Read The Book of Fame Online

Authors: Lloyd Jones

Tags: #Historical

The Book of Fame (8 page)

BOOK: The Book of Fame
8.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

But we knew, didn’t we, it would never happen at home.

The noise of the turnstiles clicking over did give us pleasure.

The Scots niggle hadn’t yet finished. They wanted 35-minute halves; we wanted 45-minute spells. Then the Scots insisted we provide the match ball, but of course we had not even thought to bring one to the ground. The Scots officials shrugged and sighed and looked lost. Jesus H! We shook our heads with disbelief.

It would never happen at home.

In the end, a shapeless ball was squirrelled up from a dusty corner under the stand.

The game was late starting when one of the horses bringing the Scots’ wagon to the ground skidded on ice and fell over; there was a delay until another horse arrived, and because of this, there was no time for the traditional team picture to be taken.

As the Scots were led out by a pipe band we noticed their boots had been fitted with ‘bars’ like those that ice skaters wear. We wore our customary studs—by the end of the game our feet were a mess of blood blisters.

The Scots won the toss and kicked off. For the first ten minutes we were all over them like a mad dog’s rash. Fred worked the blind and Billy Wallace dashed over in the corner—but he was called back. The referee ruled the pass was forward. Fred stuck his hands on his hips and glowered. He’d never thrown a straighter pass. Moments later George Smith was clear, the line ahead, when the whistle went for another alleged ‘forward pass’.

The referee strolled around like a farmer with his crook making his way through a herd, without hurry or urgency, and was seldom placed to appreciate the shape of our game.

The Scots made little effort to attack. They either hugged the touchline or stood in the pockets of our backs. The penalties awarded us were of
no use. We couldn’t dig a hole in the ground in which to place the ball for a shot at goal. Billy Glenn, who was linesman, produced a pocket knife for Billy Wallace to dig a hole, but the Scots objected to the practice, so Dave Gallaher had to spread himself over the frozen ground to hold the ball upright for Billy to swing his boot through.

The Scots played three halfbacks against us; that was the
mystery formation
. The bigger surprise came when they started the scoring—Simpson potting a field goal; the unshapely ball wobbled through the air and scraped over the crossbar. The Scots were up 4–nil and for the first time in nearly three months we were behind on the scoreboard.

Minutes later, Billy Wallace lays on a lovely raking kick cross-field to find the Scots corner flag. Billy is admiring his work when he’s hit by a late charge—his legs fly up and the frozen ground receives his head. Shadows and shapes of all kinds drift in and out of Billy’s brain. As he comes to, the first words he hears are, ‘You all right, Bill?’ ‘Jesus no, I’m not,’ he says. Helped into a sitting position he rubs his eyes and sees O’Sullivan and Gallaher in a heated exchange with one of the Scottish forwards.

Our reply came with Seeling taking a long throw to the lineout and charging upfield. In the tackle he places the ball for Glasgow to kick past Scoullar, the Scottish fullback; Scoullar has to turn and run back and Frank wins the race to fall on the ball over the line.

We were keen to build on that score, but the icy ground took away our feet. We couldn’t feel the turf. We couldn’t prop without our feet sliding out from under.

Instead, we did it by numbers. From a scrum near halfway Fred threw a cut-out pass to Jimmy Hunter. Thereafter it was just a matter of
procedure—drawing and passing, Jimmy to Bob Deans with Smithy’s finish in the corner.

Our 6–4 lead ended following a stupid mistake. A ball from a lineout on our line went loose. Two of our players diving for it contrived to knock each other clear and a Scottish forward fell on the ball.

The Scots went to the break up 7–6 and this was another new experience for us. Behind at half-time!

The Scots sniffed possibility. The crowd too. They forgot it was freezing. You saw them smiling past their red, dripping noses. The crowd was roped off but the Scots officials marched up and down the sideline shouting encouragement to their boys.

The loose cannon who flattened Billy banged up our forwards as they leapt for lineout ball, but if we retaliated the crowd hooted. Nothing was going our way. The Scots defence got in the way of our back play. We could hear our boys in the stand yelling out to us—‘Ten minutes! Ten minutes to go! Open it up!’

Four minutes to go we put down a scrum on halfway, fifteen in from the sideline. McDonald and Glasgow won us a clean heel. The Scottish halves, as they had done all game, rushed Fred and Billy Stead. This time Fred threw a lovely dummy and went alone. On an angling run he finds Bob Deans who draws and passes to George Smith, and with soaring hearts and grinfuls of pride we watched George cut infield and swerve out again leaving the last Scotsman on one knee, his hands spread over the cut-up turf. Downfield George carefully placed the ball between the uprights. My God! It was a beautiful sight.

In the stand the medical students were on their feet and yelling. Between the shouts we heard the creeping silence of the Scots.

We carried little George back to halfway on our shoulders.

On the stroke of full-time we picked up bonus points after Cunningham fell on a loose ball over the Scots line, and that was more or less it. Heartbreak at one end of the field. Joy at the other.

In the changing shed Frank Glasgow let the air out of the ball; he’d folded up the leather and packed it away with his kit when a Scots official arrived to demand the ball back. It was our custom for the man who last touched the ball to keep it. We explained this to the official. Gallaher waded into the debate. ‘Hold on,’ he said. ‘There seems to be some confusion here.’ To the Scots official he said, ‘We are the guests here. At least, I think I’m right in saying that.’ And he looked around for support. ‘Boys? Am I right?’ ‘We are the visitors,’ someone said. ‘But in Scotland it doesn’t necessarily mean you are also guests.’ The Scots official closed his eyes. Two heavy lines appeared where his eyes and mouth had been. In the end, Frank said, ‘To hell with it’, and threw him the piece of leather. We told him, ‘This would never happen at home. I can tell you, mate!’

We dined alone that night.

Sunday. We woke to a skin of ice on the windows and turned over in our beds and went back to sleep. Our feet were stiff and raw from the ground at Inverleith. After lunch we rode in drays out to the Forth Bridge but could not see anything for the fog. The freezing conditions sent us back to the hotel. That evening we spread ourselves before a blazing fire and rubbed away our aches and pains with a special lotion—

Eucalyptus
 … 60 parts
Whisky
 … 30 parts
Hartshorn
 … 10 parts

Mister Dixon’s diary

‘Glasgow. Again the Scots snubbed us. No show from their officials. People from Queen’s Park Soccer Club made up for it. Laid on professional trainers who poured hot baths and rubbed the boys down after the game. Only 10,000 in the crowd to see us beat the West of Scotland 22–nil. Heavy ground and a cold wind. Tries to Freddy Roberts, ‘Dunk’ and Smithy. That evening the Queen’s Park officials put on a musical evening, and later, escorted us down to the train station. Arrived late in the evening at Ardossan and boarded the ferry to Belfast.’

A black night crossing. We lay in our bunks smoking and talking, and drifted off to thoughts of home. Nothing specific, or sometimes specific—

The dog, for example

or a favourite chair

a bed from childhood

a favourite pipe

eyes tearing at the memory

of the world-can-wait smell of bacon fat

popping in the skillet.

High in the hills a fresh wind

that faint smell of deer.

The walk to the window that precedes

the sharing of indelicate news—

someone’s death

a shotgun marriage—

and looking out at the back yard with its chore list:

this work-in-progress

that keeps its own time, manages its own routine

has never been to Europe or anywhere else

but the back yard

and wants to know only those stories

it has seen and heard for itself.

We woke in Belfast and in the dark boarded a train to Dublin. From the station we swung round Dublin’s streets in a dozen ‘jaunting cars’ and at the Imperial Hotel picked our way through a large crowd. The hotel manager had set aside a large room and the hundreds who’d welcomed us outside now swarmed through the doors. Cards of introduction were pressed on us. Simon Mynott took a card advertising window-cleaners from a short man with a shining earnest face. ‘Have you winders down dere in New Zealand, son?’ A poet who hired out his best lines for headstones pressed a card on Mona Thompson and said, ‘I try to get to know the individual …’

Breakfast was a long time coming.

That night we attended the Theatre Royal with the Irish team; as the teams entered the audience stood on their seats and cheered and cheered until they were hoarse.

Friday night we lay under our covers, pinching fleas and listening to the rain.

Saturday morning. We pulled back our curtains to fog in the windows. Dave Gallaher didn’t show up to breakfast. He banged up his leg in Scotland and it had got worse. Jimmy Duncan decided Dave should stay
back at the hotel. It meant bringing George Gillett in from fullback to occupy Dave’s wing forward role and moving Billy Wallace to fullback. We didn’t have another fit three-quarter, and so, glancing around the breakfast room, Jimmy Duncan’s eye fell on Simon Mynott. ‘Can you spare a moment, son …?’ Simon brings his teacup down the table and Jimmy breaks the news to him. Simon says, ‘But I’ve never played wing,’ and Jimmy says, ‘Then it’ll be a whole new experience, won’t it?’ He and Billy Stead drew a pattern of wing play on a table napkin and McGregor told him to run up and down a hallway to get used to the idea of the winger’s lines of attack.

With Dave out of action, Billy Stead took over the captaincy and we ran out as follows—

Drizzle continued to fall.

A huge punt sent the ball over the grandstand into a Dublin back yard. Another ball was found but this one exploded after a scrum collapse. Waiting for a third ball to arrive we mingled with the Irish players. The Irish fullback Landers jogged upfield to chat with Billy Wallace. Billy Stead and the Irish half looked over folded arms into different sections of the crowd. George Smith grinned at the feet of his Irish opponent—both of them with their hands on hips and legs in an ungainly outsplayed
stance, like farmers familiar with each other’s problems. Tyler and the Irish hooker, Coffey, moved warily around each other. O’Sullivan and the Irish loosie leant on their respective knees and stared at the ground while picking mud out of the soles of their boots. The tall locks Hamlet and Wilson grazed in the same space as Seeling and Cunningham.

This peaceful scene was interrupted by the arrival of a third ball.

We freed up Jimmy Hunter. Jimmy’d have been across but slipped just short of the line.

After that the Irish came at us with renewed purpose, a mad glint in their eye, pitchforks in hand, ball at the toe. The huge crowd of 40,000 roaring at their backs.

At times it felt as though we were playing two different codes. We saw the paddock as an ever-changing pattern of lines. The Irish, on the other hand, saw the field as a sort of steeplechase, covered with low barriers and walls which as far as they were concerned were there to smash into. They believed in luck. They were like kids taking it in turn to kick a pebble down a bumpy road.

We longed to tell them what they were doing wrong.

We worked our way down to a lineout on the Irish twenty-five. George Gillett won us good ball from his unfamiliar wing forward position which was shifted with quick hands to Bob Deans. Deans dropped his left shoulder, and drawing the giant Basil MacClear in that direction, wrongfooted him, and moved off in the opposite direction to score beneath the crossbar. It was a tidy piece of work from Bob; but Bob being Bob looked a bit guilty about the deception and the flush in his cheeks was a rush of sympathy for MacClear who’d been obviously stuck in the midfield to stop such an eventuality.

In the second half, the wind behind us, we ran at the Irish. Freddy Roberts and Billy Stead in tandem breached the defences and Bob picked up his second try. He couldn’t bring himself to look at MacClear as he jogged back from the try-line.

The final scoring moment saw Alec McDonald peel off a scrum to score handily by the uprights and Billy Wallace convert for the final score—15–nil.

That night we ate at the Gresham Hotel, and Irishman and New Zealander were placed side by side. In speech after speech the Irish said we were the finest bunch to ever take the field. We were magicians. We’d given the ball eyes and ears and taught it the basics of our language. We were irrepressible, a force of nature; they, a fallen leaf with no will of its own. Mister Dixon raised an eyebrow at Gallaher. It was true. The Irish charmed our hides off.

BOOK: The Book of Fame
8.3Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Ashley Bell: A Novel by Dean Koontz
Sarny by Gary Paulsen
The Reluctant Berserker by Beecroft, Alex
Green mars by Kim Stanley Robinson
The Beasts of Upton Puddle by Simon West-Bulford
The desperate hours, a novel by Hayes, Joseph, 1918-2006