Back in the dim and distant, in an arty-farty corner of the newsroom at the Bristol Evening Post, there lurked a features editor who was left so cold by Rugby Union and pretty much everything associated with it, he refused to discuss the subject unless he was wearing a fur coat.
His response to England’s tour of apartheid South Africa in 1984 – which turned out to be the last, not before time – was positively Arctic. Twickenham had shown the moral compass of a newt in sanctioning the trip in the first place, he argued, and the frequent outbreaks of mass fisticuffs were a stain on the name ...