WHEN Jonny Wilkinson won England the 2003 World Cup, they were 20 seconds from 10 minutes’ sudden death and, after that, the excruciation of a drop-goal competition. Twelve years on, we are back at the point where sudden death could be a shoot-out as much as an actual result.
The agony, and the ecstasy. Now it would be down to place-kicking: it has occurred only once in big-time knock-out rugby, when Leicester beat Cardiff Blues at the Millennium Stadium in the Heineken Cup semi-final of 2009. Jordan Crane was the sadist who landed the Tigers’ winner, Martyn Williams the masochist who missed.
Leicester’s luminaries acknowledged it was a vicious way to settle any match, let alone a 26-26 thriller after extra-time with the try-count level, let alone one in which the wonderful Williams had a 100-cap career marked in a wholly inappropriate way.
“I found it very uncomfortable to watch,” said the Tigers’ chief executive of the time, Peter Wheeler, a Leicester, England and Lions hooker. “I lost interest very early on, and could scarcely watch. In rugby, above all games, you win together or lose together.”
Three weeks later, Leicester lost the final by conventional means and a score of 19-16 to Leinster at Murrayfield. At the Millennium Stadium the victorious Leicester players’ overriding sensation had been compassion; soon enough, however, one eminent Cardiff team-mate was mischievously evoking England’s shoot-out failures in football for Williams’ benefit. Talk about gallows humour.
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“It’s still one of the first things people mention to me – what they remember – even with all the other things I did in rugby,” Williams said. “And though I was devastated, and it was very raw for a week or two, I can laugh about it now.”
That one and only shoot-out changed how it would ever again play out. Each team had five nominated kickers; Cardiff went first. When it ended 4-4, with Tom James missing for the Blues immediately after Johne Murphy for Leicester, the rest had to fall into the line of doom.
This is how forwards such as Williams and Crane came to be eighth in kicking from the middle of the 22. Williams hooked wide; Crane, once a junior goalkeeper on West Brom’s books, kicked his as sweetly as any of those supposedly more expert who had preceded them.
“It was something I never expected to be taking on because by then it would be done and dusted,” Crane said. “But I felt fine because no-one would have blamed me if I’d missed, whereas there’d have been more pressure as a back, especially on the front-line goal-kickers.
“I was eighth up so by then you’re expecting to see some misses. After Martyn missed we would still have been in it even I’d missed too. I knew how good it was to get to a Heineken Cup final, but with the way it happened you had to feel for your opponents.”
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If it again comes down to it in Europe, teams will have three nominated kickers aiming for the posts with an increasing degree of difficulty. In this World Cup it is five varying across the 22. In each case, these are the ones who must keep going if it is level after five kicks.
“I would empathise, and sympathise, with whoever it may befall over these next weeks,” Williams said. “The World Cup is so much bigger than the Heineken Cup and the change in rules means you wouldn’t have a non-specialist like me who’s going to miss.
“But in some ways that makes it worse. You have the weight of a nation, not just a club, on your shoulders. It’s a bad enough way for football matches to finish, but for rugby it’s terrible. They should just keep playing.”
For a while, of course, they will. As would have followed in 2003, if the scores were tied after 20 minutes’ extra-time, there would be another 10 seeking a “golden score” before the kicking contest began. It remains mercifully unlikely while also being eminently possible.
How would Dan Carter deal with it if it was for the Webb Ellis Cup itself? We may think we know, but it would be a professional stress unlike any even he had experienced.
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The comparison with, say, Sam Vesty taking Leicester’s second kick in 2009 exists, but it is slender, if only because it was still possible for others to compensate if Vesty had missed. He did not.
“I remember it vividly,” he said. “I watched Ceri Sweeney take his before mine and when I put the ball down I felt absolutely confident, 100% that I was going to kick it.
“I struck it nicely but as soon as it had gone over I pretty much broke down into an emotional wreck. There’s no way you should end a game of rugby like that. To think such a fine player as Martyn Williams could have that happen to him… it’s unbearably cruel.”
Williams could always have blamed Tom Shanklin for suggesting he use the same tee he had, as the first Blues kicker, once it went to sudden death.
“It was the most nervous I had ever been,” Shanklin said. “There were five kicking tees. I’d used the red one and suggested if he used it he couldn’t miss.
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“You don’t ever want to be that person but it turned out to be Martyn, and 10 minutes later in the changing room I unleashed his new nicknames on him: Stuart Pearce, Gareth Southgate, Chris Waddle. Believe me, I was just glad it wasn’t me.”