White Gold

by Peter Burns

  Uttley issued a statement shortly after Woodward delivered the news in which he said, ‘I had no idea this would happen to me. It’s deeply disappointing and I’m fed up at not being allowed to follow through a job I was told eighteen months ago would lead up to the World Cup.’

  It was an unpleasant end for Rutherford, Uttley and their thirty-two colleagues. But it showed that Baron, Woodward and the new-look RFU meant serious business.

  *

  In the same month that Baron was appointed, Woodward set off to the US on an information-gathering trip. Inspired by his time at Loughborough and what he had witnessed at the Australian Institute of Sport, Woodward had developed a fascination with examining other sports in detail to see whether there were any aspects of their accumulated knowledge that could be applied to rugby. No doubt encouraged by both Martin Johnson’s obvious obsession with the game and by Dave Alred’s first-hand experience, Woodward arranged to spend time with two American Football organisations to study their practices.

  ‘Playing American Football was an unbelievable experience for me,’ said Alred. ‘The focus and professionalism was light years ahead of English sport. It really switched me on to the importance of performing under pressure. I was fascinated by the way a player could slot eight out of eight kicks one day and not hit a barn door the next. Spending time in the US had a profound effect on Clive as well – although in a different sphere to me.’

  ‘The game had gone professional and I knew virtually nothing about professional sport,’ said Woodward, ‘so I wanted to go and see people that did. We were sponsored by Nike and so were the University of Colorado and the Denver Broncos, so I arranged a visit through them so that I could spend a couple of weeks watching how they ran things – and it was fascinating. I went out to Boulder to start with to see the University of Colorado. The head coach was brilliant and let me sit at the back of the room through all the meetings and attend all the training sessions and so on. One of the big things I learned happened on the first day. We went into a building and on one floor was the offence and on another floor was the defence – in American Football you basically have two teams which come on and off the field depending on whether they are attacking or defending. And I can’t tell you what it was like sitting in a team meeting with all of the players there the day after a game when the side has just lost 50-49; the offence guys are going crazy because they’ve scored forty-nine points, but the defence have thrown the game away by leaking fifty.

  ‘The specialisation in coaching struck me profoundly and it was then that I realised what we had to do – we had to get specialists in to coach specific parts of the game to the very best standard available. And then we had to think like those two teams within the team in the NFL – when we had the ball we were all focused on offence, but when we lost it we had to switch our mindset completely and become the defensive team, we had to suddenly become a different animal. We used to call it “ice” when we lost the ball – your thoughts turn to ice and you immediately address where you’ve got to be and what you’ve got to do. And you switch back and forth throughout the game.’

  The experience in the US was invaluable – not only for the new ideas that it engendered, but also for reaffirming his belief in building a team of specialist coaches in various fields to ensure that every aspect of England’s game was the best it could be. There was also a reaffirmation of everything that both Humphrey Walters and Paddi Lund had taught Woodward – that attention to detail was crucial to sporting success. At the University of Colorado, an institution where crowds of more than 53,000 would gather in the Folsom Field stadium during the college football season to watch the Colorado Buffaloes, there was a huge message printed on the locker room wall: GREATNESS IS ACHIEVED THROUGH ATTENTION TO DETAIL. It was like manna from heaven for Woodward.

  ‘I can’t remember going to a club or being involved in a coaching situation where anyone taught me how to sidestep or swerve, where precisely you need to put your feet to make it happen, how balance affects the dynamic,’ said Woodward in an interview with Paul Ackford in The Sunday Telegraph about his trip. ‘We’re still in the culture where that skill is perceived as natural. In the States we saw people coaching one-on-one on how to lose their marker in tight areas, which is essentially what rugby is all about. The coaches were able to simplify complex skills into the smallest biomechanical movements. It’s one thing knowing your rugby, another thing entirely being able to teach it.’

  Woodward returned home more focused than ever on building a back-room team of specialists in every position imaginable. Over the next two years he would add to his already impressive team with the inclusion of Simon Hardy, who became throwing coach in 1999 and full-time line-out coach in 2000. He also employed the team’s own chef (after heeding the warning of the 1995 All Blacks, some of whom suffered from food poisoning on the eve of the World Cup final, which they lost to South Africa) and utilised the services of Sherylle Calder to develop the players’ peripheral vision.

  In December 1998 Woodward equipped every player and coach with their own laptop. By connecting them all by email and having Tony Biscombe send the players clips of their play or analysis of their opposition, Woodward was able to bridge part of the gap between the players and the England set-up when they were out of the camp on club duty. And from a team-building perspective it allowed the players to stay in touch socially and to chat online, whereas before that they had returned to their clubs in isolation from one another.

  ‘Woody used every conceivable trick in the book to fund performance,’ said Baron. ‘He was brilliant at it. He made lots of demands – he wanted more coaches and a better environment for everyone involved with the Test side. He was convinced that if he got what he wanted the team would win. The England Test side is our shop window, it generates the most income for the RFU and it puts us on the world map. If we were to succeed as a business, the Test side had to have success. Woody believed that this was what it took and we believed in him, so he got what he wanted.’

  During the build-up to the 1999 Five Nations, the work done by the specialist coaches was starting to pay dividends – and none more so than that of Dave Reddin.

  After completing undergraduate and master’s degrees in sports science at Loughborough University, Reddin worked for the Sports Council at Loughborough for five years before joining Leicester Tigers in 1994. In 1996 he began working with the England team under Jack Rowell and with the various England age group teams. His involvement with the Under-21s saw him join forces with Woodward and Andy Robinson for the first time. As discussed previously, he was one of Woodward’s first full-time appointments in 1997.

  ‘The potential to be a champion is in the genes,’ said Reddin in an interview with Vern Gambetta, ‘but the environment determines whether someone makes it or not. The wrong training can make a huge difference. With the best athletes, I think we must constantly assess what we can really add, unless we understand their sport as they do. Many coaches suffer by forcing their doctrine on their athlete. I’m always surprised about how little of the right training it takes to make a significant difference, and how much of the wrong stuff it takes before things go really wrong. In other words, training is the icing on the cake for the best athletes, whose talent tends to win through almost in spite of the training sometimes.

  ‘It was a great moment when Clive introduced the laptops to the team as it meant that I could easily communicate with all the players and send them training information – and they could send me back results for analysis. Athletes thrive on feedback in my experience. Without feedback it can be tough to engage the athlete. Using feedback systems, for example jump mats, micro-muscle lab, Rob Newton’s Ballistic Measurement System and so on really helps as it gets the athlete engaged through competition with themselves and the rest of the squad.

  ‘Throughout my time with the England squad I did a lot of analysis – I videoed training so that I could study the players’ biomechanics, I talked to their club fitn
ess coaches and to the players themselves about their training, I examined their previous programmes and looked at their movement patterns. I then tried to get to the fundamental movements and actions and energy systems which were important for each player, depending on their position, age, biomechanics and so on. For older guys like Jason Leonard, there was no point in trying to teach him too much new – it just wouldn’t work and he would get frustrated; but his work ethic was incredible. The young guys were great at learning new lifts from me, but they learnt work ethic from the senior guys. Then you get guys like Jonny Wilkinson who were both those things combined – you don’t have to beat Jonny with a big stick to train. You have to beat him with a stick to stop him training.’

  In consultation with the leading clubs, Reddin’s goal was to see England’s elite players once a week. Because of some of the distances that were required to travel between clubs, it didn’t always work out that way, but on the whole he pretty much managed it and the email communication was a huge help with developing his programmes. By the spring of 1999 they were still a long way from where he wanted them to be, but they were on the road.

  *

  England dominated the opening twenty minutes of the Calcutta Cup clash against Scotland at Twickenham, racing into an early 14–0 lead with tries from full-back Nick Beal and winger Dan Luger, both converted by Jonny Wilkinson. But Scotland roared back into contention with two tries from Alan Tait and a sixty-yard effort from stand-off Gregor Townsend, all converted by Kenny Logan. England responded with a further converted try by Tim Rodber, but the real difference was Logan’s kicking from the tee, as he missed several opportunities for Scotland to record a famous win. In the end England held on to secure a 24–21 victory.

  ‘What gave us the edge was a young man of nineteen playing in his first Five Nations start for England,’ said Woodward. ‘He was playing at centre, his name was Jonny Wilkinson, and it was his place-kicking that gave us the points we needed. In addition to an excellent kicking game with three conversions and a penalty, none easy, Wilkinson made two try-saving tackles in the second half when we were hanging on by our fingernails to a three-point lead.’

  ‘Scotland were a good side that year and they had played a game already, beating Wales,’ recalled Johnson. ‘That was our first of the tournament and it was a shaky start, but it was still a win.’

  The second match of their campaign was in Dublin where a strong Irish pack had many pundits fancying them for the title, but after a hard-fought battle, England emerged 27–15 winners.

  What many saw as the key encounter of the tournament was next: Le Crunch against the French at Twickenham. It was not a spectacle but England did what they needed to do and, thanks to Wilkinson knocking over seven penalties, they emerged as 21–10 victors – their first win in four seasons over the French, who were chasing an historic third consecutive Grand Slam.

  ‘It was a typical English performance of that period,’ admitted Martin Johnson in his autobiography. ‘We were a better defensive side than we were an attacking force, which perhaps frustrated Clive a little. He wanted us to thrill the crowd with all-out “total rugby”, but we weren’t really ready for that.’

  ‘Despite Clive’s desire to play “heads-up” rugby,’ said Richard Hill, ‘we were probably improving much faster as a defensive unit. A lot of that had to do with Phil Larder. He certainly changed my approach. I had thought I was a good defensive player before he came along but I got quite a wake-up call... Phil, with his rugby league background, very quickly made us question everything, by asking us to consider what we wanted to achieve from each and every tackle. Did we want to knock guys backwards to deny them yardage? Did we want to stay on our feet afterwards? What if your opponent was running straight at you rather than at an angle? Did you want to isolate the ball-carrier by turning him, thus stopping him presenting the ball back to his teammates? After that, we began examining our techniques in detail, from the positioning of our feet to our body angles. It all seems obvious now but his approach was much more scientific.’

  Wales were the host nation for the World Cup that autumn and the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff was still under construction, so Wales opted to play their final ‘home’ matches of the Five Nations at Wembley Stadium – the home of English football. Going into that last round of the championship, England had a Grand Slam on the cards and the deciding fixture was to be played at the most iconic ground in English sport – the ground where Woodward had dreamed of playing as a child, where he had always imagined himself lifting a cup. It may not have been the Jules Rimet trophy that he would be hoisting aloft if they won, but the Five Nations’ version was not a bad substitute; it all seemed to be written in the stars.

  Wales, after promising so much at the outset of the season, had had something of a mixed tournament. They had lost to Scotland and Ireland, but had then defeated France 34–33 in a thriller at Stade de France and had backed up that victory by thumping Italy 60–21 in a friendly in Treviso.

  As he had done against Scotland, Dan Luger burst away to score an early try at Wembley and he was followed over the whitewash by Richard Hill and Steve Hanley. ‘We should have been cruising by half-time,’ admits Johnson, ‘but whenever they got within thirty or forty yards of our line we seemed to be penalised, usually for technical infringements or offsides that were marginal at best, like guys being pinged for offside when they had just come up very quickly in the defensive line.’

  With the score standing at 25–18 to England at half-time, Woodward and his team still felt comfortable. It had been their own errors gifting the Welsh a foothold in the game. If they could cut those down during the second half, they knew that the Grand Slam was theirs.

  But after the referee blew his whistle to begin the second forty minutes, things began to unravel as the Wales full-back Shane Howarth slid over the English line at the corner and Neil Jenkins continued his immaculate kicking by slotting the touchline conversion to tie the score at 25–25.

  Wilkinson nudged England back in front with two penalties but then came the first of two decisive moments in the match.

  The clock had ticked to seventy-five minutes. England were awarded a penalty halfway between the Welsh 22 and the 10-metre line. A penalty kick at goal would stretch their lead to 34–25, more than a converted try clear of their opponents. Lawrence Dallaglio glanced up at the posts and tossed the ball to Wilkinson. ‘Go for the corner,’ he said. ‘We’ll take the try.’

  It was a bold move but it was what Woodward had wanted from his captain – a man who was willing to put himself out there to inspire the nation, to take the tough decisions.

  ‘At the time we were six points clear,’ recalled Dallaglio in It’s in the Blood, ‘but I was a disciple of Clive’s have-a-go philosophy. Both of us were naturally opposed to the lack of adventure traditionally associated with England... The key mistake was my belief that, at that point in the game, Wales weren’t going to go down to the other end of the field and score a try. I should have known better. In hindsight, it was a big mistake.’

  Ninety seconds later, after a powerful rolling maul, Mike Catt hoisted a garryowen in front of the Welsh posts, which was only just gathered by Welsh centre Mark Taylor. Tackled in the process of taking the catch, Wales were awarded a scrum; Rob Howley swept the ball to Jenkins who put in a booming kick, and the Welsh lines were cleared.

  Wales had survived. But time was running out for them and England were still six points ahead. Wales needed a converted score to steal the victory. Save for a few rampages from the giant brothers Scott and Craig Quinnell and Howarth’s try, the English defensive line had held firm all afternoon. The talismanic figure of Scott Gibbs, a hero of the Lions tour two years previously, had been well-marshalled by the English midfield and back-row and his efforts to scythe through their ranks in the way that Alan Tait had done at Twickenham just a few weeks earlier had been met by staunch English tackles time after time. There seemed no way through.

  But then Tim
Rodber smashed Colin Charvis in a huge tackle forty metres from the Welsh line, which the referee deemed as high. Jenkins stabbed the resultant penalty down to the English 22.

  There were two minutes remaining.

  The Welsh second-row, Chris Wyatt, won a shortened line-out and Howley fed Scott Quinnell. The No.8 juggled the ball and managed to slip it to Gibbs, who hit a hard flat line and burst through Rodber’s tackle, fended off Neil Back, arced his run around Matt Dawson, slid past Wilkinson and skipped past Matthew Perry, raising his arm in triumph as he dived over the line. The score stood at 31–30 to England.

  Jenkins lined up the ball for the conversion. Stepping back, he picked a bit of mud from his studs, wiped his palms on his shorts and subconsciously waved a guiding hand towards the posts. Three steps. Contact. It was a perfect Dave Alred kick. The ball sailed straight and true. 32–31 to Wales.

  There was less than a minute left on the clock as England kicked off. They were lucky. Wales spilled the ball and England were awarded a scrum. There was still time for them to snatch the win. Dallaglio controlled the ball at the base and Dawson fed Catt, who struck a drop at goal. It went wide. Howarth gathered, called the mark and then rifled the ball into the sea of red beyond the touchline. Andre Watson blew his whistle and the game was over.

  To make matters worse, not only had the Grand Slam slipped through their fingers, but so had the championship; because of their superior points difference, the title went to Scotland.