Blindsided Read online

  On the other hand you have someone like Grant Fox. Foxy was a great player and was dangerous because he could run the game from a tactical perspective. But physical confrontation? Never.

  I vividly remember a Bledisloe Cup match in Wellington in 1990. Because Grant wasn’t commonly used as a runner, we always used to drift off him in anticipation of the ball going wider to the dangerous guys outside him. On this occasion, Grant got the ball and I drifted towards his inside centre as usual. But he saw me, held on to the ball and went for the gap inside me. I don’t think Grant had ever scored a try in a Bledisloe Cup game and I remember thinking, ‘Oh no, I hope he’s not about to score because he’s just gone inside me.’ I didn’t want to go down in history for that. I just managed to turn around, grab him by the shirt and drag him to the ground where a ruck formed on top of us.

  As we were getting up off the ground as the play moved on, I accidentally stood on his hand. I said, ‘Sorry mate, I didn’t mean that.’ Foxy said, ‘No, don’t worry, it’s fine.’ Here we were, two number tens apologising to each other as a Bledisloe Cup match raged around us. It was civilised. Our forwards would have been horrified to hear it. ‘Let’s not tell anyone about this,’ we both agreed.

  He and I were alike in that way: we didn’t really relish physical confrontation. Grant was a terrific player, but guys like Rod Wilton and Tu Wyllie were completely different: they would run at you, make breaks against you and be very physical in doing so.

  My quick baptism into Queensland rugby, straight from school, shows how a decision, even a small one, can make a huge difference to the direction of your life. I never really set out to play rugby for Australia, but in 1983 I did so against an Italian A side in L’Aquila. It was at night and it wasn’t a particularly nice place to play. It was always a very difficult stadium to play at, as I’d find out in later years. Italian rugby wasn’t the standard it is nowadays, but they weren’t too bad. They had some good players who’d been around a little bit but we beat them pretty easily both in L’Aquila and later in Padova, where the Test was played, though I wasn’t in the Test team.

  My first real cap came against Fiji in Suva, in June of 1984. I played centre outside Mark Ella and it was in absolutely awful conditions. I hardly touched the ball. What was more interesting than that first cap in Suva was that I was dropped to the bench straight afterwards for the year’s first Test against New Zealand at the Sydney Cricket Ground, which we won 16–9. David Campese and Mark Ella did the kicking and Michael Hawker took my place. The same team played at Ballymore two weeks later and the All Blacks won 19–15, setting up a decider at the Sydney Cricket Ground two weeks later.

  In between, I played for Queensland against the tourists and we were run over 39–12, also at Ballymore. There was a pretty depressing mood in the dressing room afterwards, and just as I was leaving, the Wallaby coach, Alan Jones, came in and said he wanted to talk to me. He told me that he was thinking that the third All Black Test was one that required a really good goal-kicker.

  Jones said, ‘Would you play?’

  I said, ‘But where would you play me?’

  He said, ‘Don’t worry about that, I’ll take care of that part. But if you must know, I was thinking of playing you at fullback.’ He thought that Mark Ella was playing well, and Michael Hawker was playing well at centre, but he thought I could replace Roger Gould, who was also playing well at the time, at fullback.

  I told Alan that I thought I’d let the team down. I’d hardly ever played fullback and I was only nineteen, in my third year out of school. I think he was pretty taken aback, to be honest. I’m not sure he was used to people saying no to him. People always say, ‘I’d play anywhere for my country’, and that’s true to some extent. But when you get faced with a situation where somebody you’re supposed to replace is playing well, then I think it’s fine to say what you feel. Roger was a far better fullback than me. That was a fact. He was proven; I wasn’t. Thinking back recently it occurred to me, ‘How many guys play in their first Test match in a big game and then never play again?’

  In the end, they didn’t pick me and it was absolutely the right decision. Campo and Mark Ella kicked most of their goals that day. Alan and I never discussed the matter again.

  Even when I’d debuted for Australia, I never really thought I was that good. It just kind of happened and I went with it. But not to the exclusion of other things I enjoyed. Rugby has always been in perspective for me because I knew it was just one part of my life. No win meant so much to me that I got caught up in my own ego. That never happened, even after winning a World Cup.

  Equally, no defeat plunged me so far into despair that I couldn’t function day to day. Losses hurt, of course they did. But in the same way that a win was always made up of a series of moments that contributed towards an outcome, I gradually came to realise—via some tough lessons—that defeats are made up of similar components too. It was never just about one kick, just as life isn’t all about one day.

  And there was always next weekend. You live for next weekend. And, on a wider scale, when rugby was over, I knew that it was just one phase of my life. There was going to be a great life afterwards for me. I always knew that at the end the highs and lows would probably balance out. I think that attitude helped make my rugby career a lot less stressful than it might have been, despite my goal-kicking anxieties.

  FIVE

  STORMING THE FORTRESS

  I’VE OFTEN THOUGHT THAT part of the reason the loss at Eden Park in 1991 was so disappointing was that we’d won there in 1986 in not dissimilar conditions. It’s just such an incredibly tough place to win. The term ‘fortress’ is one that you hear used a lot to describe grounds that are hard places to win at. Sometimes it’s misused, exaggerated. But Eden Park really is a fortress. It’s not just Australia that struggles to win there. Everyone finds it hard.

  I remember Alan Jones and I exchanging emails about that very subject in July 2014 when we were discussing Australia’s chances of winning the Eden Park Test a month later. Jonesy said, ‘Is this the year?’ There was at least reason for optimism. Australia had held the All Blacks to a competitive 12–12 draw in Sydney the week previously. It didn’t seem implausible.

  I told Alan that I had mixed feelings. There was part of me that wanted the Wallabies to win. I want Australia to win every Test they play. That’s the proud patriot in me. But there’s another side of me that hopes they never win at Eden Park again, just so our win in 1986 remains in the record books as the last time Australia prevailed there. It’s a nice result to be associated with.

  I needn’t have worried. As it turned out, Australia were run over 51–20. I was very disappointed, but in a strange way I was also relieved.

  In addition to the fact that we won a series in New Zealand in 1986, my other enduring memory of that tour is the same one that I can recall about every trip to New Zealand: it’s always extremely tough. There were lots of matches—Saturday and then Wednesday—and it didn’t matter if you were playing the All Blacks or Manawatu; it was bloody hard. Every single game was a tough physical contest. But if you come out of it all and win a Test series, it’s probably one of the most rewarding things you can do as a rugby player. It’s the All Blacks, after all, that you’re playing, and that’s who you measure yourself against.

  But New Zealand is a country of contrasts. Off the field, people couldn’t be more hospitable and helpful. We Aussies were treated like royalty—rugby is the absolute number-one sport in the entire country. If you wanted to go fishing, wanted to go on a jet-boat trip or play golf, it was there on a platter for you. The locals were kind and treated you very well; then on the pitch you were absolutely blasted. That’s how it always was. But we responded to that by training harder than ever before on that tour, and it paid off when we won the first Test in Wellington.

  I never had vendettas against rugby grounds per se, but Athletic Park in Wellington and I never got along. I always hated playing in Wellington. It was alway
s windy. There was a huge stand on one side and a smaller one on the other, with absolutely nothing at either end. The wind howled down the ground all day every day; it was like a huge funnel.

  We played against a team that was nicknamed the ‘Baby Blacks’ that day. Because of the New Zealand Cavaliers’ rebel tour to South Africa earlier that year, some of the regular All Blacks had been suspended for two Tests as a punishment—the first was against Scotland and the second was the Test against us in Wellington. Some of those suspended players struggled to regain or retain their places after the ban. It was quite a controversial period in world rugby.

  As usual, there was probably a forty-knot wind blowing down the ground in Wellington that day and it made rugby very difficult. Surprisingly, playing against the wind wasn’t such a huge problem. But playing with the wind was almost impossible because your halfback would be passing into the wind to get it to you. As a result, the ball would float—often for long enough for an All Black flanker to arrive at the same time. It was a flyhalf’s nightmare from every perspective. It was really hard to play any kind of constructive rugby in those conditions. Nick was fantastic in these kinds of situations, though. He knew how to keep the ball close by going up the blindside in short little snipes then back inside to the forwards; he was absolutely terrific. It was a very physical game but we did enough to take it 13–12.

  NICK FARR-JONES, FORMER WALLABY HALFBACK: I loved having Michael outside me because he took so much pressure off me. He was the decision-maker and 99 per cent of the time his decision-making was spot on. I always knew exactly where he’d be; I always heard his voice clearly. We had very good empathy towards each other on the field.

  The second Test down in Dunedin two weeks later is one we should have won. But we never won in Dunedin; I’ve never been entirely sure why. It’s just one of those grounds where things always seemed to go against us. But we thought we’d done enough to win when Steve Tuynman went over for a try with just a few minutes left, only for the referee, Derek Bevan, to disallow it.

  We never knew why. Apparently he never knew why either. It was a try, no doubt about it. And in the after-match reception Bevan said to us, ‘Sorry guys, I got that one wrong. It was a try.’ It was big of him to admit the error, but I thought, ‘Great, but your mistake might cost us the Bledisloe Cup.’ It was bitterly disappointing. Alan Jones still talks about it now.

  Unbeknownst to us at the time, if we’d won in Dunedin and lifted the Bledisloe Cup with it, we would have had three days of relaxation to look forward to down in Queenstown—a resort town in Otago. Instead, we had to go to Invercargill on the Sunday to prepare for a midweek game against Southland. None of us was particularly excited about that prospect. We drove most of the day from Dunedin and arrived in Invercargill on the Sunday night. Everybody was disappointed, really down, and Alan Jones was calling the Test team into his room one by one while we were sitting in the bar having a drink.

  One by one the guys came out saying, ‘We’ve got the day off tomorrow—Jonesy’s given us the day off.’ So Slacky comes out next—‘Mate, I’ve got the day off too. After you’ve been in, we’ll organise a golf game for the morning.’ I thought, ‘That’s great.’

  When my turn came to go into the room, Alan said, ‘Michael, I’ve got some great news for you.’ I was thinking, ‘Fantastic, here we go, golf, terrific!’ but then he said, ‘Southland: really tough team. But I’m going to make you captain and fullback.’ I said, ‘What? Captain and fullback?’ and he said, ‘Yeah, you deserve to captain your country—what a great honour.’

  I agreed. ‘That’s great. What an honour.’ But what I actually thought was, ‘Shit, I’ve never played fullback and here I am playing against Southland where all they do is kick it up in the air, run through and bash whoever catches it.’

  Out I come from the room and Slacky and a few others are there going, ‘So mate, what time are we going to play golf?’ and I said, ‘Mate, I’m off to training tomorrow. He’s made me captain and fullback.’

  So off I went to training the next morning while all the other Test players were taking it easy. It was funny, because we were doing all these new moves with a revamped back line. Normally the fullback is the guy who injects from wide and behind—adds the pace, coming in at an angle and all that kind of thing. But because I was so slow and tired, I literally had to start in front of my outside centre to chime into the back line at all. I wasn’t injecting any pace whatsoever. I was just trying to keep up with them.

  Anyway, Invercargill was pretty wet and windy, as usual, with Southland out to get us—to take a big Australian scalp and make a bit of a name for themselves. But we got through the game, won it and moved on to the final Test at Eden Park.

  In that third Test, the All Blacks really surprised us. They picked a big physical pack of forwards and we assumed they’d try to soften us up. But instead they came out running the ball from everywhere. Frano Botica, a running five-eighth, was at ten that day and they really caught us off guard for a while. As soon as the whistle blew, away they went. But eventually we clawed our way back into the game.

  I remember a penalty we got in the second half. It was a pretty long way out and it was slippery underfoot, with the cricket pitch in the middle making it worse. I looked at it, noted the dodgy surface conditions, and said to Slacky, ‘I’ll have a go.’

  It was a tough kick, but I got it. Very rarely do I show any kind of emotion on the pitch, but this time I allowed myself a little air punch on the way back. It was a hugely important moment and it just about took us beyond their reach. Then Campo scored a try and that was it. We’d won and we’d won well. Mission accomplished. It was a massively satisfying achievement.

  As for the ‘fortress’ Eden Park hoodoo, I’ve thought about it many times over the years. Alan Jones has been quoted as saying that it’s nothing to do with the ground and everything to do with teams not being good enough. Some would argue that, given that he coached the 1986 team, he would say that. Even if that were true, you’d think by the law of averages that an Australian team would win there sometime—‘Every time you lose one, you’re closer to the one you’re going to win’, as the saying goes. But that sometime never seems to arrive.

  But, as I said, it’s not just Australia that hasn’t won there. Everybody struggles there and of course the All Blacks use that to their advantage. They believe in Eden Park’s aura—‘This is our place—go away!’ Every All Black team now feels like they are defending the honour there. Nobody wants to be part of the team that loses at Eden Park after thirty years.

  But when you boil it all down and remove the myth, Eden Park, like every other ground, is just a piece of grass. They’re all the same size nowadays too. They’ve all got lines in the same places. It shouldn’t be an issue. Admittedly, back in those days, before it was redeveloped, Eden Park was quite oddly shaped. The stands didn’t sit parallel to the sideline and the ends didn’t sit square with the deadball area. It was an awkward ground and the wind used to swirl around all over the place.

  Carisbrook in Dunedin was the same—it was a cricket ground too. Australia has only ever won once there, and that was as recently as 2001. That’s an even more amazing statistic when you think about it. Eden Park is always called the fortress, but Dunedin is every bit as difficult a place to win, perhaps even more.

  SIX

  THE BAD OLD DAYS

  DRESSING ROOMS CAN BE fantastic places when you win. Everyone always said that Eden Park’s dressing room, down in the concrete bowels, was a scary place because you could hear all the noise above you. After we won there it wasn’t scary. All the noise was ours.

  Everyone was smiling, drinking champagne from the Bledisloe Cup as if it was All Black blood; Slacky wearing an All Black jersey while doing so . . . these are the highs, and you savour the taste of them because soon they are gone.

  The flipside is that a dressing room can be a pretty grim place after a defeat. On this occasion, in 1987, you could literally hear a
pin drop. I just stared at an imaginary spot on the wall, above and to the left of Brett Papworth’s head. I couldn’t think what else to do.

  After twenty minutes our coach, Alan Jones, said, ‘Jeez, would somebody turn the damn showers on. It’s far too quiet in here.’ At least he’d broken the ice. A few of us started talking, discussing what had happened out there. How they’d won it. How we’d lost it.

  One of the questions I’ve been asked most often is whether losing to France in the semi-final of the 1987 World Cup was the most disappointing moment of my career. It wasn’t. I remember thinking a few times: ‘No, it’s the second most disappointing moment.’ It was beaten soundly by the precise moment in the Concord Oval dressing room when, as we desperately analysed how we’d let the semi-final slip, our manager John Breen came in and told us that we had to leave early the next morning to go to Rotorua to play Wales in the third-place playoff. For some reason that actually hurt more.

  ‘Be down in the foyer, bags packed and ready to leave at 7am.’

  It was devastating news. We hadn’t even considered the third-place playoff. All we’d been thinking was, ‘Let’s win this and get to the World Cup Final.’ Having to pick ourselves up and get motivated for what seemed like a meaningless match did not appeal much.

  ‘Who cares who comes third?’ was followed closely by, ‘Is there no way to get out of this?’

  There was no way out—we had to play.

  The run-up to the 1987 World Cup was quite strange, on reflection. We obviously knew that it was a pretty big deal because the press was building it up. But at the same time—given that it was the first World Cup—it was a complete unknown. Nobody had anything to compare it to.