My Life in Rugby: Nigel Horton – former England, Moseley and Toulouse lock

Being the first England player to play for their country across three decades, I once found myself the subject of a quiz question. The likes of Joe Worsley, Simon Shaw and Jonny Wilkinson have since gone on to achieve the feat, too, but with a lot more caps to their name.
I won 20 caps, all told, from 1969 to 1980. My final cap came against Ireland at Twickenham in the first game of the Grand Slam-winning season. Maurice Colclough cried off through injury and I thought I played well but the selectors decided to go with their original choice once Maurice returned to fitness.
My fondest memory of playing for England was ironically in defeat, to France in 1977, when they went on to win the Grand Slam. I thought I had my best game in an England jersey that day. We dominated the French upfront, but unfortunately our backs weren’t able to convert the pressure into tries, and with Alastair Hignell having a bad day with the boot, we were edged out 4-3.
I was dropped three or four times throughout my 12-year international career, none of them for playing reasons. I liked to air my views and I remain opinionated to this day.
Suffice to say it hasn’t always gone down well with the RFU who I liken to a badly-run gentlemen’s club. I thought the way they handled the whole business about whether we should play in Ireland or not at the height of the Troubles was very poor.
We were summoned to a meeting after the game against Wales in Cardiff at 10am the next morning to be told that England were sending a team whether we liked it or not. To have complete disregard for the players’ opinions didn’t sit well with me at all and I was considering my position even before my bosses within the police force instructed me not to travel.
The five of us who missed the match didn’t play for England again that season despite reassurances to the contrary.
I also represented England at water polo and a lot of the skills were transferable, such as the ability to read the flight of the ball at the lineout. My one and only try for England came from a lineout, against Wales in 1975, when I pushed my opposite number in the back, caught the ball and fell over the line. Luckily there weren’t any TMOs!
Fewer TV cameras meant the game was very different back then. You could certainly ‘look after yourself’ a lot more and punches were regularly traded by both sides. I got sent off for punching four minutes into the inaugural RFU Knockout Cup final between Moseley and Gloucester but there were reasons why my frustration boiled over.
French rugby was definitely no holds-barred and not for the faint-hearted. You had to earn respect on the field – and in my case that meant upholding my reputation as the Démon Blanc (white devil), which I did, on my competitive debut for Toulouse against Beziers, the pre-eminent French team of the time. From that point on, I was left alone!
I’d moved to France on returning home, prematurely in my opinion, from the ’77 Lions tour. People were tipping me for a Test place until I broke my thumb against Otago. I was still confident I could make it back in time for the second Test but the management didn’t agree.
Previous to that I’d enjoyed a good time at Moseley, who I led to the top of the Merit Table.
For the next 10 years I stayed on in France coaching at St Claude, Bourg-en-Bresse and Rouen in Normandy, before returning to the UK to combine coaching Birmingham & Solihull with consultancy work, which included touring with the Lions twice more, in 1997 and 2005, in my role as a scrum machine specialist.