Interview: George Graham, manager of Gala rugby, on his club’s resurrection and life under Frank Hadden

Most people were pretty much aware of this season’s key question: “Who might prevent Melrose from claiming back-to-back titles?” Almost no one came up with the answer: “Gala, of course!”

The former giants of Scottish rugby have been in hibernation for so long that many imagined them dead and buried with even the thirstiest of mourners long since dispersed. Instead it appears that the Maroons were merely enjoying 40 winks, although with Gala’s last league title coming way back in 1983, its been more like 140. A home win over Aberdeen Grammar yesterday means Gala go into the final league match before the break, against Melrose at Netherdale on Saturday, as league leaders, two points ahead of their local rivals.

To complement all the hard work off the pitch, the man behind the rugby revival is coach George Graham, whose life history reads like a Jeffrey Archer novel, with plot twists no other writer would consider for fear of ridicule. This is his second coming to Gala: he was player/coach back in 2003/04 before his elevation to assistant coach of the Borders pro team. He was Scotland’s scrum coach (briefly under Matt Williams) and then landed the plum job as full-time forwards coach under Frank Hadden in December of 2006.

If the speed of Graham’s promotion surprised many it was matched only by his abrupt fall from grace. He was gone in 60 weeks (give or take), out on his ear by the end of the 2007/08 season while Hadden soldiered on for another season.

“It [the Scotland role] was an offer that was very difficult to refuse,” says Graham. “I did it. I enjoyed it. Would I have changed things if I was to do it again? Massively!”

Asked to give an example of something he would have done differently, Graham declines to go into specifics and instead offers this cryptic clue: “It was more about what I was allowed to do. I was put on a very short leash.”

He spent time in Italy with Petrarca Padova and if you are finding it hard to imagine the former prop sipping lattes in the midday sun, Graham found it a whole lot harder adjusting to la dolce vita. He admits language was an issue: “My Italian wasn’t the best and their English was non-existent”. His family returned home after a matter of months and Graham quit one season into a two-year deal. He was at a low ebb, his confidence in pieces and racked by self doubt, which is when Gala threw a lifeline which he grabbed like a drowning man.

While he remains the same pugnacious character he ever was, check out YouTube for his introductory speech to the Gala players: Graham is older, wiser and more self-aware that he was when his career hit the heights. Asked if he is a better coach now than he was in his Scotland days, he answers “Definitely”, and he’s probably right.

Graham talks about persuading the players to buy into his ideas with something other than a big stick to back him up. At one point the coach admits to “kicking some backsides and kissing others”; in another revealing comment he insists “gone are the days when you insist, ‘I’m the boss, do what I say’.” But beware anyone taking liberties; he finishes several little homilies illustrating his caring, sharing, nurturing side by stating the bleedin’ obvious: “I’m not all peaches and cream.”

After experiencing both the champagne and the gut rot that life occasionally offers, you’d imagine that nothing much could catch Graham unawares but might he admit to being just a little surprised that his club, newly promoted to Premier 1 this season, has done so well?

“When you come up from the second to the first division I think you are always a little bit wary. Where do we stand in relation to the other teams? Where will we be against the other players?” says Graham. “Am I surprised that we’re top of the league? Eh, yeah, I am a little bit but that’s not to say that I’m not happy with where we are. I think we thoroughly deserve to be there. I think we’ve played better rugby than anyone we’ve come across, but in the context of where we are in the season then yes, I’m surprised where we are but it’s richly deserved.”

This is Graham’s third successive season with the club. He joined them in Premier 2 and won promotion to the top flight in his second year but only after finishing second behind Edinburgh Accies last time out. Gala are prospering, Accies are struggling horribly and the difference probably lies in recruitment. In the Borders you either go the Selkirk route with a team of mostly local lads, or copy the Melrose model and hoover up the best talent throughout the south. Graham makes no bones about which way Gala have gone.

“The boys we brought in are all playing well and that creates the environment where the rest have to play well or risk getting dropped so they have raised their game by 50 per cent. Last season we struggled for numbers so if you played poorly you might get picked again next weekend. This year we have won almost all of our games but we’ve only started the same team twice. The boys we’ve brought in give me options in selection.”

Alongside some impressive locals such as the stand-off Lee Miller, who Graham expects to lose to the professional game sooner rather than later, the club has drafted into Netherdale ambitious outsiders such as Peebles centre Craig Borthwick, Garry Lowrie from Hawick, who is a flanker with a bit of pace, and a pair of outstanding 18-year-olds, hooker Russell Anderson from Langholm and Chris Auld, the Scotland age group centre from Dumfries.

In addition, there are two other key imports that the far-sighted Gala committee must have spotted on the horizon when they signed Graham three years ago... his two boys, Gary and George Junior.

The former is a useful six and the latter a classy scrum-half with heaps of aggression (“he must have got that from his mother”) and the happy knack of making things happen. They played at Carlisle during dad’s first season back at Gala but both have subsequently joined the Borders club. Was it a difficult decision to bring his boys to Netherdale?

“I was very, very reluctant,” admits Graham. “Not because I didn’t think they’d be up to the task but because of all the luggage that comes with a coach bringing his sons to the team. There is scope for back biting and favouritism if you pick your sons and I was very aware of not wanting to put myself in that position or opening my sons up to that.

“In selection I always felt I had to justify why I was picking them but now luckily they pick themselves. There is very little discussion if they are selected, it’s if I feel I don’t want to pick one of them that we have a discussion.”

It was a supermarket bargain “bogof”, buy-one-get-one-free, only in this case Gala have got three Grahams for the price of one and it’s paying rich dividends to date, although the club has won nothing yet. George (senior) is at pains to underline the fact that the club and the season both have a long way to go because, as he knows from painful personal experience, you can sink just as fast as you rose. Graham insists that he is very, very happy at Gala but he wouldn’t be human if a little bit of the once proud coach wasn’t yearning for a role in the professional game.

His return to the top of the coaching ladder may seem a little unlikely, but no more so than Gala winning their first title since 1983.