My record as a player against Wales reads: Won 12 Lost 1. That’s pretty good but naturally everyone remembers the one defeat.
A beautiful spring day at Wembley in 1999 should have been the perfect setting for an England Grand Slam. But no one had shown the script to Max Boyce and Tom Jones, who whipped the Welsh into a frenzy as they said goodbye to their temporary home ahead of the completion of the Millennium stadium.
A frenetic game followed, which England should and would have won but for Scott Gibbs dancing his way through our defence to score the decisive try at the death.
The morning after a loss like that, friends and family get in touch to offer commiserations. What you don’t expect is the bloke who inflicted the agony to say sorry. Yet there it was on my phone, a text message: “All right, Lol? Scotty here. Just wanted to apologise for the try yesterday.”
I learnt more in that defeat than I did in the 12 victories. I learnt that I never wanted to feel like that again and I learnt that to win big games you have to be ruthless in taking your chances. England didn’t exploit their opportunities at Wembley.
Advertisement
I don’t want to give too much credit to the Welsh but they unwittingly set us on course to the 2003 World Cup win that day. Even after Gibbs had scored we still could have won if we had converted a drop-goal chance but we panicked a bit and Mike Catt missed with his kick. Out of that failure came the play that would lead to Jonny Wilkinson kicking the winning points in Sydney four years later.
If, like me, you have sat next to Gareth Thomas in a TV studio and seen the veins on his neck bulge and his tattoos turn three-dimensional as he talks about beating England, then you will know that there is plenty of passion to this fixture. I like that — England v Wales was always the rivalry when I was growing up — but you can overdo it.
I got to know the Wales players on the 1997 British & Irish Lions tour and they were great. As a 24-year-old, it was a fantastic experience to room with veterans such as Dai Young and Ieuan Evans. Scott Gibbs was one of the stars of the series, and Rob Howley and Allan Bateman would have almost certainly made the Test team but for injury or, in Allan’s case, Jeremy Guscott standing in his way.
People say they don’t make good tourists. I think that’s a little glib. They don’t have any antipathy to the English, Scots or Irish, it’s just that some of them miss home a bit more.
More recently Warren Gatland, with some of his pre-match pronouncements, has attracted English ire. That’s just Warren. I know from playing under him at Wasps what a huge amount of respect he has for English rugby. He took great pride in the contribution of the Wasps contingent to England’s World Cup triumph.
Advertisement
For all my affection for those Wales guys, I’m pleased to say that, Wembley aside, I was part of some thumping wins over them. I don’t think it is any secret that in those early years of professionalism in the late 1990s, England were at least a step ahead of our Welsh counterparts in terms of physicality and fitness.
Sir Clive Woodward, with his insistence that we become the No 1 team in the world, demanded it. That, coupled with the fact that we knew the Welsh didn’t travel well, meant the aggregate score in the three matches at Twickenham in the period 1998-2002 was 156-48 in the home side’s favour. Wales didn’t win at Twickenham from 1990 until 2008.
They have won on three of their past five visits to west London. It’s no coincidence that the turnaround has come since Gatland and Shaun Edwards took charge. A lot is made of Gatland backing his team’s fitness to deliver in the final quarter.
Take those three victories: they trailed 19-6 with just over 30 minutes left in 2008 and scored 20 unanswered points; four years later, they were 12-9 down with less than 10 minutes to go and won 19-12; for the sake of everyone this side of Offa’s Dyke, I won’t bother to summarise how the game last September panned out.
I don’t believe their fitness was superior to that of England on those occasions, though they are undoubtedly better prepared than 20 years ago. More important has been Gatland’s coaching, the psychological edge he gives his players and the fact he is working with a cadre of talented and focused players. You would struggle to find anyone in the northern hemisphere who would surpass Alun-Wyn Jones, Sam Warburton and Jamie Roberts — to name three — for leadership and professionalism.
Advertisement
There are strong parallels with the 1999 defeat and the result at last year’s World Cup. Both were traumatic for England and the respective captains (no names!) were heavily criticised for their decision-making. Back then, we felt we owed the nation big time. I hope this crop of players feel the same. That may sound like a big load to put on them. If they don’t like that pressure, they shouldn’t be playing Test rugby.
