by Peter Burns
Cotton, who had fought in the trenches for England and the Lions alongside Woodward, was sent to discuss the job with him. They met halfway between their homes, at the N.E.C. in Birmingham.
‘As soon as we met I knew that he wanted the job,’ said Cotton. ‘I could see his excitement and his focus. It was a gamble we were taking with him – but I had a strong feeling that we were making an intelligent choice.’
‘I was probably more surprised than anyone when they chose me,’ said Woodward. ‘But there must have been reasons that even I wasn’t aware of. Whatever they saw must have been potential because I certainly wasn’t prepared for the job at the time. I knew that if I could survive the first two or three years, I’d work out how to do it.’
*
Marlow, west London. Tuesday, 16 September 1997.
Set among sprawling grounds on the bank of the River Thames and once home to members of the English nobility and aristocracy, the 800-year-old Bisham Abbey and manor house had, by the end of the twentieth century, become one of the finest sports centres in the UK.
Used as a training base by more than twenty English elite sports organisations, it boasted indoor and outdoor tennis courts, international standard hockey, rugby and football pitches, a nine-hole golf course, an array of conference and meeting rooms and excellent medical facilities. Bisham Abbey had been a training venue for the England rugby team for decades and the condition of the pitches was among the best in country; interestingly, however, despite its position at the heart of English sport, there was no gym on site nor any weight-training facilities, and the accommodation block was run-down and tired looking. For all that, it was easy to see why the RFU had selected it as a training venue – it suited many of their needs, was easily accessible from the motorway and it had a comfortable boarding school atmosphere, which harked back to the established roots of the game in England.
In a small room behind the indoor tennis centre an assembly of journalists and camera crews were shuffling into position as they prepared themselves for a press conference that had been called by the RFU to announce the new head coach of the England national team.
When all were settled and the cameras and lights were fixed on an empty table at the head of the room, Richard Prescott, the RFU’s media director, pushed through a side door and addressed the floor.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he said smoothly. ‘I hope you are all comfortable. We will begin proceedings in just a moment, but I would like first to thank you all for attending this exciting new beginning for English rugby.’
He grasped the handle of the door and pulled it open, continuing, ‘I am delighted to introduce Don Rutherford, Cliff Brittle, Bill Beaumont, Fran Cotton, Roger Uttley and the new head coach of the England rugby team, Clive Woodward.’
The six men strode in and took up their places at the table. Woodward sat in one of the centre chairs with Uttley, Brittle and Rutherford to his left, Cotton and Beaumont to his right.
As Woodward stared into the bright camera lights, trying his best not to squint, he looked to pick out some familiar faces in the audience – but at first all he could see were shadowy silhouettes. It felt like he was in some kind of Soviet show trial. As his eyes grew accustomed to the glare he was able to determine the features of the faces in front of him, some of whom he knew, but many he did not. They were all sitting with pens poised above notepads. There’s not a doubt in the mind of anyone in this room, he thought, that I am anything other than a desperate left-field appointment. Not even in his own mind, he realised.
In an instant his thoughts turned to what the gathered throng must be thinking as they stared at him. He had never been a head coach in the top division of the English league; his coaching CV, although littered with success, had never been tested outright at the top of the England club game. But he checked himself; this was no time for self-doubt. He took a deep breath and thought of the incredible success enjoyed by Alan Jones, who had little or no rugby background before he took over at Manly. Unlike Woodward, Jones hadn’t even played at the elite level but he had brought other assets to the job and within a year had led Manly to victory in the league Grand Final before taking over the Wallaby job and guiding them on their 1984 Grand Slam tour and to further greatness beyond. Experience as a rugby coach was not necessarily a prerequisite for success in the top job – as long as you approached things in the right frame of mind, uninhibited by that lack of experience and with enough belief in your convictions to see through your new ideas with complete confidence. Complete confidence… that was what he had to exude.
After today he had just eight weeks to prepare for a brutal four-match autumn Test series against New Zealand (twice), Australia and South Africa. It was a tall order for any coach, let alone one fresh into the job; but those were the cards he had been dealt and when he accepted the job he had picked them up, prepared to play with every ounce of wit and ingenuity he possessed.
A hand went up in the darkness and Prescott nodded.
‘Clive,’ came a gravelly voice, which he recognised as belonging to Stephen Jones of The Sunday Times. ‘In just a few weeks you are facing the three best sides in the world over four consecutive weekends. How are you going to mould a team in that time to take them on? What are you going to do differently to Jack Rowell?’
Woodward smiled thinly. ‘There’s no time to implement anything drastically different between now and the first game. I need to get to know the players and they need to get to know me, so we’ll start simply. We’ll start with the basics. And then we can look to build from there.’
It was an honest answer, if a little underwhelming, but the floor seemed to appreciate it. Woodward could feel a trickle of sweat running down his back. He was glad that he hadn’t tried to grandstand and make a sweeping statement about how he was going to revolutionise the team in preparation for the autumn Tests; it would have been a lie and everyone gathered there would have known it – there was, as he had said, simply no time to do anything like that. The task ahead of him over the next few weeks was gargantuan and it wasn’t going to get any easier after that. From November to November in that first year alone, England would play sixteen Tests, including ten against the three southern hemisphere giants. As challenges go, it was like standing at base camp, staring up at the west wall of Everest. He took a deep breath. He had to make sure that he sounded confident that he was the right man for the job – as the next question so pointedly emphasised.
‘How do you feel that you were the RFU’s second choice for the job?’
Woodward raised an eyebrow and this time broke into a grin. ‘I don’t think I was anywhere near second choice. Fifth choice might be more accurate!’
To his great relief a rumble of laughter filled the room and it had genuine warmth to it. ‘Listen,’ he continued, ‘I am under no illusion as to how hard this job is going to be, how much pressure of expectation there is. And rightly so. This is England and our fans are right to expect that we should be going into every match expecting to win. It’s a big responsibility but I’m hugely excited about the opportunity that I’ve been given and I wholeheartedly believe that I am the right man to deliver the results that will place England at the top of the world rankings.’
‘And what style of play will achieve that?’
Total Rugby. That was the answer he wanted to give. The most exhilarating rugby you’ve ever seen. I don’t just want us to win games, I want us to smash every opponent we face off the park. I want each of you to fill your column inches with reports that say how grotesquely one-sided each game we play is, that no team out there can live with us… ‘Results are the only barometer that I’ll be judged by,’ he said levelly. ‘At international level, that’s all that matters. We will analyse each team that we come up against and will form a plan for how to beat them. It’s that straightforward. We will aim to win every match we play. And once we have a winning formula, then I’ll entertain thoughts on building some style into the performances. But Test match rugb
y is about winning first and foremost.’
‘But with so little experience, why do you think you’re the man to do that?’
Woodward’s nostrils flared but he did not allow himself to get riled. ‘I’m England’s first-ever fully professional coach. I’m not afraid about doing whatever is necessary, going to whatever lengths are required to make my time in charge a success. I won’t leave any stone unturned. As you all know, I spent some time playing out in Australia at Manly and I spent a lot of my time studying the set-up that Alan Jones had established at the club and how he transferred his skills – not his rugby skills, but his business and political skills – to his job with the Wallabies. He had hardly any track record in rugby before Manly, but there’s no doubting how well that transference of skills and other life experiences worked out for him and for Australia. I have a different background to Alan, but I see no reason why I can’t bring similar success to England.’
‘And who will your captain be?’
‘I have yet to decide. We have a number of outstanding candidates. Martin Johnson has obviously just had a fantastic summer leading the Lions, but I don’t want to rush into any decisions on that front. I need to sit down with all the senior players, discuss how we are going to go forward and assess who I think will work best as the captain throughout that process.’
*
Woodward had invited seventy of the top players in the country to Bisham Abbey for a meeting following his unveiling as the new head coach. They were gathered in the cafeteria beneath the old chapel, sitting at long tables amid the musty smell of old food. Woodward didn’t want it to be a long session but he felt that it was important for them to meet as soon as possible so that he could lay out his vision for the team going forward.
Woodward entered the cafeteria and nodded a greeting to one or two players as he, Roger Uttley and John Mitchell, his new assistant coach, passed them and climbed a set of creaking stairs to the Elizabethan Room – a meeting chamber adjoining the chapel. The Elizabethan Room was long and narrow with sun-bleached wood panelling and chipped, peeling paint. A stale and slightly dank smell permeated the air.
The players began to file in after them and took up seats where they could, but there weren’t enough seats for all the players and management staff, so some had to sit on tables or on the floor. As Woodward looked around, he was aware how tired and old the Bisham Abbey experience felt – it was anything but the elite surroundings that reaching the pinnacle of your rugby career merited.
He glanced at the faces of those near the front of the room. The senior players had taken up their seats there – Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Matt Dawson, Jeremy Guscott, Neil Back, Richard Hill, Mike Catt and Jason Leonard. There was an expectant look on their faces – but also something else. Fatigue. He looked further back through the room and saw the same on the faces of other players. And he knew exactly why.
While the Lions had been in South Africa, Jack Rowell had led England on a two-Test tour of Argentina, where they won one match and lost the other – which, considering the size of the English contingent on the Lions tour, was a very respectable outcome. But in an extraordinary decision, the RFU had also organised a one-off Test against Australia in Sydney – and had insisted that the English Lions fly out to join the squad as soon as the Test series against South Africa was concluded. It was one fixture and tens of thousands of air miles too many for an already stretched and fatigued squad and the repercussions of that match stretched well beyond the 25–6 loss to the Wallabies. Although the true cost of such a gruelling season wouldn’t become apparent until the summer of 1998,Woodward was facing a room of men who were, although no doubt thrilled to be involved again in the England set-up, mentally, emotionally and physically exhausted.
‘The strange thing about that time,’ recalled Matt Dawson, the scrum-half who had just made his name in South Africa with the Lions and would become an integral part of Woodward’s team, ‘was that Jack Rowell knew that he was going to be leaving. It wasn’t one of those shock coaching changes. Clive came with good credentials, he’d played for England and the Lions, he’d played down in Australia and of course he’d played for Leicester. He knew all about the England set-up and the RFU and all the committee men that ran things there. He came with all these ingredients and a completely different style of management, which some might have thought of as controversial, but I just found it so refreshing. It may have taken a few years for the players to really get used to it all, but it was such a breath of fresh air.’
When the room settled, Woodward stepped forward.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. My name is Clive Woodward and I am the head coach of the England rugby team.’ He held out a hand to the men beside him. ‘This is Roger Uttley, the team manager, and John Mitchell, the assistant coach.’
Roger Uttley smiled under his thick moustache and inclined his head, while John Mitchell, shaven-headed, ice-eyed and chiseled-chinned, nodded once.
Uttley was a rugby legend in England and across the British Isles. He had won twenty-three caps for England between 1973 and 1980, playing in both the second-row and back-row, and played in all four Tests with the Lions on their undefeated tour of South Africa in 1974. Born in Blackpool, Uttley had played for Fylde, Gosforth and Wasps. After acting as an assistant coach to Ian McGeechan on the Lions’ triumphant tour of Australia in 1989 he joined Geoff Cooke’s England coaching staff and helped to guide Will Carling’s team to the final of the 1991 World Cup. He was appointed manager of England in 1997, just a matter of months before Woodward’s appointment – but the appointment, like that of Mitchell, was only part-time, with Uttley combining his managing duties with his career as a teacher at Harrow.
John Mitchell was a more unconventional choice as assistant coach. Born in Hawera in Taranaki, New Zealand, the thirty-three-year-old former captain of Waikato had played several seasons in both France and Ireland before moving to England to become a player-coach for Sale in 1996. Just a year later he was appointed as England’s assistant coach by the RFU – although strangely this was done before Woodward’s appointment. Despite being relatively new to the English game and certainly green as a coach, Mitchell was widely recognised as a player and coach with a razor-sharp intellect, a granite-hard character and in possession of magnetic leadership skills. Woodward had driven up to see him shortly after he was given the head coach role. ‘We talked about our philosophies and ideals,’ recalls Mitchell, ‘and the marriage was created. Clive created a special environment and we got on very well from the start.’
‘I want to thank you all for being here today,’ continued Woodward to the assembled players. ‘I am hugely proud and excited by what lies ahead for this squad – you are the elite from which we’ll draw the best of the best over the coming years. The aim is for us to be the best team on the planet and I have every confidence that the players in this room can deliver on that ambition.’ He paused. ‘But to do that, we have to be prepared to do things completely differently to the way that they have been done before. Nothing you have done in your careers will prepare you for what lies ahead. To get to the summit we are going to have to prepare properly at the base camp; we have to pare everything we have thought about rugby right down to the basics, to strip away bad habits and to think and act differently, to set new standards of excellence and be willing to embrace new ideas. We will not be looking to emulate our rivals in the southern hemisphere; we will be looking to surpass them. Our ambition is to be the dominant rugby-playing nation on the world stage, to set the bar for others to follow. As a nation we have underachieved in the past. Forget Grand Slams and World Cup finals. Forget heroic one-off victories against the All Blacks or the Springboks or the Wallabies. We want to be the best in the world – consistently and undisputedly. Our ambition from this moment on is to win the 1999 World Cup. That is our sole focus. And I know that we can do it.’
*
The following Monday, Woodward climbed into his car and set off for Twickenham.
He was dressed in a suit and tie and carried a briefcase with him as he entered the reception area at the stadium. He was greeted by the receptionist – who didn’t recognise his name when he gave it and seemed to have no expectation of his arrival.
Woodward smiled tightly and hid his embarrassment.
‘If you could tell Don Rutherford that I’m here to see him, it would be great,’ he said.
A few minutes later Rutherford appeared in the reception area.
‘Good morning, Clive, good to see you,’ he said, shaking Woodward by the hand. The welcome was warm but Woodward could detect that Rutherford was flustered and seemed slightly bemused. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m here for work,’ replied Woodward, equally perplexed. ‘If you could show me to my office, I’ll get started – there’s no need to trouble you further. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to even come all the way down here.’
‘Your… office?’ Rutherford looked blank. ‘But I thought we’d agreed that your remit was to visit the players at their clubs. The head coach usually works from home, you see…’ He trailed off. Woodward was still staring blankly at him.
‘But Don, this is a professional position now. I’m in charge of the whole England set-up and you’re paying me. This is a full-time position. I need an office. With a phone and a computer. And a secretary.’
Rutherford’s eyes widened. ‘Well… I don’t think…’ he stuttered. But he broke off again in the face of Woodward’s piercing, unblinking stare.
This was not the start that Woodward had envisioned. But by the end of the day he had persuaded Rutherford to comply and he had been provided with an office, a telephone, a computer and a secretary, just as he had requested – albeit a secretary he had to share with two others. But it was a start. And like the first falling pebbles on a mountaintop, the landslide of change would soon gather momentum.
