THEY BLEW IT WHEN IT MATTERED MOST
Brilliant against the All Blacks, England froze in their greatest test and that will haunt them for ever
ONE day l ast week, Sir Clive Woodward sat in a Tokyo hotel and talked about the thought that sometimes haunts him. In his quieter moments, he said, he thinks about what his life might have become, how bitterness and regret might have engulfed him, if England had not won the World Cup final in 2003.
‘What would have happened if we had lost that game?’ the former England coach asked as his captain that day, Martin Johnson, sat alongside him. ‘ I think we’d all have turned out pretty nasty people.
‘ I wouldn’t have wanted to be responsible for how I turned out. It was the chance of a lifetime. It would have been horrible.’
In Japan’s November night, Eddie Jones and his England team stared into that void after being crushed in yesterday’s final. Outplayed and out-thought, overwhelmed by the physical might of their opponents and the boot of Handre Pollard, they stared into a darkness of knowing that they had been unable to seize an opportunity that may never come again.
They gazed inside themselves and knew that when their moment came, they had turned away from it. ‘There is,’ Jones told everyone two weeks ago, ‘ always a better samurai round the corner.’ It turns out he was right. When his runnersup medal was draped around his neck at the end, Jones walked a couple of paces and took it off.
His England team had lit up this t ournament with a semi- f i nal performance against the All Blacks that many rated as one of the best England displays there has ever been. It was enough to make them clear favourites for the final.
The sense of anti-climax when defeat was confirmed was huge.
When their greatest test came, England froze. When he was asked what had happened, Jones grew increasingly fractious. ‘ I don’t know,’ he repeated. He admitted earlier in the week that it had taken him years to get over Australia’s defeat by England in 2003, when he was coach of the losing team. This defeat, given that England had reached such heights seven days earlier, may hit him even harder. A restless workaholic, his quest for fulfilment will go on.
This final produced a wonderful story. It was just that it was not England’s story. We came here looking for our rebirth but we got South Africa’s instead. And when we talk about our failure to handle the pressure of the final, the South Africa coach Rassie Erasmus and the country’s first black captain, Siya Kolisi, who grew up in a township in Port Elizabeth, have better words than we do.
‘In South Africa,’ said Erasmus with Kolisi and the Webb Ellis Cup sitting beside him, ‘pressure is not having a job, having a close relative who is murdered. Rugby should not create pressure, it should create hope. We have a privilege, not a burden.
‘ When you sit down and think about it, there was a stage when Siya didn’t have food to eat and, yes, that is the captain and he led South Africa to hold this cup and that is what Siya is.’
Defeats like this shine a harsh spotlight on the losers. They turn what was a successful tournament into an agonised inquest. They become an examination of what might have been and an inventory of what might never be. Sir Eddie Jones may be lost to history. There will be no London victory parade. Immortality just got withdrawn.
And we will not mention this group in the same breath as Sir Alf Ramsey’s Boys of ’66. And we will not mention them in the same breath as Woodward’s Dad’s Army who won Down Under. And we will not mention them in the same breath as Eoin Morgan’s boys of summer who held their nerve and won the Cricket World Cup less than four months ago.
And we will not talk about Owen Farrell in the same breath as Jonny Wilkinson. And we will not talk about Maro Itoje in the same breath as Johnson. And we will not include Farrell with Johnson, Morgan and Bobby Moore in the company of great England captains who have won a World Cup. Not yet, anyway.
Entry to that pantheon has been withheld, too.
After landmarks like Liverpool’s 4-0 win over Barcelona, four English football teams contesting the two major European finals, the Cricket World Cup victory and Lewis Hamilton’s ongoing stroll towards a sixth F1 drivers’ title, England’s rugby players were supposed to complete an annus mirabilis f or English sport here in Yokohama but when the chance came, they blew it. As brilliant as they were against the All Blacks, so they were embarrassingly poor against South Africa.
They could not cope with the power of the Springbok pack, they gave away penalty after scrum penalty, their discipline was poor, their handling was ragged, their passing was awry. By the end of this humbling defeat, they were out of ideas.
Shaken by the early loss of Kyle Sinckler, who was knocked unconscious in a collision with Itoje’s forearm, England seemed unable to cope with the pressure and their nerves. So commanding against New Zealand and Australia, they allowed themselves to be bullied by the last of the southern hemisphere giants that stood between them and the Webb Ellis Cup.
England’s hooker, Jamie George, had also spoken last week of how elite sportsman have to do their jobs under pressure. He talked about how Jason Roy had gathered the ball in the field after the final ball of Jofra Archer’s Super Over in the World Cup final at Lord’s. He talked about Roy’s throw and how Jos Buttler had gathered the ball and completed the run-out that won the game. George knew that he and his team-mates would have to do the same.
But it didn’t happen. What happened instead was the equivalent of Roy fumbling that ball and then throwing it 20 feet over Buttler’s head. They did not rise to the pressure. They bowed to it.
It was never going to be easy. This was South Africa. These were the Boks. Johnson said he had been grabbing people by the collar all week in Tokyo, trying to correct them when they told him South Africa would be supine victims. He recalled an encounter during his playing career with men who were charming off the pitch but very different on it. ‘It was utterly brutal, physically,’ Johnson remembered.
Woodward, who had been so bulli sh about England’s prospects against the All Blacks, had also sounded a note of caution. ‘ You know what’s coming when you play South Africa,’ Woodward said on the eve of the match. ‘When the pressure is on, they revert to what’s in their DNA, and their fans love it, the whole place loves it.’
We knew what was coming but still we were powerless. It had seemed that England were peaking at just the right time. Jones had preached about how his team had to keep getting better and better to win the World Cup. Match by match they had managed that.
Until yesterday, when their performance fell off the edge of a cliff. Maybe one day, some of them will be able to put it right. Until then, in their quiet moments, they will be haunted by what might have been.