OF all the international coaches in all the world, none can have endured a stranger initiation than Scotland’s Derrick Grant, against France at Murrayfield in the opening round of the 1986 Five Nations.
The new coach watched his country’s new full-back, Gavin Hastings, send the kick-off ballooning beyond the outer extremity of the French in-goal area. The Scottish pack gathered in readiness for the consequent scrum, a reasonable but misguided assumption.
The referee, Ireland’s David Burnett, took up a similar position. Meanwhile, Pierre Berbizier and a few of his...