SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS
MARK PALMER

Andy Henderson will complete a year of personal fulfilment when he faces the Barbarians again on Wednesday


Much has changed in Andy Henderson’s world since the last time the Barbarians swaggered into it, but all that he has lived and achieved in those eventful 12 months evidently hasn’t changed him.
If position is supposed to reflect personality, centre would be the last place you’d expect to run into the Glasgow man. He may have played to the very edge of his talent this season, but Henderson still prefers to exist on the periphery of the commotion that has surrounded the national team’s resurfacing.



The 26-year-old has entrenched himself in Frank Hadden’s midfield by taking out all manner of opposition strike runners during the Six Nations, and while there was something pleasingly unforeseen in that constancy, there is one player you would always back him to handle. Himself. Hence the impression it might only be a half-joke when he says the single difference between now and this time last year is that the children no longer boo him when he turns up at local clubs to coach their mini-rugby.

“Maybe some of the big-shots at Edinburgh get noticed a bit more now, but I’m carrying on as before,” he reports. “I don’t even know if I’d go along with people who think I’ve played the best rugby of my life this year. If the team is playing well, you’ll show up better than if you produce the same level of quality but the team is not going well. You’re still always training your hardest and playing your hardest, and end up getting slated or praised at the end of it. As ever, the truth is somewhere in between. I prefer to focus on getting on with my job.”

And the stats show he has been doing that pretty well. Henderson came out on top of the official tackle count from the crude conflict that was much of the France win (although, typically, he claims his hits must have been counted double) and, taking the tournament as a whole, arguably contributed the most of all Scotland’s backs, given his defensive distinction and the fact he actually smuggled himself over the gain-line several times.

It is just as well these facts speak for themselves, because Henderson is not about to put a trumpet to his lips. In character and class, he assimilates perfectly into the ethos of his workplace, an environment that has been transformed by the ultimate in quiet revolutions. Both Hadden and Jason White, his captain, articulate their passion in deed, not decibel, and still eye compliments suspiciously. Henderson, too, talks less of a good game than he plays.

“I don’t feel the need to shout an awful lot on or off the field,” he admits, but don’t take that as an apology. “The loudest voice isn’t necessarily the most sensible. I take my lead from Jason – there’s no fuss, he performs what he knows are his duties, and that gives everyone else the lift to do the same. Jason is not a shouter, but he brings people together, and what he does say people listen to. He’s got the respect of everyone; he doesn’t need to punch the walls to get it. Some guys maybe feel that the dressing room should be noisy, but in ours there hasn’t been much head-banging. It’s a style of leadership from the top that is obviously working.”

Perhaps there’s the crux. Perhaps we should take Henderson at his word and agree that it is the context, not the content that has changed; that he isn’t a better player, he is just being made better use of.

Hadden’s on-field approach certainly suits him. His size and shape (16 stones packed squarely into his 6ft 3in frame) sit favourably with the continuity-based game currently en vogue, with the strength to make a tackle just as prized as the cunning to break one. His offload in contact has always been a faithful asset, while this year he has been noticeably quicker into his stride on the rare occasions that the three-quarter line made it onto the front foot, something he attributes to the guidance of Mark Bitcom, the fitness coach whom Murrayfield should cherish just as highly as Hadden.

No longer does Henderson’s lack of natural pace mean that a game can leave him behind, the fate that threatened to befall his international career as a whole before the changing of the guard, and the wind, last summer. After being fast-tracked into a Scotland debut before he had turned fully professional (he came off the bench for 15 minutes of the 2001 Barbarians game), Henderson was then viewed with unmistakeable ambivalence by both Ian McGeechan and Matt Williams. Henderson had never had a full Six Nations before this year, despite the staff shortages Scotland have suffered in midfield since the turn of the century.

During the 2004 tournament, Williams, as perhaps only the Australian could, actually did more damage by picking Henderson than not, taking his blindfold and pin and deciding that the player should start on the wing for the coach’s very first match in Cardiff; probably the only time in his life that Henderson could be described as a wide boy. He was never going to take to the role in any sense — it is a position for which he simply does not have the legs, never mind the necessary game knowledge. Last year his relationship with Williams and his standing in the Scotland set-up went from bad to worse, his only spring involvement a mercifully brief four minutes’ experience of the dismembering 46-22 loss to Wales.

It says plenty about the nature of both Hadden and his work that a man who was thought not assertive enough either side of the white line should have been recast as a centrepiece of the operation. Henderson is one of only four players to have started all the coach’s 10 games in charge, the first of those against the Barbarians at Pittodrie last May, a game in which he marked his return with a try and the man-of-the-match award. He is yet to have a poor match under Hadden, a day when neither his constructive or destructive qualities have been brought to bear. He is happy, but not content.

“Once you get a bit of confidence, put in a few good performances together, and have a reasonably good idea of what you’re supposed to be doing on the pitch, it makes a real difference, but you’ve got to keep trying to push on,” Henderson surmises. “I’m well aware that I’m not secure in the team, so the thing is to get your head down and keep working. For example, I’ve been working on my pace, and am reasonably happy with where I’m at, but that’s only until someone runs straight past me for a try, and that’s happened before. You can’t relax.”

Especially not with South Africa on your case. Henderson believes Jake White’s side to have the best defence in world rugby, having felt its cloying grasp first-hand the last time Scotland toured in 2003. Back then, they lost the Test series 2-0, despite performing exceptionally well in patches. “That’s an indication of how tough a task this is,” says Henderson.

It also, nevertheless, represents an opportunity on a number of levels, not least for the leading home-based players, of which he is one, to endear themselves to a wider audience as SRU chief executive Gordon McKie’s axe continues to hover in the vicinity of the pro teams. Henderson, however, communicates an ardent affinity with the Glasgow cause, an altogether isolated example of the sense of identity Jim Telfer vowed would ensue when he manufactured the sides a decade ago.

“It’s quite a big thing personally for me,” he says. “I’ve grown up there, come through the system (his club side was Glasgow Hawks) and I feel a responsibility to it. It’s a little bit unsettling to have the future up in the air, but it’s out of your hands so there’s no point lying awake in your bed at night worrying about it. Having said that, I think we (Scotland) have a big role this summer – people test the strength of Scottish rugby by what the national team are doing. People will think our game is doing well as long as we are. We’ve a responsibility to keep the good news flowing.”

Something that has become a habit for Henderson this past year.

This article was posted on 28-May-2006, 10:48 by Hugh Barrow.