Sunday Herald - 13 November 2005
Hay Fever
He has guided Hawick from devastation to redemption, but their coach is not stopping there, finds Alasdair Reid

SUNDAY HERALD REPORTS

Neat piles of sandbags still sit behind the main stand where a fading line across the grey harling marks the high-water point from when the floods hit a month ago. To the left lie the ruins of a high stone wall, a paltry defence against nature on that awesome night when the Teviot broke its banks and tore down Mansfield Road in an angry brown tide. Even now, half the clubhouse is still out of bounds, steel props holding its ceiling in place after the force of the flood momentarily lifted the entire structure clean off its foundations.
A scene of devastation, then, but a story of heartwarming redemption. For there could surely be no more stirring or inspirational guidance on the business of coping with adversity than that offered by Hawick, both the town and the rugby club, that earns it respect across the sporting world in the opening months of this season. Last month’s storms might have exposed a few weak spots in their buildings, but Hawick’s spirit has been indestructible.

Its living embodiment can be found in the squat figure of coach Jim Hay, standing on the Mansfield Park touchline, casting an almost paternal eye over his players as Thursday evening’s training session unfolds. It was stern application rather than vast natural talent that earned Hay his solitary Scotland cap against Samoa in 1995, and that same faith in the power of hard work drew him back to Hawick at the end of last season, when the rebuilding task seemed only figurative.

For most of us covering Hawick’s home game against Glasgow Hawks last April, professional detachment was the order of the day. There was no such refuge for Hay in his capacity as a match summariser for Radio Borders, however, his face ashen as he watched the club he had served as a player for the best part of two decades suffer the humiliation of an 80-19 defeat, believed to be the heaviest in their 132-year history. The possibility of coaching the side had been aired before, and Hay knew the time had come.

“Over the years, I had been one of Hawick’s biggest critics,” Hay said. “But it had come to the stage where I had to either put up or shut up. I hummed and hawed about it for a while because it was a big commitment, but [team manager] Terence Froud kept at me to do the job. All my mates were saying that I must be off my rocker, that I’d be the first coach to take Hawick into the second division, but I decided I’d give it a shot.”

As solid a citizen as any of the town where he was born, Hay could appreciate the shadow that would fall across his name were he to oversee the loss of the top division status that Hawick have enjoyed for three decades since the inception of national leagues in 1973. He might have been one of Scotland’s first professional players, but he is still of a culture and a generation of players who would think twice about walking down the town’s High Street in the aftermath of a bad performance.

Yet Hay’s understanding that defeat could bring a sound thrashing from some indignant brolly-wielding pensioners also sharpened his appreciation of the motiv ational tools at his disposal. Hence, one of his first acts as coach was to strike an arrangement with the Hawick News whereby he would award his players marks out of 10 after each game, a terse assessment of strengths and shortcomings prominently displayed on the paper’s back page. He could hardly have come up with a more public and effective method of encouraging his charges into action had he locked them in stocks and pelted them with rotten fruit.

Goodness knows Hay needed help from somewhere, for his return to Mansfield Park came hard on the heels of an exodus that stripped the club of some of its most talented players, the most significant being Cammy Bruce, John Houston and Roddy Deans, who all headed to Heriot’s. Around the same time, the Hawick president issued an appeal to club members to rally round the side, but his words smacked of desperation.




Three months on, however, Hawick have already established themselves as the team of the season after a series of displays illuminated by their gritty determination, selfless heroism and a pride in themselves and their town that is almost tang ible. In this professional era, you can see rugby played to far higher standards than those achieved by Hawick, but you would do well to find anything more inspirational.

“I’m the first to admit that we might not have the most skilful individuals at the moment,” said Hay. “But they want to win, they want to do it for their club, and they’re giving 110% every time. If you’ve got that you can sometimes get away with other things.”

For the most part, however, Hay tends to avoid talk of Hawick hearts and Hawick minds, preferring to talk of the Hawick tight five that is his particular area of expertise. “That’s the key to any rugby team,” he asserted. “If you’ve got it right in that area you’ve got a good side. I’m a great believer that it’s forwards, and the front five in particular, who win or lose matches. You can have the best backs in the world in your team but they can only do their stuff if you can give them the ball.

“What we’re doing is doing the basics. That’s what it’s all about, just doing those things well, consistently and under pressure. The conditions in this country don’t lend themselves to throwing the ball all over the place, especially once you get into November and you’re playing in ankle-deep mud and howling gales. For the past six weeks it’s pished with rain at our training, so how can you expect some sort of top-of-the-ground game when that’s going on.”

Hawick had risen to third in the BT Premiership table before yesterday’s round of games, their 29-10 victory over Boroughmuir last weekend reinforcing their coach’s insistence on the importance of getting the basics right.

Having already taken the scalps of Watsonians and Heriot’s, and having given champions Glasgow Hawks a serious fright as well, you suspect that a side who are overwhelmingly sourced from local material are also being subjected to some old-fashioned Borders prejudices about city slickers when central belt opponents are in their sights.

Certainly, there is a mis chievous glee in their progress this season, drawn not least from the fact that they have overtaken a Heriot’s side bolstered by so many of their former players. “We’ve got quite a bit of competition for places now,” Hay smiled. “And if we had all the players who defected to other sides back here then we’d have one hell of a second team as well.”

Such sentiments are lux uries in which Hay will indulge only occasionally, for the precipice he looked over during that thrashing by Hawks is still too sore a memory. Yet for all that he is reluctant to tempt fate, he still harbours a conviction that Hawick, with their feeder club structure, have a potential strength no other club can match.

“We can be a huge force in Scottish rugby again,” he says. “How many other teams in the country can say they have firsts, seconds, thirds and fourths, two semi-junior teams, four under-16 teams and all the primary schools feeding players in? That’s a great set-up to have.”

Perhaps Hay’s experience in broadcasting, and in his roles as chief executive of the Scottish Professional Rugby Players Association and as players’ representative on the SRU Council, means he can bring a wider perspective to Hawick than might have been typical of the club in the past. Where others see rubble, he sees the building blocks of the future.

This article was posted on 13-Nov-2005, 12:23 by Hugh Barrow.