More Blood, Sweat and Beers

by Lawrence Dallaglio

  ‘I played many times against Tim at international level and also when he played club rugby for Saracens towards the end of his career. He never gave anything less than 100 per cent and always seemed to make the right decisions at the right time, in attack and defence. Off the field he displays modesty and humility and remains a real gentleman.

  ‘Tim is currently a banker for Westpac Banking Corporation. He is an ambassador for the Spinal Injuries Association, speaking to school children regarding prevention of spinal injuries. In addition he is also an ambassador for Aunties and Uncles – a non-profit organisation offering friendship, role-modelling and support for children in single-parent or parentless families. In 2009 he was made a Member of the Order of Australia.

  I would like to start by paying a brief tribute to Lawrence, whom I played against on many occasions. For me Lawrence was the face of English rugby even when Martin Johnson captained the team, and for a number of years he was quite simply the best No. 8 in the world. [Ed note: Okay to delete this, Lawrence? LD: No, essential to story.] I am delighted he asked me to contribute to his book and hope it raises much-needed funds for the children’s charity Wooden Spoon.

  The 1991 World Cup is in the dim and distant past and it’s easy to assume it must be difficult to remember much about a tournament way back then, but to be perfectly honest you never forget moments like winning a world championship and participating in the biggest tournament your sport has to offer. I was a relatively new member of the squad and took my lead from the more experienced players. Having said that, even I knew it was probably advisable to dilute severely anything David Campese said in private and completely ignore everything he said in public. He was a maverick who played over a hundred times for Australia, scoring sixty-four international tries, and enjoyed many moments of pure brilliance and the occasional flash of complete madness, but overall he was a player I would rather have in my team than on the other side. He had a reputation of winding up the opposition in a similar vein to the English hooker Brian Moore. The press enjoyed interviewing ‘Campo’ because he would always provide a quote or two, sometimes unintentionally.

  On their way to the final England had played a successful forward-dominated game, the ball rarely making it past Rob Andrew at fly-half, who would invariably hoist a high kick in order to get his forwards on the front foot, thus keeping the opposition in defensive mode. Campo had a conversation with a few well-chosen journalists and told them England didn’t have a chance in the final if they continued in that fashion. The only way to win, according to the expert Campo, would be to utilise the skill of Jeremy Guscott in the centre and the pace of winger Rory Underwood, in addition to the attacking threat of Jonathan Webb at full-back. The following day the papers were full of Campo’s ramblings, which became a talking point amongst England supporters and presumably also the England team. I base this assumption on the fact they came at us right from the first whistle. Will Carling was making half breaks and feeding the ball to Guscott who was cutting us to ribbons. The ball made it to the wing on several occasions (several more times than in all their previous matches in the tournament combined) and it was only last-ditch Aussie tackling which prevented them from scoring. After about half an hour I remember my centre partner, Jason Little, looking at me gasping, ‘Why can’t Campo keep his f****** mouth shut. They’re killing us.’ Fortunately for some unknown reason England came out in the second half and reverted to the forward game which suited us much better.

  The final whistle blew and we ran out 12–6 winners, an unforgettable moment for me and all my team-mates. Before the redevelopment, the showers and baths at Twickenham were adjacent to the changing rooms and the tubs themselves were large, individual ones standing on claw feet. I have fond memories of the Webb Ellis Cup being handed from bath to bath full of XXXX beer with players toasting the success and getting ready for a night of celebration. Eight years on and not a whole lot had changed. Sure, this time it was Cardiff not London, at the Millennium Stadium, and it was in spa baths that we were celebrating, but the trophy (‘Bill’ as the Aussies christened it) was still full of XXXX and being raucously passed from player to player.

  Back to 1991. We left Twickenham on a fifty-two-seat coach that had at least 140 people on board including mums, dads, siblings, cousins, friends and a few random supporters who had somehow managed to gain access. Once again Bill was passed all around, constantly being refilled with any alcoholic drinks that came to hand. I recall looking at the scene, realising how much joy our achievement had brought to everyone on board and presumably Australians all over the world. It also occurred to me how devastated the England team and their supporters must have been. In that one moment the absolute definition of sport became clear: the ecstasy of winning and the abject agony of losing. Fortunately all of us on the bus were experiencing the former.

  In 2003 I would have preferred an Australian victory, of course, but part of me (a very small part) was pleased the England team and the English nation could appreciate the unbridled joy of success in a World Cup. But hopefully it won’t happen again for some time!

  Whatever happens on the pitch in a game of rugby tends to stay on the pitch. By this I mean if there’s been an indiscretion by player A against player B and player B doesn’t have the time to exact suitable retribution before the final whistle, he will not try and sort it out off the pitch. He simply stores the incident away in an area of his brain that will be unlocked the next time the two players face each other on the field of play.

  During my involvement in the sport at club and international level most players from opposing teams enjoyed each other’s company after matches, either in the bar or at an official dinner. For people who have never played rugby it’s probably difficult to believe that guys who spend eighty minutes knocking the hell out of each other then spend several hours having a few drinks, laughing and joking together. The only indicator of potential malice would be extremely subtle and usually delivered as the teams go their separate ways. A simple comment like ‘See you in February’ will be made from one player to another – and both would know what was really meant. A rough translation for the uninitiated would be, ‘See you in February when we play again and I kick the crap out you.’ The recipient of the comment would normally reply with a friendly smile saying, ‘I’m looking forward to it already.’

  My sense is that since the onset of professionalism teams spend less and less time with each other after matches, which in my humble opinion is a shame and detrimental to the game. It’s now eight years since I retired but I still meet guys on a fairly regular basis from my time in the game and whoever it may be we have a common bond. In addition to the fact we played rugby against each other we also have shared off-pitch experiences. However, things change and I’m just glad I played in my era when mixing with the opposition was commonplace.

  Will Carling was someone I had a good relationship with. We played against each other many times and enjoyed a number of beers together away from the game. I remember during the 1995 World Cup we shared training facilities with England at Newlands, Cape Town. They had the morning time slot and we took over for the afternoon. The England guys had finished and showered as we arrived, and Jason Little and I stopped to have a chat with Will and Jerry Guscott. We were having a laugh about various incidents which had occurred during the tournament and winding each other up about the imminent quarter-final between the two teams. After a few minutes a ringing sound emanated from Will’s pocket. I remember being very impressed: mobile phones were still in their infancy in the mid-nineties. I know I didn’t have one at the time, and if I had I wouldn’t have had it in South Africa, where calls from Australia would have cost me a fortune. Will looked at the screen on his phone and clearly recognised the number. ‘Excuse me guys, this is an important phone call, I’ll have to take it,’ he said as he walked away.

  Jerry was left with us and in his own special way, raised an eyebrow and said, ‘That’ll be Diana. Again . . . ’ I have no idea if
the call was from the princess or not, but Jerry assured us it had been quite a regular occurrence during the tournament. In fact to make us feel better he said Will had left a team meeting the day before to take a call, so he was just as happy to ‘sack’ his own team-mates as he was a couple of Aussie centres. Unfortunately a couple of days later Will Carling, with his team this time, brushed us off once again in the quarter-final when Rob Andrew dropped a huge goal to secure victory for England.

  Winning a World Cup is obviously the ultimate achievement in any sport and I was fortunate to experience it twice. Both moments will remain with me for ever. However, just as import ant as those times are the friends I made during my career in rugby, and I like to think I have many around the world, including the likes of Will, Jerry and in particular Lawrence.

  All the best with the book, Lol.

  Be Prepared

  Rory Underwood

  A few statistics on Rory. He won eighty-five England and six British and Irish Lions caps between 1984 and 1996, which at the time was an English record before it was surpassed by Jason Leonard and remains the highest total for an English back (at the time of writing Jonny Wilkinson is also on eighty-five caps for England). One record which does not look like falling in the near future is the forty-nine tries he scored whilst on international duty and it is interesting to note that in the matches in which Rory scored, England only lost five times. He is also a member of a small group of players to have represented their country at three World Cups.

  ‘I would describe Rory as the quiet man of the team. Whilst team-mates would be tearing it up during post-match celebrations, as a non-drinker of alcohol Rory was always on hand to record events and was often sought out following a typical night of excess as a source of explanation for some otherwise inexplicable occurrence. There were wingers of his era who were quicker than Rory but no one had his knack of being in the right place at the right time, nor his ability to finish off a try with little space to work with. A true gent and one of life’s good guys.

  Preparation is vital to everything you do in life. If you prepare well generally things go as you hope they will; conversely I’m sure many will recognise being in situations where a complete lack of preparation has had disastrous consequences. It might be a cliché, but only because it’s true: ‘If you fail to prepare, then you prepare to fail.’

  Looking back at the World Cup of 1991, at the time I felt we prepared well but with hindsight perhaps not as thoroughly as we could have. In fact if I compare our feeble efforts on the preparation front to the 2003 World Cup campaign led by Clive Woodward, it appears we left most things to luck and chance.

  In order to get an idea of how the All Blacks played their rugby, the England management decided to show us a video of an England–New Zealand fixture at Twickenham, the venue for our opening match against them in 1991. In order to bolster the confidence of the squad they decided the match should also show England winning. Fair enough. Good strategy.

  Unfortunately they had to search back eight years into the archives, to November 1983, to find what they were looking for. And thank God England did pull off that victory, because prior to that the last win at Twickenham came in January 1936 courtesy of two tries from Prince Alexander Obolensky! (It has taken another seventy-five years for there to be another royal connection on the field of English rugby. Congratulations Mike.) Anyway, we all watched the match and spent most of the time taking the piss (from a safe distance) out of Peter Winterbottom, who was the only player in the current squad playing in the fixture. Lots of comments were made about hairstyles and tight shorts and I was as vocal as anyone, until it dawned on me I made my own international debut three months after the match took place.

  Mentioning tight shorts reminds me of a particular kit issue we had prior to the opening match. For several years Gymflex had been our suppliers and everyone in the team had become used to the style and fit, but just before the 1991 World Cup the Rugby Football Union agreed a contract with Cotton Traders to supply England. You may or may not be aware former England prop forward and captain Fran Cotton is the Managing Director of Cotton Traders, and his patriotic involvement perhaps goes some way towards explaining the design feature of the shorts.

  Traditionally, the match-day kit is hung in the changing rooms prior to the arrival of the players, but to make it more of an occasion it was decided to present the players with their kit two days before the match in a small ceremony. As the team was announced, each player walked forward and received his kit from our coach Geoff Cooke whilst all the other players applauded. We were then told to go and try it on to check there were no problems. To be honest most of the shirts were fine, although one of the sleeves on mine was slightly longer than the other (only joking, Fran, all three sleeves were exactly the same length). When it came to the shorts, however, we had a problem. In order to get the crutch of the shorts in the right place the waistband had to be located somewhere between your chest and your chin. Conversely, if the waistband was in the correct position the crutch hung down like a sodden nappy just below knee level. You’ll appreciate this had no effect on the front five, but the back-row boys and the backs were not going to be seen in private, let alone in front of 70,000 at Twickenham, and a global TV audience of millions, wearing these ridiculous garments.

  Under normal circumstances this would not have been a major problem. Previously England shorts had been all white and readily available at all good retailers. But these were not ‘normal circumstances’. This time our shorts had been ‘designed’. Cotton Traders had decided to spice things up a bit by embroidering the rose of England on the right leg of each pair (nice) and a jazzy blue square motif on the left (inexplicable). Our team manager was despatched to Twickenham to collect a variety of different-sized old-style white shorts from the ‘kit cupboard’. They were distributed and everyone was happy, everyone that is except Cotton Traders.

  They had signed an exclusive deal with the RFU to supply the kit and presumably paid a decent sum of money for the privilege. So at the very least they would be looking for some serious financial compensation if the shorts were not worn. They had also taken the promotional photography of the ‘New England Kit’ and had a warehouse full of stock ready for distribution after everyone saw the opening game and would be scrambling to get their hands on the new designer England gear. So with less than forty-eight hours to go before kick-off, the England management were scouring Yellow Pages in search of a seamstress (or several) who could cut out the rose and the blue square and sew them onto pristine white shorts. As I said, preparation is king.

  Something else we had to prepare for was the haka. We actually had a team meeting to discuss what we should do when the All Blacks threw down their famous challenge. Perhaps we should just ignore it and continue to warm up? Maybe we should fight fire with fire and do a Morris dance? It seemed as though we were in a no-win situation and as the discussion continued it was agreed that if we ignored them it would piss them off and probably make them play better, and if we faced up to them and accepted the challenge that would also fire them up to perform. We eventually narrowed our options down to two possibilities. The backs were keen to ignore the haka whilst the forwards wanted to fight. As with all good democracies we compromised: it was decided to get into a circular huddle allowing the three-quarters to have their backs to the ‘dance’ and the forwards could eyeball the opposition and let the adrenalin flow. In addition, we were going to keep our tracksuits on for the performance, which meant that when it was finished we could casually stroll over to the touchline and take an inordinate amount of time stripping down to our kit. This would create more time for the All Blacks to come down from the fever pitch we knew they would have reached by the end of the haka. All round, not a bad plan.

  On the day of the match the All Blacks made their way to their starting positions, we gathered in a circle. As the haka started, so did the crowd. As Lawrence mentioned at the beginning, I played eighty-five times for England over a
twelve-year span. Throughout that period I never heard a noise like that one. The crowd were cheering, singing, and roaring (I think they must have thought we were in with a chance). As a result we didn’t hear one word of the haka, in fact we were still in our circle long after they’d finished. When we broke up we noticed every All Black in his starting position ready for the match to begin. Meanwhile we had a referee telling us we had less than thirty seconds before he blew his whistle to start the game (something to do with the TV schedule).

  Tracksuits are not particularly easy to slip on or off at the best of times, and when you’re under pressure you can guarantee a boot gets caught inside a tracksuit bottom and a zip gets stuck on the jacket. We looked ridiculous as we tried desperately to separate ourselves from the extra apparel. Players were hopping around and falling over in their attempts to remove the track-suits. Consequently, as the referee blew his whistle the All Blacks were perfectly prepared and composed whilst some of the England team had not even reached their starting positions.

  Looking back, we took part in a lot of team meetings to discuss various issues. In reality we should have spent more time on the training pitch preparing ourselves physically and mentally for the challenge of a World Cup and an opening game against the reigning world champions. On 3 October 1991 we were lucky to only lose by 12–18. That said, we did go on to contest the final a month later and the All Blacks lost in their semi-final against Australia, so we must have done something right. Perhaps it was the shorts.

  1995

  The third World Cup was for many more emotional than either of the first two, not least because it officially proclaimed the return of hosts South Africa to the world rugby stage. Australia were favourites to win after twelve months of unbeaten Test rugby; however, the Springboks proved they hadn’t lost their touch during the years of isolation as they beat the defending champions 27–18 in the opening match.