CHRIS CUSITER asks us to picture a scene. He is in exile and in disgrace. He is in the mountains above Perpignan and it is snowing. He is sitting around a camp fire with his team-mates, the whole sorry lot of them banished from the city following their 10-10 draw at home to lowly Dax a few days before. The first Saturday of March brought rancour at Stade Aime Giral. Perpignan were booed off by their own people and castigated by their own president, an emotional man by the name of Paul Goze.
The spirit of the proud Catalan courses through the veins of Monsieur Goze. "This is unacceptable," he thundered. "This is not Perpignan. I will not tolerate this."
Goze had an idea. Get thee to Mont Canigou, he barked. And up they went, for the h
onesty session to beat all honesty sessions. What was wrong with them against Dax? Why had they been so lacking in fight? Where was the aggression they were famous for? These weren't questions that Nathan Hines needed to answer, for he was with Scotland at the time preparing for the upcoming Calcutta Cup. For Cusiter, there was no such luck. If he was feeling down about his exclusion from Frank Hadden's squad – which he was – then he couldn't betray it, not when you had props and locks and back-row forwards hopping off each other in the mountains in an effort to regain lost passion, not when his own input was not merely requested but demanded. "It was, without doubt, the strangest week of my rugby life," says Cusiter.
Coming down the track, like a speeding train, was the seemingly unstoppable force of Stade Francais, unbeaten at home in 60 league games stretching back to September 2004. "We had to play Stade in Paris on the night of the Calcutta Cup. To say the build-up was intense was putting it mildly. You had the veterans of our team winding us up. Sebastien Bozzi is a prop. He's 36 and is one of a kind. Christophe Porcu is a lock. He's 37. He retired two years ago but they brought him back because they missed his spirit. Porcu summed up what it meant to play for Perpignan, the whole Catalan deal, the history and the pride in the jersey. It was full-on."
Kick-off in Paris was scheduled at 9pm. Beforehand, Cusiter found a quiet spot and watched the action from Murrayfield. He says he was sad and frustrated not to be there. Hadden had phoned to explain the reasons why. He said Rory Lawson was doing well at Gloucester. Cusiter thought he was doing pretty well himself but that didn't cut much ice. "The coach makes the decision and you have to get on with it," he says.
"I think Frank thought that I wasn't getting enough game-time with Perpignan, so he brought Rory in instead. Frustrated is the word I'd use. I partly guessed that something like this would happen. I knew coming here was a risk as regards my immediate Scotland future. That was the decision I took. You don't get to play every week in France. We have a big squad because we have a huge amount of games and I was aware of the gamble I was taking. I mean, in between Six Nations games I didn't start for the club because I hadn't been around much, I was away with Scotland. I was never going to just walk back into the side. I'm not guaranteed my place here. Just because I've played for Scotland a few times doesn't really mean anything to the people here. I have to earn my place.
"So, yeah, I was sad but I was also chuffed for the boys. And watching it helped give me extra motivation for the Stade game later on. I was on from the start. It was a big night for me."
The vows from the mountain-top were carried out in full at Stade Jean Bouin. "At the first scrum there was a fight. At the first ruck, another fight. Scuffles were breaking out all over the place and the ferocity of the hits were just unbelievable. No Test match I'd ever played in was more intense than this. The aggression was a real eye-opener. It was absolutely brilliant to be part of it."
Cusiter played outstandingly well as Perpignan battered Stade into submission, beating them 23-12 and thereby causing a sensation in French rugby. He says it was nice consolation but it was more than that. Getting to grips with the French championship is difficult for any newcomer but it is especially difficult for scrum-halves in places like Perpignan where the pressure on the No.9 is immense. On top of his regular duties, Cusiter is also tasked with calling the lineouts, something that brings into play a whole new set of demands.
Firstly, the onus on him to learn French, and quickly, was considerable given he was going to be the pivotal communicator in so many situations. Secondly, his workload multiplied. It's not enough any more just to focus on his own skills. He now needs to understand the intricacies of lineout play, he needs to study opposition lineouts and find chinks, he needs to know when to get aggressive with the call on his own ball and when to be defensive, he needs to do so much more than he used to and he has to do it against a backdrop of an expectant public. Against Stade and again last weekend at home to Albi, the lineout functioned perfectly. "I wasn't keen on the job to begin with but it's something I take pride in now, almost to the point of enjoyment."
After a slow start, Perpignan are now up to fifth in the table and are improving all the time. They have a Heineken Cup quarter-final away at London Irish this weekend so they are fighting currently on two fronts, a world away from what Cusiter was doing with the Borders this time last year. The only downside is the Scotland situation. Hadden has not yet been to Perpignan this season, the coach relying instead on DVDs to judge his performances. Cusiter sees little wrong with that, pointing out that getting to Perpignan takes two flights and a full day's travel. "I don't expect Frank to come and watch me play. Scottish players are spread out all over Europe now so it's not easy to see us all. I'm sure he studies the DVDs. The technology is there. I'm sure the games are being watched."
As regards Scotland's tour of Argentina, he's in the dark. It clashes with the final weeks of the French championship so even if Hadden wanted him the chances are he'd be expected to stay put and perform for his club. "It's not something I've thought about to be honest. Since I'm out of the squad at the moment it's not an issue for me. My whole focus is on Perpignan now. The club hasn't won the league since 1955 and we've never won the Heineken Cup. That's where I'm at. It's big game after big game now and I feel I'm really coming to terms with the demands."
Perpignan have a good man in Cusiter. When things get rough in the weeks and months ahead he won't shirk it. For he was captain of the Borders once. If anybody knows what it's like in the rugby trenches, it is Cusiter.
The full article contains 1265 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
