Blimey, I thought. Of course I will.
There is no greater honour in all of rugby. It makes no difference what team you’ve got or who you’re playing. I believed that then and I still believed it as evening turned to night on the southern tip of Africa and we could at last bring the curtain down on a tour which none of us who experienced it shall ever forget.
I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t recognized the potential for a disastrous trip from the moment Clive and I went our separate ways that day on the riverbank. England faced an itinerary of four Tests in five weeks over three different Continents, and I had charge of a squad containing 20 uncapped players as a result of a mass withdrawal by many of the senior players. Reaction to this came thick and fast from Australia, our first port of call. Dick McGruther, chairman of the Australian Rugby Union, described the England tour party as ‘probably the most under-equipped group of Englishmen to be sent to Australia since the First Fleet’ (referring to the 11 ships that sailed from Portsmouth in 1787 bearing the first European settlers, mostly convicts). He accused the RFU of treating the southern hemisphere with contempt, saying that England had broken its word to send its best team. Australia was insulted, McGruther maintained, by what he described as the ‘biggest sell-out since Gallipoli’, and he added, ‘I think England will have their own fatal landings in Australia and New Zealand over the next few weeks.’ He then invited all Australians to come and enjoy a ‘Pommie thrashing’.
His inference was clear: that England’s missing stars were not injured but had instead been persuaded not to tour by their clubs, who were in dispute with the Union over who controlled what in English rugby. I won’t have that. There were a lot of England players who had played a lot of rugby through 1997 and 1998 and had picked up niggles which, had they played an extra summer, would have turned into chronic injuries. I could fully understand what they were doing by pulling out; I was more interested to know who had organized this type of tour after a Lions year. Where was the thought for the players? I, too, had thought of pulling out because we were fast approaching World Cup year and I wanted above all to be right for that. It seemed that nobody was thinking about what was best for the players; it was all about what was best for the clubs, the RFU and England. I didn’t have a problem with being a little bit selfish in that respect. It came down to the question of whether the benefits of a summer of rest would outweigh the loss, in the short term at least, of my England shirt.
Four years later I would opt out. I spoke to Clive and Wayne Smith at Northampton and said I felt I needed to rest rather than go to Argentina. Clive made the call for me not to go, but I don’t think I would have done so anyway because my body was telling me I had to have some time off, away from rugby. I did lose my shirt, England won the Test match and everyone was singing and dancing about my replacement, Andy Gomarsall. But I swallowed it and got on with it, and I believe my form the following season vindicated my decision.
But in the summer of 1998 I was swayed by the offer of the captaincy. It was an opportunity I could not refuse, an honour I would never turn down. For all I knew it would not come my way again. It was a priceless chance to enhance my rugby education, and, boy, during those five weeks did I learn things.
On arrival Down Under in late May it was impossible not to take McGruther’s insults personally, even if his words were aimed at the RFU rather than us directly. We quickly became hacked off with reading the papers because everyone seemed to be laughing at us, but I believed we could use it to our advantage and show them that we were not a second or even a third team. Nobody had given England a chance in the World Cup Sevens in 1993; no one had given the 1997 Lions a chance either. We had won both. So why not again?
Actually, there were a number of reasons why not, not the least of which was that only six of the tour party – me, Austin Healey, Ben Clarke, Graham Rowntree, Garath Archer and Steve Ojomoh – had more than 10 England caps to their name. The average across the 37-man party was less than four, and there were 20 debutants – 10 in the backs and 10 in the forwards. But I had to stay positive, I had to keep faith, even if I knew in my heart of hearts that we were on a hiding to nothing.
On the day we departed I wrote a column in the Daily Telegraph in which I remarked that ‘there is a great depth of talent in English rugby. What we may currently lack in experience we make up for in enthusiasm and raw skill. Every player is keen to prove himself.’ That was fairly true. Some of that squad are not only still playing for England but playing bloody well for England, Jonny Wilkinson, Josh Lewsey, Phil Vickery, Lewis Moody and Danny Grewcock among them. It was unrefined talent at that point, very unrefined. We were one or two players short of giving the back line the necessary experience required, but, despite the absence of Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Jason Leonard, Richard Hill and Tim Rodber, the forwards were definitely competitive. In the first and second Tests against New Zealand later in June we matched them up front for more than half the game, and at some stages we were better. The first half in Dunedin, for example, we were on fire, even after Danny had been sent off. Likewise, up until half-time in Auckland our forwards obliterated the All Blacks.
Ultimately, however, the tour will not be remembered for those cameo performances, rather for the record defeats we suffered at the hands of Australia and New Zealand, and for the pledge from Clive that never again would England plumb such depths. It was straight after the tour that the gloves came off. Clive told us straight that we had to stand up for ourselves. ‘The players have to be their own people now,’ he told the Sunday Telegraph. ‘I hate it when people say the players are the meat in the sandwich, stuck between club and country. That’s crap. They’re all big boys, all over 18. They have to stand up and be counted.’
This was not an off-the-cuff remark. Right at the start of the tour he had batted the ball into our court, saying that it was up to us to be fit for England. He would no longer pick on reputation. Unfortunately, his outburst coincided with me aggravating a knee injury, having to pull out of the Test match against the Wallabies in Brisbane on 6 June, and having to pass the armband over to Tony Diprose.
I’d picked up the injury in a freak diving accident during a pre-tour break with Austin Healey in Lanzarote. Austin had this ability to bounce unbelievably high on the springboard and then, like a trampoliner, kill the bounce on landing by bending his knees. I gave it a go, but as I landed my knee turned out and I tweaked it. I cursed him, but there was nothing new in that. I fully expected it to be fine, but 48 hours before kick-off I had to concede that it wasn’t strong enough to get through an international game.
The upshot was that I spent the match in the BBC Five Live commentary booth at the Suncorp Stadium, trying to find words to describe a 76–0 defeat. I had to analyse 11 Australian tries, which by the end was proving painful. I’m sure the listeners at home could sense my tone. John Mitchell, our forwards coach, had said beforehand that the team was ‘shit scared … it’s the fear of being wiped out which motivates us’. And wiped out we were by the future World Cup winners, even if we didn’t concede a try for more than half an hour. I could hear the Aussie commentators absolutely digging it in and there was nothing I could do about it. It became so embarrassing that the Aussie crowd started leaving long before the match was over. But we couldn’t go home. There was nowhere to hide. It was an horrendous day and a harsh, if valuable, lesson to learn.
I didn’t say it then, but sometimes you need experiences like that. Those who were in the side and got severely shown up – and there were a few of those – realized they weren’t up to it and needed to go away and do some work. It made everyone open their eyes, because there was a feeling among some that they were young and as good as their potential hinted they could one day become. I went into the dressing room afterwards and it was a shocking scene. As tour captain it was just a matter of trying to raise heads, pick up the pieces and point out that we were in for a torrid month and that it was going to be a severe test of character. ‘Some of you are going to come through and some of you are not,’ I told the boys. ‘Where do you want to be?’ I couldn’t come on any stronger than that because it was the first match of the tour and I knew it wasn’t going to get any easier. What hurt most of all was that all the press, the outrageous predictions