STEPHEN JONES calls the 2003 World Cup “the great transformation” for Wales and so it was, after years of under-achievement since the flop in the 1999 home tournament when hope had been so high.
Four years later, in Australia, few people expected anything at all, certainly not after the Six Nations whitewash in 2003 and a record eight-match losing sequence that had its effect on how Wales’ Kiwi coach of that time was widely regarded.
It is easy to forget that Steve Hansen had to succeed Graham Henry in an emergency in 2002 and, if Henry could not do it, there was no reason to suppose his assistant would do any better. In 2011, they guided New Zealand to the Webb Ellis trophy.
Hansen’s insistence that performance was all that mattered might just as well have been gobbledegook for all the understanding the Welsh public had as defeat followed defeat. These included a record home loss to England in a warm-up match when the visitors fielded a second team against the home firsts. A week earlier, Wales had had a drubbing in Dublin.
To this day, Jones, the former fly-half who last month came home from London to Llanelli to take up his new job as backs coach of the Scarlets, swears by Hansen. At the time, plenty of people would have preferred to swear at him.
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“He was wonderful,” Jones said. “He did get a lot of flak, but every Welsh coach is going to have that. Steve stayed true to his belief. And if you look at his record with New Zealand, it’s unbelievable.
“I wouldn’t quite go so far as to say he learnt everything he knew from his experience in Wales, but he learnt a heck of a lot. Did I enjoy working with him? Yes. Did he tell me the truth? Yes. He challenged me as a player, told me aspects of my game weren’t good enough. Where I thought I was being the best I could be, he showed me I needed to be doing something else.”
Henry’s retirement left Hansen in charge of the All Blacks, his team’s 91% record unmatched in modern times. Fred Allen had 100% in the 1960s, but his tenure was 14 Tests to Hansen’s 47.
Hansen’s Wales team at the 2003 tournament put in two particular revivalist performances, against New Zealand and in the quarter-final against England, which almost explained what Hansen had meant by his performance philosophy. They lost, even so.
“The way the World Cup experience was organised for us was top-drawer,” Jones said. “Steve worked us harder than we had ever been worked before, but until we got to the World Cup, we had no reward for that effort. It wasn’t until our group game against New Zealand that the tide turned. But we’d known already we were improving in our physicality and skills.”
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During the year leading up to the tournament, Wales’ ignominies had included a defeat in Italy and missing the flight for their (losing) Tests in Australia and New Zealand when the players pursued a pay dispute with the Welsh Rugby Union by refusing to board their bus for Heathrow.
Before the World Cup, Colin Charvis, the Wales captain, said: “The team and I have been written off, but I don’t see us being humiliated.” That Charvis felt the need to say such a thing drew on the national mood. David Campese said Welsh rugby “has never been so woeful”. He would, wouldn’t he?
In the event, Wales qualified from Pool D, by beating Canada, Tonga and Italy with less ease than was comfortable, before the Sydney rendezvous with the All Blacks that turned everything upside down, including what some folk thought of Hansen.
Playing rugby of unfamiliar quality, Wales overturned a 28-10 deficit to lead 37-33. Then they ran out of puff and lost 53-37. “Woeful” Wales were now serious contenders in their quarter-final with England, according to New Zealand’s coach John Mitchell.
Innuendo has always had it that, Hansen having cut Welsh losses by settling on a shadow XV for the anticipated NZ hiding, it was the players who decided to give it a proper blast. Not so, Jones says.
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Shane Williams, a selection afterthought as Wales’ third scrum-half, was even given a run on the wing. “It was the first time Shane had been on the paddock,” Jones said. “He was on fire and they couldn’t handle him. But it’s a myth that we just went out and did our own thing. Things don’t happen off the cuff like that. When we were leading with the clock ticking down, we found ourselves in a position we had never been before.
“Teams have to learn how to win and, by that point, we hadn’t. Justin Marshall took the game by the scruff and that was that.”
A greater regret was letting the quarter-final in Brisbane slip. England had a number of wobbles on the way to becoming champions. Until the final against Australia, the worst was against Wales. “It didn’t exactly change the mood, because that was always very good,” Jones said. “But it’s always significant when you have confirmation that what you’re doing in training transfers to the rugby pitch for game day, so that New Zealand game was a massive tap on the back.
“We were leading England at half-time but Mike Catt came on and changed the game. The disappointment of missing out on the semi-finals was crushing. I don’t look back on it as some sort of glorious failure, but we were in a different situation where we hadn’t achieved the heights the Welsh team has in the current day. We were on a journey trying to get there and it had been a major step in the right direction.”
Now 37, Jones won 104 caps for Wales and played in six Lions Tests. His 970 international points put him sixth on the all-time list. He played for Clermont Auvergne in France and Wasps in England as well as for the Scarlets.