After an hour or so I returned to my room thinking I must be the only person suffering as I hadn’t seen another member of the England party during my nocturnal travels. Eventually at 5.30 a.m. I returned to the breakfast room in the hope it would open early; although there was no food available a waiter did bring me a cup of coffee, which was much appreciated as for the first time in nearly five hours I was beginning to feel a bit drowsy. At 6.10 a.m. the first member of the England party appeared at the entrance and it didn’t take a genius to work out from his look that he’d been suffering as I had. His eyes were bloodshot and he was obviously a little disorientated as he bumped into a table on his way to the hot buffet. Patriotic as ever, he filled his plate with a Full English and made his way towards where I was sitting. With each step I began to reassess my initial diagnosis. I could see he was having a bit of a struggle walking while carrying his fully laden plate at the same time. Within seconds of sitting down opposite me two things became apparent. Firstly, he was not suffering from jetlag, secondly he was ‘arseholed’, his bloodshot eyes merely a by-product of a massive night on the piss.
The man in question was, of course, the great Jason Leonard OBE, who went on to explain how he didn’t subscribe to ‘fancy dan’ schedules. His tried and trusted method of overcoming jetlag was to get ‘straight on it’ and meet the locals (which apparently he did from the moment we landed twenty-hours previously). Jason went on to feature largely in the World Cup, while I missed the initial games with a toe injury and didn’t make my first appearance until the match against the mighty Uruguay, where I broke my hand and took no further part in the competition.
Four years later and I was hopeful of making the 2007 World Cup squad, I’d had a reasonable season with Bath and a few rugby journalists were tipping me for selection. As it happened my name didn’t even appear on the list for consideration. Yet another referee had misunderstood my actions during a match and I was the subject of a suspension, the timing of which coincided perfectly with the tournament dates.
Old Men of the Sea
Martin Corry
Martin is yet another former England captain making a contribution to this book. “Cozza” played for Tunbridge Wells, Newcastle Gosforth and Bristol in his early career before joining Leicester Tigers, where he remained for thirteen seasons until his retirement from the sport in 2009. He gained sixty-four caps for England and also played for the British and Irish Lions in 2001 and 2005.
‘He was a versatile player who played at No. 8, blindside and in the second row. Such flexibility normally leads to individuals being selected to sit on the bench as they can cover so many positions. It’s testament to Martin’s ability that he rarely occupied a place as replacement, forcing selectors to pick him for the starting fifteen.
‘Proving rugby union is a compassionate sport, Martin was allowed to fly home during the 2003 World Cup to attend the birth of his first child, a daughter called Eve, before rejoining the squad a few days later. His son Edward was born (more conveniently) after the Six Nations Championship in 2006.
‘Martin was called up as a replacement to the Lions tour of Australia in 2001, primarily due to the injury of one of the key members of the squad. Well, me at any rate. He impressed the coach Graham Henry from the moment he arrived and played in all three Tests. Even though he was replacing me, I have to say in my opinion he was possibly the player of the tour and thoroughly deserved his place in the team.
Many things have been written about Sir Clive Woodward, particularly since England’s victory in the 2003 World Cup. Overwhelmingly the copy has been positive and quite rightly so; he was the architect of our success, responsible for putting all the pieces of the jigsaw together. He ensured we had the best facilities, the best coaches, in short everything he could think of to prepare team fully for the challenge ahead.
However in order to get everything right, it goes without saying mistakes will have been made, which is no bad thing. Without them it is almost impossible to learn. I believe one such error occurred during a trip to Australia involving an intensive course of strength and conditioning prior to the 1999 World Cup. The main objective was to increase bulk and body mass and therefore entailed a huge amount of incredibly tough weight training. As we had all come to expect, everything had been planned well in advance with individual programmes designed for every member of the squad and targets set for increased strength and weight.
As an illustration of the intensity of the programme Clive and his team had devised, one exercise stands out. I put my heart and soul into this exercise in an attempt to impress both my teammates and Clive. The instruction given was to bench press a set weight, let’s say 120kg for me, until it became impossible to manage one more repetition. Twenty kilos were then removed from the bar and the exercise continued until once again the point of no return was reached, whereupon a further 10kg was removed from each end. By the end I was left with the 20kg bar alone, which after about half a dozen very dodgy lifts seemed to take on the form of an elephant carrying a house. I couldn’t have lifted a feather, let alone this instrument of torture which was now pinning me down to my bench. I was surely done for, unable to move and barely breathe, until my training partner Lawrence Dallaglio came to my rescue. If he hadn’t removed the bar from across my chest I think I’d have remained there for ever. I had absolutely no strength left; a five year old girl would have beaten me in an arm wrestle.
Regardless of the pain we endured every day on that trip, there was one significant plus – the joy us forwards took in ‘occasionally’ taking the piss out of the backs as they struggled to lift what appeared to us to be nothing more than drinking straws with a couple of Polo mints stuck on each end. Such mockery of our team-mates, however, was only ever going to come back and haunt us and sure enough a few weeks later Clive organised a speed and conditioning course which inevitably featured the backs skipping past us on a regular basis, smiling as they changed from third to fourth gear. We only went up to second. I was briefly nicknamed ‘Tank’ during this period, not, I am afraid to say, because of my fearsome power and explosive weaponry on the pitch, but rather because every time I put my foot on the internal accelerator there was no noticeable change of pace. Hard to argue against. It was a clear indication that it takes all sorts to build a successful team.
But back to the strength and body mass programme in Australia. After days of intensive sweat and grunting Clive had organised a treat for the squad, a day of deep sea fishing. With the benefit of hindsight, I think a night in a bar would have been a better, and safer, option. After all, he would hardly have been risking any great alcohol-induced disaster, not one of us had the strength to lift even a pint. A couple of gin and tonics drunk through a straw would have probably been our limit before we crawled off to bed. However, fishing it was, which I have to say I wasn’t overly keen on, knowing that although my mind’s eye saw a blue marlin writhing at the end of my line, my body screamed for nothing larger than a small mackerel. Still, in the interest of team spirit I agreed to participate in Clive’s day of rest and recuperation.
As we boarded the boat, the sea was calm and spirits were lifting. The banter between the players was returning and I began to look forward to a day of drifting around the ocean dropping my line in the hope of wrestling that mackerel onto the deck. An hour out to sea and the boat began to rock, twenty minutes later and we were no more than a cork tossed around by the huge swell. The boys were falling like flies as sea sickness engulfed the squad. For those who have never experienced such dreadful nausea, I can remember two distinct phases. The first is when you think you are going to die, followed by the sad realisation you are not.
I went in search of the team doctor, Terry Crystal, who would doubtless have some pills and potions to speed my recovery. I found Terry below deck. He was the strangest shade of grey/green I’d ever seen. Simon Le Bon in the Rio video he most certainly was not.
‘Terry do you have any sickness tablets?’ I shouted.
‘They don’t bloody work,’ he replied. ‘I’ve taken six already.’
Several hours later we returned to port and if memory serves me well there were only two members of the party unaffected by the elements: Clive Woodward and our defence coach Phil Larder. The rest of us had emptied the entire contents of our stomachs onto the boat and into the ocean, and continued to dry heave for many hours to come.
After a week or so of building strength and body mass, the majority of the squad looked almost skeletal twenty-four hours after our ‘treat’. It was not Clive’s finest moment, but one he learnt from. Those blue marlins could swim the ocean safe in the knowledge that no English rugby player was going to come anywhere near them again, as long Clive remained in charge. I’m sure the intensive training did some good but to a man we were all lighter, felt weaker and looked ten years older when we returned home to continue our preparations for the 1999 World Cup.
Official Respect
Matt Dawson
Matt needs little introduction, although I know if I didn’t give him a decent one he’d do it himself. Perhaps one thing about Matt that not many people know is that he’s a member of a select group of two people: English players who have two World Cup winner’s medals, one from the inaugural World Cup Rugby Sevens tournament in Scotland in 1993 and the other from the 2003 tournament in Australia. I know you now want to know the identity of the other member of this group . . . modesty prevents me . . . okay, it’s me, and I’m sure Matt is as proud of this achievement as I am.
‘Matt gained seventy-seven caps for England and completed a grand slam of British and Irish Lions tours to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, playing in seven Tests. As a player he had many assets, not least his vision from the base of a scrum and his ability to grab the ball when awarded a penalty and create mayhem and confusion in the opposition defence. Few will forget the superb try he scored in the first Lions Test against South Africa in 1997 when he broke from a scrum and threw a simply outrageous dummy that “checked” four Springbok defenders, leaving the try line at his mercy.
‘Since retirement from rugby, while trying to keep his light under a bushel, he has continued to demonstrate his many talents. He is a former winner of BBC’s Celebrity Master Chef, came a very close second to cricketer Mark Ramprakash in Strictly Come Dancing and is a team captain on the ever-popular Question of Sport. He also finds time to present his own programme on BBC Radio 5 Live and appears on various TV food programmes. My spies tell me he recently featured in an edition of a www.888.com TV poker special where he ended up winning second prize, which in itself is a great achievement, but knowing Matt as I do, I have no doubt he will be entering again in order to claim the big pot.
‘And needless to say, Matt wasn’t content to just pass on the one story as requested. No, that’s not Matt’s style. He had to give me two. “They were both too good to drop one.” Don’t you just love him?’
In Need of Modernisation
The date 22 November 2003 is etched into my memory for all time, the day England beat Australia in the World Cup final at the Telstra Stadium, Sydney. A story often told at dinners by various members of the team involves the South African referee on that famous evening, Andre Watson.
Even at club level, referees tend to visit both changing rooms in order to give players a few pointers on how they intend to officiate the match, and information gleaned from these informal chats can often be useful during the game. You get a feel for what the ref is going to be very hot on, and conversely what he is likely to let go. A World Cup final is no different.
Andre arrived in the England changing room and talked generally to the entire team; for some reason he felt it his duty to remind us what a big game lay ahead. As if after months (in fact years) of preparation we were likely to have forgotten what was at stake. He then spoke specifically to the forwards, and as scrum-half I felt I needed to hear what he had to say. In his harsh Dutch Afrikaans accent he explained that in his opinion the scrum was likely to play a big part in the game, so he would not be awarding any penalties unless he was absolutely certain which side or individual caused the offence. In fact he went on to say, ‘I will need to be so certain, confident enough to “stake my mortgage” on making the correct decision.’ Our eight forwards all seemed pleased with the news. I looked at our front-row men Phil Vickery, Steve Thompson and Trevor Woodman and tried to imagine their thoughts. Perhaps they went something like, ‘If we do nothing illegal during the scrums then we have nothing to worry about.’ Get a grip Dawson. Much more likely they are along the lines of, ‘As long as we are reasonably subtle we’ll be able to try a few tricks.’ No, that still wasn’t right. They would never come up with the word ‘subtle’. Then I had it: ‘If we don’t do anything too thick we’ll get away with bloody murder!’ Andre then turned to me to say a few words. Normally this would be along the lines of, ‘Make sure you put the ball in straight at scrums,’ or a directive regarding his policy on taking quick tap penalties. On this occasion, however, he got straight to the point. ‘You, Dawse, don’t be a twat today.’
Twenty minutes later we listened to a last few words from Martin Johnson and left the safety of the changing room for the pitch. Anyone reading this who attended the final could have been forgiven for thinking they’d arrived at a weird music concert instead of the World Cup. Kick-off was preceded by performances including Kate Ceberano singing ‘True Colours’ (a theme throughout the tournament) and the Sydney’s Children Choir and the Rugby World Choir giving us a rendition of the official theme song, ‘World in Union’. Following these performances, the traditional national anthems were performed and finally we could get on with the business of playing the most important rugby match of our lives.
Everyone remembers Jonny’s winning dropped goal late into the second period of extra-time, but people often forget just how close we were to winning the match in normal time. Sixty-one minutes into the game Elton Flatley was successful with a penalty kick taking the score to 14–11 in England’s favour. It was not until the eightieth minute of the match he converted another penalty to tie the scores at 14–14. The penalty was awarded following a scrum! As both packs made contact, Andre Watson blew his whistle and said, ‘Incorrect engagement, penalty Australia.’ All the English forwards stared at him in disbelief, Lawrence Dallaglio’s chin dropped as that ‘what the f*** are you talking about’ look appeared on his face. However, the decision was made and unlike modern-day footballers, it was accepted and everyone retreated the obligatory ten metres. As we made our way back to face the penalty, our hooker Steve Thompson was clearly thinking over all he had heard from Andre in the changing room, about having to be absolutely certain of a scrum offence before awarding a penalty and being prepared to stake his mortgage on being correct. The one thing England would not have done in the last minute of the World Cup final was deliberately give a penalty away. With all these thoughts running around his head Tommo turned to the referee and said, ‘Andre, you must have a shit house.’
What the Bleep is Happening?
Other players have no doubt contributed stories about the celebrations that followed our victory over Australia, and believe me they were massive; my own recollection centres on our departure from Sydney for the flight home to England. Incidentally, when we arrived at Heathrow we had no idea so many people were going to make the effort to come to the airport and welcome us back. In some respects rugby union is the poor relation to football in the UK and understandably so; however, all of us were treated to a small glimpse into the worlds of Premier League players and film stars when we entered the arrivals lounge and were met by a barrage of faces and flashing cameras.
Back to Sydney, where even though we felt special, we were treated exactly the same as everyone else. We had to go through the usual procedures of checking in, getting our bags weighed, collecting our boarding passes and going through security. It was at that final stage where my incident occurred. I was waiting in line along with the rest of the squad and to be
honest not really paying too much attention to the notices and verbal requests urging all passengers to remove their loose change and belts etc. When it was my turn to walk through the metal detector I strolled up to the arch and wondered, as we all do, if it would go off or let me through unhindered. Two loud bleeps gave me my answer. There followed the expected hilarious quips from the boys behind me, such as ‘It’s probably his metal hip’, ‘Take him away and do an internal inspection’ and other timeless classics. As the barrage of smart-ass comments continued I realised I had not removed my watch so I walked back through the detector, took off the watch and placed it in one of the plastic tubs and sent it on its way to the scanner. I then confidently walked through the archway for my second attempt only to be once again greeted with the high-pitched electric alert.
The security guy who had to deal with me was obviously coming towards the end of a long shift and had decided nothing was going to make him smile, in particular a cocky English scrum-half who was part of the team that had pinched the trophy I am sure he felt rightly belonged to Australia. I apologised as I took out a handful of change from my pocket, walked back once more and deposited the offending coins in another plastic tub. Feeling certain I was home and dry for sure now I marched through for the third time only to once again hear that familiar sound.
More Blood, Sweat and Beers Page 20
