Keyboard warriors would have hammered Gregor Townsend - Owen Farrell situation shows divisive nature of full-backs

Farrell has had a great career – for Saracens, England and the Lions. He is a skilful, hard, uncompromising player. A lot of people in England and beyond don’t like him. His tackling is sometimes reckless and dangerous. He can seem arrogant. He interviews badly, can appear surly, with no patience for the often futile questions put to him. But he is a very fine player, up there with the best England fly-halves I have seen – Rob Andrew and Jonny Wilkinson. He doesn’t deserve the abuse that has been levelled at him.

Controversy, disagreement with selection, criticism of performance on the field, these are all to be expected. It is quite natural that some English fans – and journalists – should think England might be better served by a more adventurous, less risk-averse number 10 like Harlequins’ Marcus Smith. There have always been such arguments. They are natural, Not so long ago there were Scots who would rather have seen Duncan Weir at 10, not Finn Russell, as a safer pair of hands with a bigger boot. Finn was a bit flashy, even daft. I have a very knowledgeable friend who, even a couple of years back told me he still wasn’t convinced by Russell. Well it’s an opinion – fair enough – but this friend would never boo a player.

Gregor Townsend was a very different sort of fly-half from Farrell, but he came in for a good deal of criticism in his playing career; he was a risk-taker, and the risks he took didn’t always come off. He was for a number of years the best fly-half in the northern hemisphere; yet not always trusted by selectors or fans. He was fortunate perhaps that the anti-social media didn’t exist in his day.

Go further back, a good way back, and the same might be said of Gordon Waddell. He was a bit like Farrell, a fine tactical kicker, a controlling rather than brilliant fly-half. Like Farrell too he was the son of a famous rugby-playing father, in his case Herbert who had been fly-half in Scotland’s first Grand Slam. Like Farrell Gordon was capped very young – at the age of 18 or 19. Some in Edinburgh grumbled about “father’s influence”, for Herbert had also been a high heid-yin in the SRU. But he was a very fine and intelligent player. I put him among the best five Scottish fly-halves I have seen, along with Davie Chisholm of MelrosE, John Rutherford, Gregor Townsend and Finn Russell, but I guess that, like Gregor, he would have been given a hard time by keyboard bullies on anti-social media.

Farrell has been unfortunate in the last few years because he has been playing behind one of the weakest England packs I have seen, one apparently incapable of regularly supplying quick, clean ball. This is one reason why Farrell of Saracens has been a very different player from Farrell of England. It will be interesting to see if whoever replaces him in the England team – either George Ford or Marcus Smith, one supposes, can create a better attacking game.

Of course, the successor may be 21 year-old Fin Smith of Northampton, though I still hope that Gregor can persuade him he would be better with Scotland. His mother was the daughter of Tam Elliott of Gala, a Lion in 1955 and the cousin of the truly great Douglas Elliott. Tam, I have ben told, believed to his dying day he had scored what would have been the winning try at Twickenham; but there was no TMO to say he had grounded the ball behind the try-line – and keyboard warriors to utter threats to the referee.