Very few people get to say that they are the best in the world. But we did it and I’d love these lads to do it too SAYS 2003 WORLD CUP HERO JASON ROBINSON
JASON ROBINSON is moving a little uncomfortably. The previous night he had made an ill-judged return to the rugby field to play in a Roses league legends match at Headingley.
It confirmed that although he can still step like a human zig-zag, at 45 those shimmering moves occur in slow motion rather than on fast forward these days.
It is 16 years since Robinson danced under the Sydney lights in what remains English rugby union’s finest moment. Sixteen years since the boy from the backstreets of Leeds touched down against Eddie Jones’s Australia as the Rugby World Cup came home.
It could have been yesterday. The aching Yorkshireman sips his coffee and casts his mind back to that night and that team of English giants – Martin Johnson, Jonny Wilkinson, Lawrence Dallaglio – who he walked with.
“That was a special group. We had a huge desire to do something no England team had ever done. Never before had it been done and never since,” he said.
“Very few have the opportunity to say that at that moment in time they are the best in the world and that they’ll always be remembered for that. We set a marker there for everyone else to get to.
“I’d love these lads now to get the opportunity to reach that and to experience that feeling. Nothing for me compares to that whistle at the end of the World Cup final.”
Robinson has done some work with the class of 2019 and he likes the cut of their jib. He thinks they have the beating of their rivals in Japan physically.
The unknowable is how they will handle the pressure of a World Cup. In 2003, with each game the pressure ratcheted up. England trailed Samoa at half-time in their group match, also against Wales in the quarter-final. As for the final, in front of 82,000 at Sydney’s Olympic Stadium, the tension was extraordinary. It started badly for Robinson with Lote Tuqiri winning an aerial battle from a cross-kick to score. “The key thing was to get straight back into the game and that was one of my strengths,” said Robinson. “I was thinking, ‘Get a touch, get involved’.” The touch, when it came, was a glorious one as Robinson tracked Dallaglio’s break to score the most replayed try of his career. Recalling the tension of extratime that day, he said: “In those situations it’s so easy to go off script but that was never happening. “When the right time came Jonny called for it and kicked it off what was supposedly his poor leg – but that leg was 10 times better than my good leg. When you needed points, he was the man.” For the 2019 side, the moment has arrived when they discover if they too can be giants.