SACRIFICE?
Shut up and get on with it... there are worse things you could be doing
MARTIN JOHNSON is not a film buff. There is a reason he likes going to the cinema but it is not to cast a critical eye over the acting skills of Ralph Fiennes, to comment upon the intonation of Benedict Cumberbatch or to grab the chance to watch a new print of The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.
‘I only go to the movies with my kids,’ Johnson says. ‘It’s a great opportunity for a little kip. They say “let’s go and watch this, dad”. I say “really?”, they say “yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s great”. I say “really?”, they say “yeah, yeah, yeah”. So we go in and it’s nice and dark. Cinemas are great. How comfortable are the seats now. Big.’
Johnson always preferred the dark. He distrusted the limelight and the way personalities refracted in its rays. His never altered, howeverr bright the glare. It stayed strong and steady. And through his triumphs as England captain and his struggles as England coach at the 2011 World Cup, Johnson remained the loyal, decent, unaffected bloke who retained the affection of all around him.
It is 10 years now since he retired d as a player but Johnson has not changed. Not one jot. England’s 2003 World Cup-winning captain is, andd always has been, reassuringly happy y in his own skin. He is still a colossus.s He plays at being an old curmudgeon but there is great warmth beneath.h And he is still a relentless debunker of anything that so much as casts a sideways glance at pretension.
He listens to a question about ut what he sees when he looks inn the mirror and raises a cautionary y eyebrow. It takes a couple of goes s to get him to answer and when n the reply comes, there is a hint of exasperation in his voice. ‘I see me,’ he says, ‘but I don’t look in the mirror that often, to be honest.’
He does admit to having enjoyed Building Jerusalem, the new documentary that focuses on the roles played by him, Jonny Wilkinson and Sir Clive Woodward when England won the World Cup in Australia 12 years ago. ‘When they first showed it to me,’ he says, ‘there’s one bit where I said “rewind it, rewind it”. They said “why?”, I said “I look bloody great. I look young. I’m almost athletic”.’
On Friday, England captain Chris Robshaw and his side will begin their attempt to try to emulate Johnson the player when they open their World Cup campaign against Fiji at Twickenham. They are not tournament favourites, as Johnson’s team were in 2003, but the old skipper sees no reason why they cannot force their way into contention.
He is in favour of the policy of his successor as coach, Stuart Lancaster, not to countenance the selection of English players who play abroad and is scathing about the choice of those who have decided to put club rugby ahead of the national team. Johnson still shoots from the hip, just like always. Unlike Wilkinson, he is at peace with retirement. He is not tortured by the loss of identity. There are no pictures of the 2003 triumph on his wall at home. No mementos dotted around. Where’s his medal? ‘Good point,’ he says. ‘I saw the box the other day and I thought “what’s in that?” It’s not in a display case; put it that way. I haven’t got anything from my career on the wall at the moment. I will do as I get older. I’ve always lived a very normal life. I enjoy living a normal life. I enjoy being a normal person.
‘As far as the mirror goes, I just see the bloke I always saw. I have always had a level of selfawareness. When you do things and people talk about you, I never took any of that. All the praise and acclaim, I never took it. I always felt I had my feet on the ground.
‘Apart from anything else, rugby’s a great sport for doing that. We won that World Cup final on a Saturday in Sydney. The next week, I was on a muddy training field in Leicester with Peter Shaw who was about 6ft 5ins tall and 19st, trying to take me to pieces.
‘We did a parade around London on Tuesday morning and then we trained. We played the following Saturday. We were very much back into reality. The World Cup was like a little separate world that you dipped your toe into occasionally and just went “Christ, that’s mad”.
‘It was very enjoyable, nice to do, interesting, but not real. I just see a very normal bloke with normal things on your mind that everyone else has. Kids, school, the shower’s leaking, the dog needs a walk.
‘If you asked me what I consider important, I think being an honest and reliable bloke, a trustworthy bloke, a decent bloke. You try and do the right thing in your life, don’t you? You try and do the right thing by your family, the people you deal with, whoever you come across.
‘Rugby has a bearing on your life that you don’t really think about at the time. It’s that type of sport. It’s quite black and white. Is this guy a good bloke? Is he accepted as one of us? Is he into what we’re about or not? Will he stand up and be counted? Does he work hard? Is he trustworthy and reliable? Can we believe him? All those sorts of things.
‘They are not consciously thought about but when you are in a group like that, you want to be respected. The word respect gets overused but you want people to think you are trustworthy and honest.
‘There’s nothing like playing but life moves on. People still ask if I miss playing. Well, I’ve been retired 10 years. I’m 45. Your life moves to a different stage. I’ve got kids. I was lucky. When I was 35 I knew I was done. I do get a bit annoyed when I see people talking about “the sacrifice” players make. What sacrifice? What else are you going to do? You train and try to get better. That’s how you become good. Or try to become good.
'Yeah, when you’re away from family for a long time and you’ve got kids, I’ll give you that. But the rest of it, just shut up and get on with it. I always knew there are a lot worse things you could be doing. Even on the worst day, when you are on some training field and the rain is
1909 Local sides Harlequins and Richmond played the first game at Twickenham
coming in horizontally and your body feels sore, there are a million and one worse things to be doing.’
After his playing career finished in 2005, Johnson became England coach in 2008 and left after offthe-field controversies marred the squad’s 2011 World Cup. Many saw his departure as a necessary sacrifice to pave the way for the new harder-line culture introduced by Lancaster. Others mourn his exit.
The common theme is Johnson left with his honour intact. ‘We let Johnno down,’ said England prop Dan Cole. ‘He took the brunt of the blame, wrongly in some regards. The players were also to blame but he walked away taking all the bullets. It’s a credit to the man he did that.
‘I think he is remembered wrongly — he’s just remembered for that World Cup but nobody remembers we won the Six Nations that year. And at that World Cup we lost to France, the team who should have won it.'
Johnson is not the type to harbour bitterness. He has moved on from 2011. He thinks England are in the mix to win this World Cup. He says the tournament is “wide open” but he counsels caution, too. He still remembers something he learned when England’s 1999 World Cup squad spent some time with the army before the tournament.
‘They have a great saying,’ Johnson recalls, ‘which I love to this day: “no plan survives first contact with the enemy”. And they’re right. England have lost Manu [Tuilagi], they’ve lost Dylan [Hartley]. Wales have lost players. Everything is moving already. It’ll move again and shift.
‘You’ve got to handle the bad things as well. Your team has got to be flexible tactically on the field and it has to be resilient off the field. You will lose somebody. Nearly every team will lose somebody. You’ve just got to hope it’s not somebody irreplaceable.
‘It can be just one game. What if you concede an interception straight away? What if we’re 10-0 down to Fiji after 15 minutes? Where’s winning the World Cup then? It’s way down there. In 2003, we were 10-3 down to Wales in a quarterfinal, looking at England’s biggest rugby disaster in our history.
‘I was thinking “win the World Cup? F*** me. I just want to score the next points.” You’re always in that position in rugby. Just score the next points. Do the next thing right. Deal with the next five minutes. See what that brings and go from there.
‘England go into Fiji, Wales, Australia, Uruguay. Can they win those? Yeah, of course they can. They can beat those teams at home. They can beat them away. More chance of doing it at home and if they do that, bang, bang, bang, bang, then you’re in the quarter finals.
‘Tournaments are long, long things. You see teams mentally just not perform. Others perform above themselves and get inspired. There is no black and white formula of how you get there. Look at our football team. “Can you win the World Cup?” Don’t even answer that.
‘You can only win the World Cup if you’re in the final. You don’t win a pool game and somebody says “you played so well we thought we’d make you champions today”. It doesn’t happen. You have got to get there, get past games you should win and games you shouldn’t win, get past suspension, injury, criticism, media, everything that goes on round it.’
JOHNSON still l oves the game. Experience has not soured him. He is thankful for his career. But he has a few objections to the way some aspects of rugby have developed. His approach remains resolutely old school.
He was, for instance, appalled when he went to watch England’s match against France in the Six Nations at Twickenham last March and witnessed a furore over Courtney Lawes’ tackle on Jules Plisson. ‘People all around me were going “off, off, off”,’ Johnson says. ‘I was looking at them and going “what are you doing?” Nigel Owens, absolutely fair play to him, was the referee and he got them together and said “calm down, nothing’s happened, get on with the game”. No penalties, no cards, nothing. Get on with it. Nothing’s happened. We don’t have to get all self-righteous.
‘Things are going to happen. It’s rugby. People like rugby because guys go out there and batter each other a bit and there’s a bit of give and take and they don’t moan too much.’
There’s a twinkle in Johnson’s eye now. Rugby still moves him. He once said he and England team-mate Austin Healey had agreed once their playing careers finished, they would have to start robbing banks to replace the adrenaline rush.
Johnson laughs at the memory. ‘We haven’t been caught yet,’ he says.
£715 Official price of a Category A ticket for this year's World Cup final