‘My first job was to get the referee off
Even the Australians grew to love Jason Leonard, despite him being an essential part of England’s 2003 World Cupwinning side. More importantly, so, too, had South African referee Andre Watson, the man who was threatening to derail England’s march to glory in that Sydney final, taking serious issue with the English scrummage, awarding penalty after penalty which Wallaby fly-half Elton Flatley duly kicked, all until “Fun Bus” Leonard came on late in the game to apply his Kofi Annan diplomatic skills. Never mind sorting out a peace process, Leonard had to persuade Martin Johnson of the merits of England not contesting the scrum. Any scrum. Not even on their own ball. Not even against the so-called wobbly Wallaby unit.
“Trust me, Johnno,” said Leonard. “We’ve got to stem the penalties and get the ref off our backs. Just trust me.”
Johnson did. Watson did, too. The penalty count stalled, Jonny Wilkinson had his drop-goal moment and the Webb Ellis Cup was England’s. And then began
Leonard’s second quest for champion status. By the time he and four team-mates, Martin Corry, Lawrence Dallaglio, Paul Grayson and Mark Regan – “The Sydney Five” – flagged down a police wagon after a fully committed session at the Bourbon Bar in the city’s we-never-close area of Kings Cross, the group were in danger of missing Clive Woodward’s three-line whip World Cup Sunday lunchtime gathering at the team base at the Manly Pacific. It was a long shot. The cops took them to their local station and put them in front of the desk sergeant who took them into a back room. “Right, sign these shirts and balls here for the boys and we’ll have you on your way back to Manly right away.”
The sight of five weary but exultant England players piling out the back of the Black Maria was part of the story of that historic weekend, those in white shirts getting the job done, or getting to a meeting, no matter what.
“We’d gone to Australia as favourites and we’d managed to deliver,” said Leonard. “Clive [Woodward] had challenged us to live up to our billing.
A lot of coaches or football managers would have ducked the issue and claimed that they weren’t favourites. But he wanted us to walk towards it, and live up to our billing.
“That was Clive. He was a breath of fresh air on the rugby scene, always trying stuff, some of which was a bit wacky – but he wasn’t afraid to get on the front foot.”
England arrived in Australia very much on the front foot. They were (finally) Grand Slam champions after just missing out in the previous four campaigns, and they followed that up with a defining tour of New Zealand and Australia in June. Beating the All Blacks in Wellington 15-13 before posting their first Test victory over the Wallabies in Australia with a mighty performance in Melbourne, winning 25-14 .
“Yeah, that gave us all a bit of confidence,” said Leonard. “We still knew we had a lot to do if we wanted to win the World Cup. This was going to be my fourth World Cup and I knew how hard it was.
“I was a youngster in 1991 when Australia just got the better of us. South Africa four years later was when we ran into Jonah Lomu or, rather, he ran into, through, and over us. The 1999 World Cup saw us go out a bit lamely to South Africa in the quarter-finals. We’d had a good couple of years prior to 2003, but we knew that there were no gimmes.
“We targeted that pool match against the Springboks as a real tester for us, a must-win match. We trained our butts off that summer.”
Dave Reddin (who moved to the Football Association afterwards) was a cutting edge conditioning coach, a hard taskmaster, which is exactly what the players wanted.
“We wanted to be the world’s best at everything and that meant being fitter than any other bugger,” said Leonard. And they were. The sweat and toil paid off, particularly in the semi-final demolition of France. Before that, England had to work their way through their pool stage and that all-important fixture against South Africa in Perth. There had been recent history between the two sides.
“Yeah, it had been a bit lively the previous year at Twickenham, with Jannes Labuschagne sent off for clipping Jonny [Wilkinson] and their captain, Corne Krige, tearing round trying to demolish anything in sight,” recalls Leonard.
England came through in Perth, 25-6, with the decisive try coming from Will Greenwood in the second half. But if England believed the Springbok match would be the be-all and end-all of that group, they were quickly disabused of being so presumptuous by a blistering display from Samoa in Melbourne.
Rattled and trailing 16-13 at