Jason Leonard: The Autobiography - Jason Leonard

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politely.

      ‘Get one thing fucking straight – I ain’t your fucking mate,’ he said. ‘Now go and train.’

      Dick was a tough coach, and he made my life hard that day – but he was fair. I was late and stinking of booze, so what was he supposed to do – congratulate me?

      But by the next year, when I broke into divisionals, he’d become more vicious. I remember turning up late to one of his training sessions then, with Jeff Probyn. We got changed at record speed and ran out onto the pitch.

      ‘Hello, Dick. We’re here,’ I said.

      ‘No good to me. Just run round the pitch till I call for you,’ he replied, without even looking round.

      ‘Which way do you want us to run?’ I asked, determined to be as awkward as possible.

      ‘I don’t fucking care which way you run. Just run.’

      We ran around that bloody pitch all evening. All evening. We were talking most of the time as we went round – telling bad jokes and gossiping about everyone. Then, at the very end of training, Bestie called us over to do this thing called the Tunnel Of Love that he does at the end of every session.

      First, he put us into two lines, with each of us holding tackle bags. The remaining players had to run down the tunnel of bags to the other end. You had to try and do it without either being knocked down through the tunnel or knocked off your feet. There are around 15 bags each side in the tunnel, so it’s a chance for everyone to knock seven bells out of everyone else. Guess who went through the tunnel first? Yep, me and Jeff, after we’d been running non-stop for about two hours.

      I think Dick was quite miffed that we both managed to get through without being dumped, because he’d specifically instructed the boys to knock us over. But we made it through.

      Dick has his moments and he can flare up, but it’s usually when he feels his authority is being undermined in some way. As a coach, he is absolutely superb and his coaching skills have played an enormous part in my growth and development as a player.

      He is extraordinary at retaining information about players. He once did a team talk, before one of our games at Northampton. I said to him, ‘Do you want to say a couple of words?’ and he said, ‘No, not really.’

      I managed to persuade him just to say a few words about the opposition and what we would be in for that afternoon until eventually he agreed, whereupon he gave a short talk which was the most incisive piece of analytical summary of the opposition I’ve ever sat in on. I think he realized that a lot of the boys were tense that day, so he put us at our ease. First he went through Northampton’s star players, telling us where they were going wrong. He started with Ian Hunter and said, ‘Great player, great runner, great defender, one of the original big English backs, apart from injury he would have had a lot more caps. He plays on the wing and full back, sixteen stone and fit as you like, a superb athlete. If you run at him, he’ll cut you in half and knock you over, but he has his weaknesses – for example, he’s weak going into the comers. If you kick the ball into the corner, away from him, because of his height, he finds it quite difficult to bend down and pick it up.

      ‘That’s when you’ve got to strike him. You can’t wait for him to have picked the ball up because he’s a very precise kicker. You have a very good chance of charging him down if you go for his feet while he’s about to kick to touch, because he takes so long.

      ‘Also – just a quick warning for you – if you see him tuck the ball under one arm, he’s going to run. He’s not going to pass, he’s going to run.’

      Despite playing in the England team with Ian Hunter and playing against him for Quins, it wasn’t until Dick actually said all that that I realized how he played. When Dick had said it all, I realized how astute he was. I thought, ‘Jesus, I play with this bloke all the time and I’ve never noticed before what he does.’

      He added lots of comments about other players as well, some insights into the way they played and some funny stories about players to lighten the mood – most of them rude. We ended up going out and beating Northampton at Franklins Gardens. It was great.

      But while Dick had a real talent for understanding rugby and remembering exactly what he’d seen in a game, his man management was never very good. He is an emotional sort of bloke, which he admits himself, and does tend to wear his heart on his sleeve. If he believes something’s right, he will say it there and then rather than wait for a quiet moment. If he doesn’t agree with something, he stands up and says he doesn’t agree straight away, sometimes without thinking things through properly.

      Sometimes he’d start having a real go at players – I’d urge him to calm down and not fly off the handle, but his response was always the same: ‘Why should I?’ Some players had a very difficult time with him and, ultimately, that is why in my view he left Harlequins. I’m sure he partly blames me for what happened, because I was a senior player, but there was nothing I could do to save him at that stage – the rest of the club had decided they couldn’t work with him, and that was the end of it. I respected him enormously and know I’m a far better player for having worked with him. He’d give me new ways that I could train and play and he was always right. He made life easier and never wanted thanking or pats on the back – he just wanted to get on and do his job. Sometimes I’d go up to him after training and say, ‘Cheers, Bestie. That worked really well.’

      He’d just be standing there, taking a drag of his fag, nodding his head and rolling his eyes. I really enjoyed my time with Dick for Quins, England and the Lions. One thing was for sure – there was never a dull moment.

      Nicknames are such an important part of rugby that it was only a matter of time before I got one. Mine was Fun Bus. Unsurprisingly, it came from Martin Bayfield – the team joker. It was back in the days when we were given three training shirts before every England match – one white, one blue and one red. I was proudly sporting the red shirt when Bayf stopped in his tracks, spun round and said, ‘Look – it’s a red London bus.’ You have to remember that these were the amateur days, when we all liked a pint or 20 (me more than most). I didn’t have the most slender of figures and the players loved to take the mickey out of my size.

      Looking back, I suppose Fun Bus is an appropriate enough name for someone who’s big and likes to party. If there’s any more offensive meaning to it than that, then I’m afraid it’s lost on me!

      When I first started in the England squad, I was intrigued by all the names that everyone had been given. Rob Andrew was Squeaky because of his squeaky clean image and because every woman wanted to mother him. Will Carling was Bum Chin for obvious reasons, Brian Moore was Pit Bull – again for obvious reasons. There was Peter Winterbottom, the Straw Man, while Jerry Guscott had two names – Jack because he would always look after himself (as in ‘I’m all right Jack’), and Joan Armatrading after her song ‘Me, myself, I’. Then there was Phil de Glanville, who was called Hollywood because of his film-star looks.

      On one memorable occasion which no other player seems to be able to forget, I turned to Paul Rendall, who as explained earlier was known as Judge, and said, ‘Judge, why don’t you have a nickname?’

      I don’t know what possessed me to say it. I’d just got so used to calling him Judge that I never considered it a nickname. But the abuse that I got for the question was unbelievable. First, there was the silence – they all stopped, stared at me and looked from one to the other – then there was the hysterical laughter, pointing, nudging and general humiliation. Finally, the more serious issues. Judge took me to one side and said, ‘Look, no one minds you making a complete prick of yourself every now and again, but for God’s sake don’t let the backs hear you say things like that. You’re lucky on this occasion – they didn’t hear, but you must be more careful. You’re a forward and have a reputation to uphold. Stupid comments are for backs only.’

      There

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