More Blood, Sweat and Beers

by Lawrence Dallaglio

  The year of the first World Cup was a memorable one for me. I proposed to the current Mrs Redman, we bought our first house together, and I equalled the record of tries scored in a Cup final during Bath’s win over Wasps at Twickenham – not bad for a second row, although the record, if I’m honest, doesn’t stand much scrutiny in terms of inducing jaw-dropping awe: it was two tries, there are about fifteen other players with whom I share the distinction, and I am not even the only second row on the list, as my team-mate Martin Haag also scored a double in the 1995 final, again against Wasps; mind you, a record is a record as far as I am concerned. Added to that, as a member of an England squad successful in only one match of the Five Nations Championship I gained selection to participate in the first-ever World Cup tournament. The next challenge was how to take six weeks off work without losing my job as an electrician. I decided honesty was the best policy and fessed up to my employers that in my spare time I was in fact an England international rugby player. This came as something of a surprise to them. Apparently they had never noticed my previous sojourns, thanks entirely to my work colleagues who brilliantly covered for me during domestic international matches when I was away for a couple of days. I like to think that was the reason the powers-that-be were unaware of my disappearances, rather than the quality of my work being eminently missable. Having explained about the World Cup, the existence of which had passed most people by back then, they kindly agreed to a leave of absence. Unpaid, of course.

  The international season had got off to a stuttering start with the opening fixture against Scotland at Twickenham postponed due to a frozen pitch, meaning our first match of the campaign would be against Ireland at Lansdowne Road. In fairness we didn’t do too much in the way of pre-match analysis in those days. It was generally left to the people who had experience of playing against the up-coming opponents to give an appraisal of what to expect. ‘It’ll be wet and windy, the Irish will kick everything just above grass level, occasionally below it, and the crowd will be on our backs from the start.’ I can’t remember who actually said those words but it might as well have been Mystic Meg as it was absolutely correct. The rain never ceased, I had the shit kicked out of me, the crowd were against us for eighty minutes (although later that evening as I entered the Dublin nightlife they were like long-lost friends) and we lost the match 17–0. Possibly the first time England ever failed to score in a Test. I became a casualty of the post-match analysis (we had those unfortunately) and was dropped for the next two games, France at Twickenham and Wales in Cardiff, the latter becoming notorious for the violence which took place. Mike Teague, the Gloucester and England No. 8, was targeted from the kick-off, fight followed fight, and Wade Dooley, the English lock, hurt his hand when Phil Davies put his jaw in the way of Wade’s swinging arm (apparently this incident also led to Phil unluckily sustaining a broken jaw). Wales won the match and England suspended Richard Hill (captain), Gareth Chilcott, Graham Dawe and the aforementioned Wade Dooley. Some felt the decision was harsh, but with Dooley on the sidelines the door opened for my return in the rearranged fixture against Scotland at Twickenham, a match England dominated from the first whistle to the last and in which I performed well enough to gain selection for the World Cup.

  In preparation for the tournament the Rugby Football Union made a revolutionary decision and hired the services of an athletics coach called Tom McNab. (Interestingly when looking at Tom’s extensive website recently, I noticed that this appointment warrants less than one line and is buried away under several subheadings.) Tom is a Scot, a best-selling author and was technical director on the Oscar-winning film Chariots of Fire, but even for someone with such an impressive pedigree it was an almost impossible task to increase the athleticism of the England World Cup squad. As we prepared on the running tracks of England Tom could be heard shouting his favourite catchphrases, ‘Relax and run with a jelly jaw,’ or ‘Run as if you are holding a delicate crisp between your fingers.’ All the talk of jelly and crisps was too much for some who followed a strenuous session with a visit to the bar to celebrate getting under 30 per cent body fat. Another of Tom’s favourite quotes was, ‘you can’t fire a cannon from a canoe,’ in reference to building a solid training base. Highly reflective by nature, I remember responding to this by pointing out to Tom you could fire a cannon from a canoe if it was fired along its length. I like to think I am slightly less anally-retentive these days.

  By early May we were as ready as we were ever going to be and departed from our hotel to Heathrow. The adventure had begun. I’d never previously flown long haul, never been on a jumbo jet, and was excited at the prospect of stopping off in Bahrain and Singapore en route. ‘Do you think we’ll get our passports stamped?’ I remember asking one of the more experienced tourists. On entering the plane the stewardess (yes, those were the days when they were called stewardesses, trolley dollies, coffee jockeys, wagon dragons and the rest) was guiding first-class passengers to the left whilst ensuring our squad were heading towards ‘economy’. I had been told prior to departure that the RFU had a policy on seats with leg room and that at 6ft 3in and 17st I was neither tall enough nor big enough to qualify. The pre-booked emergency exit seats with additional legroom were for the ‘big lads’ only. Surely I had a chance of an aisle seat? No such luck. A window? No, I was wedged in between fly-half Rob Andrew and winger Rory Underwood, both about 5ft 8in and neither prepared to swap seats. By the time we’d all had the compulsory giggle at the stewardess demonstrating how to ‘top up’ the air in our life jackets by blowing into the hose, I knew it was going to be a hot, increasingly smelly and uncomfortable flight to the other side of the world. The journey was broken up into eight-hour flying slots with about an hour stop-over in Bahrain and Singapore and no they wouldn’t be stamping my passport. We eventually landed at Sydney airport before flying up to Brisbane for a training session and the opening ceremony. Approximately thirty hours after leaving Heathrow we arrived at our hotel.

  ‘Drop your bags in your rooms and be on the bus in half an hour, changed and ready to train,’ came the instructions from England coach Martin Green. We arrived at our training ground, the GPS club, where the first task of the duty boys was to move up and down the bus in an effort to wake all the sleeping players. The conditions were hot and humid, which combined with the damp air made breathing difficult. My most notable memory from the first session was a tackling practice where the tackling players were asked to kneel on the grass and as luck would have it they positioned themselves over a colony of large and overly aggressive ants. Training continued after the medics had used up their supply of camomile and antihistamine.

  Following the opening ceremony we were back on the bus and heading for the airport to fly south to our Sydney base, a motel (yes, MOTEL) in Rushcutters Bay. This is an area on the outskirts of the red-light district known as Kings Cross, and our motel was situated about 400 metres from its centre. The accommodation had seen better days, the restaurant was on the top floor, and a tenpin bowling alley and burger bar featured in reception. At the back of the motel there was a small kidney-shaped pool and our training pitch.

  The keys were handed out and my room-mate and great friend Graham Dawe and I made our way to room 101. As depicted in George Orwell’s 1984, were we to be made to confront our worst fears? Oh yes. On opening the door any mild excitement we may have had soon evaporated. The room was on the small side, damp, with a settee and one double bed. ‘Do you want to toss a coin for the bed or wrestle for it?’ I asked Dawsey. After crashing around for five minutes we decided to take it in turns. The room also had a large window overlooking our training pitch and a small bathroom with a warmish shower that distributed water powerfully at a rather inconvenient 90° angle to the floor.

  Towards the end of our first full day in Sydney, as I left the tenpin bowling alley I was greeted by the loud roar of motorbike engines ridden by fellow lock forward Steve Bainbridge and back-row forwards John Hall and Peter Winterbottom. John goes into more
detail about this story elsewhere in this book so I will mention it only in passing. Apparently Winterbottom had never been on a bike before and had to borrow Dave Egerton’s driving licence in order to hire the 125cc chopper he was proudly sitting astride. It was probably no more than ten seconds between the three of them turning off their engines and Martin Green telling them to return the bikes to the hire shop. ‘But Martin, we’ve got them for three days.’ Martin just glared and without another word they started their ‘hogs’ and took them back.

  We were scheduled to play Australia, followed by Japan and the USA in the group stage. The selectors decided to keep faith with the team that had beaten Scotland, a personal landmark for me as it was the first time I’d been selected for two consecutive England internationals (having made my debut three years earlier). We played our three group matches at the Concord Oval, the home of West Harbour RFC. We were competitive in our opener against Australia going down 19–6, the turning point a hotly disputed try by David Campese. The fact he bounced the ball off his knee as he crossed the try line made no impact on New Zealand referee Keith Lawrence. Feeling hard done by, the squad boarded a plane bound for Hamilton Island, a leading resort destination in the Whitsunday Islands for a couple of days’ R & R. The highlight of our stay was a visit to the beautiful Great Barrier Reef. The players and management were given the choice of either flying out to the reef in a helicopter and snorkelling, or going by boat to a small island reef and scuba diving. I had always wanted to scuba dive and opted for the boat trip along with my Bath team-mates Graham Dawe, Richard Hill and Gareth Chilcott. When the two groups met later that evening to exchange stories it became apparent only two of the touring party had come close to dying.

  From the helicopter group, Martin Green, the head coach, stood up on a boat, stripped off his shirt, fitted his mask and snorkel and said, ‘I have been waiting all my life for this moment,’ before diving into the sea, not realising the water was only twelve inches deep and the rest of the party already in the water were lying on top of the reef. Martin badly grazed his chest and legs on the live coral and, after being coated with bright orange iodine spray (he probably needed some camomile, but the doc’s supply had already been used), was left feeling very uncomfortable for a number of days. Meanwhile on our trip, while removing his air tank and buoyancy control device, Graham Dawe had forgotten he was wearing a 15kg lead-weighted belt, which resulted in him disappearing into a cloud of bubbles heading rapidly to the bottom of the reef, to reappear like a frightened cat some time later with his weight belt remaining on the sea bed.

  After our adventures on the Reef we returned to Sydney, beat Japan, where I scored my one and only international try, rolled over the USA and booked our place in the quarter-finals, where we were to meet our good friends from Wales.

  After being rested for the USA match the selectors were obviously so impressed by my try-scoring efforts against the mighty Japanese that I found myself selected for the Welsh game. My second-row partner was 6ft 8in PC Dooley, who had now completed his suspension following the match in Cardiff. Martin Green informed me I would be jumping in the middle of the line-out against Welsh legend Bob Norster, adding that it should be a fair contest as Bob had a hamstring injury. In addition to Bob’s ailments Wales had also lost a prop and a back-row forward to injury and had invited the teenage pair Dai Young and Richard Webster to join the squad. Dai and Richard were on holiday backpacking around Australia when they saw a request for them to contact the Welsh management in a newspaper article.

  At the first team meeting we established our strategy for the match. Dominate the Welsh physically up front, starting with the first scrum where we were to target the backpacker Young. ‘First scrum on our ball, let’s hold the ball at the No. 8’s feet and double shunt them with all eight forwards driving on,’ was the advice of Gareth Chilcott, who was starting the match on the bench, followed by, ‘Let’s teach this young f***** what international rugby is all about.’ Training went pretty well during the week and at the end of our final team meeting England manager Mike Weston announced that the winner of the match would be staying in Brisbane to play their semi-final, while the loser would be on the 6.30 a.m. flight back to London the following day. We had to pack our bags and leave them in our rooms before departing for the game, not knowing whether we would be flying back to the UK or not.

  According to the military, ‘No plan survives first contact with the enemy.’ This statement could just as well be applied to the sport of rugby union, as within five minutes of the kick our mighty pack was being driven backwards at an unbelievable rate of knots, as our No. 8 Dean Richards attempted a complicated back-row move. Just before half-time, our loose-head prop Paul Rendall collapsed with an eye injury leaving me to volunteer for front-row duties five metres from our own line. Our seven forwards manfully packed down against the full quota of eight Welshmen, we put the ball in and just before my head disappeared up my backside I saw the ball roll out of the scrum where we should have had a flanker and noticed Welsh open-side Gareth Roberts diving onto the ball to score for Wales. And that was our best moment: Wales scored two more tries through John Devereux and Robert Jones and we lost our quarter-final 16–3.

  Our World Cup was over and I was left rueing the fact I was (only) 6ft 3in and would soon be wedged into an economy seat for the flight home.

  For those of you wondering about my career development, now the cat was out of the bag with regard to my rugby moonlighting, to their credit my employers took it in their stride, after a touch of gentle persuasion. I mentioned earlier I was anally retentive, so much so that the next year, prior to a six-week England tour which was to be followed by a month-long trip with Bath, I prepared a presentation highlighting the positive aspects of having an employee who represented his country at rugby union. I made a solid business case, laced with corporate benefits and my personal development, concluding with the additional profile my position in the sporting world would bring to the company.

  Once again they agreed to let me take the time off, which I have to say was very decent of them, but I am not sure they would have been quite so accommodating had they realised I was to be forced to spend the week in between the two trips recuperating from my England excesses, snoozing my way through the day while I should have been rewiring the Bristol Royal Infirmary A&E department. I was able to undertake this much-needed recovery process by sitting at the top of a long pair of step ladders, my upper half out of sight through a gap in the ceiling tiles, with my head resting on a joist and my eyes firmly shut. The disembodied legs dangling limply down which greeted the sick and injured on their arrival to the waiting room can hardly have instilled much confidence in the healing powers of the casualty medical staff. Happy days indeed.

  Vague Memory

  David Sole

  Many prop forwards enter their prime as they turn thirty years of age; David Sole retired from international rugby aged thirty. He had however accumulated forty-four caps for Scotland, twenty-five as captain, plus a British and Irish Lions tour by this time.

  ‘Richard Bath said in his book The Complete Book of Rugby, “David Sole is another of those players who is remembered and virtually defined by one moment: in this case it was when he made the decision for his side to take the now famous walk onto the pitch for the Grand Slam decider against England at Murrayfield in 1990. As a statement of resolve, it was a masterstroke from which the English never recovered as they lost the most high-profile game in Five Nations Rugby history. It also cemented Sole’s name in Scottish folklore . . . ”

  ‘He will also be remembered for another match against England when he played with his left shirt sleeve removed so the English tight-head prop Jeff Probyn could not grab it to gain some perceived advantage. Conversely Jeff was happy to see David paying more attention to him than he was to his own game.

  ‘These moments may define David Sole’s career to some extent, but it does him a disservice to say they encapsulate his playing days entirely. D
ue to his “early” retirement from rugby our playing careers didn’t overlap, but I do remember watching him play; he was an extremely mobile prop who was so quick he played in the Scotland sevens team, and believe me there are not many props who can claim the honour of representing their country in this version of the game.

  The Scottish team arrived in Christchurch for our first group match against France and after a couple of days getting over jetlag and a few training sessions we felt ready for the challenge. The day before the match a few of us were relaxing in the team room watching some rubbish on TV. At the bottom of the screen was a box with some ‘rolling news’.

  There were two lines of script and they read as follows – Auckland 15 Rotorua 14 . . . Wellington 13 Nelson Marlborough 12 . . . Christchurch 10 Dunedin 10 . . . Invercargill 11 Milford Sound 10 etc.

  One of the squad who shall remain nameless (he has a brother called Scott Hastings) walked into the team room and stared at the screen for a few moments, taking in the names and numbers before saying to the boys, ‘Wow those were all bloody close games.’ Everyone in the team room stared at the individual, let’s call him Gav for the purpose of this story, with looks of absolute disbelief on their faces. Realising he was serious, not one of us even bothered to tell Gav he was looking at the weather forecast and the numbers related to temperatures in the relevant New Zealand towns and cities.

  On the field of play the real matches were brutal to put it mildly. To refresh your memory, the squad size in 1987 was twenty-five players and only two replacements were allowed during a match. Following a 20–20 draw against France in our opening game, the Scottish management decided it would help our campaign if we could go on and win the group, thereby missing an almost certain quarter-final against New Zealand. A consequence of this decision was to field a broadly similar team barring injury, for every match (our best team), which meant little rest for those selected. We picked up a few injuries against France and a couple more during a relatively comfortable 60–21 victory over Zimbabwe. In order to finish top we needed a decent win against Romania so the strongest team available was once again selected. Romania were a much better team in the late eighties than they are now, we knew they’d be difficult to break down and, having lost to them three years earlier, several players reminded the rest of the lads just how physical the match was likely to be.