It was an innocent mistake, but try telling that to the press pack and the social media hordes. We’ve dodged a bullet there, and we know it. That’s one of the advantages of not being a high-profile team like England: we can fly under the radar a little. I hope we can stay there for a while.
It’s my first time in New Zealand. When Gats first came over to be interviewed for the Wales job, the WRU chief executive Roger Lewis took him on a helicopter trip over South Wales. Villages and towns dotted with rugby pitches, fields and hillsides lush with rain, valleys and the mountainous beauty of the Brecon Beacons – Lewis knew just what he was doing.
‘It looks like New Zealand,’ Gats said.
It does. And now I’m here, I see that the reverse is obviously true too – that New Zealand looks like Wales. The similarity doesn’t stop there. Both countries have got small, rugby-mad populations: just over three million for us, just under five million for them. England, France, South Africa, Australia and the rest of the big names here – their populations are too big, their range of other sports too large, for rugby to capture the soul of the nation in the way that it does us and New Zealand.
I feel right at home.
In Wales, the most celebrated position on the field is number 10, the fly-half. Think of the men who’ve played there: Cliff Morgan, Barry John, Phil Bennett, Jonathan Davies, Neil Jenkins, Stephen Jones.
New Zealand have produced their share of excellent fly-halves too, but for them the sacred number isn’t 10. It’s 7. Before Richie McCaw was Josh Kronfeld, before Kronfeld was Michael Jones, and before Jones was Graham Mourie. To be playing 7 in New Zealand, even if you’re not playing for New Zealand, is to take on a precious mantle.
Gats and I are in a press conference before our first pool match against South Africa. ‘There are three definite world-class players at the breakdown in this tournament,’ Gats says. ‘David Pocock, Richie McCaw and Heinrich Brüssow. I’d rate the guy next to me in that category as well. A lot of people haven’t seen Sam Warburton play, but he’ll create an impact in this tournament. He wins man of the match more often than not, and you’ll find out why on Sunday.’
Bloody hell, I think. No pressure, Gats.
Sunday, 11 September. You never want the hardest game in the group first up, because if you lose, then every game after that becomes a must-win. Even if those must-win games are ones you should win, it still alters the equation a little bit. But we didn’t choose the schedule and we can’t alter it, so there’s no point complaining. Crack on. Game on.
I lead the boys out in Wellington. At 22 years and 341 days old, I’m the youngest World Cup captain ever. I’m up against a seriously talented back row – Brüssow, Schalk Burger and Pierre Spies – but I feel invincible, and I play like it too. This is the best international match I’ve played so far, and only perhaps one or two more in the future will match it.
I’m everywhere. I make 23 tackles, almost a quarter of the team’s entire total. I secure six turnovers. I’m faster to every breakdown than the AA could dream of. No matter how quick the Boks are, I’m quicker, and it really pisses them off. As the game wears on I can hear them shouting more and more at each breakdown: ‘Smash him. Get him off the ball!’
They try and clear me out by fair means or foul. I cop a massive blow to my head and can hardly stand up for a moment or two while the world spins, but I’m there at the next breakdown, and the next one, and the next one after that.
I win man of the match. And we lose the game. Only by a point, 17–16, but a loss is a loss. It doesn’t matter how well I played, because we lost. But it does matter how well I captain, because I make one mistake that may have a big effect on the result.
It’s the 14th minute. Hooky – James Hook – kicks a penalty so high that it passes over the top of the upright. From where I’m standing, it’s hard to tell whether it’s just in or just out. The assistant referees watch the ball in flight, look at each other and keep their flags down: no score. The referee, Wayne Barnes, agrees.
Even though both Hooky and Jenks think it’s gone over – Hooky’s so confident that he starts running back to the halfway line for the kick-off – I don’t think of questioning it. The moment comes and goes so quickly that I’m almost not aware of it. I should question it, but I don’t. It’s just not me, to confront something like that. Ironic that I’m happy to confront enormous Springbok forwards all day but not ask a simple question of the officials, but there you go. I’ve never been the kind of person to complain in restaurants or make a fuss in public, and that feeds through into this.
It might not make a difference, of course. The officials might decide after looking at a replay that there’s no reason to change their minds; and even if they do, it’s so early in the game that there’s plenty of time for South Africa to come back, and maybe they’d change their tactics if they were two points down rather than a point up. Rugby’s rarely as simple as saying that a single incident would leave the rest of the match unaltered.
In years to come, this respect for referees and their decisions will become one of my biggest strengths. But right now it feels like a huge weakness, and even though I can’t change what’s happened, I resolve that if it ever occurs in the future I won’t make the same mistake again.
Losing to South Africa means that, assuming we both win all our other pool matches, we’ll come second in the group and face the winner of Pool C in the quarters. That’s almost certain to be Australia, whose toughest match in that pool is against Ireland. We’ve only won one of our last six games against the Wallabies. You can say all you like about having to play the good teams sooner or later, but Australia in the quarters would be a big ask.
The Irish turn them over 15–6.
Suddenly, all the permutations are flipped 180 degrees. Now it’s almost certain that we’d play Ireland in the quarters, which is a far easier prospect. We know Ireland’s game so well, we beat them in the Six Nations, and we reckon we’ve more than got the measure of them.
We’re looking at a semi-final here, I think, as long as we don’t screw it up.
Sunday, 18 September. Hamilton. We almost do screw it up. We’re 10–6 down to Samoa at half-time, and if we lose this that’s zero points from two games and we’re almost certainly on an early flight home.
I don’t know what to say to the boys in the dressing room, but Shane Williams does. He gives us all the most almighty bollocking. ‘There’s no way we’re going to lose this,’ he yells, ‘not after everything we’ve been through.’
Remember Spala.
Samoa are without doubt the dirtiest team I’ve played against; at one point I get someone’s heel in my face as I’m lying on the floor, and it’s not an accident. Stung by the thought of going home, we take it to them physically. We pluck it fast off lineouts, Jamie runs over Seilala Mapusua in the 12 channel, we work it through the biggest forwards until there’s space out wide and we can spread it. They don’t score a point in the second half, and we run out winners 17–6. It’s not pretty, but the result’s all that matters. Very few teams ever go through tournaments playing brilliantly all the time and swatting aside every opponent.
Now we know we’ll be in the quarters, because with the best will in the world we’re not going to lose either of our remaining matches to Namibia or Fiji.
Monday, 26 September. New Plymouth. There’s a moment against Namibia which means a lot to me, even though no one in the stands and few people on the pitch even notice. We have a penalty, and I tell Stephen to go for the three points rather than kick to the corner and go