Blindsided Page 24

  I remember one incident from 2014 in particular. Brodie Retallick—who I think is a great player—was playing for the Chiefs in the Super 15. He made a tackle at one side of the field, then he went into a ruck and then he was the last defender to make a covering tackle in an attempt to prevent a try. A second-row forward. It didn’t matter that the try was scored against him.

  ‘Look at his work rate,’ I said.

  I stopped the footage for a second and highlighted Brodie.

  ‘He makes a tackle there, goes into a ruck, makes a difference there—and then who’s this guy making a tackle in the corner? How does he do that? He’s a second-row forward! What great commitment and athleticism.’

  By tracking and highlighting good rugby in that way, you can explain to the viewers why it’s good play and also why Brodie is a great player. People might not notice otherwise. They just see the try in the corner and the tackle that failed to prevent it.

  Equally, when I highlight a mistake, it’s not a personal thing. I know all the players are trying hard. I’ve been there. People don’t drop balls on purpose. But as a commentator I can say, ‘He’s having a shocker—it’s just one of those days.’

  It’s just like when I left my house the other day and slipped in the street on a piece of plywood I didn’t see. I fell pretty much flat—I got cuts on my hands and was a bit shaken. Then I got drenched when a bus went through a puddle of water beside me. Then I arrived at the station to find that my train to work was cancelled. Not delayed—cancelled.

  Anyone watching this would have said, ‘Mate, you are having a shocker!’ I thought about turning around and going back to bed.

  But instead I grudgingly accepted what had happened and thought, ‘Surely it can only get better from here?’

  I didn’t try to start my day like that—it just happened. Rugby, and any kind of sport, is exactly the same. Sometimes, in these situations, the harder you try, the worse things get. You become tense. You make mistakes. The same applies to referees. They’re not trying to make bad decisions. They’re not intentionally trying to get things wrong.

  But sometimes you’ve got to point these things out—with both referees and players. That’s your job, as a pundit. I usually preface any critique with, ‘Look, I know what he was trying to do there . . .’ Then I add, ‘. . . and it was probably the right decision for these reasons.’ Then I’d say, ‘But his execution was poor.’ That way I’m not just having a go. I’m seeing what the player had in mind and explaining why it didn’t work out.

  Of course, if a player makes three or four mistakes in a row, we’ll put them together, and if we have time we’ll say, ‘Kieran Read at number 8—he’s a great player. But he’s not having a great day today. Look at this . . .’ We also do the opposite: ‘Look at Kieran Read! What a great day he’s having. This is why he’s one of the best players in the world.’ There’s got to be balance.

  There also needs to be harmony among us pundits. Sean Fitzpatrick is generally in the studio with me. I enjoy Fitzy’s company. He likes to stir things up a little—wind me up a bit to get a reaction. He’s pretty good at that and that’s what he used to do on the field. I’ll say, ‘The All Blacks get preferential treatment from every referee’, or ‘Look at McCaw! Let’s just look at the replay and you tell me that this is not offside.’

  Fitzy just shakes his head. I’ve got him to agree with me most of the time now.

  But then he’ll turn it back on me. ‘Look at Hooper! He’s always offside. Come on!’

  Having said all that, we have a pretty good time considering we never got on particularly well on the field. He was always really obnoxious on the pitch. Even he wouldn’t deny that. It was part of what made him so great. He took every opportunity to wind you up. For example, whenever you were getting up from the ground after a tackle and Fitzy was running past, he’d make a point of standing on your hand. Every single time, his studs would crunch into the back of your hand. Fitzy never missed an opportunity to irritate you and wear you down—that’s just how he played the game. He also knew exactly how to get referees onside. He’d give you a clip round the ear as he ran past and if you reacted in any way he’d say: ‘Aw, come on, ref! Michael’s pretty tense today. You’d better calm him down.’

  SEAN FITZPATRICK: We never got on particularly well [on the field], to be honest. We were just a grizzly bunch of bloody forwards who annoyed the hell out of the Aussies. That was always the All Black mentality: look for a chink in the armour and then try to exploit it. I was horrible—a horrible person [on the field]. I think the Aussies were always vulnerable to our antics. I remember Simon Poidevin at the bottom of a ruck, while I’m standing on his head, yelling, ‘Fitzpatrick, I’m going to get you!’ I played against Michael all the way back to the under-21s and he was always a class above everyone else. I remember playing him in 1982 or ’83—he was at a completely different level. Michael was one of those special cases. Even when I watched him play outside Ella at number 12 on the Grand Slam tour in 1984, he had maturity way beyond his years.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE TOUR LIKE NO OTHER

  ALTHOUGH I WAS STILL contracted to Sky, I was left out of the team for the 2013 Lions tour to Australia. They wanted a British- and Irish-dominated studio and that, I suppose, made sense. I was disappointed—of course I was—in the same way that I was whenever I was dropped from any team. But you can either go away and moan about it, focusing on the negatives, or you can say, ‘I see where they’re coming from’, and look upon it as an opportunity to do something else. I chose the latter.

  There were no hard feelings on my end whatsoever. Nevertheless, I was still very keen to go. It would be great to spend six weeks in Australia watching the tour. Some of the time would be spent in Melbourne, and I thought, ‘That would be great—I’ve hardly ever spent any time there.’

  So I was excited to be offered the chance to work with Jim Rosenthal, Scott Gibbs, Jeremy Guscott and Steve Thompson on a panel for OSN Sports, a Dubai-based pay TV network that was also covering the series. On paper it was a great bunch of guys, some of whom I’d worked with before. An agent contacted me: ‘Do you fancy it?’ and I said, ‘Yes, I’d love to do it.’ There were no downsides for me whatsoever. I’d cover the action, enjoy great synergy with the other panellists and spend six weeks in Australia. And get paid for doing so. Yes, it was a long time away from home but it seemed to pass quickly and was worth it on a financial level. Not just that, but from an ambassadorial point of view, there were plenty of speaking opportunities for me on the radio, on television and at live events.

  The Lions tour is a huge sporting event nowadays, arguably on a par with the Ryder Cup or the Tour de France. The nation, or in this case several nations, stops to watch, even though the sport of rugby union is still a distant fourth in terms of popularity in Australia.

  Inevitably, as an Australian who’s played in a Lions series, I was often asked during the 2013 tour for my thoughts on that Lions tour to Australia in 1989. That was always a bit of a problem because, as with most matches and series, I just don’t remember many of the details. I really have to dig deep to dredge them up. ‘What was that game again? What happened there? Jeez, I’ll really have to give this some thought.’

  What most people forget is that 1989 was the first full Lions tour to Australia, so we didn’t really have anything to measure it against. In that sense, it was a bit like the 1987 World Cup: there was no precedent. Australia had previously been just a stop-off for the Lions on the way to New Zealand, so we didn’t have the same Lions traditions as South Africa and New Zealand, and the concept of the Lions coming for a three-Test tour wasn’t something especially important. Also, until that point, and not wishing to sound arrogant, we’d largely beaten the northern hemisphere sides quite comfortably. While we still weren’t professional or employing professional methods, I always felt that we were physically better than they were. We were naturally physically fitter.

  Why was that? Well, I’ve
often thought about it and I keep coming back to the lifestyle we were able to lead in Australia. When I was a kid, I was outside every afternoon, running around. Playing sport of some kind every day. I was fit. We were all fit. And that wasn’t just because we were running more laps of the oval than anyone else. Yes, when we thought of ‘fitness’, the first idea that came into our heads was, ‘Let’s go, ten laps of the oval—quick as you can.’ But there was a broader type of fitness that only a southern hemisphere upbringing could give you: the climate, being outside all the time in the fresh air, surfing every week. It all added up, making us stronger.

  I never went to the gym. I hated the gym. But I was training every day in some way: a game of touch down the park, surfing, cricket training, playing tennis on my friend’s tennis court. Non-stop activity. But it didn’t feel like we were consciously trying to get fit.

  We were fit simply because there was always something to keep the body active and the weather was conducive to doing it. I’d come home only when it got dark and get up and do the same thing the next day. I really believe that made a big difference. We were stronger and harder than northern hemisphere teams then as a result. So when things got tough in the last fifteen minutes of games, we had the edge because of our upbringing. That was the theory. The same applies to New Zealanders and South Africans; we share that same inherent toughness, although I’ve often thought that the inability to tap into a vein of farming stock has been where Australia has been at a disadvantage compared with the All Blacks and the Springboks. Most Australian players have come from city backgrounds.

  The gap has closed now, obviously. Now every team has indoor facilities and specialised nutrition and training and it makes no difference where you grow up. But back in the amateur days there was a significant gulf in fitness between teams from the northern and southern hemispheres.

  Having now spent quite some time living in the northern hemisphere, I know that it gets dark at 3.30pm in winter. If I was a kid, the last thing I’d want to do is go outside and play sport, although my own kids manage it fine nowadays, probably because they’ve known nothing else. Even when I was playing for Saracens as a professional, I used to say to myself, ‘If I’d grown up here, I would not have become a rugby player.’ You adjust, but it’s just not pleasant. Instead of being outside in January, I’d rather be at home in front of the fire with the paper and a glass of red wine.

  So when the Lions came over to Australia in 1989, I thought, ‘Well, it’s just another northern hemisphere team and we’ve beaten all of them already.’ It might sound cocky, but that was really how it seemed. We thought, ‘We’ll give them a bit of a touch-up as well.’ We felt that we had each of these countries’ measure.

  Of course, they’d beaten us reasonably regularly prior to when I started playing. But after 1984, apart from a defeat against England at Twickenham in 1988 in Will Carling’s first game as captain, we’d had pretty much constant victory over all of the countries that make up the Lions. And there were even a few valid excuses for our Twickenham loss. Why would this be any different? I felt no more threatened than I might have felt if it was England or Wales on tour.

  Despite the way I felt, everybody kept saying, ‘But it’s the Lions’ first tour . . .’ as if it was a big deal.

  It didn’t matter. The way I approached it was still, ‘Okay, here’s another job to be done.’ That was my way of focusing on any match, no matter who the opposition was. When I think about it now, though, I would say that I misjudged the Lions tour in 1989. Perhaps that’s only because the Lions tour is such a huge deal nowadays and there is a tradition in Australia. Back then I was a little naive about it.

  As it turned out, it was an exciting three-match series with a famous moment in the third match that still lives on today. That third Test match, though . . . what a shocker that turned into.

  As I recall, ten minutes from the end, Rob Andrew had an attempt at drop goal that went out to the right. I was standing on the twenty-two; we were ahead at the time. We were reasonably in control; they were having occasional shots at drop goal; there wasn’t much more in their arsenal. We were holding them. Frustrating them. Our forwards were immense. I thought, ‘Okay, we’ve got this.’

  To be completely fair to Campo, he hadn’t had a lot of ball that day. It had been a tight game, not particularly expansive, and Campo was stuck out there on his left wing. He didn’t like that. His excuse for what happened next was, ‘Well, I hadn’t had a lot of ball so I had to use every opportunity.’ So he gathered Rob Andrew’s missed drop goal in the dead ball area, and instead of just touching it down as he should have and giving us a twenty-two drop-out, he tried to run it out. To be fair to him, if he’d gone on his own he probably would have gained a lot of ground. Instead, he flipped this pass to Greg Martin while they were both still on the goal line. The decision itself wasn’t a bad one, on reflection. It was two on one with the Lions’ wing Ieuan Evans, and in rugby language two on one usually means ‘take it on’. Just not behind your own try line.

  Also, his execution let him down. It wasn’t a great pass. Although he’d throw a few very important passes later in his career, Campo wasn’t really known for his passing. It was short and a little behind Greg. Secondly, Greg wasn’t expecting it. He must have thought, ‘Why on earth are you passing to me here?’ Ieuan Evans, who simultaneously must have been thinking, ‘It’s Christmas!’ got in the middle of it and just fell on the ball.

  It was a calamity and, worse than that, it was totally unnecessary. I just dropped to my knees on the twenty-two and thought, ‘Oh God, what’s he done? After all this work . . .’

  I don’t know what the forwards felt—they work a lot harder than we do, putting themselves physically on the line all day, just so we can look good. But we all had to run back behind the goal line and wait for the conversion. It wasn’t the way you expect to lose a game.

  To lose a series.

  What was said to Campo in the dressing room afterwards? Not much. It was pretty stony, I can tell you. But it was only really stony because we’d lost—and it was normally pretty quiet when we lost anyway. But this was just such a silly way to lose. It doubled the disappointment.

  We all went to the after-match reception and, of course, the Lions were on fire, buying Campo champagne, all having a great time—‘We’ve beaten the Aussies on their own patch, lads!’

  Legend has it that Campo went home early from the reception and got pulled over by the police as he was driving to his place in Bondi—speeding, sirens, the whole palaver. He winds down the window and the policeman comes over. Then Campo apparently says, ‘Mate, I’ve had a really crap day but, yeah, I was probably speeding. I just want to go home.’ As the policeman’s writing out the ticket, he goes, ‘Yeah, I know. I was there. I watched you, you prick.’

  On reflection, the second Test was one that we should have won as well. The first Test we had won easily, 31–12 in Sydney. It wasn’t really much of a contest. The Lions were just finding their range and ours—‘What have you got?’

  For the second Test up in Brisbane the Lions had a specific method. It was, ‘Let’s target their halfback.’ They figured that they couldn’t stop guys like Campo and me running the game, so they thought, ‘Okay, how do we stop the ball getting to them? Let’s cut off the supply.’

  So they decided to upset our captain, Nick, by basically making the game one long physical fight. It worked. Nick was a very fair player who always played within the rules, but if he was confronted he was not the kind of guy who would lie down. Right from the first scrum when Robert Jones stood on his foot, it was on.

  Once they’d upset Nick, they started kicking at Campo, kicking behind him, putting pressure on him all the time. The Lions were just a different team from the first Test. Both in personnel and, more importantly, the way they came out. They were very aggressive towards us. Nasty.

  Until that point, we had prided ourselves on our ability to not give away penalties. We were not a dirty team
. We were tough but never undisciplined, but they came out wanting to physically fight us, and that really put us off our game. I think they sensed that we were a little bit soft when it came to an all-out fistfight; it wasn’t our nature to do that kind of stuff.

  I was targeted too, as I was in every game I played. Years later, when Jonny Wilkinson came on the scene, people said, ‘Aw, they’re targeting Jonny. Running down his channel. With his sore shoulder’, as if it was something new.

  I used to think to myself, ‘Show me a flyhalf in the history of the game who hasn’t been targeted!’ It’s like targeting the quarterback in American football. It’s the logical place to start. He’s the conductor. Take him out and the orchestra can’t play. Equally, the flyhalf is the playmaker—of course he’s going to get targeted.

  In the first Test, they couldn’t really get anywhere near me. The guys were running at me, trying to get to me, but I didn’t mind that because it created more space for the people around me. Any time people ran really hard at me when I had the ball, I liked it. They were so intent on hitting me that I could easily move the ball on. I’d think, ‘Okay, that takes you out of the game.’