Originally published in NZ Rugby World #133, page 42
Top Ten Rugby Psychos
10. Mathieu Bastareaud (France)
This one sails a little close to the wind as Mathieu Bastareaud was obviously in a dark place mentally for a while last year. But it was a place largely of his making. Seriously, what on earth was he thinking? Making up all that stuff about getting the bash after the All Blacks versus France test in Wellington?
For anyone who can’t remember – Bastareaud was the 20-year-old centre who sparked a massive police investigation into an assault that never happened.
After the game, Bastareaud went out on the sauce, seemingly got a bit lashed, came back to his hotel, fell over and smashed his coupon on a table, or the floor or a team-mate’s fist. No one, least of all the player, is sure. Anyhoo, when his shiner buffed up all black and blue, he panicked – worried about what the coaches would say.
So he concocted a story he was beaten up outside the team hotel and New Zealand’s reputation took a hammering. Until he came clean a week later. Nutter.
9. Buck Shelford (New Zealand)
Now we all know Buck was not a full crazy. Off the field, he’s a perfectly decent, normal good Kiwi bloke. But on it, he was something else. He wouldn’t say he was crazy as such - more committed to a level others weren’t. That’s why his legend is alive and well today. That’s why last year when Rugby World was compiling its list of the 50 greatest All Blacks, Buck was up there in the top five despite the fact he only played 22 tests.
Rugby’s first great fitness trainer, Jim Blair, says that Buck used to like to go for a decent run on the morning of a test just to get himself warmed up and ready. That would kill others, but it just got Buck in the mood.
Then there was the testicle incident. Everyone knows what happened - a French pack containing an inordinate number of psychos managed to rake Buck’s nuts. It was pretty grim - there was blood and body parts winding down the great man’s legs. Instead of fainting or possibly even dying, Buck wanted to play on. Now that’s crazy.
8. Andy Powell (Wales)
But for one moment of madness, Andy Powell wouldn’t have made this list. But it was such a daft thing he did; such an act of lunacy that he has to qualify as a bona fide nutbar.
If he had his time again, he would have chosen a different path. Sadly for the Welsh No 8, there is no time machine at his disposal, therefore, he will have to live with his shame.
He decided to head out for a few drinks after Wales’ astonishing comeback win against Scotland in this year’s Six Nations. By the time he got back to the Welsh team hotel, outside Cardiff at the Vale of Glamorgan, he was well oiled. He was sensible enough to head off to his bed, only to wake at 5.30am desperate for a feed.
Now, here’s the crazy part. He woke up in a five star gaff where he could have picked up the phone and ordered something from the 24-hour room service. Or he could have waited an hour for breakfast to begin.
But no - he wandered outside, saw a golf buggy (it is a golf resort) and headed, with a mate, down the Motorway to a nearby service station. Tootling along at 20 kph, Powell scooped up a traffic cone and orange light to place on the roof just to make sure he drew passing motorist’s attention to his illegal presence. The police arrested him before he made it too far down the hard shoulder and he was subsequently breathalised and banned from driving for 15 months.
“It was a silly thing I did. Around five in the morning I got the munchies but I didn’t want to take the car because I thought I’d get done for drink-driving. I got this crazy idea and took the buggy.
“I just wanted some munchies. I got to the service station without any problems and, in fairness, the police were brilliant. They were quite sympathetic because I admitted I was an idiot.”
7. Brian Moore (England)
Brian Moore didn’t really come across as unhinged necessarily during his playing days. He was committed, yes, absolutely. He had that fearsome, snorting, bulldog thing going on – a whole vibe that said look at me the wrong way and I’m going to make you bleed. But there was nothing too disturbing about that.
He played through the 1980s and early 1990s when rugby had no handle on its violence. Men like Moore were everywhere – pub psychos who were hard enough to back up with some action. It was only after he retired that we got an insight into the real Moore. He has been a hugely talented columnist and commentator since he retired, combining his media role with his work as a solicitor. So he’s clever and that is what is scary.
He became really scary when he released his biography last year and revealed a dark side no one, or very few people knew about. He had been abused as a child. He has been divorced twice. He’s a doting father. Was basically an alcoholic for most of his time after he retired. He used to recite Shakespeare in the changing sheds before he played. He bawled his eyes out after England won the 2003 World Cup – not because he was happy but because he was insanely jealous he missed out in 1991. He is a qualified manicurist and has been asked by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown to stand as a Labour MP.
He’s a mixed bag – mostly nuts and fruits.
6. Trevor Brennan (Ireland)
There was something about Trevor Brennan that gave away the fact he was a loose cannon. Maybe it was his eyes, or his fiery thatch of ginger hair. Or his missing teeth - never a good look as blokes who have missing teeth usually want you to know they have missing teeth so they can tell you all about why their teeth are missing. And that story usually involves gratuitous violence. So there was always a hint of the crazies about Brennan, a big Irish loose forward who won 13 caps for his country as an enforcer.
Just how crazy became clear in 2007 when he ended up punching, repeatedly, an opposition fan in the crowd. Brennan had joined Toulouse some years before and had become a firm favourite with the locals - the French, of course, having a deep appreciation of players with a dark side. In a Heineken Cup match against Ulster, Brennan was warming up as a replacement when he reacted to some repeated chanted abuse from the visiting fans. Up he climbed into the stands and pop, pop, pop - the punches were thrown.
Brennan actually took the field after the incident and just to prove he was ever so slightly mental was sin-binned a few minutes after coming on. This being France, the local police exclaimed they were surprised there was so much fuss over the Brennan incident with the fan. In the end Brennan was banned for life and fined about $60,000.
5. Alain Esteve (France)
All the best nasties are French. The really crazy types who would eat a live frog or stick their head in a fire - for fun. Alain Esteve was one of those. How cool is this - his nickname was the ‘Beast of Beziers’. And it was one he deserved and one of which he was considerably proud.
He was indeed a beast - he stood at about 2.05m – that’s a fair bit taller than Ali Williams - and was a good 125kg. Clearly this was a specimen not to be trifled with. But not only was he huge he was just a tad mental. He held the view there was no point in being his size and flouncing around not scaring anyone. So he grew a massive beard and never once flounced.
A quiet night in for him no doubt involved knocking the froth off a crate of cold ones and then eating his television.
His real kicks, though, came on the field where he did his level best to not allow the rugby to get in the way of his chosen sport of violence.
Bobby Windsor, the Wales hooker, frequently came up against him. “When we packed down, I’d hear him say, ‘Bob-bee, Bob-bee’ and then this big fist would come through and smack you in the chops. To get my own back I booted him in the mush as hard as I could. He got up and gave me a wink.”
4. Maurice Colclough (England)
It’s uncharitable to label Maurice Colclough a crazy - he was more of a good natured joker but some of his gags were on the verge of crazy.
He was, like all good nut jobs, a tight forward and as a sign of his unstableness, opted to play for Swansea even though he was English. An English accent in those parts guaranteed a good kicking every game.
But it is his part in the infamous after-shave drinking incident following England’s win over France in the 1982 Five Nations Championship, for which Colclough is famous (infamous).
As with all Paris internationals, the post-match function was a lavish affair and the England players were bemused to see miniature bottles of after-shave at every place-setting. With the England players in boisterous mood after their 27-15 victory, Colclough tapped his England team-mate, prop Colin Smart, on the shoulder and challenged him to a drinking competition. The second row then grabbed his bottle of after-shave, twisted off the lid and threw the contents down his throat in one. Not wanting to be outdone, Smart then followed suit, downing his bottle of after-shave as his team-mates cheered him on. Unfortunately for Smart, Colclough had replaced his after-shave with tap water. After a few minutes, Smart could not stand up and was rushed off to hospital to have his stomach pumped.
3. Gerrad Cholley (France)
The clue that Gerrard Cholley was maybe just a bit nuts was in the fact that he had been a paratrooper. Usually, the French military special forces aren’t particularly keen on rationale types who see reason. Their recruit of choice has distorted hard wiring that prevents them from weighing up the pros and cons of most situations. They simply act on instinct which usually ends in blood flowing followed by death.
That was pretty much the attitude Cholley took on to the rugby field. That made him rather fearsome, especially as he was 130kg.
In one game against Scotland he laid out four people. Bang, bang, bang, bang - down they went. That was the way Cholley did things - he was a prop who saw his role not so much as an enforcer but as an eliminator. Packing down against him would have been one of the less fun things for props of the 1970s.
Not only was Cholley all scrambled in the head, he was also a boxer of some distinction. Legitimate boxing that is - in a ring with gloves.
There was massive relief around the globe when he called it quits in 1979 - so he could get on with the serious business of increasing his weight to 150kg. He remains a fearsome sight and commented recently that rugby had lost its way - that it had gone soft: “There is no fear in rugby anymore,” he lamented.
2. Armand Vaquerin (France)
Armand Vaquerin was one of the many legends of the once famous Beziers club in the Languedoc region of France. The club had a reputation for breeding hard men - real nutters who didn’t hold back. That was Vaquerin. He was a prop with whom few would mess, which explains why Beziers won 10 titles with him on board - a record still to this day. He won his first title in 1970 and also amassed 26 French caps before retiring the most decorated man in French rugby in 1984.
Like so many, though, whose hard wiring is a little suspect, it was life after rugby that was problematic for Vaquerin. It was in 1993, that he walked into a bar in Beziers - le Cardiff -that he partially owned. He had brought a pistol - as you do apparently, when you are a bit on the iffy side of psycho. Vaquerin was keen to play Russian Roulette and to drum up interest offered to start. Sadly, the one bullet in the gun happened to be in the relevant chamber and he blew his own brain out across the bar.
1. Marc Cecillion (France)
Cecillion is King of the Crazies - and of that there is no doubt. He is currently in jail - the single most appropriate place for a man whose life spiraled out of control once he hung up the boots.
He was a brooding, hulking loose forward in his day, playing 46 times for his country between 1988 and 1995 - even captaining them on five occasions. But once the outlet for his aggression was removed, Cecillion began an inexorable descent towards a 14-year jail sentence for murdering his wife.
He became an alcoholic after he stopped playing: “I fell into alcoholism whilst being totally wrapped up in my own little bubble,” he told the court during his wife’s murder trial between sobs. “I exploded without knowing why.” The end of his playing career hit him unusually hard and Cecilion, known during his playing days as ‘The Quiet Man’ was lost. He was woken by the police on the morning of August 8, 2004 to be arrested.
He had no recollection of the preceding evening but the court was told that Cecillon shot his wife five times at point-blank range during a garden party in the town of Saint-Savin on 7 August 2004. He was reported to have arrived at the party drunk and slapped the hostess for no apparent reason before being asked to leave. Mrs Cecillon refused to leave with him. He went home and returned shortly afterwards, when he pulled out a Magnum handgun and shot her in the presence of about 60 witnesses.
“I wanted my wife to come back with me. I wanted the two of us to leave together,” he said in court. “Why did I shoot? It is a question I shall ask myself all my life. I didn’t plan anything. I wish I could understand.”
One comment
RexM
Looking back at a world cup final in 2011 a couple of questions will always remain unanswered. Would NZ have beaten France by more than they did if fifteen fully fit men had taken the field.Were the injured/unfit AB's a liability? Were there really no other player(s) fit and good enough to replace the player(s) that were carrying injuries into the test? Would NZ select a team in the future where players were unable to train and carrying significant injuries.
What do you think?