This is Your Everest by Tom English

Author:Tom English
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DO A JOB ON JOOST

THE TIME HAD come for Geech and Telfer to name their Test side. The players would be told in the very early morning by way of a letter slid under their hotel room door. There were three groups of players at this point – those who were pretty certain they were in the team, those who were pretty certain they weren’t and those who felt they were on the cusp, possibly in the team, possibly on the bench, possibly nowhere. The stakes were too high for slumber.

Tim Rodber: Geech hated confrontation, so he put the letters under the door at six in the morning – and no one went to bed. Everyone stayed up. There’s that great video of John Bentley, knackered. Hasn’t been to sleep.

John Bentley: I decided to film my reaction to receiving the envelope that would tell me whether I was in the team for the first Test or not. I’d scored four tries in five games and thought I must be in with a chance. I couldn’t sleep, so I waited outside the lift for Samantha Peters [Lions administrator] to deliver the letters.

Gregor Townsend: I was sharing a room with him and you see it in the video, him in the corridor, which I didn’t know he was doing at the time. I remember the light switch going on several times through the night, him looking at the door and then the light going off again. This was before everyone had mobile phones or anything. A bygone era. So you had to wait for the letter to be pushed under your door. I think it arrived at something like five or six in the morning, and he came back into the room and went to the bathroom and filmed himself opening it.

Jeremy Guscott: I had a good feeling about being selected. I hadn’t played for about eight days, but I was flogged pretty hard at the beginning of the tour. There were some injuries. And then to give everybody a game, I was set aside for a little bit. I just had a good feeling I’d be there or thereabouts. We played against Transvaal. We lost, but I knew I’d played well. I was part of the side against Gauteng when Bentley scored. I put myself in a decent position. Bateman needed to play out of his skin, I thought, to edge me out. It wasn’t a sure thing, but . . .

Fifteen players got positive news under the door shortly before dawn in Cape Town.

Full back, Neil Jenkins: I was rooming with Tony Underwood. He was a great guy. I think I roomed with him for about twenty days on tour in total. I’ll always remember the different experience we went through when we had our letters. I was lucky enough to be selected, and Tony wasn’t. Tony left me to go for a walk and gather his thoughts. It’s hard, you know? He’s your roommate, he’s a good man and I felt for him.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.