By STUART BATHGATE AND DAVID FERGUSON
Published on Saturday 4 February 2012 11:00
IN ONE dressing room we have a Scotland coach who played for England. In the other, an England coach who played for Scotland. Whatever happens out on the pitch this evening, the identity of the two team leaders – Scotland’s Andy Robinson and England’s Stuart Lancaster – has already ensured that today’s Calcutta Cup match will be remembered as a unique occasion.
It would never have happened in the old days. Then – and for rugby the old days really only ended in 1995 with the advent of professionalism – there was a presumption that a coach would be of the same nationality as the team he took charge of.
Indeed, it was more than a presumption. Although there have never been eligibility laws for coaches, it was an unwritten rule that a coach should have played for his country – ideally at an exalted level, either as captain or as a senior figure. And before there were coaches, the national electors fitted the same bill. Venerated former internationals, or at a push long-serving committee members, but always of the same nationality as the team they were choosing.
In Scotland, Matt Williams changed all that in late 2003. The Australian became the first non-Scot to take charge of the national rugby team. Frank Hadden’s appointment as Williams’ replacement was a return to tradition. And the appointment of Robinson to succeed Hadden followed the same pattern, in the sense that both were promoted after successful spells in charge of Edinburgh.
But the difference, of course, was that before Edinburgh, Robinson was coach of England. And before that, from 1988 to 1995, he was one of the most fiercely patriotic members of an England team which for many Scots epitomised a certain strain of arrogance – one which Robinson himself accused the English of displaying the last time
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