Northern Edition

Select Edition

Northern Northern
Southern Southern
Global Global
New Zealand New Zealand
France France

LONG READ 'He annihilated people': How Tom Jordan defied the odds to become a Scotland star

'He annihilated people': How Tom Jordan defied the odds to become a Scotland star
2 weeks ago

Mark McConnell remembers the tackles. The pain Tom Jordan would inflict upon the bruisers of New Zealand club rugby as Hamilton Old Boys’ teenage fly-half. He remembers the bloodthirsty heavyweights who lined him up, under the grave misapprehension this gangling, baby-faced first-five with the floppy hair and bright eyes would be an easy target.

“Tom could hit,” McConnell says. “And he didn’t look like he could hit, being tall, young… He would annihilate people who chose to run down his channel just because he was 18.

“He would be up in the line, making really good quick decisions. He would smash people because they didn’t have time to react when they’d caught the ball. Not many players can do that. They will sit back and rely on their feet to get them into position, where Tom relied on his brain.

“He would get himself wound up, yell and scream at other players a bit, but he was one of the players who would come and take the ball. The best part about Tom was the whole attitude thing.”

Tom Jordan
Jordan made a fabulous start to his Test career playing full-back, where he had never started for Glasgow (Photo by David Rogers/Getty Images)

We’ll talk about Jordan’s skills – and he has many – but first we’ll talk about Jordan’s grit. It’s the theme running through his remarkable voyage from stymied and unattached in New Zealand, to covid-enforced purgatory on the other side of the world, scaling the URC summit on the Highveld and winning a place in Gregor Townsend’s swashbuckling Scottish backline. There is no easy ascent to Test rugby but where Jordan is concerned, every rung on the ladder was excruciatingly attained.

Back home, the young playmaker was a stand-out for McConnell’s Old Boys, a clutch of future All Blacks and Super Rugby gunslingers among them. Samipeni Finau, Sevu Reece, Shaun Stevenson and Bryn Gatland were all part of the crew. Jordan worked part-time for McConnell, a general manager of the popular apparel brand Kukri, and the Old Boys won back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018. That wasn’t enough to convince the Chiefs he was worth a punt.

“If I’m being completely blunt, he was overlooked,” McConnell says. “We pushed him hard but Waikato just didn’t give guys a shot.

“In New Zealand, school rugby is really promoted, those players move into the pro-teams, and it’s almost a closed book if you are a second-tier player. Tom’s pathway was offshore.”

Sometimes you watch players and are wishing they impress because you want to bring people in. You didn’t have to wish with Tom.

In weighing up his options abroad, Jordan spoke to McConnell. His coach had traversed a similar route three decades earlier. McConnell went to Ireland, rose through the Galway club scene, and wound up captaining Connacht in the old Celtic League.

“You don’t think of these things, but Christmases, holiday periods, it’s not just relationships as rugby player, it’s relationships with yourself, having a beer and a laugh,” he says. “Whatever club you get into, make sure you don’t just connect with the players, you connect with the club, the people who actually run it and see the players come and go. If you want any longevity in an overseas club you need to make sure you find out the nuts and bolts of the history and get involved.

“I’m not gonna bag New Zealanders but it’s something they struggle with, especially the ones who go overseas. They’ll park themselves up and stick their hand out and it doesn’t paint a good picture of the New Zealand rugby person. That was not a hard thing to impress on Tom.”

Jordan refused to see his rugby dreams wither. He had a degree in finance and accounting, and, through his English grandmother, a UK passport. He got in touch with Pete Murchie, the former Scotland full-back coaching Ayrshire Bulls in the now-defunct SuperSeries. The competition was semi-professional and budgets meagre so recruitment left little margin for error.

Edinburgh Rugby V <a href=
Glasgow Warriors – BKT United Rugby Championship” width=”1024″ height=”643″ /> Jordan cemented himself as Glasgow’s first-choice fly-half in the 2022-23 campaign (Photo by Mark Scates/SNS Group via Getty Images)

“I’ll be honest, normally for every 20 players you watch, you sign one,” Murchie, now Jordan’s defence coach with Glasgow, reflects. “Sometimes you watch players and are hoping they do stuff well, wishing they impress because you want to bring people in. You didn’t have to wish with Tom.

“At the level he was playing, there is often some weakness in a player’s skillset, but you could see his all-round game, he could play flat and distribute, his kicking game was there, defensively he was very keen for the confrontation. It was obvious he had something.

“He was playing a bit of 15 that day, very comfortable on the ball, good skills, very strong, physical, all the attributes we’ve come to know. That was one of the easiest ones I’ve had. I was very keen to get him over.”

Within a year of Jordan fetching up in Scotland, coronavirus placed the game in a state of indefinite suspension. This was unsettling enough for professionals – the ambitious crop at the level beneath festered in the doldrums. Jordan trained with the Warriors but was stuck behind a logjam of fly-halves. He made more teas and coffees than first-team appearances. He looked to move south, bag a gig in London and put his degree to use in the city. Third-tier clubs in England turned him down. What a player they passed on.

You have a 10 knocking loose forwards backwards and stealing ball on the ground, it’s such an inspirational thing for the pack to see.

“I hadn’t been offered anything, I was just at Glasgow on a little training retainer, enough to get by,” Jordan said in a RugbyPass interview two years ago. “I barely had any money. I’m over here chipping away but where’s this going? What am I doing? I was thinking, ‘am I even good enough?’”

It wasn’t until Franco Smith and his new broom swept through Scotstoun in the summer of 2022 that Jordan began to flourish.

“Whether it’s through the fortune of Nat One clubs passing him up – which would be unbelievable now – he stuck at it, which said a lot about him,” Murchie says. “It would have been easy to fly home and not come back, but he kept going, and you can link that to the way he plays.

“When you’re under the radar and you’re playing SuperSeries, sometimes you get that label of ‘club player’. With Franco, there was no preconception, everyone was equal, and when everyone is equal you pick your best guys to do the job. That’s what happened with ‘TJ’.

“I remember conversations where he’d been frustrated. He was training bloody well, it wasn’t like he wasn’t up to it. It was just the opportunity was hard to come by. That fresh set of eyes and clean slate was really important for him and he’s not looked back.”

Jordan stood up to the physical aggression of the Bulls in last year’s URC final at Loftus Versfeld (Photo by Phill Magakoe / AFP) (Photo by PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images)

Smith selected Jordan for his first competitive game in charge and kept him there right the way through a brilliant debut campaign. Jordan thrived at the hub of a dazzling Glasgow side, pulling strings with the ball and belting rivals without it. They rampaged their way to the URC play-offs, when Jordan’s first major blow as a pro player landed. He was sent off for whacking Conor Murray high in the quarter-finals. Glasgow, with a six-two bench, toiled to replace him and foundered in defeat. Jordan was suspended for the Challenge Cup final weeks later.

“He definitely had a bit of work to do technically,” Murchie says. “The Conor Murray incident maybe showed that. Just bringing that technical level with the desire he has.

“That’s what I admire about him the most – that mental toughness. He loves it. It’s almost like having a seven playing at 10 defensively. Everyone feeds off it. He really energises people around him.”

Watching last year’s URC final from the SuperSport studio, Nick Mallett’s jaw practically hit the floor. Never had he seen a fly-half arrive at Loftus and manhandle the Bulls’ monsters like a bloke dragging his wheelie-bins down the front drive. Fly-halves don’t behave this way on the Highveld, against these mountainous, red-blooded specimens.

Tom is a natural rugby player. He’s a very skilful, instinctive rugby player. You can’t coach that into a player.

“Jordan was outstanding,” Mallett waxed. “Henry Honiball or Butch James-like in his physicality. You have a 10 knocking loose forwards backwards and stealing ball on the ground, it’s such an inspirational thing for the pack to see, for the heart and soul of the team.”

Had Mallett seen Glasgow’s semi-final in Limerick a week earlier, he’d have had a better idea of what was coming south. Jordan’s calculated savagery spurned Munster’s raids on the Glasgow 22.

“Someone will have to find me a better defensive performance from a 10 than what Tom did that day,” Murchie says. “There are preconceived ideas around, ‘your 10 can’t tackle’, or ‘you have to hide him on defence’ – he completely flips that on his head.

“He is banging guys and leading from the front, getting turnovers from strips, on the floor counter-rucking. When you’ve got your 10 doing that, it sends a message to the rest of the team.

“We definitely tapped into that for the final.”

Come November, Jordan had spent five years in his new country, long enough to qualify for Test honours. The clamour for his inclusion was significant. He’d been that good, that often. In the background, Bristol had put a whopping deal on the table to bring Jordan to Bear Country next season. And he didn’t disappoint as a fledgling international. Pitched in at full-back against the reigning double world champions, Jordan delivered a wonderfully belligerent and tactically astute performance. Never mind it was against South Africa. Never mind he’d never started a match at full-back for Glasgow. With the devastating loss of Sione Tuipulotu, Jordan could easily slide in at 12 this Six Nations, where Smith regularly deploys him now, or provide Townsend with the perfect bench option.

Jordan and McConnell celebrate after Hamilton Old Boys win the 2017 Breweries Shield (Photo by Mark McConnell)

“Was he going to be 10, 12, 15? That was a debate for a while,” Murchie goes on. “He is very versatile – his skillset allows him to do that. His physicality at 12, he can run a game at 10, and he can do it all at 15.”

Jordan cherishes his time in Hamilton; the lessons he learned, the community he embraced. The boozy bus rides and the camaraderie of brothers in arms. His rise is the antidote to the gilded ‘performance’ pathway trodden by many of today’s professionals. The Old Boys cherish him too, savouring his success in a foreign land and a blue jersey 11,000 miles away.

“We’re all very proud of him,” McConnell says. “He’s done amazingly.

“Tom has shown the way he’s done it – yeah, it’s worked out for him, but it’s come at a massive cost in terms of the sacrifice he’s made to go away, train hard, had the right attitude. For the majority of players who go through our club system, that’s the guy they need to look at. He wasn’t packaged up and pushed through the system. He had to work hard and break in and that’s what he did.

“He wasn’t a manufactured rugby player. My take on European rugby is, you’ve got a lot of manufactured players, who get in an academy, get all their training and diet right but they’re still not a natural rugby player. He’s a very skilful and instinctive. You can’t coach that into a player. What’s his cap? He can be around that scene for a long time if he stays injury-free.

“We’ve got lots of natural rugby players in New Zealand but they don’t have the attitude Tom’s got. If you get all of that natural ability with an outstanding character, that’s pretty unique.”

Comments

2 Comments
H
Head high tackle 15 days ago

I feel for these type of guys but why does it always end up the fault of the nations rugby if a player isnt good enough to be selected? He clearly wasnt good enough to be an SR player and didnt impress in the English comp either so basically ended up where he was getting selected. Natural selection systems and nothing more.

T
Tom 14 days ago

Pretty sure he's never played in England. Although he's moving to England next season.


He's been one of the top players in the URC winning a lot of MOTMs, looked excellent for Scotland and has signed a big money deal with Pat Lam's Bristol. He may have struggled to break through into SR but he's absolutely good enough for SR. Keep your eye on him in the 6N, he's a baller.

Load More Comments

Join free and tell us what you really think!

Sign up for free
Search