More Blood, Sweat and Beers

by Lawrence Dallaglio

  As I left the room I met one of Clive’s good friends, a guy called Paul Monk, and told him to go and have a word as Clive appeared to be approaching meltdown mode. Paul entered the meeting room and the first person he encountered was Johnno, who was not in the mood for visitors. ‘I don’t know who you are but you’re not allowed in the team room.’ Paul responded by pointing at Clive. ‘I’m the person who’s going to speak to that bloody lunatic to try and calm him down.’ ‘Oh,’ said the England captain, ‘on you go then, mate. And good luck.’ I assume the chat had the desired effect as Clive was much calmer the following day.

  If I had to choose one single moment from the 2003 World Cup experience it would be that semi-final against France. As I ran onto the pitch the English support was truly amazing, huge swathes of white shirts all around the stadium creating an unbelievable atmosphere. The match was my sixty-fourth international for England and even though there had been many memorable matches before, not least my first cap, nothing came close to equalling the positive energy I experienced that evening. To succeed you need a decent team and confidence in your own abilities and in those of the players around you, but that day I realised just how important the support of a crowd is in helping to determine the outcome of a match. What hair I had on my neck was genuinely raised as I emerged under the floodlights for that match. It was an unforgettable experience.

  As for the final, apart from the obvious, two memories will stick with me for ever. And both occurred before a tackle was made or a ball kicked. The first came as we walked out on to the pitch and I saw the Webb Ellis Cup standing proudly on display. It gave me a strange feeling. It was physically so close, but I knew there was a lot of effort and emotional expenditure required before its destination was determined. I’m not a particularly superstitious person but I refused to touch it. I didn’t want to tempt fate.

  The second happened almost immediately afterwards, when I looked up and saw Martin Johnson standing next to the Australian captain George Gregan. There was only one of those two men I wanted as my leader. I mean no disrespect to Gregan at all, he was an exceptional player and brilliant captain, but just from a physical perspective, Johnno at 6ft 7in and nearly 19st seemed indestructible. George was 5ft 8in and weighed in at less than 13st. He looked like a schoolboy in comparison to Johnno. To me it was further proof that England were going to win, and we did. But you know that already.

  Deflating the Bus’s wheels

  Josh Lewsey

  Josh won his first England cap on the “Tour from Hell” to Australia in 1998, aged twenty-one. The vast majority of players from that tour never appeared in an England shirt again after a 76–0 defeat at Brisbane. It’s a credit to Josh, and an indication of his determination to succeed, that he was not one of those lost souls.

  ‘On the rugby front he was capped fifty-five times, scored twenty-two tries, and also toured with the Lions in 2005. His try count demonstrates his attacking ability, but as a forward I was always impressed by his defensive qualities. I knew any high ball was going to be fielded by Josh and returned with interest. At 5ft 10in and weighing less than 14st (89kg) he was not the biggest full-back I played with but it was extremely rare any attacker managed to get round him. Like me, his rugby highlight was winning the World Cup in 2003.

  ‘Since retiring from international rugby Josh made an ascent of Mount Everest, falling just 100 metres short of the summit when he experienced problems with his breathing apparatus and was forced to descend. Having been so close I asked him why he hadn’t just sprinted to the top, taken a photo and clambered back down. Josh patiently explained that at such altitude a good rate of progress was about three steps a minute (Jason Leonard’s top match-day speed) and the temperature was so low one of the guys he was climbing with was forced to turn back when the covering of his eyes (the corneas) froze. Not that I needed it, but that and other tales confirmed to me what a tough and gritty competitor Josh is.

  No matter how many times a player represents his country he will always experience a healthy dose of nerves leading up to a match. All international matches feature prominently in a player’s mind, but it’s fair to say none more so than a World Cup final.

  When you go to bed on the eve of a match your brain is full of thoughts, predominantly concerning the game, the team performance and your own personal contribution. The combination of nerves and an overactive mind often means sleep is hard to come by. So to counteract this, the England medical team have for many years supplied a sleeping pill called Zopiclone to ensure a good night’s sleep before a game. It’s entirely up to each individual whether they take the pill or not, and as a generally relaxed person I tended to accept one but very rarely needed to use it. Players who took them always said how well they’d slept and never felt drowsy the following day, but I was always worried I’d be the exception and feel lethargic and sluggish. So the night before the final, I went to bed as usual, read for a while to clear my mind and managed a fairly decent sleep.

  The following day was filled with team meetings, relaxation periods, in fact anything to while away the hours before the 8.00 p.m. kick-off. To be honest there was nothing to be said or done which would have made any difference; we were as ready as we were ever going to be, just waiting for the first whistle.

  Fast forward to Jonny’s drop goal, referee Andre Watson blowing the final whistle and England are world champions, the first (and so far only) northern hemisphere side to achieve the feat. It doesn’t get much better than that – time to celebrate!

  I remember returning to the team hotel at 11.00 a.m. the following morning with a couple of team-mates, thinking to myself, Well done, Josh, you’ve been out all night and absolutely ‘smashed it’ and you are still managing to walk. Being fit has an added benefit when it comes to celebrating: you can drink a huge amount of alcohol without feeling completely out of it. It was therefore something of a personal comedown to discover I obviously wasn’t as fit as most of the other players, who didn’t arrive back until 4.00 p.m., the time we were due to depart en masse to the International Rugby Board awards dinner.

  Following the do several of us pushed straight on through the next night, continuing our party. There were more beers, more English supporters to talk to and a few Aussies who had to accept some gloating on our part. I knew it was all going to end at some point but was doing all I could to ensure I played my part in proceedings. As a consequence I once again arrived back at the hotel around noon (Monday), in time to pack my bags and get ready for the flight home later the same day.

  We all arrived at the airport and a few of us had a ‘cleansing beer’ before boarding. I am now officially ‘ruined’. I’d been running on fumes for well over sixty hours and needed to board the British Airways flight, find my seat, get comfortable and sleep all the way home. It was at this point I received some potentially alarming news: the boarding passes, and therefore the seat allocations, had all been issued in alphabetical order, Phil Larder (our defence coach), Josh Lewsey and JASON LEONARD! I’m sure other players have contributed stories featuring Jason Leonard OBE but all you really need to know for the purpose of my story is that sixty hours of drinking for Leonard is little more than a warm-up. Having spent the last few days on the ‘launch pad’, he was doubtless getting ready for ‘take-off’ both figuratively and literally. My only hope was to be at the front of the boarding queue, get to my seat and fall into a deep, unconscious sleep. Seconds after I found my seat I saw Leonard (‘Fun Bus’) wandering down the aisle, studying his boarding card and looking at the seat numbers below the overhead lockers.

  A broad smile appeared on his face when he saw the vacant seat to my right. ‘Ah, Josh me old mate, you’ll have a little drink with your uncle Jase, won’t you?’ I vividly remember thinking, Oh dear God please don’t do this to me. I looked around for players who would swap with me, they either ignored my gaze or gave me the ‘rather you than me’ look. I was on my own.

  ‘Come on, Josh, let’s crack on. What do you want
to start with, a beer, a drop of white or something stronger?’ I was feeling close to death and knew a few hours with the Fun Bus would cause further short-term damage and probable long-term health problems. I needed a way out.

  ‘It’s okay, Jase, I’m a bit tired and need to get a bit of sleep.’ I even tried a bit of lame humour: ‘I want to be looking my best when we all meet the Queen on Wednesday.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Josh, you know it makes sense, my son, have a little drink with your old mucker Jase. Tell you what, I’ll organise a nice claret to get us going.’

  Within minutes of take-off we both had a glass of red wine in our hands, with one of us doing all the talking and the other (needless to say, me) not. It’s difficult to convey how tired I was. Days of virtual non-stop drinking on top of the exertion of a World Cup tournament had all caught up with me. The last thing I needed was an extended session with Leonard and that’s when it hit me: there was a way out. It would take the smallest of efforts on my part to guarantee a quiet trip home. I reached into the overhead locker and took out my flight bag and removed my ‘stash’.

  Initially, I intended to take one of my Zopiclones myself, but in reality I didn’t need it. All my body craved was sleep. And that was precisely what it wasn’t going to get. It would take falling into a virtual coma before Leonard would stop pestering me. I decided I needed to take positive action and surreptitiously slip Jase a Mickey. A single Zopiclone is normally sufficient to put a grown man out for a solid eight to ten hours, so when Leonard’s attention was diverted briefly by Phil Larder I dropped one into his red wine and waited for it to take effect. During the next few minutes he finished his drink and with the words, ‘Josh, keep up, son, you’re slacking,’ he poured us both another glass. At the first opportunity, I slipped another tablet into his fresh glass, realising the mistake I had made. I wasn’t attempting to subdue a mere mortal man, I was trying to knock out an elephant.

  It took a total of three and a half tablets before I finally tranquillised the bastard. I was so desperate I actually didn’t care if I killed him, I just needed to be left alone to get some rest. The end arrived somewhere over Perth and things happened really quickly; he took a deep breath, stuffed a bread roll into his mouth and that was it. Just prior to following him into the deepest sleep of my life I have a vague recollection of a few members of the public who were on the flight taking photographs of the unconscious Jason Leonard enjoying what could have been his final meal before going to meet his Maker.

  Dear diary

  Shane Byrne

  Whilst a very good hooker who played forty-one times for Ireland from 2001 to 2005, Shane Byrne will always be remembered by the public for his hairstyle (or lack of it, style that is, not hair). Born twenty years too late for his mullet to be fashionable, if indeed it ever was, it never seemed to bother him and no amount of ribbing from teammates and opposition would persuade him to change it.

  ‘On the rugby front he was a robust player with good mobility and according to members of the England front row I’ve talked to, an awkward customer in the set pieces, often making things uncomfortable for opposition front rows. In effect he did exactly what he was meant to and very well too. He also played in all three Tests in New Zealand for the Lions in 2005.

  From 2002 to the end of 2003 I did something I had never previously done. I kept a diary. So when Lawrence asked me to contribute some World Cup memories for his book, I dusted off the diaries and realised as I read through the entries the information recorded would provide an insight into the life of a professional rugby player leading up to a World Cup and during the campaign itself.

  It was a hell of a long road for the Irish side to get to Australia, and also one of the best experiences of my life. It started in August 2002 with pre-qualifying training. Ireland had failed to reach the quarter-final stage of the previous tournament following a terrible loss to Argentina, so we had to qualify for 2003. After a warm-up game in Limerick against a strong Romanian side we headed off for our first qualifier, against Russia. This required an incredible trip to a place called Krasnoyarsk in central Siberia. To give you an idea of the size of Russia, Dublin is closer to Moscow than Moscow is to Krasnoyarsk. We comfortably won a hard-fought match, only to have to rush all the way back to Dublin for a home fixture against Georgia four days after our return from the Siberian wastes. We had to travel further for our home match than the away team! (Someone needs to look at the scheduling of qualifying matches.) Victory against Russia and Georgia secured our qualification and also provided us with the platform to continue the year with some great victories, including the highlight of my career when we defeated Australia in the autumn. By the time we played England in the 2003 Six Nations Grand Slam decider we had won a record ten consecutive matches (sadly it was not extended to eleven).

  After the Six Nations we had a training camp every two weeks to keep our minds on the job, followed by a tour of Australia, Tonga and Samoa which, let me say, was a severe physical test. Tonga and Samoa may not be the most technically gifted of sides in international rugby but they certainly know how to knock ‘seven shades of shit’ out of you for eighty minutes. After the tour we finally had some holiday (a whole two weeks off). Since the birth of my twin girls in October 2002 I had been home for eight days in a row only twice. Our final run-in towards the 2003 World Cup was a training camp in Poland, a training camp in Limerick, a training camp in Athlone, warm-weather training in Bilbao, Spain – where it rained all the bloody time – and then warm-up matches against Wales, Italy and Scotland.

  During this build-up we had some motivational speeches from some amazing characters including ‘Marvellous’ Marvin Hagler, the undisputed World Middleweight Champion throughout most of the eighties, and the well-known adventurer and explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

  Marvellous was some creature, probably one of the greatest all-round boxers in recent history, and believe me he had no problem in telling us that. With a very level head he extolled the virtues of ‘starving the doubt’ and ‘feeding the faith’. Although I understood the sentiment, I’m still not entirely sure how you actually achieve this. Anyway, this strategy obviously worked somewhat better for him than it did for the Irish team.

  Sir Ranulph was a completely different experience. Throughout his career he has tended to attempt things that had not been done before, taking routes no one else has entertained or embarking on expeditions without any support other than the equipment and food he could carry or drag on a sledge. To be honest he could have spoken to us about tiddlywinks and made it sound interesting, but what a nutter. Five months before talking to us he’d had a double heart bypass operation and a couple of months later he successfully completed seven marathons on seven continents in seven days. I don’t think I could have quite managed that. My biggest difficulty being that I didn’t even know there were seven continents. Other than that . . .

  With all the intensive training and motivational assistance now complete we left for Australia on 29 September, landing in Sydney on 1 October where we were given one day to get over the trip and the jetlag (not enough time, in case you’re interested). The travel seemed to affect some people worse than others. We thought Victor Costello might have been a casualty following a briefing on the local wildlife when we heard him ask Keith Gleeson, ‘So what colour is the Australian Brown snake?’ All the locals were very friendly with most claiming to have family connections to Ireland, even if it was only as a result of owning an Irish Terrier. It was pleasing to hear the Irish pool games were some of the hottest tickets for this stage of the tournament.

  All of our World Cup matches were well documented at the time, so perhaps I can enlighten you regarding some of the things the boys did during their downtime. On one particular occasion we were offered a variety of options. We could climb the Sydney Harbour Bridge (why would you want to do that?). Go to the horse racing at Gosford (something I was tempted to do when I heard it was Ladies Day). Or visit the set of the Aussie soap Home and
Away (just try and keep me away). What we didn’t realise was that this seemingly innocuous trip was to be responsible for a major revelation. One that shook many of the squad to their very core. It transpired that scrum-half Peter Stringer was a massive fan of the TV show. He knew all the character names, the back stories, the actors who played them and much more besides. This was a man who had been entrusted to make split-second decisions on the pitch. It was very worrying.

  Donncha O’Callaghan provided my personal highlight of the day when we were observing the filming of a scene taking place in a living room. On the coffee table was a large bowl of fruit and between takes, Donncha would sneak in and remove one piece of fruit at a time. I know it’s not clever, but when every waking hour seems to be filled with rugby, rugby, rugby, watching a bowl of fruit slowly disappear, knowing it will be broadcast across the world in a few weeks’ time, seemed hilarious to me.

  Following my exciting visit to Home and Away, on the next occasion we had some time to ourselves I decided to go scuba diving, having qualified a couple of years earlier. Just before the dive I asked my usual question of the guide.

  ‘Any sharks out there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘WHAT?!! That’s not the right answer – you’re supposed to lie.’

  Seeing the genuine look of fear on my face the instructor tried to save the situation by telling me he had never seen one on this particular dive and I’d have more chance of getting killed by a coconut than a shark. He obviously thought I was an idiot. I knew there were no coconuts under the water but there might be a f****** shark! I carefully made my descent, and was more vigilant than at any time in my life. The growing fear inside me was compounded when Mal O’Kelly cut his foot. Bright red blood flowed freely from the wound, which is surely tantamount to the ringing of a dinner bell to any shark within a twenty-mile radius? I made an instant decision, and left the water as fast as I could, leaving the lanky eejit O’Kelly to fend for himself. I’d seen Jaws after all.