Gavin Hastings recalls 'hairs on back of my neck going nuts' in 1990 win

Published on Thursday 11 March 2010 22:04

THE 1990 Five Nations championship reached a dramatic climax at Murrayfield, where Scotland played England with everything at stake – the Calcutta Cup, the Triple Crown, the championship title and the Grand Slam. Twenty years on, Scotland's full-back Gavin Hastings recalls here what it was like to play in such a momentous occasion and help his country to a famous 13-7 victory.

"There hadn't ever been a game of that magnitude. Whilst we'd all been playing in Five Nations games and the first World Cup and Lions tours, this was without question the biggest game any of us had ever been involved in.

"We'd actually played a game down in Cardiff the fortnight before. England didn't play that weekend so they had a whole month in the build-up.

"So we knew that unless we won in Wales, there was no point in us even thinking about the Grand Slam. From the moment we beat Wales, I never thought we would not win the game – at any stage. We were not in any way intimidated by England because we felt that we were every bit as good.

"The morning of the game, I went down to Murrayfield with Craig Chalmers, Gary Armstrong and Jim Telfer for a bit of a kick around. I think that helped a bit.

"Our captain David Sole had decided on a slow, deliberate march out onto the pitch, which was a masterstroke. It just allowed us the time to go and take it all in. We probably walked for 45 seconds or so, which doesn't seem a long time. But it allowed us to take in the atmosphere instead of bursting onto the field and start in a much more controlled manner than England.

"We got a penalty in the first minute and Finlay Calder just took a quick tap and ran into the English forwards. Then this tidal wave of support players just hit Finlay and drove the England players about 20 yards.

"I just remember the hairs on the back of my neck going absolutely nuts.

"The Tony Stanger try was one of our strike moves that we probably didn't get an opportunity to do all through that Five Nations.

"Right at the start of the second half, I kicked a ball that went straight out so it was a scrum on halfway to England. They knocked the ball on so the scrum was reversed, I kicked the ball forward and we scored that try.

"It was a wonderful occasion to be Scottish and it was even more wonderful to be part of a team that won the Grand Slam.

"Boy, did we suffer at the hands of England after that and it was 10 years before Scotland managed another victory."

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