Terrier's second coming

Simon Turnbull meets Scotland's Gary Armstrong, who has thrived in the new era

The afternoon Rob Andrew kicked off England's professional rugby union revolution Gary Armstrong was spotted four miles from the media circus at St James' Park, driving a lorry past Sir John Hall's MetroCentre. While Andrew was putting his name to a handsome five-figure contract, Armstrong was heading homewards to Jedburgh at the end of another 12-hour shift on the road.

The contrast between the two half-back greats that day, 14 months ago, seemed to magnify the sport's suddenly developing schism. Andrew, having scaled his international peak by giving Australia his almighty order of the boot in the World Cup quarter-final, had been hired to build a successful club with the generous help of the bold Sir John's chequebook. Armstrong, approaching his 29th birthday, was fighting to overcome injury in the vague hope of recapturing the sublime form he produced as Scotland's dynamic scrum-half scavenger in his mid-20s. He was doing so, moreover, as a manual worker who was as loyal to Jed-Forest, where he learned his Saturday afternoon craft as Roy Laidlaw's understudy, as he was to his beloved home-town and his wife and two children.

Armstrong and his family still live in Jedburgh, but his daily trips across the border are no longer taken by lorry. His job is partnering Rob Andrew at half-back for Newcastle Falcons. And Scotland, at Murrayfield next Saturday, will doubtless have good reason to be grateful for it.

Armstrong, as Bill McLaren, a fellow son of the Scottish Borders, once testified, is "the most modest and self-effacing of men, not given to using five words if two would do". So when even he agrees with the growing consensus that he is playing better than ever you can be sure the claim is accurate. And Armstrong at his best would be good news for Scottish rugby, the best in a long while, and bad news for the Wallabies, who attempt the first leg of their Celtic Slam in Edinburgh on Saturday.

Armstrong at his previous best on the international stage was formidable enough. Rob Andrew would testify to that, drawing on the still-painful memory of his work-mate's part in England's downfall in the Grand Slam decider at Murrayfield in 1990. The rugged-faced, tousle-haired terrier was a colossus in the repelling of English attacks that day. And his creative nous, in momentarily drawing Andrew and Mike Teague out of the English defence, opened the window of opportunity through which Gavin Hastings chipped for Tony Stanger's decisive try. "A wee touch of Armstrong magic in cheekiness, timing and technique," McLaren called it.

On Scotland's summer tour that year came fulsome praise from New Zealanders, never prone to giving it lightly. Armstrong was lauded as one of the finest scrum-halves ever beheld in the land of the long white cloud. This season, at the age of 30, he has been the finest among the fine array of talent in the Falcons team in second place in Courage League Division Two. He topped the Unisys charts with 14 tries from eight league games, and has cornered the market in Newcastle's man-of-the-match awards, reducing such luminaries as Andrew, Nick Popplewell, Tim Stimpson, Doddie Weir and Dean Ryan to bit-part recognition. Fran Cotton, the British Lions team manager, left the Reddings purring about Armstrong's show-stealing performance against Moseley a fortnight ago. And Andrew, with whom Armstrong toured Australia in the 1993 Lions party, proudly trumpeted last week: "If there's a better scrum-half in Britain I'd like to see him."

It seems ironic to reflect that Armstrong, who turned down rugby league offers from Carlisle, Widnes and Sheffield Eagles rather than uproot from Jedburgh and Jed-Forest, planned to retire after the Lions' New Zealand tour in 1993. Because of a groin injury, though, he never made the trip, and knee damage kept him out for 18 months after his comeback early in 1994.

"Looking back," Armstrong said, before an afternoon shift in the gym at Newcastle's Kingston Park complex, "it was probably a blessing in disguise that I had my injury problems when I did. I've got my appetite back for the game. I'm thriving on the challenge Rob has given me as a professional here. It's been like a second career for me. If I hadn't got the chance I don't know what I would have done. I was playing in different positions at Jed.

"I didn't have the same buzz for the game. I wasn't as fit as I should have been. But here I'm training every day. I'm as fit as I've ever been, stronger than I've ever been and I probably am playing better.

"I'm not having to work 12-hour shifts in a lorry. It was pretty hard to fit in training around that. I never even did any weights until I came to Newcastle. That's made a big difference."

The difference will doubtless aid the Scottish cause on Saturday, when Armstrong lines up against Australia for the first time since he made his debut opposite Nick Farr-Jones in the 32-13 defeat at Murrayfield in 1988. "It's like the wheel coming full circle," he said. Thus spoke the man who gave up his place behind the wheel to become a driving force for Rob Andrew.