Richard Bath: 'There is a feeling that Simon Taylor has consigned himself to history'

Published on Saturday 8 August 2009 21:07

WHEN MATT Williams took over the Scotland rugby team in December 2003, one of the first things he did was to tell Gregor Townsend and Glenn Metcalfe that they were about to announce their retirements. Neither wanted to go, both thought they had more to offer, but each of them had little choice.

Simon Taylor's self-imposed exclusion from Andy Robinson's first Scotland training squad this week had much the same feeling. Taylor, who turns 30 on the first day of next week's three-day training camp in St Andrews, may have made the decision himself, and Robinson has made it clear that the door isn't closed, but there is an unmistakable feeling that Taylor has consigned himself to history.

The straight-speaking Robinson has as little in common with the bombastic Williams as the idiosyncratic Taylor does with the bluff Toony, but there is an undeniable symmetry to the two scenarios, a sense that another changing of the guard is at hand. Robinson says he has "changed a lot" since he was England coach, and one of the areas where he has changed the most is in terms of loyalty to players past their best. It was arguably his innate conservatism that cost Robinson so dearly at the helm of England and he won't make the same mistake twice.

At Edinburgh, admittedly out of necessity, he achieved more with an unfeasibly callow team of youngsters than Frank Hadden ever did with a star-studded crew of grizzled internationals and former All Blacks. And when he coached Scotland A, he showed he could spot a player by picking a disparate group, which then went on to thrash Ireland and Italy, putting over a hundred points on teams that Scotland usually struggle to beat at any level. By the end of that season, more than half of those second stringers were playing in the Scotland side which won in Argentina.

Robinson will undoubtedly miss a player described with some justification by Hadden as "the ultimate warrior". Yet he will also see opportunity in the No.8's decision. He could fancy his chances of turning the exasperatingly laid back Johnnie Beattie into a real international player; could look at utility breakaways Kelly Brown and Ally Hogg and know that they might flourish with a run in their best position of No.8. He may even see Richie Vernon, the young Glasgow player who was superb at No.8 for Scotland as they beat France to win the Nations Cup in June, as the man for the future. Taylor may have made the decision, but if a successor emerges, the decision may quickly be taken out of his hands.

Taylor's decision to forego the Autumn internationals against Fiji, Argentina and Australia will also help Robinson focus on which new players he wants to blood. Teenage second-row Richie Gray, centre Alex Groves, openside Alan Macdonald, fly-half Ruaridh Jackson and fullback Jim Thomson will all be in his thoughts.

But if this is the start of the line for Robinson's Scotland, what of Taylor, the country's most conspicuously consistent world-class player over the past eight years?

If he has chosen to draw a line under his international career – and at the moment that is a big if – then it is utterly fitting that he has chosen to do so at a time of his own choosing and on his own terms. It has always been thus with the big breakaway from Crieff. A fickle soul, he has always trodden his own path, away from the rest of the herd. Even to his teammates he has remained an enigma, and to the press – of whom he once wrote in his Times column: "Scotland has its fair share of pernicious, perfidious pressmen waiting to stick the knife in. Charisma-free, rugby illiterate non-entities, many of them" – he is a monosyllabic interview to be avoided at all costs. Which, you suspect, is the way he wants it.

Yet as a player he has always been an inspiring sight. I still remember the first time I saw him play, which was for Heriot's against Boroughmuir at Goldenacre over ten years ago. He was a gangling 19-year-old then, but with his huge hits, straight running and unmistakable dynamism, you could see why national coach Ian McGeechan and under-21 selector and mentor David Leslie placed so much faith in him.

Jim Telfer was always a huge fan of Taylor's, and from an early age he impressed seasoned Scotland internationals with his workrate and footballing skills. I was in New Zealand in 2000 when the Scotland squad took a day off to watch Scotland's under-21s play the Springboks Colts. Taylor's promotion to the full squad had been delayed to help the under-21s, and days after he had scored a wonderful solo try against the Wallaby Colts to force an unexpected draw and get every member of Andy Nicol's team standing and applauding, he did the same against the baby 'Boks. That team contained future internationalists like Butch James, Joe Van Niekerk, Marius Joubert and Adi Jacobs, while the Scots contingent included Euan Murray, Donnie MacFadyean, Jon Steel, Dougie Hall, Bruce Douglas and Andy Henderson. Taylor, though, stood head and shoulders above them all.

He was already on his way to earning his "ultimate warrior" tag of a decade later and quickly made the transition to Edinburgh. I was at Franklin's Gardens when, in one of his first games with Edinburgh, Taylor's speed and athleticism made a monkey of Northampton No.8 Pat Lam and was the bedrock of a famous victory.

I wasn't the only one who was impressed; shortly after the game I ran into Lions selector Donal Lenihan who made no secret of the impression that the young No.8 had made. It was no surprise when the 21-year-old was named in that year's Lions squad to tour Australia. Nor was it a surprise when he scored a cracking try in the rout of Western Australia in a performance of real promise, only to see his tour end because of a knee injury that was a taste of things to come.

Yet if Taylor had huge gifts and an ability to shine when he wanted, there were doubts about how fulfilling a self-consciously intellectual sort like Taylor would find life as a full-time rugby player. Privately, some of his Edinburgh teammates moaned that he would coast through games unless the mood took him, and from the outset Taylor himself made no secret of his misgivings about life as a professional sportsman.

"I'm just not sure whether I want to be a professional rugby player," he told me in January 2000, shortly before he joined Edinburgh and just months before he made his Scotland debut against the USA. "At least not in Scotland if we don't get summer rugby. The weather is just too bad; when I was on the bench for the district before Christmas it was terrible, just rain and mud every week. The south of France has a nice ring to it, though."

Sixty-six caps, two World Cups and two injury-ruined Lions tours later, he only made it as far as Paris, where he now plays for media magnate Max Guazzini's show ponies Stade Francais. It has meant that he's escaped the Scottish goldfish bowl and the media commitments he loathes, but with his dynamism curtailed by injuries and age, and competing against a stellar breakaway selection that includes Sergio Parisse, Mauro Bergamasco, James Haskell and Juan Manuel Leguizamon, he spent last year in the second row.

It may just be, of course, that with Parisse out until 26 September after being banned for eight weeks for eye-gouging against the All Blacks, that Taylor sees a chance to lay a claim to the Stade Francais No.8 shirt. Or it could be that, with a thriving restaurant and bar business in Edinburgh and Dundee, he's decided that he no longer needs international rugby.

Characteristically, he's not saying. Whether or not he returns, Simon Taylor will remain one of the most talented players ever to pull on the Scotland shirt and a law unto himself.