by Richie McCaw
Luke is lining up the conversion, 15 metres to the left of the posts, bread and butter. He pushes it to the right.
It’s 18–13 to us. We’re back. We’ve taken the momentum away from them—I can actually feel that as Cedric Heymans drops a bomb from Nick, and we get an attacking scrum. They’re gone. The crowd have stopped singing ‘Allez Les Bleus’.
One more score of any description and we’re home.
From the scrum, Nick clean breaks the French line, accelerating inside Beauxis and outside Elissalde who gets a hand on his waist-band and drags him down. We’re in behind them, got them at sixes and sevens. All we have to do is hold on to the ball and good things will happen. But Nick goes for a miracle pass to Mils as he’s tackled and loses it forward.
Rodney scores, with a bit of help from Ali and Woody.
Scrum France. Once again, we destroy the French scrum, pour over Harinordoquy, pull him backwards towards his own line. He’s lying full-length on his back, being dragged along the ground, holding on to the ball in a moving ruck. I’m a metre away watching this, screaming at Barnes—Ref!—who does nothing. Then he tells Horey to go back.
Beauxis thumps it to halfway, Leon passes infield to Joe, who brings it back strongly to contact, then throws another wild pass in the tackle. Forward. Jesus wept.
We had them. Two bad passes we didn’t need to make.
We keep having to go back to the well, the French scrum, but this time it holds. There’s still confusion at the back between Harinordoquy and Elissalde, which draws Brendon in to them, which means that when Harinordoquy manages to throw it wide to Traille coming from fullback, there’s no sweeper and the French suddenly have numbers on a wide blind. Traille sees it, plays it perfectly, punches between Luke and Siti, makes the half-break and forces me to commit to the tackle. As I drag him down, he offloads to Frederic Michalak on his outside. The pass has to be forward—my head is on Traille’s left shoulder, he can’t pass it through me. Traille throws the pass two metres short of halfway and Michalak takes it on the halfway line. As I hit the ground I see assistant referee Jonathan Kaplan right in line. Barnes is back behind us and might have been obscured, but Kaplan, so keen to assert himself in the first half, says nothing. By the time I look back up, I see the end of a brilliant French move—Jauzion diving across the line for the try.
This can’t be happening! Yannick Jauzion scores.
This can’t be happening! They’d been on the rack, mixed up behind a retreating scrum on their own 10-metre line, and seconds later they’re 60 metres downfield, scoring.
We’re tied, 18 points each.
We stand under the posts. Disbelief has been replaced by a really bad picture. I suddenly understand the expression I saw on Jeff Wilson’s face in ’99. Bewilderment, disbelief, yes, all there. But something else. Fear.
What we went through after Sydney in 2003 surges back, the recriminations, the anguish, the anger. Bad pictures from the past fomenting fear of the future. The headlines, the national grief, the disappointment of my parents and my sister somewhere up there in the crowd, among thousands of Kiwis who have flown across the world on package tours to support us here and next week in the semi in Paris, and in the final. I look at the eyes around me and can see they’re not here, they’re watching the same reels. I’m standing right in front of them and they can’t see me. I don’t understand what’s happening, but instinctively I know I have to somehow get my mind back to the here and now in Cardiff.
Someone is standing right in front of me. Physio Pete Gallagher. Repeating messages from the coaches. There’s still time. Got that. Retain possession. Got that. Play at the right end of the field. Got that. Don’t forget the drop-kick option. What?
Going to sleep after Dan’s speculative drop-kick has cost us seven points already, whereas our applied pressure after that through 26 phases got us Rodney’s try and a conversion we should have had. And there’s something else. There’s no drop-kick in our play-book. I know that Byron and Dan discussed it at training, but they’re gone, Nick Evans is gone, and Aaron Mauger, who slotted a crucial drop for the Crusaders in a Super 14 final and might have been able to make that call, is sitting in the stand. A drop-kick has never been part of our plan. We’ve never practised setting up for it. If I suddenly tell the guys we’re playing for the drop-kick, what does that tell them about the plan? The word that springs to mind is ‘panic’.
I need to make a rational response to the circumstances and our resources. And not panic, or induce panic. The plan is to win by tries, by retaining possession and applying huge pressure. We’ve done it once with Rodney’s try, we can do it again. That’s the plan we came in with, that’s the plan I’m sticking to.
Elissalde converts. 20–18 to France. We’re behind for the first time in the game. The French are going off. They think they’ve got it. This isn’t supposed to happen!
I try for a better picture, to change the channel: 2001, my first year with Canterbury, we’re playing for the Ranfurly Shield against Wellington. We’re down 29–12 with 15 to go, and our captain Todd Blackadder gets us around him and says, ‘Don’t for a minute believe that we’re not going to win this.’ And I don’t believe him, I’m standing there thinking, Bugger, my first decent shield defence and we’re going to lose it. When we got over Wellington and won it, that was a big lesson. You’ve got to believe that it’s not over.
So that’s what I tell them, gathered around me. What Toddy told me. And I try to put the bad pictures out of my head and believe it myself. It’s only two points and there’s 10 minutes.
But it doesn’t begin well. From the restart, the French bomb and Siti takes it into the tackle too high, gets held up and France gets the put-in on our 10-metre line. Worse, Nick Evans is crocked in that maul and hobbles off. What else?
Luke comes into first-five, Ice—Isaia Toeava—goes to second.
The rejuvenated French scrum splinters us, but we pile into the loose fracas and turn the ball over, then break right. Ice makes an outside break, then throws the ball away. Clerc hoofs it downfield and we’re back 10 metres out from our own line. Fuck!
Nine minutes to go. Ali’s unbeatable in the air, Brendon kicks beautifully from the base, and Christophe Dominici is forced out five metres short of halfway.
Eight minutes to go. We overthrow to a short lineout, and I’m crash-tackled by Dusautoir, but manage to retain possession and we go right, where Luke grubbers in behind them. Ice is taken out by Jauzion’s shoulder, a carbon copy of the move that got Luke a yellow card what seems an age ago. Ref! Barnes is right there, flaps his arms wide and says, ‘Play on!’
Clerc takes the ball under no pressure, hoofs it into our in-goal and, again, we regroup for the 22, at the wrong end of the field.
Seven minutes to go. Harinordoquy collects our restart, thunders forward into contact, but we attack him like men possessed and turn it over. We pile drive through 14 brutal phases of pick-and-gos to get to 35 metres out from the French line.
Five minutes to go. Stick to the game plan. Attack narrow again, pick and go, get another try doing what has already worked. Failing that, a penalty. We haven’t had a penalty in the second half. Law of averages, if we keep possession, keep the French under the hammer, they have to infringe. Have to.
Seventeenth phase. I burst down the blind to set it up 10 metres out from their line. Chris Masoe takes it another couple of metres, and after 19 phases we’re right in front of the posts. Leon’s at halfback and the rest of the backs are flat. Woody rumbles it up another metre. Horey takes it forward again. Luke calls for it, he can see numbers on the right, but we crunch it forward again, doing what we did to get Rodney’s try. It’s worked once, it will work again. We’ve got the French where we want them. If we don’t get the try, we’ll get a penalty. Either way, I believe we’ll score. It will happen.
Three and a half minutes to go, we’re on the twenty-sixth phase, two metres out from their line, when Harinordoquy plays the ball at the bottom of a
ruck with his hands, sweeping it back to Elissalde. Barnes doesn’t see it, or if he does, decides that he hasn’t. Michalak clears, badly, from the dead-ball line, straight to Jacko, on his own, way out wide.
We get to him in time, recycle wide out on the 22, and go again. Mils gets in behind them, and we take it on through Luke and Woody and Rodney, until I get caught at the back of the ruck and the French get it back. Elissalde kicks it straight out.
Two minutes to go. Our lineout. Last throw of the dice.
What’s happening? I’ve never known this sort of extended sequence play not to yield up something: a try or more likely a penalty for one side or the other, usually the attacking side. But as the game tightens up, Barnes seems to have gone from a ruck and maul martinet to Mister Anything Goes. I finally click to the fact that he’s as fearful as we are of making a mistake. I realise, too late, he’s not going to make a big call, that he’s not making any penalty calls, no matter how blatant. This is Barnes’ first big game and he’s frozen. The pressure of a quarter-final at the RWC has got to him just like it’s got to us. But I haven’t seen that early enough. I should have realised sooner: We’re completely and utterly on our own out here.
While we’re assembling for the lineout, Carl reads my mind and asks about a drop-kick. I still don’t want to make that call. But this is it. We’re down to the last play. I compromise, tell Luke to have a crack at the drop if it’s on. That’s all I can do.
Ninety seconds to go. The ball is thrown in, Ali secures it. Siti steps through to their 22, and Rodney bulldozes it on and I pile in. We’re right in front of the posts, 20 metres out, but when the ball is recycled the only one standing in the pocket is a prop. Woody. The backs are all lined out flat. Woody trudges across after the backs as they take it right and are smashed backwards by the French defence.
At the breakdown, France knock on, Barnes calls an advantage as we regurgitate the ball on our 10-metre mark, having lost 20 metres. We should take the scrum, but Luke is in the pocket finally and takes the drop-kick. The trouble is he’s standing on the halfway mark, and the ball bounces twice before it gets to the goal-line. Advantage over. Traille runs it back and forth along the dead-ball line, using up time.
Thirty seconds to go. We’re gone. Joe takes the restart on halfway, I power it up to the 10-metre mark. Maybe not. we go wide right, come back left, but we’re going sideways, getting skittled. Time is up when Luke makes a half-break and Horey takes it on with a good drive, but the ball gets ripped away from him.
I finally stop, exhausted, disbelieving, and watch Elissalde grab the ball and dance triumphantly backwards and sideways almost to the sideline, waving one hand in the air, before booting the ball into the roaring French fans in the stands.
We’ve lost. It’s over. That’s the truth.
Ali and I try to find the words.
The losers’ dressing room turns out to be the right dressing room after all. Before I can get there, I’m stopped by a microphone and camera. An English voice points out the obvious, that the French just seem to have this ability to come back at us.
‘Tell me about it. It’s one of those days you just want to forget.’ Knowing as I say it that I never will forget. He asks more questions. I shake my head, still shell-shocked, and tell him I’m lost for words.
I do have words to describe myself, but none that I can use. Angry. Devastated. Pissed off. Frustrated. Despondent. Angry. Remorseful. Did I say angry? Angry at myself, angry at the stupid passes we threw, the mistakes we made, the chances we blew. Angry at the ref for abdicating his responsibilities. Angry at not getting what I think—for all our mistakes—we deserved.
I forge on and see Andrew Mehrtens in front of me, comments man for TV3. Mehrts has his own bad pictures from ’95 and ’99. He doesn’t know what to say to me. Mehrts lost for words? Things must be bad. He gives me a consolatory pat on the shoulder.
Someone offers me a chair to sit in while I wait my turn for the next interview. In front of me, Ibanez is doing his bit for French TV. I don’t speak much French but the language of ecstasy is universal. That should be me. What happened?
I stumble through that one, and head to the false sanctuary of the dressing room. There is no sanctuary, but there are my mates, who are going through what I’m going through. Caveman Chabal is blocking my passage, excited about something. I realise he’s upset about not being able to swap jerseys. He mentions Chris Jack. I don’t know enough French to tell him Jacko might have a few other things on his mind right now, so I brush past.
I get to the dressing room. Anton, conjuring up an image from his extensive reading on the First World War, later describes it as being like ‘no-man’s-land in our hearts and minds. It feels desolate, decay, the putrid smell of, I don’t know, death.’ That’s Anton. Never use a short word when several long ones will do almost as well. Though, to be fair, he did also say at the time that no one actually died. And at least he’s able to articulate something.
No one else knows what to say. Except the coaches, who move about, making consoling noises. The players seem lost in their separate worlds. There’s no need for ice baths or recovery strategies. It’s over. We’re out. Most are sitting unchanged in their little cubicles, heads in hands.
We all thought—in so far as we’d considered losing at all—that Ted would take it the worst. But he’s calm and collected, which is staggering. I know even then that this loss is more likely to be a career-defining event for him than it will be for me. I might get to go again: his chances of doing so are pretty slim, based on the response to past All Black coaches who have lost badly at RWC. The ’99 coach, John Hart, was spat on at a horse race. After 2003, John Mitchell was cast into the wilderness. Ted is already 61, has had a long and distinguished career, but it seems now that he’ll be remembered for two huge failures: the 2001 Lions Tour to Australia and the 2007 All Blacks RWC.
In the midst of my own despair, my admiration for Ted soars as he takes me aside and tells me that just he and I are going to do the big one with the assembled world media, that we’re going to front up, play it straight down the line, pay the French respect, and as much as we might feel that we have gripes, there’ll be no whingeing. He confirms what I already know in my gut: that if we complain, no matter what we say, no matter how justified we think it is, we’ll look like sore losers. We have to front up and cop it on the chin.
That’s what we try to do. I don’t remember the details, except for one thing. I’m still in my rugby kit, covered in sweat and grime, and at one stage I rub my face and eyes with both hands. It’s just one of those reflexive, unthinking actions. But as I do, I can feel the heat and light as the flash-bulbs pop. Bugger, I’ve given them their front-page photo.
Some time later, I get a message that my father and sister are at the players’ entrance. I find them there with an old school friend and his father, in their black and silver supporters’ kit, looking bewildered. Not my old man or my sister, Joanna. They’re more concerned about how I am. I apologise for ruining their trip, and Dad tells me not to worry, that they’ll have a good time anyway and they always knew there was a risk that the All Blacks wouldn’t make it. He and Mum have never been part of the hype, and they’re not now: he tells me that today was just one of those days. That’s sport.
It’s a perspective I desperately need. Sport is about winning and losing. There’s no fudging, no smudging, no saying, well, that’s not really what I meant. In RWC knockout, it’s binary: two columns, win or loss; the classic zero sum equation: for every winner, there has to be a loser. If winning was pro forma, victory wouldn’t be worth striving for. Victory is only sweet because you always risk losing. If you step into that combat zone, you accept everything that goes with it. You don’t decide whether you want to stand under a bomb in front of the French forward pack when you’re waiting for the ball to arrive. You don’t decide once you’re out there whether you want to be battered and bruised and humiliated. You have to make those decisions long before
. The time to decide that losing is too painful is before you walk out on to the field.
Bugger, I’ve given them their front-page photo.
I take some comfort from that, and also from what our psychologist Gilbert Enoka tells us when we gather in the team room back at our hotel, the Vale Glamorgan. ‘Playing rugby is what you do,’ says Bert. ‘It’s not who you are.’
But shortly after that, I’m called out to do one more interview, with Tony Johnson for Sky TV’s Reunion programme. Tony’s eyes are glistening with emotion as he talks about the end of the dream, and that’s when it really hits me: what this loss will mean to so many people in our rugby community, our rugby nation. Try telling them that supporting the All Blacks is what they do, it’s not who they are. I feel tears welling and struggle to get a grip.
We don’t make it to Paris, of course. We don’t see the big ball the NZRU has set up by the Champs-Elysées to promote the 2011 RWC, and we can’t be part of the promotion. Thousands of New Zealand supporters do make it, many of them flying out from New Zealand on non-refundable package tours to see us play in the semis and finals. We probably pass them in the air somewhere over the Pacific as we fly home.
Twenty-four of the squad fly out of Heathrow on Japan Airlines. We’d agreed before we left New Zealand that win or lose we’d come home together, but there aren’t enough seats for everyone, so we work out priorities for media duties and families and leave six behind.
There’s an understandable trepidation on that plane as to what our reception will be. In 2003, when we’d also been favourites, we lost in the semi-final to Australia, but I was young and didn’t have much profile, so was able to stay over there for a while, then slip back quietly into the country. This time, I’m coming back as the captain of the worst-performing All Black team in the history of the RWC.