Twenty minutes of havoc and Lomu had put the game beyond us
We were rolled over by a legend in 1995 and the feeling of mortification has still not left me
It was the only game I ever played for England when I knew after just 20 minutes that we had lost. It was also the game where one man was catapulted on to the world sporting stage. We are, of course, talking about the great, sadly late, Jonah Lomu. Tomorrow’s World Cup semi-final will not be a repeat of that 1995 game at Newlands in Cape Town, but it will bring back memories for anyone who played in or watched it.
In retrospect, England got many things wrong before and during that game and the thrashing we suffered was, at least in part, self-inflicted.
First amongst the errors was the break we had after the quarter-final, where we had knocked out Australia with a dramatic late dropped goal from Rob Andrew. Nothing wrong with having a break, but Sun City was not the place to go.
It was not that we messed about, it was that it had so many distractions we failed to concentrate properly on what was to come. We did not do this consciously but in retrospect it was a bad mistake
The second blunder, and it turned out to be seminal, was in our analysis of New Zealand. We had seen footage of Lomu running over opponents but assumed, wrongly, that he had been able to scatter opponents because they were not good enough to tackle him properly.
This was a classic demonstration of the limits of video study. What appears germane from afar does not always match what you will face on the pitch. Only when you have experienced something first-hand can you truly know what you have to deal with. And what happened that day is now a matter of record – we lost 45-29 – and the subject of countless replays on Youtube.
The pass to Lomu was poor. It went behind him and had the ball bounced a different way, it could have given Tony Underwood a free run to the Kiwi line.
It did not, and we all know what happened next. Lomu’s dispatch of first Underwood, the fruitless dive from Will Carling and then the doormatting of Mike Catt, is there for all to see and I remember every step of that run. Lomu proceeded to wreak havoc and within just 20 minutes he put the game comfortably beyond our reach.
In the subsequent World Cup final, the Springboks had learned this lesson and approached the
difficult task of stopping Lomu the only way you could.
The first player got hold of Lomu and hung on in any way possible, until a second or third tackler put him down. This left gaps elsewhere, but it was better to risk this than to allow Lomu to run free.
Ultimately, we only lost the try count by six to four, but the blistering start and Lomu’s four tries meant that this was of little import. Few fans will be able to tell you how many tries we scored, because the memory of Lomu’s demolition is all-pervasive.
If you think that New Zealand relaxed and let us record those scores, you do not know the Kiwi mentality, nor were you next to me when I heard Sean Fitzpatrick bellowing: “Don’t let these English ----- cross our line.’ After the game there was a sense of shock in our dressing room, but my principal feeling was one of embarrassment. There is no shame in losing a sporting contest; no shame in being beaten by a better team, but we had badly let down ourselves and the England fans. We had not done this on purpose, and it was not a case of not trying or of us having insufficient pride; nevertheless, we had not performed as we could and should have. Yes, Lomu was a phenomenon, the like of which had not been seen up to that point, but that does not lessen the feeling of mortification that stays with me and, I suspect, many of the England team who played that day.
It was a moment when the game changed, and people saw what was possible. The attention captured by Lomu, for himself and rugby, brought the game to a wider public; it was just shattering to have been on the wrong end of it.
Perhaps unexpectedly, my strongest memory from that game is not Lomu’s physical domination, astounding though it was. It is another moment that summed up our haplessness. A skewed clearance kick from Carling landed in the arms of Zinzan Brooke, the Kiwi No 8, just five metres inside our half. When I saw him shaping to take a drop at goal, I was mentally getting ready for a 22 drop-out. As the ball sailed through the posts, I found myself near Fitzpatrick and expected the inevitable sledging.
He simply shrugged his shoulders – it was that sort of day.