Hogg's heaven in the forward role
TOM ENGLISH

IT ALL seems so long ago, still vivid in the memory, but belonging to a different time, a different place. He was 17 and innocent; his eyes wide open to the majesty of a Saturday in Gala and a place in the Stirling County first team. Young Ally Hogg got educated that day, his game-breaking exuberance halted by one haymaker that landed flush on the side of his head and sent him to the floor like a falling plank. "It was a proper punch," he says now. "Oh aye, a real beauty."

Sympathy was in short supply, that's what he remembers. There he lay, assailed by a bruiser, and his teammates weren't exactly rushing to his aid.

"Get up, for f*** sake."

"Next time, hit him back - only harder!"

Later came the bus trip home and the beers and the laughs and later still the day in Kelso when promotion was won, his appearance off the bench going some considerable way to settling a game that ranks among his sweetest even now.

Several years on and Hogg is just about the oldest 24-year-old Scottish rugby has seen. The last few months alone have aged him, they must have done. Not only has he had to deal with the pressures of regaining fitness and form after lengthy spells out injured, he has also had to contend with the head-wrecking complications of life at Edinburgh, doing so as the recently-appointed captain of a ship seemingly determined to sink itself.

"Two weeks in the job and what the f*** have you done!" his team-mates chided him as Bob Carruthers announced his idea of transferring their contracts offshore. "We're off to the bloody Cayman Islands, Ally!" "Don't worry, boys," replied Hogg, the wit of the gallows. "It's tax-free there."

Humour, though, was thin on the ground in that period. Still is. The turbulence might have abated but there is still uncertainty, still huge concern about what state Edinburgh are going to be in when he comes back from the World Cup. The support, too, is a big issue. Have the fans became disaffected? Will they still turn up? Will they still bring their kids? "That has to be a fear, that they'll turn away. The kids might want to come but the mums and dads might be fed up with all that's gone on. I hope not, I really do."

For the most part he freezes Edinburgh out of his mind, focusing easily on the upcoming Test with South Africa and the big challenges thereafter, but he has his moments when Edinburgh's plight is revisited. He tries to be diplomatic towards Carruthers, the club's former owner, but you can sense a frustration there.

"When we got pulled out of Scotland training that week, that was when it really hit home. End of the day, Edinburgh are our employers and we couldn't go against them. We had to do what we were told but none of us knew what was going on, we didn't know if we were going to get paid from one month to the next, didn't even know who was going to pay us.

"I don't think Bob went out to be a menace to the SRU. His heart was in the right place but maybe he didn't realise how much money was needed to run a rugby team. I don't think he meant any ill when he took over but the way it ended, the way it was handled, he put the players in a difficult position and he didn't help matters too much, to be honest.

"He didn't do us any favours, didn't do himself any either. The players had to let it happen round about us, we had to stay out of it, none of us wanted to get ourselves caught in the middle of it. But when the Cayman Islands thing got mentioned? I still don't understand it now."

As part of his life as a professional player, Hogg spreads the rugby message in local schools from time to time. Lately, the kids have been asking questions about New Zealand and how much it will mean to him to play in that game but there is one question they've been asking for as long as he's doing these visits and that is, simply: "Do you know Chris Paterson?"

Indeed he does. Knows him, respects him and will miss him when he's gone. Paterson, says Hogg, is the player young Scots identify with the most and his absence next season is another reason to ponder the future.

"The way things have gone, losing people, it's not good. To be honest, losing Chris and Simon Taylor and Scott Murray, you can almost expect it because they're that bit older and they've been here a long time. More surprising was the loss of Strokosch and Dickinson and Dewey. That's sad because I've played age-group with those fellas and I had huge hopes for them.

"How are things going to be taken forward? Honest answer is I don't know. It's up in the air. If all this had to happen in any season then maybe this season is the best time. Everything is disjointed anyway because of the World Cup. But it's going to be a hard season for Edinburgh. A very, very hard season."

In the meantime, some optimism, some cause for cheer. Hogg has just come off the back of a drastically interrupted season, frustrating at the time but a godsend now. He reckons he played barely a dozen games last season because of injury, so, by his estimation, he is fresher and fitter than he's ever been.

That's a relief, for when he's in full flight there are not too many back-row forwards in world rugby better than him. At his peak, Hogg's work-rate is prodigious, his dynamism a match for the great open-sides of the era.

That's just as well because if Frank Hadden drops this nonsense about fielding a weakened team against the All Blacks, Hogg may face the greatest of them all, Richie McCaw. They've met before, of course. In the autumn of 2005, McCaw's All Blacks completed their Grand Slam with a win at Murrayfield, a day the Kiwi may not remember all that well.

"Aye, we collided at one stage and he knocked himself out on my hip. They had to take him off afterwards. He's an outstanding player, a powerful man, no doubt about it. People say he's a genius but what I admire most about him is his basics. He cleans out rucks brilliantly, he carries well, he reads things excellently, his decision-making is spot-on. I have his shirt in my house. It was good to play against him. I'd like to do so again."

The No.7 jersey has been filled by some amount of law-breakers - Scotland used to lead the charge on that score - and McCaw is one of the finest. He is gifted but he is also cynical, a quality that is an essential part of his make-up.

"Er, well, I don't know about that. He gets away with things, put it that way. If you're good at cheating and you can get away with it, then why not? It's part of the art of the back-row forward as far as I'm concerned. Cheating and not getting caught, it's a skill."

Four years ago Hogg remembers watching Scotland's game with Fiji in a hotel in Galway. Then he felt a million miles away from the big stage, hardly believing that one day he would be at its heart. That's precisely where he is now and what's more he has the attitude and ability to take the lead to boot.