Blindsided Read online

  As strange as it might sound, I don’t think there was any real animosity or nastiness behind either of these two incidents. It was more of an ingrained cultural thing that needed to be addressed through education, though in the second instance the turn of phrase needed to change and change fast. But I guess if you told me to stop saying the word ‘mate’ it would probably take me a little while because I’m so used to saying it. I’ll give the guy the benefit of the doubt; maybe it was so habitual with him that it would take time before his mouth and brain caught up with the new South Africa.

  NICK FARR-JONES: South Africa in 1992 was still a very divided country. I got woken at 1am the morning after South Africa played New Zealand and was told that the ANC [African National Congress] were having a meeting to discuss withdrawing their support for our tour. They’d asked for three conditions to be observed prior to all tour matches. First, the non-waving of the old flag. Secondly, the non-playing of the old anthem and, finally, the observance of a minute’s silence for victims of township violence. When we were at the All Black match in Johannesburg, all these conditions were unbelievably breached. So the morning after that match we woke the team and said, ‘Guys, we’re still going to training but pack your bags.’ It came very close to our tour being abandoned, but the then sports minister in South Africa stepped in and said, in reference to the three conditions: ‘Give them one more chance.’ Our tour was that close to ending and there were two planes ready to fly us out of the country if need be.

  The first game of the tour was against Western Transvaal in Potchefstroom—very much a rural Afrikaner stronghold. The locals were, shall we say, fervent. When the bus was being driven through the car park at Olën Park, the supporters were shouting and hammering on its sides—there were really intense scenes. I thought, ‘So this is what a boxer feels like, walking through the crowd to the ring.’

  I remember that Nick stood up at the front of the bus—he had a serious look on his face. ‘Look guys, this is very different for us. Concentrate on the job and don’t get intimidated by the atmosphere.’

  He was right—we knew what the job at hand was. But you couldn’t help being unsettled. We’d heard about how huge the South African players were, how good they were. That aside, we had no idea whatsoever about their style of play—it was all an unknown quantity for us. As it turned out, we won the game fairly comfortably, but it was very tough, very physical and extremely intimidating.

  After we won the game, the head-games began. The words ‘What a great side Australia is. No wonder they beat us—they’re the reigning World Champions’ were never heard. Instead it was, ‘Yeah, well you’re not really World Champions unless you beat Northern Transvaal.’

  We beat Northern Transvaal.

  And then it was the same thing with the Eastern Province, and so on. Even when we’d won all of our three provincial games, two of them by pretty wide margins it should be said, the doubters still wouldn’t lie down.

  ‘Not until you’ve beaten South Africa.’

  BOB DWYER: There were actual posters all over Cape Town that said, ‘You’re not the World Champions until you beat us.’

  A score of 26–3 later, after the Newlands Test match, everyone was a little bit quieter. We outmatched the Springboks in every discipline—particularly upfront. But at no point were any of these games easy, even if the scoreboards suggested they might have been. These were sides with a lot of strengths and even more to prove, but there were definitely aspects of their game that reflected their lengthy spell in isolation. We needed to show them we meant business. I’ll never forget a tackle Willie O made on the Springbok hooker Uli Schmidt early in the Test. Schmidt was a big guy with a low centre of gravity. He could run a bit too, when he’d worked up a head of steam. Willie dropped his shoulder and buried him—stopped him dead in his tracks, right in front of me. It was the kind of moment that makes you breathe a sigh of relief and think, ‘I reckon we’re going to be all right here.’ Just as well Willie tackled him—I was next in line if he’d missed. Willie was a silent presence on the field but he worked extremely hard. When we were calling moves, we’d tell him what it was and he’d just nod. He didn’t discuss it; he just went and did what was required every single time. He never, ever, missed an assignment.

  With hindsight, South Africa were a little predictable defensively—you could read them. You could probably explain that when you consider that the players had been defending exclusively against one another on a weekly basis for years. It was as if Queensland played New South Wales or Leicester played Bath every weekend. Eventually it reaches a point where you’re only as good as your opposition—‘Oh, not this move again—we’ve seen all that before.’

  And if that opposition doesn’t have any outside influence either, predictable patterns—and responses to those patterns—develop almost subconsciously. You know the players you’re playing against inside out—what they’re good at and what they’re not so good at—and that’s what seemed to have been happening in South African domestic rugby. It was unavoidable. They were in a goldfish bowl. When a touring side like Australia turned up—battle hardened, Test match hardened—they were presented with a whole new set of problems: pace, style, defensive strategy and so on. It caught them by surprise, and understandably so.

  On reflection, the boot could easily have been on the other foot. We’d only seen occasional footage of Currie Cup games, so it’s possible that they could have caught us out. Their domestic game could have been miles ahead of what we were doing and we could have been whitewashed 4–0. Instead of us saying, ‘ Yeah, we beat you too’, it would have been, ‘Oh my God, these guys were sleeping giants all along.’ As it stood, though—after being beaten by New Zealand and us on successive weekends—it was clear that the South Africans had hoped they were at a certain level in 1992, but that they weren’t quite there. Not yet. We’d learn of their progress the following summer when they came to Australia.

  HAVING HANDED IN MY notice with Robert Jones Investments, I decided to return to Italy following the Wallaby tour to Wales and Ireland in the northern autumn of 1992, my first tour as captain of my country. I was the logical choice; there really wasn’t anyone else. How did I feel about the new role? Well, I knew for sure that the outgoing skipper, Nick Farr-Jones, and I were very different personalities. Nick was always more extroverted and vocal. That was his style and I admired it. I’d think, ‘Good on you.’

  NICK FARR-JONES: I always got on well with [the Wallaby coach] Bob Dwyer. We debated and argued a lot but we always ended up back on the same page. I never really felt that Michael was totally comfortable with Bob. Bob came from the Randwick, running-rugby, ball-in-hand background, and I always thought he perceived Michael to be central to the typical Queensland ethos, which was very positional—with a fair bit of kicking deployed to get out of your own half.

  But I always felt that I was as much a leader on the field as Nick was—albeit with a completely different approach. Over many years of playing together we had been an effective halves pairing who knew each other’s game inside out, we also complemented each other well as people, in that we both brought slightly different qualities to the table.

  BOB DYWER: Our relationship was quite mature with a strong degree of trust. Certainly on my part there was confidence in Michael as a captain. I felt we could talk to each other about any subject. Nick was a bit more forthright than Michael was, however. He’d come to me and say things like, ‘You think I can play better, don’t you?’ I’d reply, ‘Seeing as you ask, yes, I do think you can play better.’ Michael would never come to me and say something like that.

  One thing I knew I needed to do when I became captain was speak up a little. While being overly vocal isn’t my style, I knew that the team as a whole needed me to come out of my shell a bit more. I was nervous about doing that and to help with the transition I relied on the hooker and vice-captain, Phil Kearns, in a way that perfectly complemented my strengths. Kearnsy was a typical front-row for
ward: gregarious and a good motivator of people on the field. While I made a big effort to engage more with the team than I previously had under Nick’s captaincy, I knew where my strengths lay and where other people were perhaps better placed to deploy theirs. I relied on other people too. David Wilson was another forward to whom I delegated some of the team management roles. In the backs I included guys like Timmy Horan and Jason Little as well as David Campese. That was always the best way of managing Campo: make him feel that he was involved in team decision-making.

  I was more comfortable in a role where I was the less obvious voice of authority. I was the captain of the team and nobody was in any doubt about that—I’d proved in Dublin in 1991 that I had all the attributes needed. But on occasions I preferred to delegate some of the man-management roles to my vice-captain. Kearnsy and I turned out to be a good combination and the tour went well until I dislocated my shoulder making a cover tackle against Ireland at Lansdowne Road, somewhat ironically. From a playing perspective the tour was over for me.

  With a season in Italy around the corner and with the injury unlikely to properly repair simply with rest and time (that anyway I just didn’t have), I returned to Brisbane and underwent an operation to repair the injury before rejoining the tour in Wales as non-playing captain. The shoulder was delicate; still pretty painful. And the medical people always sow a seed of doubt: ‘Take it easy; don’t rush it. There’s a lot going on in there.’

  I RETURNED TO ITALY in December of 1992, thinking, ‘This is going to be an interesting few months.’ When I weighed it all up, the main reason for going back to Treviso was remarkably simple: I’d loved the whole experience—it was a no-brainer to go back. Yes, for language reasons the first three months had been difficult, but once the fog lifted, as it had felt to me, I really enjoyed everything. I felt at home there. Not just that, looking at things from a purely rugby perspective, the year had been a success. I’d personally played well and we’d won the final. All was good. I could order dinner in a restaurant or a beer in a bar, and while I wouldn’t say I was fluent or even proficient in the language at that time, I certainly knew enough to converse and get by on a day-to-day basis.

  Prior to coming to Italy, I’d never been a great food connoisseur. I was very much from the ‘If I’m hungry, I’ll eat something’ school of thinking. I’d always been of the view that food was just food. But you can’t survive like that for very long in a country where food, wine and the enjoyment of sharing them are part and parcel of the daily culture. As time went on, I started to appreciate that things like food and wine were pretty important.

  I remember telling the guys at training one night, ‘I went to this restaurant last night.’ They said, ‘Oh really, what did you have?’ I said, ‘Pasta and then some meat.’ They laughed and said, ‘No, but what did you really have? What was the pasta? What kind of a sauce was it? How was it cooked?’ I’d never really considered those details before, but I was gradually acquiring a much more continental approach to food and living generally. I liked it and it suited me.

  Was my life still in Australia? Definitely, I still had a home there. But another six months in Treviso was an experience I wanted to repeat and, as I said, in my heart I knew that I was going to do it as soon as the offer of a second season was made.

  As for Isabella being a motivation for me to go back, all I can say is that there was something about her in the back of my mind that wouldn’t go away. The thought of seeing her in person again gave me butterflies—‘I wonder how all this will play out?’ I’d had girlfriends in the past, sure, but nothing serious. Being around Isabella, even in the very early stages of courtship, seemed to give me a confidence I’d never had before. But in actual romantic terms there was technically nothing between us at this point. The pleasant exchange of letters, our friendly conversations before I left after the first season and the fact that our meetings had all been so fleeting combined to make me both curious and optimistic.

  What made things a little tricky was the fact that Isabella’s mother, Daniela, preferred me to Isabella’s boyfriend, who was still on the scene. That was good news. But the downside was that a girl who’s told what to do, or who to be with, by her parents usually resists and does exactly the opposite. I needed Isabella to be the exception to that rule. I needed to be persistent, but I also needed to play it pretty cool.

  In the end it came down to the old ‘Can you help me with my Italian?’ routine (I tried everything, trust me) and that’s when we started seeing each other properly.

  TIM HORAN: My wife and I and our daughter, Lucy, went to stay with Noddy in Treviso after the end of the Wales and Ireland tour. We were supposed to stay at his place for four nights but we were chased out of the place after just two because Lucy was crying at night, crying in the morning and Noddy wasn’t used to it! One night I accompanied him to meet Isabella at a big tennis party. She was very busy with the organising and Michael didn’t quite get stood up, but he definitely got the shits a little and left after a couple of hours. When he jumped in his car, he reversed into a tree and then blamed me for it!

  Life carried on with Benetton as if I’d never been away. I was enjoying being back with my teammates, we were playing good rugby and I had a new relationship that made me very happy. Part of the arrangement with the rugby club was that they arranged my accommodation each year. The place they gave me was a little studio right in the middle of town—I could literally walk out my front door into the piazza. It was pretty nice and interesting being in the historic centre of town—but it wasn’t very spacious.

  I remember Timmy Horan and his wife came straight from the UK tour to stay with me for a while. They’d just had a daughter and, as I now know, babies cry—particularly at night. ‘Helmet’ likes to say that I kicked him out, but that didn’t happen. Where else was he going to go? He had nowhere else to go.

  I just said, ‘Mate, I’m not used to this. I’m going to use the earplugs the airline gave me.’

  And that’s what I did.

  Another day Timmy wanted to go on a day-trip. ‘Let’s go to Venice!’ I asked a friend of mine, Francesco Cosulich, if he wouldn’t mind being a tour guide. Of course he was excited to meet Timmy, so he agreed. When we arrived in Venice and met up with Francesco, Helmet looked around and said, ‘Mate, it must have been raining a lot here. All the roads are flooded!’

  I don’t think he was joking.

  Francesco had booked us in for lunch at a very expensive restaurant called Harry’s Bar. When we got there, Timmy said to me, ‘I fancy pie and mash today.’

  Francesco looked at me and said, ‘What is pie?’

  I just rolled my eyes.

  Francesco said, ‘It’s going to be a long day!’

  AFTER PLAYING WELL IN Italy for a second season, I checked in for a double hernia operation in Australia after returning from Europe in April 1993. I’d been having niggling problems with it; it was gradually getting worse. During the World Cup Sevens in Edinburgh in March, it had started feeling considerably more painful. The operation was something I’d probably needed for a while, but I’d never quite found the right moment.

  In the course of the surgery, the doctors took a couple of lymph node biopsies from my groin area for testing. When they were in there repairing the hernia, they’d seen something that looked suspicious. They were pretty concerned about it for a while but, thankfully, everything turned out to be benign. I was inactive for maybe three weeks in total.

  As preparation for a one-off Test against the All Blacks in Dunedin—followed by Tests against South Africa shortly afterwards—I played first in a Test against Tonga at Ballymore and then in a club game for University against Sunnybank. I felt fine; I just needed a bit of match-time to test the groin. During that second game I got a fingernail scratch on my arm. It didn’t seem like much; it was the length of a dollar coin, maybe not even that big. I thought nothing particularly of it at the time.

  The following day, while I was on a flight down to
Sydney to join the rest of the team prior to us leaving for the Bledisloe Cup match in Dunedin, I started to feel ill. At first I thought, ‘Ah shit, I’m getting the flu.’ When I got to Sydney, I went to see Cam Osborne, the Queensland doctor who was due to go to Dunedin with us, and he told me that there were a couple of other guys suffering from similar flu symptoms. I didn’t train that day and was told to go to bed in the hotel. We were staying in Camperdown.

  As I was lying on the bed, I remember becoming incredibly sick, to the point where I couldn’t even move. I thought, ‘Something’s really not good.’ I managed to call the hotel reception and say, ‘I think I might need a bit of help here.’ It was that bad. I couldn’t even get to the door of my room. So they came up, opened the door, took me to the doctor and he took one look at me and said, ‘You’re in trouble.’ Luckily, the hotel was across the road from a hospital. I was admitted and diagnosed with peritonitis. Twenty years earlier, people regularly died from peritonitis. It was beyond painful.

  That whole next week wasn’t good. I think I lost eight or nine kilos—a lot of weight for somebody who was pretty fit. Apparently, bacteria had entered my body via the fingernail scratch on my arm—probably as a result of contact with dirt on the ground. From there it had travelled downwards and found the area in my groin where the lymph nodes had been weakened at the time of the surgery.

  The team left for Dunedin and played New Zealand with Pat Howard in my place. I missed the remainder of the summer and didn’t appear again until the tour of Canada, the USA and France.

  BEING TEMPORARILY RELIEVED OF goal-kicking duties has had a significant effect on my overall play on a few occasions. One example that I remember particularly well was on the tour of France during the Australian summer of 1993. Having missed South Africa’s tour in Australia due to the peritonitis, I was straight back in as captain of the Test team for the French tour that stopped off for games in the USA and Canada on the way.