IF YOU'D seen the state of him that Sunday afternoon you wouldn't have fancied his chances much. It was September 23, the World Cup was up and running and Frank Hadden's A team were an hour away from taking to the field to face the All Blacks at Murrayfield. The home dressing-room was calm in the main, except for the sickly cries in the background. John Barclay was in the toilet, green around the gills and throwing-up for Scotland.
A number of things made Barclay's stomach churn. This was his debut and that was enough in itself to get him going. The thought of his family and friends willing him on was nice but it piled the pressure higher and higher. He'd received 200 congratul
atory texts. His 83-year-old granny wept buckets when she heard he'd been picked. Pressure, pressure. On top of that, he hadn't played a game in close to four months and that didn't do a lot for his constitution. The prospect of facing the great Richie McCaw had him retching some more. McCaw is the God of openside flankers, especially to one as young as Barclay.
"I puked before the warm-up," recalls the 21-year-old. "Then I puked after the warm-up, then I puked again just before we went out on the pitch. When I wasn't being sick I wanted to be sick. It was almost like two-fingers-down-the-throat just to get it up. It was painful. There I was, crouched at the toilet bowl, thinking to myself, 'what the hell is happening to me here'."
This is standard stuff for new boys but what was unusual that day was the way this particular debutant relaxed into the game so quickly. The mental strength he showed then is half the reason he is here now, in the team to face France today and being talked about as a No.7 with all the ability in the world and a cool head to match.
He remembers his first ruck in his first cap like it was a car crash. He hit it hard and then the pile-up started, one body smashing into it more violently than the next. Every half-second there was an eruption as another Kiwi came thundering in. He got off the floor and said, "My God, if every ruck is going to be like that..."
Twenty minutes in and he was knackered. Wiped out. George Graham, the forwards coach, told him earlier that the day would pass in a blur, that it would be over before he realised and that he should enjoy every minute. Right then, Barclay thought that either the Murrayfield clock had stopped or that Graham was the biggest liar that ever walked the earth. Soon he would realise that neither was the case.
Time did indeed fly after that. It passed in a welter of tackles and carries and steals on the ground. By the end, Barclay had made 21 hits and had won five turnovers on the floor. Against the storied McCaw this was a triumph that went some way to deadening the impact of the 40 points New Zealand scored. A real gem emerged that afternoon.
And here he is, in a Glasgow coffee shop, running through the details of his young and eventful life. He was born in Hong Kong, was raised in Switzerland and Belgium and Malaysia and London. His dad's job in the petrochemical industry took him around the world, to six homes in five different countries by the age of ten. As a souvenir of his early life he still has at home a jersey from a minis tournament he played in at the Hong Kong Sevens signed by the great Michael Lynagh and Willie Ofahengaue.
The nomadic life couldn't continue, though. His parents sent him to Dollar Academy as a boarder and it was there that this strange game called rugby started to have an appeal. He became the star, the one they all raved about. He played in two Schools Cup finals and won them both, captaining them on the second occasion and winning the man of the match award, as decided by an adjudication panel of Mike Blair and Simon Taylor. Taylor told him later that he stood head and shoulders above every other kid on the park, that he seemed to do whatever he wanted to do, whenever he wanted to do it. That just about summed it up.
His was a strange rugby existence, however. He'd outgrown schools rugby but wasn't nearly grown up enough to take the next step despite what people of influence thought at the time. Matt Williams was one of them. A few months after Barclay left Dollar and not long recovered from a bad groin injury, Williams picked him in a national training squad and in the process set off a chain of events that could have forced the young man from the sport.
Barclay wasn't ready for that level of rugby. And he knew it. "I hadn't even played a game for Glasgow when the call came," he says. "I'd only just got to know the lads and I felt really uncomfortable going to training with them the day after I made the national squad because there were guys with Glasgow who deserved to be in the squad and weren't and it was all very awkward. I didn't know why Matt picked me. I was just a kid. On one level, with my friends and that, I enjoyed the recognition but when I turned up for the first Scotland session I knew within minutes that I was completely out of my depth. I had no idea what I was doing. I was only 18 after all. When Matt told me I didn't need to come back the next time I was relieved."
Only problem now was that he was marked out as the most exciting prospect in Scottish rugby. That's a fair bit of baggage for any youngster to carry. He went away to serve his time with GHA but didn't enjoy it. All the time there was this pressure of being the boy that Williams called up for training and it played on his mind. He decided to go down another road. He applied for medical school and was turned down because the authorities didn't believe he was serious about his studies. "They thought I'd just take the piss and play rugby all the time but I wouldn't have. I really wanted to do that degree and I was gutted when they said no. All I wanted to do at that stage was put rugby on the back-burner, to tip away at it as an amateur, get my degree and then see what happened after that. I was definitely disillusioned with the game by then. I thought things would happen for me instantly and when they didn't I got very down and I wanted out."
A three-month rugby scholarship in Wellington, New Zealand, helped revive his love of the game. He came back, got some breaks, and found himself in the Glasgow first team. Now he started to motor. Before he knew it he was in the World Cup squad. He was standing at Edinburgh Castle holding the saltire in the air with a battery of photographers taking pictures of him. The New Zealand experience happened soon after. And now it's France.
"In the beginning I was very shy about mixing with the lads but the World Cup fixed all that," he says. "At the start of sessions we'd normally play a game of touch and I'd stay out on the wing minding my own business. I didn't have the confidence then but I blend in now."
Not much is known about some of these new French players we'll see today but Barclay has come up against a few of them before. Playing underage with Scotland, their paths have crossed. "I played France at under-18, under-19 and under-21. Three games and three sound beatings. Francois Trinh-Duc played in one of those matches and so did Fulgence Ouedraogo. I remember him as an incredibly fit, high-energy, big tackling flanker and I think he's much the same now."
Thierry Dusautoir, the Toulouse wrecking ball, is the man in direct competition with Barclay today. Dusautoir has been described in the past as "a horse of a man" and "a wrecking ball" so Barclay pretty much knows where he stands with him. Getting the better of the Frenchman will be a monumental challenge but it is one that he relishes.
"I don't know how I'm going to be beforehand. I don't know if I'll be sick again or what but at least I'll be familiar with the atmosphere and the tension and that will help. I can't wait for it. I was very disappointed not to play more of a part in the World Cup but that's past now. This is a big occasion for me."
A Six Nations opener against France at a heaving Murrayfield? Few occasions come bigger than this.
The full article contains 1528 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
