Blindsided Read online

  L’Aquila, historically, was an extremely tough place to play. The guys were big, physical. We were one of the best teams in Italy, but even we were a little nervous about the game. The instructions I received from the coach, the legendary Pierre Villepreux, on the bus before my first appearance were basic, to say the least. ‘Yes’ and ‘no’, I knew. Then he taught me ‘left’ and ‘right’ so that I could at least let my halfback know which way to go. Then he said, ‘If you want to try to motivate the forwards a little bit, just say “Spingi!”’ That simply meant ‘Push!’—it was hardly technical stuff. That was the extent of my Italian when I played my first match. My vocabulary definitely had scope for improvement.

  I’ll never forget sitting in the dressing room beforehand, as we tried to motivate ourselves. I felt like a fish out of water. I was listening to what was going on without really understanding much of it. One of the guys was prowling around the dressing room, shaking his fist and shouting: ‘Dai ragazzi! Dai ragazzi!’

  ‘Die?’ I thought to myself. ‘That seems a bit over the top, doesn’t it?’

  I was all for giving it a go but I wasn’t prepared to stake my life on a game! I remember asking one of the guys what it meant and he laughed and told me that our enthusiastic teammate was saying ‘Come on’ or ‘Let’s go!’

  Despite my basic familiarity with the surroundings, to call my initial weeks in Italy a smooth transition wouldn’t really be accurate. In day-to-day, practical terms it was anything but. The language barrier was a bigger obstacle than I’d imagined, and with new faces all around me it felt more like I’d dropped in from another planet. It was exactly the type of situation that I don’t generally take kindly to. The awkwardness was reinforced by the fact that I couldn’t even pronounce my halfback partner’s name, far less hold a conversation with him! I was certainly outside my comfort zone and in some ways that was no bad thing. After all, I was twenty-eight years old—a World Cup winner with a decade of relative predictability under my belt. I thought to myself, ‘You wanted a challenge, mate. You’ve got one.’

  My habitual response to that kind of unease is to do my best to solve the problem. So at a very early stage I asked Benetton if I could have Italian lessons. It was my first step towards self-sufficiency. They agreed. I willingly went to the classes every day and at training at night the guys would ask: ‘So, what did you learn today?’ Normally they spoke to each other in dialect, but with me they made a point of speaking correct Italian. That really helped me. I appreciated it and I think, from their perspective, they appreciated that I was willing to try to integrate more.

  As I was a foreigner in a new country, people often came up to me after games to say hello, trying to be welcoming and friendly. After one of the first matches I played in, an elegant gentleman approached me. He spoke pretty good English and he said, ‘Nice to meet you, Michael. I’m Giuliano and I love rugby.’ He was very pleasant and seemed to have a good knowledge of the game. He added, ‘And by the way, my daughter did an exchange in Florida and speaks very good English. You’ll have to come over for dinner one night.’

  Initially, I didn’t think too much of it. By nature, most Italians are very open and generous, so friendliness of this kind wasn’t exactly unusual. I thanked him and then, two weeks later, the same thing happened again, except this time Giuliano finished the conversation slightly differently, adding: ‘And by the way, my daughter said to say hello.’

  Unbeknownst to me, Giuliano and his daughter (whose name, I had learned, was Isabella) had watched me play against Ireland in the World Cup. They’d definitely picked the right game! Apparently they’d been very excited, and Giuliano had said, ‘See that guy who just scored that try? Well, he’s the one coming to Treviso to play this season.’

  ‘He looks nice. He probably doesn’t speak much Italian,’ Isabella apparently said, ‘Let’s have him over for dinner sometime.’

  ISABELLA LYNAGH: I saw Michael on TV while watching with my father. I had always been a rugby fan because of my father’s interest in the club. I saw him score the try and when my father told me Michael was coming to play at Treviso, I said out loud, ‘Ah, he does look good! I wouldn’t mind meeting him.’ I was going out with someone else at the time, though, and my reason for wanting to meet Michael was to learn better English. Of course, Michael never actually came over for dinner and the reason was that I had a boyfriend.

  These post-match chats went on for a good many weeks. Giuliano would say similar things each time we talked and over time I got to know him and his wife, Daniela, pretty well, although I never went over to their place for dinner. Isabella never came to the games, or if she did I didn’t meet her. Actually, when I think about it, this went on for almost the whole season!

  Inevitably, as time passed, I started to develop a mental portrait of this seemingly mythical girl in my mind.

  ‘What sort of girl sends her father to say hello, but never actually comes to meet me?’ I wondered.

  It didn’t really make sense. I had a vision, in the absence of anything tangible, of a traditional-looking Italian girl: black hair, maybe quite big, shrouded in old-fashioned black clothing. I really hoped I was wrong.

  Just before the club semi-finals, I went for lunch with some friends to a beautiful village called Asolo, in the foothills of the Dolomites. We had a very nice meal, and afterwards, as Italians do, we went for a walk through the stunning town centre, which was closed to traffic. As we were strolling among the crowds, I noticed a girl in the group that was coming towards us. I thought, ‘She looks nice.’ Gianni Zanon—the fellow I was walking with—nodded to her and said hello as we passed.

  I said, ‘Who was that?’

  I turned and watched her walk away.

  Gianni said, ‘Oh, that’s a friend of the committee’s daughter.’

  I gathered that meant she was one of the club member’s daughters. It didn’t register to me at the time, but that was Isabella. Also unbeknownst to me, she—at that same moment—had commented to one of her friends: ‘Oh, that’s the Australian rugby player—he’s nice.’ We reported these stories later, but at the time we didn’t know each other and passed by as strangers.

  A few weeks later we played in the finals against Naas Botha’s Rovigo side in Padova. We won, I scored two tries and it was a fantastic game of rugby all round. We ran the ball from almost everywhere. We blitzed them. It couldn’t have been scripted any better. When we emerged from the dressing room we got a typical Italian victory greeting from the fans: hordes of people were chanting and waving flags. Afterwards, as we made our way through the car park of celebrating fans towards where the bus was waiting, I ran into Giuliano and his wife, Daniela. They were hugging me, congratulating me on the win, when they suddenly stopped and said, ‘By the way, Isabella is here today . . .’

  I thought, ‘Oh, that’s all I need right now.’ I was picturing that old-fashioned, slightly dowdy Italian girl I’d imagined.

  ‘. . . and here she is!’ Giuliano announced, revealing a beautiful long-haired blonde girl who spoke perfect English.

  I thought: ‘Oh my God!’ I actually said: ‘Why didn’t you tell me?!’

  ‘I’ve been trying for the last six months!’ Giuliano replied.

  ISABELLA LYNAGH: I ended up at the final with friends, one of whom was my boyfriend. We had a falling out and, instead of meeting me at the stadium exit as agreed, he left without me. I was stuck with my parents, being sulky, and that’s when I met Michael. It was pure fate. As soon as we met, it was like a lightning bolt passed through me. I knew he was trouble.

  Isabella didn’t really know what to say to me, but she eventually asked me if I wouldn’t mind signing her ticket. I remember signing it ‘Con amicizia [with friendship] from Michael Lynagh’ and she still carries it with her today. We chatted for the few moments before the team was due to leave for a celebratory dinner at a beautiful restaurant outside Treviso. Friends and supporters were planning to congregate there also, and so I asked Isabella
if she’d like to join us. I thought, ‘What have I got to lose?’ As it turned out, her parents had planned to go there already, so she came with them and we spent the evening chatting, just the two of us.

  Something I didn’t know at the time was that Isabella was at the rugby that day with her parents because she’d had a fight with her boyfriend—a boyfriend I had no knowledge of whatsoever, I should probably add. Apparently he didn’t like rugby, so on the few occasions that they’d come along to games, they’d left directly afterwards. Now it all made sense and it seemed that perhaps fate had intervened on my behalf.

  ‘Lovely to meet you,’ I said as she was leaving. ‘By the way, a friend of mine is having a going-away barbecue for me tomorrow; why don’t you come along?’

  ‘I think my parents are coming to that so maybe I’ll come with them,’ she answered.

  I thought, ‘So far so good.’

  Isabella did appear the next day and, again, we chatted pleasantly all afternoon until, at around four o clock, I had to leave to catch a flight back to Brisbane. We were starting the build-up to a Test match against a touring Scotland side in Sydney on June 13th 1992. As far as I was concerned, my time in Italy was over. After all, I had a new job waiting for me and I’d be playing rugby for my country again in little more than a week. In my mind, life was about to return to normal.

  ISABELLA LYNAGH: I went to the barbecue and we talked for about seven hours. It was like we knew each other already. I used to play competitive tennis and to talk to an elite sportsman at the peak of his career, who had just won the World Cup, was a big attraction for me. I found the psychological aspect very interesting.

  I REMEMBER THERE BEING a little bit of talk about me and Campo—who was also playing rugby in Italy—coming back to Australia and walking straight into the Test team. Bob Dwyer picked us for the Scotland game and I remember John Connolly, my coach at Queensland, being reasonably critical of that. It wasn’t a big thing, but I do remember being a bit discomforted. In reality, John was probably just stirring the pot to unsettle Bob Dwyer a little, nothing much more than that.

  I was sensitive to the feelings of the guys who’d been playing hard all season at home. I certainly had no intention of upsetting anyone or doing anything other than playing fair, particularly as I’d gone to Italy with the blessing of both Queensland and the Australian Rugby Union. In those pre-contract days, nobody could have stopped me going anyway, and we all knew that. Equally, I knew from the start that the potential penalty for playing abroad was that I wouldn’t get picked. I wouldn’t be under the selectors’ noses. I just hoped that the way I handled myself in combination with coming back in good form would be enough to secure my place, and that generally proved to be the case throughout my career in Italy. It didn’t help that quite a few influential people back home didn’t consider playing Italian rugby to be valid preparation. Granted, the standard of rugby in the lower Italian leagues probably wasn’t up to much. But I was playing in the top tier, winning in the top tier—it was more than competitive.

  Incidentally, I always got on very well with John Connolly and he was a very, very good forwards coach. We never had any run-ins other than when he dropped me as captain in 1989, and even that was okay. I usually saw people’s reasons for making decisions, even when they negatively impacted me.

  John was very forwards-orientated, and was good at getting them drilled. But when it came to the backs he used to defer to John Brass, the backs coach. I remember one particular team meeting when Connolly said, ‘We’re going to win the ball, the forwards will drive’, all that kind of thing. ‘Then you just give the ball to Michael and he’ll do what he does.’ It was pretty simplistic, but I took it as a compliment.

  He used to have a laugh about me being late for training at Ballymore too. My office was in the city and while it wasn’t far to Ballymore as the crow flies, at the time I was trying to get there, I usually got caught in traffic. All the other guys, like Timmy Horan, would be there at 5.30pm for a bit of a kick, a pass or a team meeting. But training didn’t officially start until 6pm.

  Seemingly there was a standing joke at my expense.

  John would pull all the guys onto the pitch at 6pm, and nine times out of ten I wasn’t quite there. Then, when he saw my car appear over the hill, he’d look at his watch and say, ‘Okay guys, it’s Noddy time!’

  GIVEN THE HIGH COST of international phone calls in those days before emails and text messages, letters and faxes were the only ways Isabella and I could keep in contact while I was back in Australia. It’s funny; my sons nowadays say things like, ‘What’s a fax machine?’ At that time I considered myself very lucky to have one at home. But the only one Isabella had access to was the one at her father’s office, so I’d ring her very quickly, barely long enough to get out the words: ‘I’m sending a fax . . . now.’ That way she could rush down to the office and intercept it before anyone else got to it.

  In this way, in the odd spare minutes between my new job and rugby commitments, we continued to get to know each other. Eventually, after a few months, Treviso asked if I’d like to return for another season. I had every intention of going back to Italy; there was no doubt in my mind. But I was in a slightly awkward position with my boss and my first thought was that I needed to be one hundred per cent upfront and honest with him. I loved the job, but I wanted to go to Italy for six months even more.

  ISABELLA LYNAGH: The club knew that I was in touch with Michael so eventually they came to me and said, ‘Do you think he’d be interested in coming back?’ I said, ‘Well, you better talk to him. But I hope so!’

  It was also in the back of my mind that Australia had a three-week tour to South Africa in August and then, later in the year, another lengthy trip to Ireland and Wales. All of this combined would represent a lot of time away from the office, and in the case of the Wallaby tours I would be paid by Robert Jones to be away from the office. That made me uneasy.

  As much as I loved my new role at Robert Jones Investments and the generous amount of flexibility my boss gave me, rather than stringing him along, I decided that it was probably the right time to part ways on good terms. It was a decision I’ve always felt was the right one. Better to do as you would be done by, I always think.

  NINE

  A NEW ROLE

  I ALWAYS CONSIDERED SOUTH Africa to be a very intense place from a rugby point of view. My father took me to one of the more controversial Test matches in rugby history, between the Springboks and the Wallabies in Brisbane in 1971. I was only seven at the time and remember nothing of the game whatsoever, but I do remember sensing the danger in the air. I was right to feel that way. A state of emergency had been declared in Queensland in an attempt to quell the anti-apartheid demonstrations that overshadowed the whole Springbok tour.

  Fast-forward twenty-odd years to the summer of 1992 and I was part of the first Australian touring party to set foot in South Africa since the late 1960s. It was a big occasion, not least because the All Blacks were there at the same time.

  Unlike in Australia, where rugby union is not the number one winter sport, the game is very much part of daily life in South Africa. Back in 1992 the white population lived and breathed it. Then they lived it a bit more. That’s no different from how it used to be in Wales and still is in New Zealand, but because the Springboks had been exiled from the world stage for so long, the excitement and intensity we encountered there were on another level from anything we’d previously experienced. To add spice to the mix, we were arriving there as reigning World Champions, and in the eyes of the bullish locals that meant we were there to be scrutinised and there to be beaten.

  All we’d heard about back in Australia was how volatile things were in South Africa. While the political climate was certainly more promising than it had been for many years, it wasn’t as if there had been an overnight transformation from the dark days of apartheid to the kind of inclusive society we were accustomed to. With security with us wherever we went, South Afric
a—by any normal standards—was an intimidating and strangely exciting environment to be in and we definitely had to tread lightly at times.

  I remember one incident early in the tour, in Pretoria. We were at a function, drinking wine and chatting. Nick Farr-Jones and I were making polite small talk with some local bigwig when I asked, for no reason other than to fill a void in the conversation, ‘So, how many people are there in South Africa?’

  This guy said, ‘Well, if you count the blacks, there’s forty million. If you don’t count them, there are just five million.’

  He wasn’t smiling.

  Nick and I looked at each other quizzically. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing.

  Nick said, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you count them?’

  The guy just stared at him blankly.

  We never did get the answer.

  Then, during a free afternoon, we were enjoying a barbecue arranged for the squad in a game park. It was a beautiful day, a relaxed atmosphere. We were having a beer or two when some local fans came over to chat, bringing items for us to sign. One of them went up to Willie Ofahengaue and said, ‘Hey boy! Sign this would you, boy?’

  The charitable view would be that it was probably no different from me saying something like, ‘Hey mate, would you sign this?’ But the turn of phrase didn’t come across well in the context. It sounded really bad. We all sat there for a moment, not sure what might happen next.

  Now, if you don’t already know, Willie O is of Tongan descent, seventeen stone plus and six foot three. A really big unit. Willie never said very much. You had to really push him. But when spoken to like that, he isn’t going to be happy. He looked up, and for a fleeting moment it looked like there might be a major incident, but in the end, to his eternal credit, he just quietly said, ‘Please do not call me that again. My name is Willie.’