Interview: former Scotland captain Rob Wainwright

RUGBY has a unique ability to stir the emotions of a nation and even a Hebridean farmer will arrive at his old stomping ground of Murrayfield today admitting to former brothers-in-arms that he was one of the hundreds of thousands who thought Scottish rugby was on the brink two weeks ago.

Rob Wainwright is in the capital on a rare weekend away from his island home on Coll and, after a joyous Roman  occasion is happy to discuss the fateful day in Italy that proved the beginning of the end of his own Test career. We will return to that later, and his thoughts on the controversial “southern hemisphere creep” into private schools adding to concerns over Scotland’s struggle to  develop its own talent.

But, for the moment, the 6ft 4in  Wainwright is in full flow, his sheep and Luing cattle forgotten as the former back row anticipates a reunion of past players at Murrayfield before today’s 5pm kick-off in the RBS Six Nations Championship match with France. His memory  has stopped on the dark cloud that  engulfed the last Murrayfield occasion, the Calcutta Cup defeat.

“It was all wrong. Everything was wrong,” he said. “I wrote a list of what I could see in the game against England and where we were letting ourselves down and it went on and on. At that point, staring at the list, you were asking yourself if there was a way back for us.

“I am pretty remote to the game these days but, after the match against England, I endured a fortnight of soul-searching. And then, just two weeks later, they are in Italy, where we have suffered many times, and every problem I had identified they turned around. Every single one I was crossing off. I couldn’t believe it!

“The scrum started poorly but got better, crucially, and we got better with it. The lineout was much better, the defence, breaking the line, imagination, crispness, passion, belief, momentum, direction and the execution was all missing against England but was excellent in Rome.

“That is the point where you realise that you are a supporter again, not a  player because, clearly, the players themselves believed that they could turn it around or they simply would not have been able to do it in Italy.”

It is interesting to listen to a former Scotland captain who was something of a colossus in the back row over 37 caps, and who also earned respect when he captained the British and Irish Lions midweek side on the successful tour of 1997, now talk with the angst of a supporter.

His successor as skipper Gary Armstrong once said that he was a player briefly, but a supporter all his life and, for all that players insist that they will not criticise their brethren upon retiring, it is only a matter of time before that passion fuels a desire to speak out. Many did in the wake of the Calcutta Cup defeat, though some, including Finlay Calder, did it privately, after being invited by Scotland interim coach Scott Johnson to speak to the players. Wainwright was never one given to wild extremes of emotion, the Cambridge blue – in rugby and boxing – and army doctor always displaying a neat line in composure and clinical analysis that made him an  obvious captain.

But, in the days leading up to  Scotland’s meeting with Italy last month, his mind was racing back 15 years to one of the most depressing games in his rugby career. “I can remember too clearly,” he says. “At the beginning of my career I played B games in Italy and it was a formality but, by the end, they had  support and passion, and we narrowly lost over there in 1998, and it was seen as an unmitigated disaster.

“It was the end of the Richie Dixon era and I lost the captaincy over it. I played on into 1999 because Jim Telfer [coach] persuaded me to, but I shouldn’t have.