrong, Craig Chalmers, Peter Dods, Gavin and Scott Hastings, Finlay Calder, John Jeffrey, David Sole and Derek White — were on that trip to Australia. Eight (Dods was the odd one out) played in that infamous Calcutta Cup match at Murrayfield a year later when Scotland defeated England 13-7 in a grand-slam shoot-out. A year before that encounter, Scotland had drawn 12-12 at Twickenham.
Then the slump. Of the 26 matches between the countries since 1990, Scotland have won only three and drawn one. None of those victories occurred at Twickenham, which has resisted Scottish sorties since 1983, and which will no doubt repel the latest attempt this afternoon.
That run cannot simply be explained away by the usual stereotypes and platitudes. Yes, Scotland are under-resourced and underfunded compared to the bloated English model, but not appreciably more than Ireland and Wales, whose record against England is markedly better. Yes, Scotland have gone through five head coaches in the past decade, but the rest (England have used four, Wales four and Ireland three) have been almost as profligate. And yes, Scotland teams have not made much of a dent in the knockout stages of the European Cup, but then neither have Wales in recent times and they have secured grand slams in 2005, 2008 and 2012.
You get to know people very, very well on Lions tours, especially when you spend part of your day with an arm thrust between their legs and a head alongside their hip, as I did with Sole back then. You begin to understand how they react when they are stressed, in pain, under pressure.
That’s why forwards are different to backs; why they are generally more grounded, of greater substance. Backs pay lip service to harmony and cohesiveness. They can survive and prosper in isolation. Forwards can’t. A forward on his own is easily picked off.
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Sole, by the standards of his peers, was not a big man for a prop. His technique was not that extraordinary. What marked him out as special was his capacity to sacrifice personal ambition on the altar of the team. That, and his iron determination not to buckle or give ground.
Those qualities defined those Scotland players and that made them so successful as members of a touring party, and when they united the next year in the colours of their country.
There was other stuff, too. Gavin Hastings was, still is, the most confident sportsman I have met; Finlay Calder the most understatedly caring and solicitous; John Jeffrey one of the most driven; Gary Armstrong one of the most ruthless.
Collectively, they also tapped into something that seems to have gone out of modern rugby: patriotism verging on the jingoistic. I mean that as a compliment. Every team need a cause and with that group their Scottishness was used as a point of difference. Most were in, and of, Scotland, and that mattered to them.
I have no idea what defines or unites the present Scotland team, but I do know this. They need to find a performance today, for their own peace of mind as much as for the memory of some illustrious predecessors. A possible reunion depends on it.