Forme England hooker Brian Moore gestures to the Cardiff Arms Park crowd during his side's Five Nations Championship victory over Wales
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England’s finest hooker took years to tackle his toughest opponent - the one inside his head called Gollum, Paul Kimmage writes in the Sunday Times.
"If you’ve watched Brian Moore play rugby, or listened to his commentaries on TV or read his newspaper columns, it’s the passion and obduracy that marks. This was a sporting icon, the Pitbull of England’s scrum, and it paid to beware of the dog. This is a classic Yorkshireman, immortalised by Harry Enfield, who says what he likes and likes what he bloody well says. So it comes as something of a shock to find him so shaken and vulnerable.
"We meet on a Tuesday morning at his Wimbledon home. Three days have passed since the revelations that he was sexually abused as a boy made headlines and he hasn’t quite come to terms with it. His mind is racing and skipping on every thought; his arms itch with clumps of weeping psoriasis; his sinuses are clogged and there’s gravel in his throat. He sits at the kitchen table, aching for a Marlboro Light, sifting through the pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle. It seems a perfect metaphor for his life.
“Is that a passion?” I ask. “No, someone gave it to me and over the last few days I’ve just ... I don’t know. It’s been odd and quite difficult really. I’m still a bit numb about the whole thing. I knew the serialisation was going to be in the paper but when it was on the front page it made me feel sick actually. I thought, ‘Oh God! Have I done the right thing?’ I didn’t read any of it for a few hours and my wife said, ‘Look, it’s not as bad as you think it is’. And so I had to make myself do it and once I had done it, it was out of the way.”
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