by Peter Burns
‘Whichever daft sod thought we were going to beat Wales by forty points needs shooting,’ said Will Greenwood after the game. ‘Wales–England in a World Cup quarter-final was always going to be close.’
‘I think we played the World Cup well enough, but the one game we really did stuff up was against Wales – we really stuffed it up,’ said Woodward. ‘I think that was partly because we looked at the fixture and were already focused on playing France in the semi-final. We were up in Brisbane and all week things felt wrong, you could just tell people’s heads weren’t right. And that is the worst part of being a coach because you try all sorts of things to turn it around to make it a good week, to make training better, to change the atmosphere in the camp, but it just wasn’t happening. Training was flat – I put my hands up and say we probably overworked the players – but we were just trying to do things to lift them and it didn’t work. I woke up on the day of the game and I didn’t feel like I normally did, I didn’t think, Oh wow, great, we’re ready to go, I thought, We’re just not right. And it is a horrendous feeling. You always look in the mirror and blame yourself at those moments.
England were panicking and Wilkinson was again struggling with his kicking. He missed his first shot at goal from a penalty and a drop-goal attempt didn’t even come close to the target. The malaise spread through the team, affecting decision-making all over the field – they were forgetting the basics of T-CUP, none more so than Ben Cohen, who grabbed the ball at a penalty that was within range of the posts and sent a poorly executed cross-field kick wide to Neil Back that missed its target and bounced harmlessly into touch. This tactic was repeated a few minutes later by Mike Tindall – but to much more costly effect. The centre fired the ball wide to where lock Ben Kay was roaming in open space, but the ball was gathered instead by Shane Williams, who continued the dance he had started against New Zealand. He weaved his way downfield, fed the ball to scrum-half Gareth Cooper, who carried for thirty metres before slipping a pass to Gareth Thomas, who returned the ball to Williams. As the last-ditch England defence tried to haul the diminutive Williams to the ground, the little winger juggled the pass and then flipped the ball delicately to fly-half Stephen Jones to score.
‘We saw errors from the team that we’d never seen before,’ said Woodward, ‘and suddenly Wales were running through us like we were an under-10s side.’
Just four minutes later, England imploded again. Cohen fielded an up-and-under, but he was isolated in the tackle and conceded a penalty. Wales nudged the ball into the corner and from the resulting line-out they drove to the line and formed a ruck from which Welsh captain Colin Charvis pounced to score. Stephen Jones was unable to convert either try, but Wales were more than deserving of their 10–3 half-time lead.
‘We came in at half-time and the boys looked tired. I felt tired,’ confessed Martin Johnson. ‘The humidity was draining us and I thought, we could be in trouble here. It almost felt like we had pushed ourselves out.’
Woodward strode into the changing room and stared around at his troops. He was pleased to see that, despite ignoring virtually every tactical principle they had built their game around for the past few seasons in the first half, they were at least going through their usual half-time routine. When chaos threatens to overwhelm you, it is important to have reference points to return to, islands on which they could seek shelter from the storm. The half-time routine was one of these and, as the players silently changed their shirts and took on fluids, Woodward could sense a semblance of calm returning. A few moments later the players gathered into their forwards and backs units to discuss how to address the problems they were facing on the field. Then the captain addressed the team.
‘Johnno just let fly,’ recalled Woodward. ‘He really lost it in the changing room – which he needed to do. He needed to make a statement to the team.’
‘What are you going to do?’ recalled Johnson of his outburst. ‘You’re not going to pack it in. You have to go back out there and go for it. If that was going to be our last forty minutes in the World Cup, then we were going to make it a good one.’
Then it was Woodward’s turn to speak.
‘Calm,’ he said. ‘Just stay calm out there. We need to relax. We know we’re not playing well but we know how to fix that. I haven’t ever seen this side play the way we have just played in that half. So now we go back to doing what we do best. I want width on the ball. I want to stretch them across the field. At the moment, we’re easy to defend against. We should never be easy to defend against. Trust our systems, trust our fitness and trust each other. Don’t overcommit at the breakdown – we don’t need so many bodies in the rucks. We should be able to win our own ball cleanly and quickly with fewer numbers, let’s just make sure our technique is spot-on.’
He glanced around the room. ‘Luges,’ he said to Dan Luger. ‘Thanks for your work, but you’re off. Tinds, I want you on the wing instead. Will, you’re moving to outside-centre. Catty, you’re up.’
Then he turned to Martin Johnson and nodded. He had made the tactical changes he thought necessary – Mike Tindall on to the wing, Mike Catt into inside-centre, Will Greenwood to outside-centre. Now it was up to the players.
‘The shuffling of the back-line was a big call, but those are the ones that you’re proudest of when you look back,’ recalled Woodward, ‘because it worked. I think most coaches would have left it ten or fifteen minutes into the second-half to make that call. And if someone went down injured we would have been stuffed but I just felt it was a change that we had to make at half-time to give us a change in momentum as soon as we left the changing room. That was a T-CUP moment, we had to make the big changes, make the big statements.’
As he watched them wander out for the second half, Woodward was pleased to see Catt talking animatedly to Wilkinson, his arms cutting running angles and kick trajectories in the air. He was even more pleased to see the calm focus on Wilkinson’s face. The fly-half had played poorly in the first half, he had been rattled. But now that Catt was there, he looked serene. He was computing exactly what was needed to haul England back into the game and what was needed for them to push on for the win.
Catt’s presence seemed to add reassurance to the whole team. As soon as England got possession of the ball in the second half, they looked like a different side. The distance and variation of Catt’s passing stretched the Welsh defence across the field, forcing the back-three defenders and fly-half Stephen Jones to push flatter, while his accurate, long, diagonal punting moved England into the areas of the field where they needed to be.
‘Mike Catt came on and was inspirational in what he did,’ said Wilkinson, ‘which he is as a person not just as a player – but this time he came on and really added to the game enormously.’
Both sides knew how crucial it was to be the next to score – Wales to push further ahead, England to bring them back into the game.
The width of Catt’s passing game meant that the Welsh defence was spread across the field like a string of pearls. They were being forced to stand further apart from one another than they had in the first half, but they were still harrying and pushing up fast and defending furiously.
Then came another moment of pure magic in an already scintillating game. After Wales had won an English line-out in their 22, Gareth Cooper hoisted a thumping clearance kick that soared deep into the England half. Ben Cohen tracked its path, gathered it on the bounce near the left-hand touchline and immediately fed the ball infield to Jason Robinson. Robinson looked up. The Welsh defensive line was racing up after the kick. Their organisation was impressive – a red wall was swiftly closing in, every chasing defender holding the line to ensure there were no dog-legs, every man evenly spaced so that there was no hint of a gap. Robinson would have to kick, there was no other option.
Robinson began to run.
He set off, shuttling on a diagonal towards the midfield where three defenders awaited him. As he closed in on them they began to push together, shutting d
own the space – three on one, with two sweepers just behind them. There was no way through. Robinson was travelling at full pace and as he approached the defence he gave a little hop and then stepped off his right foot, cutting a jagged line between the first two defenders. Normally a step like that would take the momentum out of a player’s run, but Robinson was still sprinting and, incredibly, had even more speed in reserve. He put on the afterburners and accelerated through the traffic, using a powerful hand-off to repel a despairing tackle. He arced his run to the right and then honed in on full-back Gareth Thomas, the last line of defence. Another little half-skip and feint of balance change fixed Thomas in his tracks. Screaming up outside Robinson was Will Greenwood, who, alone among some 70,000 spectators in the Suncorp Stadium and twenty-eight other players on the pitch, had read Robinson’s intentions from the moment he had touched the ball. With Thomas committed to tackling Robinson, the little magician floated a delicate pass out to Greenwood, who strode in to score in the corner.
‘It is my natural ability to just go and run,’ said Robinson. ‘And the way I see it, if I don’t know where I’m going, the opposition defence certainly doesn’t know where I’m going... It’s a rush when you do create those opportunities, when you do beat men, and you can sense the crowd on their feet... that’s why you play the game.’
‘You can see what he’s trying to do,’ recalled Greenwood in Will Greenwood on Rugby. ‘But you just don’t believe it is possible that someone can cram all that skill into a split-second of natural athleticism and instinct. I can honestly say that I was disappointed to score the try he made against Wales – Jason deserved to finish that off on his own.’
‘Will’s ability to read the game is probably second to none,’ said Matt Dawson. ‘It’s like watching a snooker player and wondering how he knew where he needed to be four shots earlier. He could read the game so well and he had obviously thought, Jason could make a break here and if he does, he’s probably going to be running to the outside, so I need to be there. For me that was the defining moment of our World Cup.’
The score took Greenwood’s Test try tally to thirty, equalling Jeremy Guscott and leaving him second only to Rory Underwood on the all-time list for England.
Wilkinson, who had endured a torrid time with the boot up to that point, slotted the touchline conversion perfectly. The tide was turning. With Wilkinson’s confidence restored and Catt expertly dictating play alongside him, England returned to their formidable best throughout the rest of the game – and as Wales desperately tried to slow them down and hem them in, they began to concede penalty after penalty. Although they would score another try through Martyn Williams in the closing minutes, Wilkinson had already pushed clear daylight between the sides with five more penalties. Then, with the last kick of the match, he sealed the result with a drop-goal to take his side through to the semi-finals, 28–17.
‘Clearly, we were not at our best today,’ said Woodward at the post-match press conference, ‘and we made some fundamental errors, but I am also confident that we can sit down, have a clear-the-air meeting next week and beat France. We are disappointed with how we played, but it’s far nicer to be flying to Sydney than flying back home to London. We are not playing well, but we are winning these games through sheer bloody-mindedness.’
*
England flew south from Queensland to Sydney, settled themselves in the Manly Pacific Hotel and began to prepare for the semi-final – against another old rival, France.
The margin of victory in the quarter-final had flattered England. How Woodward and his team handled their analysis of the game and their preparation for the semi-final would be critical if they were to stand any chance of success. They held a clear-the-air meeting behind closed doors. ‘There were some pretty serious bollockings handed out,’ said Tindall.
While England had stuttered through the tournament, France were widely considered to be the form team. Les Bleus had blown away every opposition they had faced. They had dispatched Fiji 61–18, Japan 51–29, Scotland 51–9 and the USA 41–14. In the quarter-final they had faced Ireland and been just as merciless. If the final scoreline of 43–21 suggested that Ireland had put up something of a good fight, it was misleading. Ireland did indeed make a late rally, with two well-worked tries from Brian O’Driscoll and one from Kevin Maggs, but that was only after France had pushed themselves into a 37–0 lead and taken their foot off the gas. Frédéric Michalak, the young darling of French rugby, played magnificently outside his equally impressive captain, Fabien Galthié, the half-backs pulling the strings of a powerful French team with an otherworldly grace as they blew Ireland away. The French forwards completely dominated their Irish counterparts in the set-piece and in the contact areas, allowing their audaciously talented back-row trio of Betsen, Harinordoquy and Magne to cause complete mayhem in the open spaces.
To a casual observer – and even the professional pundit and bookmaker – France, playing so brilliantly, were odds-on favourites to overcome England. In a pre-match press conference, Martin Johnson was as pragmatic and forthright as ever about the way his team had been performing and the challenge that awaited them. ‘It’s much better to be talking about a disappointing victory than to be sat at home talking about being beaten. We won a World Cup quarter-final and people are saying, “Oh dear, you’re not playing very well.” I’ll tell you this – Wales would love to have won that game and be able to say that. As for France, they have a lot of class and a lot of speed in there. They are the form team of the World Cup. It’s a tough challenge. We could play well and still lose. We’re not going to be able to play poorly and pull off a win. France are too good for that. But it’s not a game we’re now expected to win. So winning by a point will do.’
While England had had a shaky time at the tournament, their campaign was built on stronger foundations than any other team’s. The players also felt that they had over-trained in the build-up to the Wales game and that heavy legs and the general sluggishness that permeated the entire team had been to blame for their poor first-half showing – a condition that had not been helped by the humidity in Brisbane. The senior players broached the subject at the post-match debrief the following day and the week that preceded the semi-final was dramatically different to that which had preceded the quarter-final. Training was light and organisation-based and the players were given plenty of time off to relax away from the field. As they all accepted, there was little more that they could do to improve their well-honed game and drills in the space of a week, but they could certainly disrupt their chances in the same space of time by over-training and exhausting themselves.
*
On the Saturday, Australia played New Zealand in the first semi-final. So far, New Zealand had been magnificent, cruising through their pool – with the exception of the fright against Wales, but even then they had scored eight tries – and had then completely dismantled their old rivals South Africa in the quarter-final. Their back-three were electric, Carlos Spencer at stand-off had more tricks up his sleeve than Merlin and in Richie McCaw at open-side they had one of the finest players the game had ever seen. But they had a problem that had not been challenged since a wet and windy night in Wellington a few months earlier when they had succumbed to a thirteen-man England: the forwards, as a unit, were poor. The team had claimed a dramatic clean sweep in the Tri Nations after that loss at the Cake Tin, running in tries for fun away from home. But when the Wallabies and the Springboks had come to New Zealand and played more pragmatic, forwards-orientated rugby, the All Blacks had only just scraped past them. And when the pressure came on up front and Spencer’s time and space were cut down, the fly-half struggled to pull any rabbits out of his hat.
And so it was that New Zealand’s World Cup dreams unravelled once again. McCaw remained a giant and the back-three were still a constant threat, but the Australian tight-five turned the screw on their opposite numbers and Phil Waugh and George Smith – two natural open-sides playing either side of No.8 David Ly
ons – roamed menacingly around the breakdown and hunted down Spencer, while the muscular figure of Stirling Mortlock in the centre was like a brick wall. And it was Mortlock who broke Kiwi hearts as he intercepted a loose Spencer pass to sprint almost eighty metres to score. Although the All Blacks claimed a try back through their captain, Reuben Thorne, Elton Flatley kept the Wallaby score mounting until his team closed out the game 22–10. The hosts had reached the final and were one game away from being the first side to retain the World Cup.
The next day would see who was going to face them. The trans-Tasman match had been played on a balmy evening, but the next day the weather began to change – quite dramatically as it would turn out.
*
Wind and rain – a lot of both – thundered over Sydney. Although both semi-finals were played in the same stadium, the difference in the conditions from one day to the next made it seem as if they were played in different hemispheres.
‘We looked at the rain and we thought, Fine, we don’t mind this, we can play in this,’ said Mike Catt. ‘But I’m sure the French were probably cowering, thinking, Why does it have to rain on this particular day?’
