World Cup dream kept Caskie going through the dark days of throat cancer treatment

WE will see some amount of courage in the coming weeks in New Zealand, some heroic performances, some players who will go beyond the beyonds in pursuit of what they’re looking for. Not all the stories of bravery will be played out in front of the cameras, though. Some will happen in the margins of the tournament, in anonymous little places like the Invercargill suburb where the Georgians hang out and, particularly, in the corner of the team hotel where their assistant coach, Don Caskie, is sitting.

Caskie is a former Scotland Students centre, a former Scotland U-21 player, a former Scotland A and B man. His father hails from Glasgow, his grandfather is from Islay, his grandfather’s cousin an ex-Church of Scotland minister and a celebrated war hero and writer that went by the name of the Tartan Pimpernel. As a kid, Caskie used to hear stories of his ancestor and how he helped 2,000 Allied sailors to escape occupied France during World War II, heard ripping yarns about his namesake, Donald Caskie, being sentenced to death by the Nazis only to talk his way out of an execution, how he was honoured by the British and the French for his heroism in war-time, how his bravery medals lie in a church in Bowmore.

The autobiography of the Tartan Pimpernel, published in the late 1950s, was not one Caskie ever bothered reading – until such time as reading was one of the few things he could do. “When I was younger I’m not sure I believed what I was being told. The Tartan Pimpernel sounded a bit too much like The Scarlet Pimpernel. It couldn’t be true, but it was. I only read his book recently.” After some successful years coaching Moseley in England, Caskie became Richie Dixon’s assistant with Georgia in August of 2010. Round about the autumn he fell ill with a sore throat. In December he had a specialist take a look at him and the diagnosis was grim. Caskie had throat cancer.

He’s talking in the Georgia team hotel, content and happy. Only a week ago he was given the all-clear. The tumour had gone, the danger had passed. He’s got his World Cup credential around his neck and the picture in the middle was a reminder of what he has gone through to get here. It was taken during his treatment. His hair is barely visible, his face gaunt and pale. Only recently has he started eating some solid food again, but only in small doses. He still gets tired easily. He will do for a while.

“Being here for the World Cup was a great focus to have,” he says. “It was what focused my mind throughout all the chemotherapy and radiotherapy, throughout all the tiredness and the worry. I had the chemo in January and February and the radio in March and April. I was in hospital, but I felt like a bit of a fraud because I was in a ward with some very ill people and it was all a bit of an eye-opener. I actually felt fairly okay in comparison to those around me, so that was a strange time. I lost two and a half stone but all the time I was hoping I’d make it back in time for Nations Cup in June, but I missed that. I rang up Richie and said, ‘I’m struggling here, I’m not sure I’m going to make it’ and he was brilliant. He said, ‘Don, just come when you can, we’ll be waiting for you’. All the guys were brilliant. My family, my friends; fantastic.

“My partner, Debs, was the real star. She kept me going. We had a no-cry rule in our house and we never broke it. Maybe we might have broken down in front of other people but not in front of each other. We stayed positive. And she’s here with me now.”

Rugby was a God-send. Caskie said he didn’t have time to feel ill because, at his request, Dixon gave him some work to do from his hospital bed, some scheduling for an A team tour to England. When he was well enough to travel to Tiblisi he said it was like a light going on in his head. “It was just great to be back into it, to feel well enough to do the work and know that I was going to the World Cup.”

Tomorrow he is going to meet Andy Robinson again. Time was when they used to meet pretty regularly, Robinson as a flanker with an outrageously successful Bath side and Caskie as a centre with an occasionally threatening Gloucester. “I don’t know Andy at all, but I’ll not forget some of the games we played against Bath in those days. I made about 200 appearances for Gloucester and I remember the 1989-90 season when we beat Bath in the league, an epic 6-3 type of game, and then met them again in the final of the Pilkington Cup. It was a nice balmy day and they absolutely killed us.

“They had an outstanding side, forwards and backs both excellent. We were chasing shadows. You could say that I owe Andy one after that.”

Caskie is enjoying life with the Georgians, enjoying watching the strides they are making in the country. “The president of Georgia loves his rugby and so does the minister for sport. They’re investing money in the game because they want it to be national sport of Georgia. Football is the national sport at the moment, but only just. The more success we have, the more popular rugby gets. If any of the tier one nations ever played in Georgia it would be a 60,000 sell-out. We had 60,000 for Russia recently. Rugby fits with the culture of the nation, it has that warrior spirit that they like. It’ll be interesting to see where we are in relation to Scotland on Wednesday, but these are interesting times.”

Interesting and emotional and, above all, courageous.