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'I just gave him a wee pop to the balls… I might need to be a bit careful after all this Joe Marler stuff'

By Jamie Lyall
(Photo by Bruce White / SNS Group via Getty Images)

As a 15-year-old flanker growing up on the industrial fringes of Livingston, Luke Crosbie knew he could never match his Edinburgh rivals for wealth or opportunity. He didn’t have access to the rugby sessions, the lavish facilities or the international expertise of the private school lads from the city. West Calder, his own high school, didn’t have a rugby team.

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What Crosbie did have was a work ethic that would make the average leaf-cutter ant blush. Even back then, he was driven by a ravenous hunger to make it in the game, an anxiety that the boys he was competing with for age-grade selection might be training more, could be edging ahead if he let his guard slip and spent a night on the PlayStation, not the weights bench. He couldn’t beat their relentless exposure to rugby, but he could damned sure work harder.

“It was a tough gig coming through to Edinburgh myself to give it a crack at Currie,” he told RugbyPass. “Those boys were at schools like George Watson’s where they were getting a lot of rugby training. I wasn’t, so what could I do? What work could I put in to try and do more than the training they’d do at school?

“I thought: if they’re getting the rugby, then I’m going to need to get something else. They might be doing more, so I need to keep doing more, keep on at it. I would cycle up to the gym in Livingston with my mate after school and we’d train for a couple of hours. I got proper into that.

“I had to get those sessions done or I couldn’t relax. Other boys were at boarding school where they were getting training all the time. That sort of work helped me get my foot in the door and I feel like I’ve stepped up and proved myself whenever I’ve had opportunities since.”

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In those days, nobody knew much about this gangling brute of a kid. The regional selectors, Crosbie still feels, weren’t willing to back him over players they had watched and coached all season. “You’re coming in, say, with a group of Watson’s players, the coach knows them and the coach wants to look good and pick a good team, so he goes with what he knows well. I used to get cut from U16s basically for that reason.

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“The Currie coach Andrew Jones actually emailed in and asked, ‘Why have you cut Luke? We need some feedback; we don’t think that’s fair.’ And then I actually wound up getting back in. It’s all about having equal opportunity. I understand it is tough as a coach if you don’t have time to see all these boys play.

“But there are a few boys playing at West Calder now, some have moved on to Currie and I keep in touch with them. I make sure they’re working hard and give it a shot, make sure their confidence doesn’t get blown because that rejection can make some people go into their shells.”

In continuing his prodigious rise at Edinburgh, a soaring ascent that will surely culminate in a Scotland cap before the year is out, and helping the next crop of Livi lads along the same path, Crosbie is proving a wonderful antidote to the posh-boy stereotype that still pervades the Scottish game. 

That edifice remains, but it is shifting thanks to the emergence of blokes like Crosbie, the ferocious West Lothian tearaway, salt-of-the-earth Borderers like Rory Sutherland, Finn Russell the stonemason, Jamie Bhatti the cow-slaughterer and Prestwick’s finest, Gordy Reid, however you want to bracket the uproariously entertaining prop. The team is becoming more representative of its people.

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“That’s what rugby is,” said Crosbie. “There are so many different players, so many different body types. You’re getting so many different personalities from across Scotland. It’s important everyone gets a shot at it and gets to almost understand the concept of what rugby’s actually like. Rugby is a complicated sport, maybe you don’t understand the laws – you’ve got to dive into it, try to understand it and you might like it.

“I just came across rugby going for a walk with my dad as a kid, saw folk running into each other and thought, let’s give that a crack. It looks better than being stuck in goals. From there, I grew a love for the sport and you start to realise there is an actual community that you can meet all these people and all these connections through rugby.”

The coronavirus pandemic has placed an indefinite hold on Edinburgh’s charge for the Guinness PRO14 title. They top Conference B after 13 games and have a Challenge Cup quarter-final against Bordeaux-Begles to play at some point. When – indeed if – those matches will be fulfilled, nobody can say.

If the crisis eases and Scotland’s summer tour goes ahead, the safe money is on Crosbie winning his first cap against South Africa or New Zealand. He has been in and around Gregor Townsend’s camp for over a year now and has the frightening speed and snarl to fit the coach’s blueprint. Townsend, like Richard Cockerill, loves the aggression and dynamism he brings to the party.

With all that is looming, and all the riches that could await in the very near future, how tough is it to stay rooted in the present? Crosbie framed his explanation in terms so simple even a dense journalist grasped it. “If you were interviewing someone else in three interviews’ time, and you’re thinking about that and you’re not prepared for this one, then this one goes to s*** and you’ve got nothing to write about.

“Your whole process to get to that interview is completely derailed. Focus on each job as well as you can. Every step is a building block on a path to where I want to be, and enjoy the process. If you look too far ahead, in the game right in front of you you play s***. Then you can be shipped out of a team. It’s too intense an environment – you’ve got to fight every week to stay in the team.”

This is a confrontation that Crosbie has loved since the days of slugging it out with the Watson’s lads for an age-grade jersey. He takes joy in heaving his huge frame about, stampeding around open prairie with a gait that suggests the grass on which he is running has mortally offended him. 

He broke his jaw against Zebre last season but played on nonetheless, more annoyed that the injury prevented him demolishing the post-match pizza. At Edinburgh, the staff call him The Terminator. “When you’re coming back from injury, the physios are constantly asking you, on a scale of one to ten, how sore is it?

“Well, rugby hurts anyway. I just thought, I’ll be alright and I got on with it. And my facial expression as well – if we’re doing conditioning, the boys say it doesn’t change, even if I’m knackered. It’s the same as a resting b**** face, I suppose.

“I’m not like that off the pitch but on the pitch, at this level, and the reason Edinburgh have gone well is that we play our game and if it comes to it, we’re happy to stand toe-to-toe and go to work. I just enjoy getting stuck in with my team-mates; it’s all a laugh winding a few people up as well.”

There is, of course, one unconventional wind-up that made Crosbie Twitter-famous last season. Way before Joe Marler and Alun Wyn Jones, in a Murrayfield rout of the Kings, he squared up to irate lock JC Astle and delivered a swift back-hand flick to a very tender area.

“They got a penalty and their second row was trying to wind me up, slapping my chest, and he was looking me in the eye, so I just gave him a wee pop to the balls,” Crosbie explained. “He wasn’t happy with that, looked straight to the touch judge. As soon as I saw him getting wound up I thought, I’ve got him here. Off the pitch, it’s nothing like that, we’re shaking hands. I might need to be a bit careful with that after all this Joe Marler stuff.”

Perhaps, in the current circumstances, that would be wise. Still, there can be no denying that Luke “The Terminator” Crosbie does not lack for balls.

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J
Jon 6 hours ago
Jake White: Are modern rugby players actually better?

This is the problem with conservative mindsets and phycology, and homogenous sports, everybody wants to be the same, use the i-win template. Athlete wise everyone has to have muscles and work at the gym to make themselves more likely to hold on that one tackle. Do those players even wonder if they are now more likely to be tackled by that player as a result of there “work”? Really though, too many questions, Jake. Is it better Jake? Yes, because you still have that rugby of ole that you talk about. Is it at the highest International level anymore? No, but you go to your club or checkout your representative side and still engage with that ‘beautiful game’. Could you also have a bit of that at the top if coaches encouraged there team to play and incentivized players like Damian McKenzie and Ange Capuozzo? Of course we could. Sadly Rugby doesn’t, or didn’t, really know what direction to go when professionalism came. Things like the state of northern pitches didn’t help. Over the last two or three decades I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have all that Jake wants. There was International quality Super Rugby to adore, then the next level below I could watch club mates, pulling 9 to 5s, take on the countries best in representative rugby. Rugby played with flair and not too much riding on the consequences. It was beautiful. That largely still exists today, but with the world of rugby not quite getting things right, the picture is now being painted in NZ that that level of rugby is not required in the “pathway” to Super Rugby or All Black rugby. You might wonder if NZR is right and the pathway shouldn’t include the ‘amateur’, but let me tell you, even though the NPC might be made up of people still having to pull 9-5s, we know these people still have dreams to get out of that, and aren’t likely to give them. They will be lost. That will put a real strain on the concept of whether “visceral thrill, derring-do and joyful abandon” type rugby will remain under the professional level here in NZ. I think at some point that can be eroded as well. If only wanting the best athlete’s at the top level wasn’t enough to lose that, shutting off the next group, or level, or rugby players from easy access to express and showcase themselves certainly will. That all comes back around to the same question of professionalism in rugby and whether it got things right, and rugby is better now. Maybe the answer is turning into a “no”?

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j
john 9 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

But here in Australia we were told Penney was another gun kiwi coach, for the Tahs…….and yet again it turned out the kiwi coach was completely useless. Another con job on Australian rugby. As was Robbie Deans, as was Dave Rennie. Both coaches dumped from NZ and promoted to Australia as our saviour. And the Tahs lap them up knowing they are second rate and knowing that under pressure when their short comings are exposed in Australia as well, that they will fall in below the largest most powerful province and choose second rate Tah players to save their jobs. As they do and exactly as Joe Schmidt will do. Gauranteed. Schmidt was dumped by NZ too. That’s why he went overseas. That why kiwi coaches take jobs in Australia, to try and prove they are not as bad as NZ thought they were. Then when they get found out they try and ingratiate themselves to NZ again by dragging Australian teams down with ridiculous selections and game plans. NZ rugby’s biggest problem is that it can’t yet transition from MCaw Cheatism. They just don’t know how to try and win on your merits. It is still always a contest to see how much cheating you can get away with. Without a cheating genius like McCaw, they are struggling. This I think is why my wise old mate in NZ thinks Robertson will struggle. The Crusaders are the nursery of McCaw Cheatism. Sean Fitzpatrick was probably the father of it. Robertson doesn’t know anything else but other countries have worked it out.

36 Go to comments
A
Adrian 11 hours ago
Will the Crusaders' decline spark a slow death for New Zealand rugby?

Thanks Nick The loss of players to OS, injury and retirement is certainly not helping the Crusaders. Ditto the coach. IMO Penny is there to hold the fort and cop the flak until new players and a new coach come through,…and that's understood and accepted by Penny and the Crusaders hierarchy. I think though that what is happening with the Crusaders is an indicator of what is happening with the other NZ SRP teams…..and the other SRP teams for that matter. Not enough money. The money has come via the SR competition and it’s not there anymore. It's in France, Japan and England. Unless or until something is done to make SR more SELLABLE to the NZ/Australia Rugby market AND the world rugby market the $s to keep both the very best players and the next rung down won't be there. They will play away from NZ more and more. I think though that NZ will continue to produce the players and the coaches of sufficient strength for NZ to have the capacity to stay at the top. Whether they do stay at the top as an international team will depend upon whether the money flowing to SRP is somehow restored, or NZ teams play in the Japan comp, or NZ opts to pick from anywhere. As a follower of many sports I’d have to say that the organisation and promotion of Super Rugby has been for the last 20 years closest to the worst I’ve ever seen. This hasn't necessarily been caused by NZ, but it’s happened. Perhaps it can be fixed, perhaps not. The Crusaders are I think a symptom of this, not the cause

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