Brendan Gallagher: Clear the air? No, Fartgate only left a very nasty smell!

It was 20 years ago today – the Sunday of the early May Bank Holiday – that one of the strangest cameos of the fast disappearing amateur era was being played out.  The rugby world was in ferment after Will Carling had been axed as the captain of England three weeks before the World Cup in South Africa for describing the RFU committee as “57 old farts” in a TV interview.
Except the comments weren’t even in the interview proper, they came off-air, off-camera moments later as Carling was enjoying a bit of supposedly light hearted banter with interviewer Greg Dyke as they both headed for the front door. Their two clip-on mikes, discarded on a table, were still running, however, and that had far reaching consequences.
That Channel Four ever used the comments to pepper up a turgid and disappointingly sensation-free interview for the documentary Fair Game was clearly a disgrace but that was minor compared with the massive over-reaction of rugby’s establishment as one or two on the RFU committee sensed the opportunity to “get” Carling and all that he supposedly stood for.
That they should even be thinking like that three weeks before a tournament in which Grand Slam champions England were second favourites behind New Zealand shows just how truly awful and rotten the “bad old days” were and the utter contempt some administrators held for players. Ironically, however, what they perceived as an open goal quickly morphed into the biggest own goal in rugby history.
In retrospect we can see that the stakes were high. As rugby hurtled towards professionalism the blazers were losing control of ‘their’ game and their inner sanctum had been exposed for the elite cosy club it was.
It was always going to get messy and personal at some stage and “Fartgate” was that moment.  You might argue what transpired was a much-needed clearing of the air – so to speak – on the eve of rugby union‘s quantum leap into professionalism. Alternatively you might view the RFU’s actions as the last desperate act of a reactionary group badly out of touch with its national team and membership.
Carling takes up the story: “At the end of the season I was interviewed for a Channel Four documentary by Greg Dyke who unbelievably went onto run the BBC. The interview was over, I had taken my microphone off, got out of my chair, walked past the camera and was on the way out of the room when I passed Dyke.
“In a friendly conversational way he said, ‘so Will, what do you really think will happen if the game goes professional’. I replied something along the lines of, ‘I’ve no idea but you certainly don’t need 57 old farts running it’. We both laughed and I left.
“The transcript of the programme was leaked to the Press ahead of its screening and when the ‘story’ broke all hell broke out on the Friday morning before the Pilkington Cup Final between Bath and Wasps.
“I was on the golf course with Gary Lineker and there were 20 missed calls from the office when we stopped for a drink at the halfway hut. I racked my brain. If I’m honest it had been a pretty boring uninspired interview, nothing of interest had really been said by either of us.
“I quickly got up to speed and was amazed, I wouldn’t really put it stronger than that. It was all just too stupid. Then Colin Herridge who helped out as England’s media liaison man phoned and said it had become very serious and I needed to phone Denis Easby, the RFU president, at the East India Club immediately to apologise.
“I had no real problem with that although I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. I got through and was in the process of apologising and explaining that it had been pretty sharp practice when he interrupted me and said, ‘I must stop you there Will, you are no longer the England captain’.
“For some reason I was very calm and cool – this was just too stupid for words and I wasn’t going to lower myself to their level. Ok that’s absolutely fine I said but can I still play in the World Cup? He said yes. That’s all I want to know. I thought we had a real shot at the World Cup and wanted to be involved. After so long at the helm, if I’m honest, I really wasn’t bothered if it was as captain or not.”
The RFU statement, surely one of the defining documents of the time, issued on the morning of the final ran as follows:
It has been decided with regret that Will Carling’s captaincy of the England team will be terminated forthwith an announcement concerning his replacement will be made shortly. In light of the view recently expressed regarding administrators it is considered inappropriate for him to continue to represent, as England captain, the RFU, England and indeed English sport.
Will has lost the confidence of the RFU committee who appointed him in the first place. In view of his attitude to the committee, his position as England captain is untenable.
So a hastily convened meeting of the six or seven main officers of the 18-man executive committee, corralled by RFU secretary Dudley Wood, had unilaterally decided on the Friday night that not only was it inappropriate for Carling to represent the RFU and England as captain, it was no longer appropriate for him to represent English sport generally. Laughable. And laugh, of course, is exactly what the sporting world did for the next 48 hours or so.
As for the bit about Carling’s replacement being announced shortly, that was hogwash as well. Everybody they approached – notably Rob Andrew and Dean Richards – refused point blank to have anything to do with such nonsense. Carling, speaking to me when contributing to the launch of Behind The Rose*, takes up the story again.
“Next on the phone was Rob Andrew. The players were very angry and wouldn’t be going to South Africa unless I was reinstated as captain. A bizarre weekend followed. I was laying on the couch watching the Bath-Leicester Cup final when I heard my name being chanted by the crowd. That was a first. Then it was Colin Herridge on the phone again.
“Apparently if I offered a public apology down at the England squad session at Marlow I’d be reinstated. I thought I already had apologised? Okay, anything to end this nonsense. So I went to Marlow where a Press conference had been arranged for me to apologise in front of the camera and eat a bit of humble pie. I remember arriving in the car park and Martin Bayfield rushed up, ‘Will I’ve heard the news.. (long pause) .. apparently you’ve been reinstated, I didn’t think it could get any worse’. We broke into fits of laughter. It was all so stupid.
“After training and public making up we went to some meetings at Twickenham and I passed Dudley Wood and I’ve never seen an individual so crestfallen.
“Denis (Easby, RFU president) then sat me down and asked what this was all about and, in fairness, he listened long and hard and we then had a very good conversation in which I detailed the long and growing antipathy and tensions between the team and certain RFU members. It rather sounded to me like it was the first time Denis had ever been given our side of the argument. He promised to do what he could to ease the situation.

“Denis was all right, he had been placed in a very difficult situation by others and we appreciated that. When he travelled to the World Cup he was made welcome in camp. But nobody wanted to talk to Dudley Wood or Ian Beer (recent past president).
“In my opinion it didn’t interfere with our World Cup preparations too much but the very fact that some in the RFU would react like this in the run-up to the tournament showed where their priorities lay and they certainly were not with the England rugby team. Their vendettas were more important and it was a real insight to what I had been up against for nearly eight years.
“We so badly wanted and needed a committee whose only concern was about England winning. Some at the RFU were running scared. We the players had won three Grand Slams in five years and we now had a public profile and platform and people were listening to us. That wasn’t what they had in mind at all. It had been a big sea change.”
The RFU’s climbdown when it came on the Bank Holiday was spectacular although with weasel legal words they attempted to disguise it and establish Carling as the villain. Their statement, handed out to those of us waiting in the car park of Marlow rugby club, read:
Will Carling wishes to apologise to every member of the committee for his inappropriate and gratuitously offensive comments at the end of a recent television programme. All 25 members of the England squad have indicated their support for Will Carling as captain and respectfully requested the RFU officer to reconsider their decision to terminate his appointment.
Will Carling would like to thank the squad for their support and also Denis Easby for his courage in reconsidering his original decision thus enabling the England squad to have a settled and successful World Cup build up.
In truth Carling had been a marked man almost since he took over and gave up both his embryo Army career and then a trainee job with one of the big oil companies to become England captain, a move which clearly indicated that amateurism was on its last legs although the process was far more advanced in New Zealand, Australia and indeed France where a quasi-professionalism had existed for decades.
And you can be pretty sure that some of the big overseas names in Italy weren’t playing entirely for the good of their health or for an overwhelming desire to eat pasta and learn Italian.
Rugby was Carling’s life and career and the knives were out for him and the likes of Andrew and Brian Moore who were trying to negotiate, in a proper adult manner, a reasonable halfway house so that the players putting their lives on hold and bringing great glory to England and the RFU were at least not out of pocket and could earn a few quid for activities not directly related to physically playing the game.
Generally, however, it fell on deaf ears, the parameters remained unclear. On at least one occasion Carling was contacted late at night by an extremely supportive former RFU president, highly regarded by the players, telling him that the committee was smelling blood and that Carling was about to be called before the committee to explain a recent guest appearance opening a shop. “If there was any modest payment involved for God’s sake make sure it was donated to a charity and that there’s paperwork to back it up,” was the former president’s message. Carling offered his sincere thanks and made the necessary arrangements.
England hooker Moore recalls this era vividly: “Will’s old fart comments were neither here nor there – clearly off air, not for use or particularly offensive. They bordered on the generous in my opinion, almost a friendly humorous reference to a few old buffers who really needed to back off a bit in a rapidly changing game hurtling towards professionalism.
“What was absolutely incredible is that some of those in power – a very small minority not the majority – chose this moment, just before a World Cup in which we were well in the frame, to sack the England captain over something so utterly trivial. That beggars belief and showed their true colours.
“The England rugby team was not their prime concern whatsoever. The game was changing, they were losing power, it was becoming all about the players. They didn’t like it and reacted badly.”
Moore, with his legal background, had taken the lead in the players’ negotiations with Dudley Wood over the communication for reward issue.
“Back in 1991 myself and a number of others had worked bloody hard to present the case for an approved payment by the BBC for squad access throughout the season. We did it properly and professionally and got it approved by the full RFU committee. Progress was being made. We are talking absolute peanuts by the way – £500 to be shared by the entire squad! – but it was the principle.
“The BBC were happy to pay it, we would receive it almost as a token payment but, hopefully, as that relationship developed we might achieve a more realistic figure. Then Dudley Wood – essentially the hired hand of the RFU committee who had given the green light to our arrangements – just vetoed them point blank. The payment would have been rugby-related and therefore contravened IRB regulations. No can do.
“The argument over “communication for reward” affected the team very profoundly going forward but actually in quite a good way because we were well aware that if any of us mucked up they would get rid of us instantly, they were always looking for the excuse. I know for a fact, although Geoff Cooke has never confirmed this to me, that pressure was regularly put on him to drop certain players of which I was one and he simply said No.”
A week after this scarcely credible little episode the executive committee of the RFU exonerated their president of any wrongdoing while at the same time wishing the England team bon voyage to South Africa.
So that was all right then. “It is the joint and earnest wish of the RFU and the England squad that the matter be regarded as closed and all our attention is focused on what we all hope will be England’s successful challenge for the World Cup”, the RFU said in a statement, having done almost everything in their power to torpedo England’s campaign. You couldn’t make it up.
*Behind The Rose, the history of England Test Rugby, by Stephen Jones and Nick Cain (Arena Sport and RFU).