by Peter Burns
England were soon fighting back, with Wilkinson keeping them in the hunt with his boot. Wood’s try aside, the pivotal moment in the game came when Dan Luger sliced off his wing and straight through the Ireland midfield. The whole pitch opened up before him and as he scorched away a try seemed certain. But the Ireland scrum-half Peter Stringer dived desperately for his ankles. A flailing hand made contact with one of Luger’s trailing boots and slapped it sideways, tripping the England wing and sending him sprawling to the ground, where the chasing cover defenders enveloped him and swiftly extinguished the danger.
As the match reached its final minutes, Austin Healey, who had come off the bench, scythed in for a try, which Wilkinson, surprisingly, failed to convert. At 20–14, England needed a converted try to claim the Slam, but the Irish defence were dogged and fought like mad men to keep them out. When the final whistle blew, England were Six Nations champions but the Grand Slam had once again slipped through their fingers and the millstone of ‘chokers’ continued to hang heavy around their necks. While the press went to town once more with this label, Neil Back looked back on those Grand Slam-costing defeats quite differently. ‘We lost to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France because we played badly and the other side, at home, played well,’ he said philosophically. ‘That happens in sport. It is just a coincidence that, on three occasions, we were going for the Grand Slam. It is insulting to the other sides, in my opinion, to suggest that if only the real England turned up on the day it would be a foregone conclusion. These are proud, talented, international rugby sides and they are going to beat us from time to time.’
‘We always felt we were learning something from each of our losses,’ reflected Richard Hill. ‘It may sound strange, but I really think each one helped us. There were always little details that you picked up on and stored in the memory bank. That Lansdowne Road defeat definitely influenced our preparations for the next time we played there.’
‘Champions learn from their mistakes and grow stronger as a result,’ said Woodward. ‘They don’t feel inhibited by the fear of failure, but are stimulated and motivated by it.’
After Dublin, the 2001 autumn Test series saw Australia, Romania and South Africa entertained at Twickenham over three consecutive weekends. Sandwiched in between the Tests against two giants of the rugby world was Romania, a once-proud rugby nation that had last been truly competitive in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The side that represented the Mighty Oaks in 2001 were a shadow of their forebears and duly fell to a humiliating 134–0 scoreline. The fixture did neither side any good.
The real tests for England would be provided by the Wallabies and Springboks, whose scalps they had claimed twelve months earlier. With Johnson and Dallaglio still unavailable, there was every chance that the Wallabies would have the power and nous to regain the Cook Cup.
The Wallabies arrived in London as the holders of the World Cup, Tri Nations championship and with a Test series victory against the Lions in the bag. But Woodward and his team were looking for a reaction to Dublin – and they got one. It was a game in which the momentum swung back and forth, with England surging into a 15–0 lead at the break only for the Wallabies to punch back in the second half. But Wilkinson was as metronomic as ever and his powerful forwards set the platform for him to target the Australian posts and England pushed on to win 21–15.
The final game of the year against South Africa was a typical pitched battle between the sides. Once again it was Wilkinson who was the critical figure for England. While Mike Catt grabbed a drop-goal and Dan Luger sealed the deal with a late interception and a length-of-the-field sprint to score, it was Wilkinson’s boot that had doused the fire of the Springboks’ fight. England had many heroes, notably Jason Robinson, who caused the Springboks defence no end of difficulties, but it was Wilkinson’s seven kicks out of nine attempts that tolled the bell for South Africa. ‘That was a great day to be in the stands at Twickenham,’ said Woodward of the 29–9 victory. ‘It was our third straight win over South Africa and our fifth successive win against a Tri Nations side – the first European nation ever to do so.’
‘We saw off Eddie Jones’s side without the injured Johnno, Lawrence and Daws, which made a statement,’ said Richard Hill. ‘It was also back-to-back wins over the world champions. Johnno was back for the Springboks and made an even bigger statement after that match, saying that it was no longer such a big deal for us to beat southern hemisphere sides.’
SEVEN
THE ANATOMY OF EXCELLENCE
‘You don’t win once in a while, you don’t do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.’
Vince Lombardi
THE SUCCESS OF the autumn series put the disappointment of the Lions tour and the Grand Slam loss to Ireland to one side and spread a feel-good factor within the England squad so that they went into the 2002 Six Nations Championship with a great sense of optimism.
England’s first game was away to Scotland in Edinburgh. To maximise their preparation time, Woodward kept the team at Pennyhill Park until the Thursday before the match before flying north. It was a gritty game, but England showed their class and won 29–3, scoring four tries through Mike Tindall and Ben Cohen while Jason Robinson crossed twice.
*
A few days later, in the video analysis suite at Pennyhill Park, Tony Biscombe sat transfixed at his computer as he put together a series of clips from the Calcutta Cup match. While sitting in the stands at Murrayfield, he had noticed something but hadn’t wanted to raise it with Woodward until he had had a closer look at the footage after the game. Now he had confirmation of what he had seen, evidence to back up his initial impressions. He finalised the clips and burnt them to a DVD, then went to find Woodward.
The two of them sat down in Woodward’s room and went through Biscombe’s findings. While Will Greenwood, Austin Healey, Ben Cohen and Jonny Wilkinson all featured in the montage, the main footage that Biscombe had gathered had been of Jason Robinson. Now playing full-back, Robinson had scorched in for two tries but there had been several occasions when he had made a half-break through the defensive line and was hauled down only because a Scottish defender had managed to get hold of his baggy shirt.
‘If his shirt was tighter,’ said Biscombe, pausing the action as centre Gregor Townsend reached out a desperate hand towards the breaking Robinson, just managing to grab the back of his flapping jersey, ‘Townsend wouldn’t have even laid a finger on him. And even if he had, he wouldn’t have had enough purchase to bring Jason down. He probably wouldn’t have even slowed him down.’
Woodward’s brow was furrowed but his eyes were bright. Tighter shirts. Why not? It made perfect sense. Tighter and lighter. Surely that was possible.
Within an hour he had sent an email to Nike, the kit suppliers to the team, with Biscombe’s clips attached. It was an email that became something of a company legend as it passed from department to department at Nike and the challenge to design the new shirt was enthusiastically accepted. It took eighteen months of development but in the end they had just the product that Woodward was after – and from that moment on, rugby shirt design never looked back.
*
In round two of the Six Nations, England welcomed Ireland to Twickenham and more than made amends for their performance against Keith Wood’s men in the autumn by sweeping the visitors aside 45–11. Will Greenwood scored two tries and he was joined by Wilkinson, Cohen, Joe Worsley and lock Ben Kay, who scored after a spectacular forty-metre charge through the Irish defence. Wilkinson mercilessly added a penalty and six conversions. It took England’s results at home to fourteen consecutive victories, a record.
All eyes turned to Paris and a French team that was firing once again. With England due to entertain Wales at Twickenham and Italy considered little more than a formality, even in Rome, this match seemed destined to decide the championship and England’s tilt at the Grand Slam.
England trekked across the Channel with confidence,
having not lost to Les Bleus since 1998, but the trip to Paris got off to the worst possible start. Woodward thought it would be a good idea if the team caught the Eurostar and travelled on their own rose-emblazoned bus. It would make a dramatic statement to turn up at Stade de France in the bus – we are England, we think of everything. But they hadn’t thought of everything; in fact, they had forgotten a rather unfortunate hazard of travel by bus: traffic. This and a delayed train conspired to make the journey to the team hotel a gruelling eight hours.
Matters did not improve at the Stade de France, where England were treated to a physical onslaught led by a fearsome new back-row combination of Serge Betsen, Imanol Harinordoquy and Olivier Magne. The French had recently employed Dave Ellis as defence coach. He was an Englishman who had played rugby league in England, Australia and France, before becoming involved with rugby union when Jacques Fouroux persuaded him to join Racing Metro. With the New Zealand-born centre Tony Marsh controlling the defence in midfield alongside Damien Traille, France put up a robust wall across the park and Ellis charged Betsen with the task of single-handedly – and single-mindedly – hunting down Wilkinson.
‘Jonny won’t mind me saying it was probably one of his poorest games,’ said Woodward. ‘Betsen focused his energy on putting Wilkinson under as much pressure as possible. Occasionally he’d take himself away from the rucks entirely, place himself in the midfield and go for Wilkinson from the outside, putting his pass under pressure. Then at the appropriate time he’d come from the other direction to shut down Wilkinson’s kicking game, forcing him to miss touch or restrict his distance significantly. Wilkinson’s mistake was that he decided to take on Betsen. He let it become a personal battle and started flying into rucks to clear out Betsen, to show him he was not intimidated, but you do not want your No.10 flying into rucks, you want him playing quarterback. Betsen won that battle only because he got Wilkinson playing in a way England didn’t want him to play. Both myself and Wilkinson learnt a lot that afternoon. The next time we played France, I put Charlie Hodgson outside Wilkinson to offer him a get-out route and we won the game comfortably.’
‘Usually, if a guy flies out of the line like this, it’s brilliant because it means that they are defending individually and you’ve got opportunities elsewhere,’ recalled Wilkinson in Jonny. ‘But when Betsen goes, the reaction of everyone else in their team is so urgent. They come out so fast it’s like their lives depend on it... I had Clive in my head – build the score, direct the game. But we can’t build anything because, at home in front of their passionate fans, they are too good at preventing us from doing so. They play very, very well, and it’s actually in attack where they really win the contest. They exploit a couple of minor lapses in our defence and score two tries.’
‘They spotted weaknesses in our game and were clinical in exploiting them,’ said Richard Hill. ‘For years the England team had prided itself on playing pragmatic rugby, but we failed to live up to that. Johnno made exactly that point afterwards; we needed to go back to those roots in crunch games, playing it tight where necessary... We had been developing an “all-singing, all-dancing brand of rugby” but the method was not always working when we were put under pressure. For years, under previous coaches, England had gone through an era of rolling mauls, so Clive had concentrated on taking us to the other extreme. To be successful, though, we knew we had to marry the two approaches.’
‘I’d been France defence coach for a couple of years under Bernard Laporte,’ said Ellis, ‘but it was in that game when we spotted a weakness in the England team that people really sat up and took notice. Working with Mike Catt a few years later, he told me how that match changed their game plan and made them realise that Jonny could be isolated, and it’s no coincidence Catt or Hodgson always came into the team to face France.’
‘Regrettably, our chances of the Grand Slam perished again,’ said Jason Robinson in Finding My Feet. ‘We had promised much as a team and, again, we had come up one game short. Yet there remained a sense of optimism. There was more right than wrong with England’s rugby. Once the disappointment of the moment had passed, I am sure, like me, the other players in the squad looked forward to the future with optimism, keen to rise to the fresh challenges ahead.’
After that Paris defeat the team regathered themselves at Pennyhill Park and, as had been expected, they bounced back with comfortable wins against Wales and Italy – 50–10 and 45–9 respectively. Thanks to the points difference, England were in the hunt for the Six Nations title right up to the final game, but France finished the tournament undefeated to pick up the Grand Slam that had so eluded Woodward’s team.
A further shuffle of staff behind the scenes occurred during the Six Nations when Brian Ashton stepped down during the middle of the championship owing to issues at home. He moved sideways within the RFU and became national academy manager. Woodward felt that it would be too disruptive to the team to bring in another attack coach so close to the World Cup, so he assumed the role himself. It is fair to say that while he was undoubtedly competent in this area, he was not as inventive as Ashton and an analysis of England’s attack over the next eighteen months showed that the élan with which they had torn defences to shreds while Ashton was there fell away somewhat after his departure. But having said this, some in the team felt that there was already a general decline in the team’s play that had begun even when Ashton was involved. ‘The worst thing for me was that as well as losing to France we’d also shown that we’d gone backwards as a squad,’ said Jason Leonard. ‘We weren’t as good as we had been the previous year... There were lots of reasons for our loss of form but the main one was sheer exhaustion. It was the end of an awfully long season – the Lions tour had taken up the previous summer and we’d rolled straight into a tough autumn international season, the delayed Ireland match and then straight into the Six Nations... We didn’t have the zip and snap of the year before. There was an irony in the fact that while we were all tired and needed a break, we also needed more sessions together as a team.’ The recognition of the team’s fatigue was one of the main reasons why the England management rested many of the leading players and took a second-string side to Argentina for a one-off Test in Buenos Aires in the summer of 2002.
With the front-line players rested, Woodward was keen to develop some more selection options for the team going into the biggest season of his career.
The previous summer, while the Lions were in Australia, England had taken five hookers on tour to North America to work on strengthening their reserves in a key area of the team and, as part of their squad development programme, had employed Simon Hardy as a specialist line-out coach to work with them. Among their number was a young man from Northampton called Steve Thompson. Born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire, Thompson moved to Northampton when he was three, around the time that his parents split up. His relationship with his father soon became distant, something that never really recovered, and he grew up with his mother, who eventually remarried. Thompson was adopted by his stepfather and he changed his name to Steve Walter. He spent much of his childhood playing sport and no matter what he turned his hand to, he did it well. He was a useful footballer and represented the Midlands at basketball, but rugby was his big love. Then, when he was seventeen, his world shifted on its axis. He was sitting at breakfast with his mother and stepfather one morning when they turned to him and said, ‘We’d like you to leave.’
Thompson recounted this story in a heartbreakingly frank interview with David Walsh of The Sunday Times in 2004. ‘I thought, “I’m not going to start arguing here”, and I just left,’ Thompson said. ‘I didn’t see that anything was wrong. I hadn’t done anything. I was never a kid that got in trouble with the police or anything like that. I was just sitting there and they walked in and said, “Look, we want you to leave.” Just like that... My mum kicked my sister Heidi out when she was fifteen or sixteen. I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of seeing I was taking it badly. So I was just fine wi
th it. “Right, OK then. I’ll go.”
‘I am not very forgiving in situations like that. I will never forgive them for it. Where my sister still speaks with my mum, I don’t. I never went back. I will never forgive them.’
Thompson moved in with his sister, and while Heidi offered him physical refuge with a new home, rugby offered him an emotional one. He played flanker for Northampton School for Boys, then the Old Scouts junior teams and was finally signed as a professional for Northampton Saints. He played in the back-row for Northampton and changed his name back to Thompson as he worked his way through the traumas of his personal life. Then, aged twenty-one, Northampton’s head coach Ian McGeechan and his assistant, Colin Deans, suggested that a career change might be in order. Deans had been one of the finest hookers of his generation for Scotland and the Lions and he saw something he liked very much in Thompson. They suggested that he could make a name for himself at the highest level if he changed his position. ‘I loved playing flanker,’ said Thompson. ‘I’d played in the European Cup for Northampton in the back-row, I’d scored tries, played well there... But there’s something about being a hooker. That one-on-one battle is the heart of the game. Looking people in the eye, knowing you have got them, that’s the best feeling in the game.’
McGeechan and Deans, a combination made in Scotland, had created a new force for England. Coincidentally, it was against Scotland in the 2002 Six Nations that Thompson made his debut and, while newspaper hacks north of the border crowed that the converted flanker was an obvious weakness in the England juggernaut, Thompson proved that he was anything but. After an assured debut, he played in every match in the campaign, adding both size and ball-carrying dynamism to the front-row where previous candidates in the position had offered either one or the other. As Woodward prepared his squad for Argentina, he wanted to know just how far Thompson could go. Was he going to be as key an element in the World Cup squad as his early form in the team had promised? Time would tell. But if his mettle was ever going to be truly tested, it would be done in Buenos Aires.
