Broon frae Troon

FOR one so young, the receptionist at the Sheraton Hotel on Edinburgh’s Lothian Road demonstrates a healthy sense of priority.

These things tend to happen to one of the most luminous characters in rugby and, indeed, any sport. He’s in town to fulfil an after-dinner speaking engagement for a brewery. This is his full-time occupation now and a role he could have been born for. As raconteurs go, Brown is in the superleague.

In baggy shorts and T-shirt he looks in good shape. He’s bald from the chemotherapy, of course, he’s lost a fair bit of weight and the voice occasionally drops to a whisper; but the humour and energy are undiminished.

Gordon and his older brothers, John and Peter, were brought up on a council estate in Troon, Ayrshire. Peter, another great sporting eccentric, went on to captain Scotland while John, according to Gordon, was the best rugby player of all three - a "natural thug" - although he didn’t take up the game until the age of 28. Father Jock played in goal for Clyde, Hibs, Dundee and Kilmarnock; he won the Scottish Cup with Clyde in the season 1938-39 and gained one Scotland cap.

"Mum was a great hockey player, too, so there’s a fair bit of pedigree there," says Gordon.

These sporting genes produced three brawny lads with natural ball-playing skills. And, as with the Calders and the Hastings, and in common with most siblings, the seeds of a competitiveness that served so well later in life were sown early on at home. In the case of the Browns, this was usually with a round ball. The early ferocious kick-arounds up and down the narrow hallway of the family home, or on the huge area of waste ground on the estate, gave way to contests of a more formal nature and Gordon played in goal for Troon Juniors until the age of 16. For his conversion, West of Scotland, Scotland and the British Lions should thank an archetypal Brown incident in a game against Irvine Meadow some 36 years ago.

Says Gordon: "It was a West of Scotland Cup tie and the game had a huge following, around 2,000 there. We were 6-1 down - none of the goals my fault, of course - when their winger came homing in on goal. He went round me and I brought him down with a rugby tackle. Bedlam. The crowd was going mental, throwing coins and howling for my blood. There were two policemen there and for the first time in their lives they had to escort a player off the field. In the dressing-room I could hear the voices outside planning dire things for me and I ran all the way home. The Monday night, I went to the rugby club and asked to play. I honestly thought I’d be safer."

Brown began his senior career with Marr College FP before graduating to West of Scotland, where brother Peter, Sandy Carmichael and Alastair McHarg were among the established stars.

Peter Brown is fond of describing his young brother as "my best mate". To Gordon, Peter was his hero. "I used to watch him from the schoolboys’ enclosure at Murrayfield," he remembers, "and dream of playing alongside my big brother, but he wasn’t in the team when I won my first cap, against the Springboks in 1969.

"I remember putting the blue jersey on and looking in the mirror. By the time we got to the tunnel, I’d had it on for 45 minutes. The Boks went down the tunnel first; the steward held us back. The sounds of a piper wafted down the tunnel and we set off. The further I ran down the tunnel, the bigger and bigger I seemed to get. I was 22 years old and playing for my country. In those days we sang ‘God Save the Queen’ and I cried and cried. I was still crying when the Boks kicked off. I caught the ball and the Boks caught me and, boy, was that a welcome to international rugby.

"The game seemed all over in a flash and there we were - we had beaten the mighty Springboks. Back in the dressing room I was still greetin’ and big McHarg came over and said, ‘Who hit you?’ I said, ‘No one, I’m just happy.’ He came from Irvine and Irvine guys didn’t show emotions like that.

"That night I had a rendezvous with a young student from Dunfermline College of PE, later to be my wife Linda, and I told her I felt so good I could play another game. Next day I couldn’t get out of my bed. It took three weeks to get over it."

The longed-for ambition to play in the same Scotland side as Peter was fulfilled in the Five Nations season of 1970, although not under the circumstances either had expected: "I usually got a phone call from a press guy before a match who would tell me the team and, sure enough, before the match against Wales in Cardiff the phone rang," Gordon recalls. "It wasn’t the journalist, it was Peter. ‘Great news,’ he said, ‘I’m back in the team.’

"‘Who’s out?’

"‘You are.’

"It was the only time in my life I doubted his parentage. But then he tore a calf muscle just before half-time and the physio, who happened to be our dad, waved the towel as a sign to the selectors for a replacement and I ran on as sub for my big brother."

Brown’s bulk (by then he was over 17 stone), scrummage and lineout capabilities and overall aggression made him a natural choice for the successful Lions tour of 1971 - the first and, so far, last to win a Test series in New Zealand - although he failed to displace the great Welsh lock Delme Thomas until the third Test at Wellington on 31 July.

Says Gordon: "I had the greatest respect for Delme. He was like King Kong, biceps the size of my thigh. He and Willie John McBride, the other second-row, were like twin brothers. They went around together all the time.

"But I got in and on the eve of the match I was rooming with Willie John. I knew he had had a voice in selection and I was babbling away, ‘Willie John, I’m going to play the biggest game of my life. Willie John, I am going to give 200 per cent tomorrow.’" And, of course, he just sat in his chair, puffing on his pipe and saying nothing.

"‘Willie John,’ I said, ‘I will repay the faith the selectors have shown in me.’ Suddenly, without even looking up, he spoke: ‘Well, I know who I wanted.’ To this day I don’t know what the big bastard meant."

Such was Brown’s lineout dominance in the third Test that the All Blacks laid special plans for the Scot in the fourth at Eden Park, Auckland. "At the first lineout Jazz Muller, the prop, grabbed me and Whiting thumped me." Brown went off with a knee injury later in the match, but the 14-14 draw secured the series for the Lions.

Ligament, knee and tendon problems cut huge swathes into Brown’s Scotland career over the next three years, but he was still an automatic choice to partner McBride in the Lions’ second row in South Africa in 1974. This Test series was savage, with Brown in the thick of much of the action.

This was the tour of the famous, and possibly apocryphal, 99 call when McBride would order his team-mates to "get their retaliation in first" on uttering the magic numbers. "The referees were giving us no protection whatsoever," says Brown. "In the third Test at Port Elizabeth, the Boks had brought in some heavies to try and sort us out, the main one being Moaner Van Heerden. Willie John had singled him out and warned that he would have a go. The nearest Lion would then wade in and give Van Heerden a doing. Sure enough, after ten minutes, Van Heerden belted Bobby Windsor and I was the nearest man; that’s how I broke my thumb."

In his decade as one of the world’s leading locks, Brown had faced many uncompromising opponents but none was as fearsome as the one that crept up behind the unsuspecting Scot late in 1999. "I had these symptoms of a groin strain that wouldn’t go away," he says. "I went to the physio and after a few visits, he said, ‘There’s something wrong because normally you’re a quick healer and this won’t go away.’ In the end, the doctor told me, ‘Gordon, you’ve got an aggressive lymphoma.’

"‘What the hell’s that?’ I asked. ‘Cancer,’ he told me."

The diagnosis was non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and the chemotherapy began in February 2000. Most of his friends had told me that, in a battle between the tumour and Gordon Brown, Mr Non-Hodgkin and his lymphoma would come a poor second best. When I tell him this, a wee crack appears in the happy-go-lucky facade.

"I’ve been lucky," he says. "Normally you only find out what people think of you when you actually die. I’ve found out and I’m still here. The number of people who have rung me up and said, ‘We love you Broonie.’"

It is these occasional bouts of introspection that cause concern. Gordon Brown’s wife, Linda, has never allowed him to lapse into self-pity. At the height of the chemotherapy treatment, when the suffering was at its worst, Brown was slumped in his chair at home in Troon feeling, he admits, very sorry for himself.

"You’re not doing very well, are you?" said Linda.

"Lin, my body aches and I feel sick. I’ve got sores in my mouth and what feels like thrush in my throat. I feel bloody awful."

To which Mrs Brown replied, "Welcome to PMT."

Gordon Brown lost his fight against cancer on 19 March, 2001. He was 53.

This interview is taken from Giants of Scottish Rugby, by Jeff Connor, published by Mainstream, £9.99