FOR those of us born in the last 40 years the idea that the Calcutta Cup could ever have felt at home in Scotland has a touch of the wishful thinking about it.
There are Scots, however, who recall very clearly a 'golden period' in the fixture, wh
en it appeared almost as if England were ritual lambs to the slaughter at Murrayfield. Sandy Carmichael is one of them, having the unique distinction of having beaten the 'Auld Enemy' six times, five of them in a row at Murrayfield.
In fact, beating England became such a regular occurrence for the prop forward, as genial off the field as he was stolidly aggressive on it, that he remembers a Scotland selector once winding up his counterpart at the after-match dinner by saying the Scottish Rugby Union would be meeting the next day to consider dropping the fixture until England became more competitive.
Carmichael laughed as he recounted the tale this week at his home in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire, and yet he has also felt the bitter chill of luckless runs and can just as vividly recall running out in front of a mere 22,000 supporters at Murrayfield. In fact, there were intriguing similarities to the challenges faced by the current team to those of 40 years ago, just before Scotland embarked on its most dominating period over its great neighbour.
Carmichael explained: "We had a run of seven defeats after I came into the Scotland team in 1967, and the SRU was struggling financially. I remember my second cap against France and there were 22,000 in a ground that held 80,000 – it was like being a pea in a drum.
"The SRU shipped all its money out to clubs in those days, but they had announced that there was none left to ship out. The clubs weren't happy, supporters weren't interested, and Wilson Shaw, the president then, came to the team and gave us an ultimatum that we had to start winning. He wasn't threatening anyone, just saying 'We have a big problem in Scottish rugby and we need you to save it'. They needed us to start winning.
"The upturn started really when we won in Argentina in 1969 – the first home nation to do so. That was an incredibly hard tour – some players never played again after it – but we were pulled through by senior players like Jim Telfer, and it was the start of our 'famous four' of forwards, Gordon Brown, Alastair McHarg, Ian McLauchlan and myself, who stuck together till 1976/77.
"We had beaten France 6-3 in Paris in 1969 to get our first Test win in two years (Argentina were not an IRB member then, so there were no caps) and then we beat England in 1970, and that turned the tide. England was regularly the last game of the season then, and was always the biggest game, and we discovered that it didn't seem to matter how you did the rest of the year when you beat them because everything else was forgotten if the Calcutta Cup stayed here. I don't know if that's changed.
"I'd never beaten England before then – Hughie McLeod, the great prop before me, drew with them, but never won the Calcutta Cup in his 40 Tests. That was also around the time that Dickie (Bill Dickinson] came in as Scotland's first real coach, which was a big part of it. We started to become a fighting force."
The seeds were sown in that 1970 win at Murrayfield and Scotland lifted themselves out of a difficult 1971 championship when they again faced the white-shirted foe. In 1971, there were two games, one in the championship and a second, back at Murrayfield, staged to celebrate the centenary of the first-ever international match.
Chris Rea, Carmichael's club-mate at West of Scotland, scored a last-minute try at Twickenham and Peter Brown converted to win the match 16-15, securing a first win at Twickenham since 1938. To celebrate, the Scots ran amok in the return fixture a week later, scoring five tries – Peter Brown, Billy Steele, John Frame (2) and Rea again – for the first time in a Test match since the 1938 win, when Wilson Shaw had scored twice.
Carmichael went on to help Scotland defeat England at Murrayfield in 1972, 1974 and 1976, but twice lost possible Triple Crowns in the London fixtures. The prop ended his Calcutta Cup experiences with England gaining revenge for the centenary defeat with a record 26-6 win at Twickenham in 1977. He retired the following year with 50 caps, then Scotland's most-capped player and the world's most-capped prop.
It is intriguing that no Scotland team before or since has managed to replicate such a run of victories, or perhaps simply incredible that a team managed it at all. So, what was the secret and is there anything the modern-day side can garner from the 1970s?
"The game was so different then that there's probably not much we can take from it," Carmichael admitted.
"The selectors stuck by us despite that bad run in the 1960s and we didn't have many changes to the team, so we developed a good team and had a lot of experience by the 1970s.
"I was only 23 when I first came in, but we built a good pack and had good backs, and we became lethal at home. We only lost three Test matches – to New Zealand, France and Wales – at Murrayfield from that England win in 1971 to the end of 1977.
"For us then rucking was our real weapon. There were only really two real rucking countries – New Zealand and Scotland. England were not a good rucking pack; they mauled, but we rucked, and we found out that they didn't have an answer to it. The more we had the ball, the more we rucked and the more they would stand off, which was the key to winning for us.
"Ian McLauchlan once told the players in the dressing room before a game that studs weren't for keeping a grip on the grass, but for ripping English jerseys – I think three were torn in the first ruck of that game! I always thought the ability to ruck was in-built in a Scottish forward, like rounding up sheep is in a Collie dug.
"We were never the heaviest pack either. From about 1970 to 1977 we had the lightest, but strongest, pack of the four home unions; there weren't many who could take us on. That came from training and practice.
"I was only 15-and-a-half stone; McLauchlan only got to 15-and-a-half stone when he ate too much and got fat; McHarg was 14st 3lbs; and Broony was by far our heaviest forward at 18-and-a-half stone. We had this thing called the sledge, which we pushed up the pitch in training, and by the time we got to the end we had nearly two tonnes on it.
"We would take half-a-tonne off for the way back, but we couldn't go for a bath until we pushed it right back to the bottom of the pitch, which taught us terrific technique. I don't know what the current guys do, but the principle could be the same this weekend. The English pack is big and likes to dominate, but I'd like to see us take them on, get underneath them and then really run them ragged about the field.
"Heavy people don't run no matter how fit they are. Everyone talks about the American footballers, but they don't run far or very often, and our guys are meant to be much fitter now than we were – the only six-packs we had we drank after the game; we got ours from an off-licence not a training camp."
Carmichael has a young daughter who keeps him on his toes, but at 64, he is largely confined to crutches by severe arthritis. Still, he keeps a keen eye on the progress of the professional team and Scotland, and could feel the excitement rising this week ahead of another Calcutta Cup showdown.
He added: "I just hope that it's an interesting game. I would settle for boring rugby if we were winning, but we've been playing boring rugby and losing, so I'd like to see some flair from people; something a bit special. I'd say to the guys 'Don't be scared of their pack and don't be scared to just go out there and do something'. It would be nice to turn the corner this weekend, wouldn't it?"
Carmichael's six wins1970 Scotland 14 England 5
(Murrayfield)
1971 England 15 Scotland 16
(Twickenham)
1971 Scotland 26 England 6 (Centenary challenge match)
(Murrayfield)
1972 Scotland 23 England 9
(Murrayfield)
1974 Scotland 16 England 14
(Murrayfield)
1976 Scotland 22 England 12
(Murrayfield)
The full article contains 1508 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
