Blindsided Read online

  Because a lot of our pool games were in Sydney, the guys who lived there, like Nick Farr-Jones and Simon Poidevin, went to work in the morning as usual and turned up to training in the afternoon in their own cars—business as usual.

  For us Queenslanders, though—guys like me, Slacky, Andy McIntyre, Bill Campbell and Anthony Herbert—it was as if we were on an overseas tour. There was an immediate imbalance. Even our coach, Jones, was continuing with his morning radio show at 2UE, so we never saw him in the team hotel until around lunchtime—not that many of us were up by then because, during the evenings, we’d head out on the town.

  We’d be sitting around the lobby like a bunch of university students. Except we were a bunch of unsupervised amateur rugby players.

  ‘Okay, where are we going tonight, boys?’

  ‘Anyone hungry?’

  ‘Let’s go and get some pizza.’

  ‘How about that Italian restaurant round the corner?’

  So three or four of us might do that, or go to the pub, or go and see a band somewhere. I remember that Died Pretty—a really good pub-rock band that released a load of albums in the ’80s and ’90s—was in residence at a bar just round the corner from the hotel. I went and saw them twice and had a couple of beers. It was great. But it didn’t feel like a World Cup build-up.

  Guys would sleep in until eleven o’clock or midday pretty regularly, get up for training and then go out at night. We didn’t stay out ridiculously late, say until 4am. Some nights we stayed out latish, though. It wasn’t an intentionally lazy routine; it’s just how the days worked out. Our body clocks had been moved back a few hours because we knew we didn’t need to get started early in the mornings.

  It was never full-on debauchery, but it wasn’t the optimum physical preparation and nothing like a World Cup build-up of the twenty-first century. We simply knew that we didn’t ever have to train until the afternoon.

  The result was a subtle divide in the camp, a slight lack of unity. Nothing major, but it was there. We Queenslanders felt isolated when we were in Sydney—as I’m sure the other guys did when we played in Brisbane. I’m not suggesting that this imbalance created any animosity among the squad—not at all. I’m pretty sure the New South Wales guys would have done exactly the same thing if we’d been based in Brisbane for the majority of the tournament. But it didn’t create the ideal environment to prepare for what was a World Championship event, albeit a very amateur one in those days. We all knew each other pretty well, but we weren’t as tight-knit a group as we probably could have been—maybe that’s the best way of summing it up.

  As far as the tournament went, it was pretty obvious to most people that New Zealand were the favourites. Of all the other teams, we were the one considered most likely to beat them, and our pool draw with England, Japan and the USA made progression look reasonably straightforward. Worryingly, it seemed as if some of the more lethargic aspects of our preparation had been transported onto the playing field when we went behind to a Mike Harrison try in our opening pool game against England at Concord Oval. It felt like a few of us were still in the pub.

  Tries from Campo and Poidevin and a few kicks from me got us back in the game and in the end we came out 19–6 winners. We certainly weren’t at our best, but we hadn’t needed to be. We did enough.

  Relatively easy wins in our other two pool games booked us a quarter-final appointment with Ireland in Sydney on June 7th and, theoretically, ensured that we would avoid New Zealand until the final in Auckland. We beat Ireland fairly comfortably in Sydney and then only France stood between us and the first-ever World Cup final.

  My good friend Philippe Sella always says that the semifinal between France and Australia in Sydney on June 13th 1987 is the greatest Test match he ever played in. Philippe ended up being capped 111 times for France so he’s pretty well qualified to judge. Many people have described it as one of the greatest Test matches ever played.

  Me? Even though we lost it, I would probably agree.

  It was such a great game of rugby. It was close, the lead changed constantly; you just never quite knew what was going to happen until that Blanco try at the end. But at no point did I ever feel, ‘I’m part of history here.’ You don’t have the time to register the significance. It was purely a game of rugby and it was my job to work out a way to win it.

  Speaking of that last-minute try, I’ve watched it a few times recently and it looks a little suspect. We have TMOs (video referees) nowadays and I reckon that try might have been disallowed if they’d had that technology back then. If I was the referee I’d definitely be saying, ‘Let’s have a look

  The bloke who tackled Serge Blanco in the corner was our seventeen- stone hooker, Tommy Lawton. How he got there I’ll never know, and, remember, back in 1987 the corner flag was considered to be ‘out’. Tommy definitely had most of Blanco in touch before the ball went down. And I don’t just say that because of a mistake I made in the lead-up to the try.

  On the third or fourth phase of an intense passage of French possession, there was half a chance of an interception. Patrice Lagisquet’s inside pass looped up in the air for what seemed an eternity. Instinctively I went for the ball because I thought it was there to be had, but Eric Champ arrived at the same time and snapped it out of my hands. The way I snatched at the ball doesn’t look too good when I watch the footage. But had I taken the ball, we would have had a good chance of scoring down the other end. It was one of those instinctive decisions that you make in a split second. It could have worked in our favour. It didn’t. It gifted France the game.

  The ball bounced backwards towards their number eight, Laurent Rodriguez, who, as he scooped it up before slinging the match-winning pass to Blanco, knocked it on. It was a tiny movement in a very frenetic period of play. If you watch the footage, it’s barely noticeable. But the ball did go forward and we paused for a split second expecting the whistle to blow. Later replays confirmed the knock-on, but the referee didn’t call it at the time. It was just one of those things—an example of the fine line between winning and losing.

  ALAN JONES, FORMER AUSTRALIAN COACH: Rodriguez’s knock-on still haunts me. Michael was in possession shortly beforehand and I always remember wishing that he’d kicked it up the other end of the field. As it turned out, we almost stopped playing when the knock-on occurred but the referee didn’t pick up on it, they scored in the corner and converted it. In all honesty, it was a game that we shouldn’t have lost.

  Earlier in the game I experienced one of the more surreal moments of my entire career, let alone this match. My dummy to wrong-foot Franck Mesnel and a step inside Philippe Sella set up a break deep inside French territory. As he usually did, Campo showed up at the end of the move to score in the corner after Peter Grigg popped the ball inside to him. It was a try that gave him the Australian record for try-scoring at that time. It also left me with a conversion from the right-hand touchline, right in front of the grandstand. In the context of the match, it was a vital kick and would give us a slender three-point lead with only fifteen minutes left.

  Back in 1987, we were still using a few handfuls of loose sand as a platform for the ball, as plastic tees had yet to be invented. So the ball boy came onto the field with the little bucket of sand and it was part of my routine, as I was preparing my sand tee, to look up and say ‘Thank you’. It was something I always did. I thought it was a nice thing to do. But as I was putting the ball down, I was aware of this ball boy—probably twelve years old—still standing there. I looked up at him as if to say, ‘You shouldn’t still be here.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘This is a pretty important kick, mate . . .’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was a bizarre moment of personal interaction in the midst of a momentous occasion. But for a moment it was as if he and I were the only two left at Concord Oval.

  ‘Thanks, I know.’ I said. ‘This is the semi-final of the World Cup.’

  ‘Well, you better get it,’
he said, before trotting off.

  I did get it and as I was running back for the restart, I glanced over and saw him standing on the touchline giving me the thumbs-up with a big smile on his face. I’ll never forget it.

  When I review the game in detail, it’s clear to me that I made another important mistake. Why is it the mistakes that you remember best? I missed a tackle to allow Philippe Sella to score under the posts early in the second half. Philippe was very strong and highly evasive—a really hard runner. In addition to that—and I only really found this out many years later when he and I played together at Saracens—the French didn’t have much of a structured game plan to implement. Whereas we had predetermined, sometimes intricate moves designed to get across the gain line, create defensive confusion and then score tries, the French just ran. Their policy was pretty simple: get deep, pass the ball—shimmy a little bit here and run . . . Then Serge Blanco would get involved and anything could happen. It was all so free and easy—so French.

  Saying all that, Australia had quite a good defensive pattern, certainly for defending set pieces, which in those days were considered to be the best positions from which to attack. But once play broke up or a kick went up and the ball started bouncing here and there, our defensive pattern went out the window and it became a case of all hands on deck. Consequently, I ended up covering a lot. Hence, in both the Blanco try and the Sella one earlier, I ended up pretty close to the person who scored.

  In Philippe’s case, I was coming across in cover and he just stepped inside me. I was so nervous about being on my own on the outside that I left him the inside, which he gratefully accepted. There was very little I could have done about it other than stick out a hopeful arm as he went past (which I tried).

  As tough as it was to accept, France did to us what they often seemed to manage in later World Cups: they found a great performance from practically nowhere—one that didn’t correlate with their previous form. They pulled a result out of thin air. Because of the way they played and the talented players they had in key positions, there was always that potential to turn a game on its head.

  In fairness to them, in front of all the flair and unpredictability in the back line, their forwards were extremely tough. I remember the first lineout of the semi-final clearly. It set a precedent. Eric Champ, who was a big guy for the time and a pretty crazy-looking character to go with it, took a step away from the lineout and stared directly at me, muttering and pointing towards me with a look on his face that said, ‘Lynagh, I’m coming for you. I’m going to kill you.’ My French wasn’t good enough to get his exact meaning, but I’m in no doubt it was something along those lines.

  Never having been a fan of the actual physical contact part of the game, I remember thinking, ‘Oh shit . . .’ while taking a couple of backward steps, not, ‘All right Eric, let’s have some fun.’

  NICK FARR-JONES: One of Michael’s great strengths was that he always stayed out of the deep, dark places—the combat zone. It’s a very good skill to have and that comes down to his decisionmaking. I hardly ever saw Michael getting shoed by anybody; he always seemed to stay out of it.

  I did three full tours of France. The first and most memorable was in 1983. Despite the devastating World Cup loss, I always enjoyed playing against the French. France tested teams in different ways: by being very physical, running the ball, kicking it; the overall standard was always very high. They were always hard.

  Were they dirty? Probably. Not all of them, but most of the forwards tried to intimidate you. I remember the first game of the ’83 tour; it was up in Strasbourg. They just belted us. The first lineout was a full-on brawl. They wanted to soften us up and I’m glad I was on the bench. Steve Tuynman almost had his ear ripped off. He was young, like I was. I remember looking at it in the dressing room afterwards; you could actually see cartilage. It was brutal. But you just had to get on with it.

  Also on that ’83 tour, there was some pretty dubious refereeing. I remember one occasion when I kicked a drop goal. There was no question about it. We’d all started running back. But the referee just went, ‘Non—no goal. Twenty-two.’ Our captain, Slacky, just couldn’t believe it.

  But when I run into the French guys now, I always get on very well with them. Even the forwards, who tried to kill us back then. Nowadays, they are friendly and open. They’ll have dinner with you, have a beer with you—they’re very hospitable and always treat you well. I only wish I could speak better French.

  Even though I haven’t seen him for a few years, Jean-Pierre Rives is someone I’ve always got on very well with. He’s an interesting guy. He’s a renowned painter and sculptor; he exhibits his work all over the world. Blanco was an interesting character too. He smoked a lot—that was common knowledge. In recent years, I’ve occasionally run into him in Biarritz, where he lives. We go down there on holiday a couple of times a year. He doesn’t speak much English. Or at least he pretends he doesn’t. He’s as enigmatic as he ever was, but what a great player.

  All the French players I run into are nice, friendly guys who’ve moved on, as I have, since retiring from the game. The great thing about rugby is that, whenever you all meet, there’s that common bond that holds you together. I really think that the sport is unique in that way—perhaps more so than other team sports.

  AFTER THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF Sydney, the third-place playoff in Rotorua was a mere footnote. It didn’t help that David Codey got himself sent off in the first five minutes, somewhat unfairly in retrospect, for trampling in a couple of the rucks.

  We spent most of the game with fourteen men on the field. Ultimately, we lost 21–22 with a last-minute conversion from the touchline by Paul Thorburn. It was so disappointing, but an appropriate cherry on the cake of the defeat in Sydney. The record books say that we were the fourth-best team in the competition, but I’m not sure how many people would agree with that.

  SEVEN

  FOUR MINUTES OF MAGIC

  GRANT FOX: While I’m sure Michael was affected by the missed kick at Eden Park, I’ve always been of the opinion that that defeat in Auckland was what helped them win the World Cup. It was the most important game in Australia’s 1991 World Cup victory, apart from the actual games at the tournament itself.

  THE EMOTIONAL SCARS THAT Eden Park in 1991 had left on my psyche were always with me. They were like stubborn stains on my rugby brain and I felt that the only way of erasing them was to stand in front of the next important kick as soon as possible. But as a team we were pretty confident about the 1991 World Cup going into it. Losing to the All Blacks, regardless of how it had happened, had done us a favour, it seemed. The Australian press weren’t hyping us; nobody else was either. We thought, ‘Maybe we can fly under the radar a little here.’ The All Blacks, on the other hand, were all the rage.

  There was no doubting our team was a good one. Several of us, probably myself included, were at or approaching the peaks of our careers. We were also pretty relaxed and unburdened. Although we’d lost the Bledisloe Cup, we’d played well enough against a touring Welsh side and then, later, a very good England side in a Sydney Test match in July, suggesting we’d definitely be in the mix in the latter stages of the competition.

  BOB DWYER: We were the best team going into the 1991 World Cup. There was absolutely no doubt about that. We’d given England a hell of a hiding and were more than New Zealand’s equal. We were also smart enough to know that none of that mattered. It was all about what we did each day. That was our focus.

  The 1991 World Cup is memorable for me for several reasons. Everyone talks about the Ireland game, the quarter-final—that try in the last minute that dug us out of a hole. Or rather, a chasm. But apart from actually lifting the Webb Ellis trophy at Twickenham, that’s not the memory that sticks with me most. Lansdowne Road was fabulous, yes, but it was four minutes of magic. And there were still two more bridges to cross after it. In the background of all of this, I was still really struggling with my goal-kicking.

  We were u
sing the same ball we’d used in Auckland and I seemed unable to break the cycle of doubt and anxiety, despite adjusting my preparation by changing my pre-kick approach. That missed kick was still on my mind. No matter how much I practised to perfect my execution, it was always in my head, going, ‘Remember me?’ every time I stood in front of a kick.

  In an attempt to iron out the problems and restore my shattered confidence, I practised more than I ever had previously. I used to stand at the corner flag in practice and kick along the goal line. The point was to hit the post; the aim was just to use a line that someone had conveniently put there to focus on kicking the ball down a particular path. In a way I was taking some of the pressure off myself by removing the conventional goalposts from the equation. It seemed to help when I came to actually aim between the posts in matches.

  Despite that, I still had a lot of trouble with conversions or penalties that were ten metres either side of the posts. Maybe it was because these are the kicks you should get, the ones everyone expects you to get. I’m sure I was overthinking them—‘What am I going to do here?’ It was really unsettling me, not that you’d have known if you looked at the bare results.

  On paper, I was successful in the pool games against Argentina, Wales and Samoa. I think I kicked seven penalties and seven conversions. I don’t know what the percentages were, but hey, that was still fourteen successes. But believe me, every time I stepped up to a kick, I had this mental dialogue going back and forth in my head as my practical brain tried to overcome my confidence’s cautionary warnings.

  ‘I want to kick from really close to the posts.’ That would make it harder to miss.

  ‘But wait! If I do that, I’m increasing the chances of having the kick charged down.’

  ‘Let’s shorten my run-up to avoid that.’

  ‘Fine, but at what stage when you go out wider do you revert to your old run-up?’