The Wright Stuff

Just occasionally a family comes along that has the potential to contribute greatly to the game of rugby. The Wright family are like that. With father Gordon helping run the Under18 team and 4 sons and a daughter turning out every week for the club the could have an influence for many years to come.

19 year old eldest son Danny (or Daniel to his Dad) has already started to make his mark having made his debut as a prop for Scotland Under18 last season. Having decided he was going to play for Scotland at some time during the season, his ambitions seemed to be thwarted when he was left out of the Edinburgh Under18 squad early in the season. But with the support of his club and his family he just upped the work rate and his determination. He was soon back in the starting line and around Christmas he joined a 90 strong national training squad. Danny said “Seeing all the boys from the Exiles and elsewhere it kind of brings your feet back down to the ground and you think there’s a lot to work on here”. But hard work has never frightened any of the Wrights and throughout the interview there were constant references to the graft and hard work the lads will put in.

Daniel played a few more games for the Edinburgh Colts before, returning from an away trip to Calley he got the letter. Danny takes up the story “Initially I thought I’d be lucky if I got into the Scotland Under18 A squad but when I got the news that I was in the full squad I just sat quiet on the bus for about 2 hours”. The experience wasn’t quite perfect as Danny was sent off in his first game at Inverleith for punching his Spanish opponent.

Surprisingly rugby doesn’t run in the Wright family. Father Gordon (45) was a footballer in his youth (“The nearest I got to rugby was British Bulldog at Under18”) and after 3 years in the Kings Own Scottish Borderers and a year living in Australia he returned home to Edinburgh to build his career and raise his family. As Managing Director of Insitu Fabrications and with 5 children he seems to have been successful in both.

In contrast to the mild mannered Gordon and the quietly determined Danny, 2^nd son Jason is an entirely different character. Confident in the extreme he is saved from cockiness by a strong sense of humour including an ability to make himself the butt of the joke. Jason is a precocious talent who always seems to be younger than most of his team mates but has one of the highest tackle counts in any game. He is currently enjoying his 2^nd season at Under18 level and still has another year to go after this. Coach Sandy Dundas described him as “putting in some thundering tackles” in a recent match report.

Jason is keen to emulate his elder brother as soon as possible but having switched from winger to flanker this season, and having missed a large part of last season with a broken leg which kept him out of the Edinburgh Under 16 set-up, father Gordon cautions “I think he’s going to find it hard this season. He’ll get all the support moving to a new position from myself and the club and I don’t have to worry about his tackle rate –he’s very aggressive in the tackle - but playing in to a new position he’ll find it difficult. I think he should really spread himself over two years to achieve his Under18 goal, but as the year goes on he’ll certainly improve.”

Daniel on the other hand is pushing for more honours “I want to be a starting Prop in the Scotland Under 19 team. I’d also like to get maybe one or two games for the 1st XV”. And he’s certainly prepared to work to achieve his aims “I’ll put in the graft – I want to go all the way”. 

Gordon continues to keep their feet on the ground and he told me (and Daniel at the same time) “I think Daniel should keep a level head and I’d like to see him working hard to get his position in the Under 19 squad. There’s a lot of hard work and hard graft for him to do during the District set up. A lot of the players from last year will be motivated because they didn’t get the position that he’s in so he’s got to keep himself firmly in the eye and really work at his job and if he puts in the work I think he can do it”.

The boys have a healthy rivalry between themselves but they were unable to hide their obviously close relationship. Jason told me “I’m very proud of my brother - He’s a fantastic brother he gives me anything I want” and he admitted he wanted to keep up the tradition of brothers playing for Scotland. But as Daniel pointed out “There’s a couple more still to come up so maybe we can have four of us in the squad”. He then went on to describe Jason as “A great little brother – he just gets on my nerves all the time”.

And there are three more Wrights in the structure at Boroughmuir. Next off the production line comes Lewis, scrum-half for the S1 team. Sister Elizabeth has just joined the P6 squad and youngest sibling Aaron is with the P4s. Gordon admitted “There’s a lot of interest in this club for me yet – it’s not just the two older boys” and Jason was quick to point out “ He’ll still be down here in a couple years with his Zimmer frame”.

Gordon is immensely proud of his family and rightly so. He tries hard to conceal his feeling by being the boys’ harshest critic but he fails miserably. He recognises the quality of coaching at all levels within the club and knows that his own lack of rugby background does not make him an ideal adviser. He does, however, give the best advice he could “I tell them where they should approach people at the club to try and better themselves”. He continued, “I think that there really are some super coaches at this club and they really have to work under them”.

Once again the emphasis was on hard work. Constantly, each member of the family acknowledged the amount of work necessary to get to the top and to stay there. This family doesn’t believe it’s all about the game – winning is what they want and they’re prepared to put in the effort to get there.

The competitive edge continues off the field as well “Well there’s rivalry at home” said Gordon, “I don’t know who puts up with the most – whether it’s me or them. There is rivalry but it’s good healthy competition and I think that once they settle down they know they’ve got a lot of work to go on with”.

It seems a long time since his primary Under18 days when Danny first developed a taste for rugby “My first time playing rugby was at primary Under18 in the playground and I was bigger than all the other boys so it made it a lot easier for me. I invented my own rules as I went along – if I wanted to pass backwards I just turned round and threw it over my shoulder so it could go forward”. However, it wasn’t until after the 1995 World Cup that he took rugby seriously and joined Edinburgh Academicals. When the midi section at Accies struggled to get the numbers a playing friend of Danny’s was advised by Ian Snedden to try Boroughmuir. The friend is long since history but Danny is the future.

Jason just naturally followed in the footsteps of his elder brother after he was told he was too aggressive to play football. “I’ve not been playing for long. I started playing rugby because I was too aggressive for football. Daniel was a member of Accies so I went along there but the mini level broke down so I went back to play football. Then I got asked after playing rugby at PE to go along to Boroughmuir High Under18 team. I played there for a season, quit and went back to football. Finally my Dad suggested I go along to Boroughmuir U15s as Daniel was playing there. I went along and the first game was in Ireland on tour and I scored 3 tries in my opening game and that was that. I also got straight into the Edinburgh squad the same as Daniel”.

So hard work allied to natural talent offers a bright future for the Wright stuff. Nobody can yet tell how far the lads can go but if determination and commitment play a part then nothing can stop them. I’ll leave the last word to Gordon, with Jason in the family it might be the only time he gets it, “The kids will take out of the club what they put into it and it’s the same for myself”.

Mark Furnivall