Jeff Probyn: Merv…the O’Driscoll axe lacked respect

I had to laugh when I read the comments posted by ‘Merv’ following my article about Brian O’ Driscoll being left out of the Lions final Test squad. To be labelled as “typical of the blazered buffoons mentioned by Will Carling (in fact, he actually called the committee 57 Old Farts), living in the past amateur era when the tour was a jolly”, was quite a surprise given that I was actually playing at the time of Carling’s comments and was part of the group that helped force professionalism through!
‘Merv’ was right to point out that I have never coached a Grand Slam win, a Six Nations Championship or a Lions series win – but I have played in back-to-back Grand Slam wins, something not achieved by any of the other Home Unions’ teams in living memory and a winning Lions Test (the bicentennial in Paris) for which I have my Lions number (639) and a World Cup final. I was also the England U21 manager who introduced coaches Clive Woodward and Andy Robinson (World Cup winners) to the representative game, along with a number of players who went on to full international honours.
As for Six Nations Championship – that never existed when I played international rugby and there was no such thing as Five Nations Champions – you either won the Grand Slam or nothing.
I did, however, also play for a number of years as a professional player so I am well aware of the daily level of commitment needed by today’s players in the modern game.
The dramatic increase in time commitment from when I joined the England squad in 1985 to post the first World Cup in 1987 was almost unbelievable and that had more than doubled by the ’91 Cup.
In 1985 you’d meet on a Wednesday night and over the next few days have a lot of scrums, a few lineouts, a bit of semi-opposed, play the match and be back to work on the Monday.
By 1990 there was  a 12-month chart with training dates, testing dates, what diet to eat, when to rest and when to peak, a training programme that included aerobic, anaerobic, plyometric and weight training coupled with sprint training and stamina runs  – and all while still working full time and playing club rugby.
To be told that you are expected to train for at least three hours a day if you want to continue to be an international player when you were also working full time was, to say the least, difficult.
In fact, it was because of the increased demands in terms of training required to play in World Cups and on more frequent tours, including training breaks abroad that we, the players, felt we needed to be compensated for our time away from work.
It was for that reason that the squad formed a company, Player Vision, designed to provide a reasonable level of financial compensation taking the first steps towards professionalism.
The company was set-up on similar lines to the All Black Club that had been running for a number of years without any sanctions from the IRB against the players for receiving ‘professional payments’.
With more and more demands being placed on players ‘free time’ it became obvious that something had to give and with the threat of a professional circus, Kerry Packer style, it was just a matter of time before the IRB finally voted for full professionalism.
As for the comments that a tour was “a jolly” that if we won great but if we lost, well it was the end of a long season etc. ‘Merv’ really is out of touch and living in cloud cuckoo land if he believes that is true.
While it may be true that club tours were considered “a jolly” to round off the season, an international tour was anything but and far, far more serious and probably as close as you could get to professionalism in the amateur era.
Unlike a club tour that lasted a weekend or a week at maximum, international tours could last as long four to six weeks, which, for an amateur without pay, was a very long time, particularly as I had a young family.
The preparation for a tour started with a fitness session at Twickenham where every selected player was given a full fitness test before being allowed to have his tour kit.
We then flew to the tour venue in cattle class at the back of the plane which wasn’t particularly “jolly” for the second rows or anyone else over 5ft 6ins.
Once there, we stayed in second rate travel lodge hotels, trained every day, then after a week to acclimatise, we began an arduous schedule of play, travel, play (still training every day) until the end of the tour…and then on the plane the following morning for the flight home again in cattle class, win or lose.
There was only one thing worse than being on an international tour and that was being left at home, because if you were told you were the best player in your position and didn’t need to tour it was usually a sign that you were about to be replaced in the team.
More important than all this is that ‘Merv’ seems to have totally missed the point: I was not criticising Gatland for making the decision he made, I said it was a professional decision not a rugby one and not what I would have done.
The fact is, that since rugby has gone professional, it has struggled to maintain its identity as more than just another scandal-ridden professional sport with a series of explosive stories hitting the headlines.
So much so, that the RFU took the extraordinary step of outlining a number of ‘core values’ for the sport that are supposed to be represented by all that take part in the game, they are Team work, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship.
In my opinion, the most important of these values is respect, respect of all and by all in the game. If players lose respect for the opposition, their management team, for each other, or even the volunteers that mark out the pitches and run the grassroots clubs, our sport would be diminished.
A professional view of players and coaches is that they are commodities to be bought, sold and discarded once they have outlived their usefulness and that shows little or no respect for the person that is the player or coach.
Gatland’s decision may have been right as a professional choice but, as I stated before, it was not what I would call a rugby decision as it fell short in the most important core value – respect, respect not for just what O’Driscoll had done on the tour and in the two previous Tests but also throughout his career.