Tour of Duty

WELL, one week in Australia but it feels like a lot longer. The days have flown by since we arrived in Perth and after a lot of training early in the week everyone was just dying to get on the park and play some rugby. I know I am.

Although it wasn't much of a contest on Friday the boys played well, and I thought Simon Taylor played very well when he got on. It is such a shame his tour has now ended through injury. The whole team played for 80 minutes, no lapses, steadily putting the points on the board. Fair play to Western Australia though. They were obviously nowhere near as good as the Lions, but they didn't give up.

I am sure the competition will be tougher on Tuesday. It looks like there'll be a fair amount of Super 12 players playing for the Queensland team, and Townsville is a hot, humid place, so we'll be up against it. We were up at 6.30 yesterday morning for training and all the boys who haven't played yet are looking really keen. There is fierce competition in the second row because there is only one place up for grabs with "Jonno" being the captain. So four of us are going for the other position, and I have to try to make a big impression on Tuesday.

I must admit I have suffered a bit of jet-lag, although I thought I had it under control to start with. We were told to sleep the first part of the journey from London, then stay awake the second part - from Singapore to Perth - and then stay awake the whole day we arrived. I went to bed about 10.30 and slept fine, all the way through. The next night the same. But for the last few days I have been waking up at four in the morning, and not getting back to sleep until seven. It's strange. I feel tired when I should be wide awake, raring to go at the start of the day. But training has been so enjoyable that you soon switch on. Before we had even left the UK we had sorted out all our line-outs and scrums. That sort of thing usually takes a lot longer at your club or even with your country.

The standard has been massively high, and there's been only one dropped ball all week that I can remember. It brings it home to us what we can achieve on this tour if that is the way we are training. You are scared to be the first person to drop a ball or do something wrong, so you are always switched on. But when training's finished I've found myself sleeping on the bus on the way back to the hotel.

I've been working a lot with Jeremy Davidson, my partner in the second row on Tuesday. I am not so good at scrumming on the right hand-side, which you tend to worry about, but that worked out fine because Jeremy likes to scrum on the right, and I could stay in my preferred place on the left. He is a very committed and aggressive player looking at the way he trains. I think he likes to put it about a bit.

The coaches are trying to make it a players' tour, and they are always looking for feedback. There are different line-out and scrum committees, and Andy Robinson or Graham Henry will liaise with a certain player who will then discuss it with the rest of the players in his position. For the locks it's usually Jeremy or Danny Grewcock. It's good that way, because you are more enthusiastic about buying into a certain way of playing if you have an input.

I have been sharing a room with Phil Greening, the England hooker, and the last couple of days have been difficult for him with his knee injury.

To start with he was pretty devastated because he thought his tour was over. But now, reflecting on it, he is a bit happier because there is a chance he could pull through. He is up at 6 o'clock every morning getting intense treatment, in the pool, getting the knee iced. Hopefully for Phil's sake he'll pull through because he's a top boy, very easy to talk to. He is not shy at all, put it that way. He is on the entertainment committee as well, along with four others, so I get to find out what's happening before everybody else.

The in-house entertainment committee have organised a playstation and table tennis in the team room, because they are trying to get us out of our bedrooms as much as possible. I like to get down there and watch some DVDs, which they can hook up to a big screen. There are milkshakes and food, everything you need in there. I also like to wander into town for the odd coffee and have a look round. I know Perth reasonably well because myself and Graeme Beveridge (the Glasgow Caledonians and Scotland reserve scrum half) came over here to play for Western Suburbs on a working holiday for a couple of months in 1995, so I have been catching up with a few people. I also went to the casino and lost a bit of money. Bugger.

There are a whole load of different committees. I am on tickets, and there are only three of us - Danny Grewcock and Jeremy as well - but because they were both involved in the first game, I drew the short straw. Everyone gets two free tickets for each game, with the option of buying another four, so I had to go round all 50 people in the party and organise what tickets they wanted.

On Tuesday the whole squad went out for a meal - pizzas and the like. Simon Taylor took a bit of stick as the baby of the party and Austin Healey ordered him a birthday cake and everyone started singing Happy Birthday, even though it wasn't his birthday. But he's a bright lad and everyone is sad his tour has ended prematurely.

We had a full day off on Wednesday and there was shooting, golf and fishing organised. I opted for shooting, which I have always been keen on since I was brought up as an Army kid. You had to do a mandatory hour-and-a-half session with handguns, showing you how to fire them safely, before you were allowed to handle the big ones - you know, the whole Dirty Harry routine with the magnums and desert eagles. If you were bored shooting at targets with the little 2.2s, there was a little silver disc you can shoot at, which makes quite a satisfying "ting". Unfortunately nobody told me not to do it when I had a magnum in my hand. There were eight of them on the wall, and I managed to completely shatter two of them, before I got a tap on the window and the guy told me: "No more of that. Stick to the target."

Copyright 2001
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