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51.4782°N, 3.1826°W
Saturday, 16 March 2013. Wales v England, Six Nations decider
I’m ready to pile in as first man into the ruck when I see something.
They’ve got no one sweeping.
I scoop the ball up and burst through the middle. The crowd roar is like a tsunami at my back. I look right, then left. The speed and suddenness of my burst has taken even my team-mates by surprise. All I can see are white shirts: seven of them, some muddied and dirty and others still pristine, scrambling back behind me.
Ten metres. Twenty. Run, Forrest. Run.
Farrell’s up ahead, waiting for me. He goes high. Too high. I half-shrug him off and keep going a few more paces with him clinging onto my neck until Tom Croft arrives to help him bring me down.
Phillsy fires it out fast while England are still scrambling. Justin with Cuthie outside him and Mike Brown trying to cover both of them. Justin drawing Brown, throwing the dummy and keeping on. Brad Barritt half-catching Justin, letting Brown make the tackle second time round, but Cuthie’s still on Justin’s shoulder and he takes the pass to go in untouched.
Still on my hands and knees 40 metres away, I punch the ground as hard as I can.
Game, set, match, championship.
Rach and I go out for a meal. I’m asked for three autographs even before the starter’s arrived, and then when it does come and I’ve got a mouthful of food, some bloke just plonks himself down and puts his arm around me so his mate can take a photo. The autographs I don’t mind, but the photo I do. No one looks their best while eating. Just ask Ed Miliband and his bacon sandwich.
It’s a far cry from that moment in St David’s 2 after my first home game two years ago – only two years ago – when Rach and I giggled at my being recognised by a solitary person. There aren’t that many places in Cardiff where I won’t be bothered now.
I buy a drum kit and thrash away on it for hours on end to let off some steam. Dad approves. He’s got about 600 heavy metal albums, and always says drumming’s the heartbeat of that kind of music. When I’m playing I imagine myself as some kind of rock god, but in reality I probably look like Animal from The Muppet Show.
Rach tries to get me reading, but I’m more interested in watching property shows on TV. I love real estate. Ryan and Shane have got their own letting agency, and I pick their brains about the property market whenever we’re in training camp. If this whole rugby thing doesn’t work out, I’d like to pursue a career in that kind of field.
Sunday, 5 February 2012. First match of the Six Nations, in Dublin against an Ireland side still smarting from the World Cup quarter-final. It’s another immensely physical, take-no-prisoners game. I get a dead leg in the first half, and at half-time the physios assess it and tell me I’m off.
A dead leg might not sound much – it’s the kind of thing kids try to give each other in the school playground – but its more technically known as a thigh contusion, a crushing of the muscle against the bone which tears the fibres of that muscle and makes the leg hard to move.
Injury #6.
I watch the entire second half from the bench. With 15 minutes to go, Bradley Davies tip tackles Donnacha Ryan off the ball. It’s much worse than the one for which I was sent off in the World Cup semi-final four months ago, and Bradley’s very, very lucky that the card Wayne Barnes shows him is yellow rather than red.
By the time Bradley comes back on with five minutes to go, we’re six points down, but George North scores in the corner to bring it back to within a point, and with less than a minute left we’re awarded a penalty bang in front of the posts. Pence nails it, and we squeak home.
Saturday, 25 February. Having missed our win against Scotland through that injury, I’m raring to go against England at Twickenham. If we win this, we win the Triple Crown too, and of course keep our Grand Slam hopes alive.
Twenty-seven minutes gone, 3–3. England have a lineout and scorch upfield, moving it fast through the hands: Dylan Hartley on the run around, Dave Strettle off his wing into midfield, Brad Barritt running hard on the outside shoulder. It takes three men – Foxy, Phillsy and Pence – to bring Barritt down, and already they’re looking to move it wide, so I haven’t got time to go all the way around the ruck. I come into the defensive line from an offside position, turning to keep an eye on the play as I do so, and by the time Lee Dickson dive passes out to the England left I’m just about onside.
They’re ten metres out with a man over and we’re scrambling. I’m waving defenders over to my side but we haven’t got enough. Faz (Owen Farrell) shuffles left and passes to Manu Tuilagi. I’m on Tuilagi’s inside shoulder and outside me there’s only Cuthie (Alex Cuthbert) drifting with two men on him, so I have to make this tackle, I simply have to.
He’s a unit. Go low on him. Go high and he’ll just bounce me off. Go low on him and don’t let go. Close your eyes and dive at his ankles.
I’m side-on to Tuilagi as he hammers towards the line. Full stretch as I dive at him, head first and willing to break my nose if that’s what it takes. I wrap my arms round his ankles and he hits the ground. Keep holding on. Don’t let him get up. He tries to bounce himself forward but I’m still there, and now we’ve got men in the ruck and I’m leaping up to take up the guard position on the blindside and they’re having to work it back the other way towards the open spaces.
At the time, I don’t think anything of that tackle. I know it’s technically a good one and saved a try, but it’s also the kind of tackle I practise in training several times a week and one I’d always back myself to make.
It’s only after the match, which we win 19–12 to secure the Triple Crown, that I find the world and his wife wanting to congratulate me on it.
I sprain my medial knee ligament during that game and have to sit out our victory against Italy at the Millennium a fortnight later.
Injury #7.
Sunday, 17 March. Cardiff, and we’re four wins from four matches. This one’s for the Grand Slam, and who else can our opponents be but France? Not a single player on either side will forget what happened the last time we met. Winning today won’t erase the pain of that defeat, but losing is also unthinkable. Winning four games out of five is a hell of an achievement in any Six Nations, but if the one you lose is the very last one when you’re going for a Slam … it must take a long time to get over the hurt, put it that way.
Five things will secure us the win and the Slam, Shane says. Attack their scrum, change the points of our attack, and keep the tempo high, nullify their back row, and stick to our game plan.
The first half is frantic and scrappy. We come in at the break 10–3 up, but for me the game and the tournament are both over. I’ve damaged a nerve in my right shoulder, and my arm on that side is more or less useless. There’s no way I can carry on.
What is it about the French? Three times I’ve played them now, and not once have I finished the match. The knee injury in the Stade de France last year, the red card at Eden Park and now this.
We hang on to beat them 16–9 and win the Slam. Lyds is voted player of the tournament, which is richly deserved, and I’m absolutely chuffed for my great mate. But when I lift the trophy with my left arm – my right arm is hanging down immobile by my side – I don’t really feel I deserve to be the one holding it. Of the five matches in this year’s tournament, I’ve only effectively played two whole ones: the first half against Ireland, the match against England and the first half against France. Forty per cent of the total time I could have played.
Three months out, the doctors say. Injury #8.
Friday, 25 May. I carry the Olympic torch past the Millennium Stadium as part of the Cardiff section of the relay. The crowds are cheering and clapping, and their reaction makes me certain that the Games will be a huge success when they start in a couple of months’ time, despite all the grumbling about the cost, the disruption and how many things will go wrong.
Saturday, 26 May. The Western Mail carries a big picture of me with the Olympic torch. One for the scrapbook, I guess, apart from the small matter of the headline directly below the photograph.
PAEDOPHILE JAILED AFTER 12 YEARS ON THE LOOSE.
Saturday, 23 June. Sydney. Wales summer tour of Australia, Third Test. Less than half an hour gone, and I know my game is over. I come off to be replaced by Justin Tipuric, a man who many people think should have started the match in my place.
It’s been a pretty miserable tour all told. We lost the first Test in Brisbane 27–19, and the second Test last week in Melbourne by two points right at the end, with Mike Harris kicking an injury-time penalty when we thought that for once we’d managed to hold on in a tight game against Australia. That was the series gone, and in an hour or so’s time the Wallabies will sneak another narrow win – by even less this time, a single point – to close out the whitewash.
If it’s been miserable for the team, it’s been just as miserable for me. I’ve only just come back from the injury I sustained against France, and I always need a few games to get back into form, but I haven’t had that luxury here.
And if there’s one guy you don’t want to be playing against when you’re not on top of your game, it’s Pocock. He’s done a number on me in all three Tests, properly outplaying me. At my best, I’m a match for him; but I’m not, far from it.
Justin, on the other hand, is very much at his best, or very near to it. That’s why there’s such a groundswell of support for him to take my place. It’s a debate that won’t really go away for the rest of my career. It’s like the Beatles and the Stones, or Blur and Oasis; people tend to support one or other of us, whether it’s for Wales or the Lions.
Even though we play in the same position, we’re very different types of player. Justin plays more as a link man between forwards and backs. His hands and feet are quick enough for him to play 13 at international level, his levels of aerobic fitness are ludicrous – he and Bradley are the two best natural athletes I’ve ever played with – and his form for the Ospreys week in, week out is consistently good.
I’m stronger over the ball in the jackal and when hitting people in the tackle, and the ultra-physical way I play means I can’t put in big matches for the Blues on a regular basis. The one area where we’re both equally good is as lineout jumpers – indeed, in one Six Nations the two of us will end up with more lineout takes than anybody else, including our own second rows.
Certainly, Justin’s strengths are more visible to the casual fan. He does more of his work in the open, whereas I do more of mine on the floor in a pile of bodies. People see him pop up in a move to provide the extra man and make space for the men outside him; they don’t so often see the way I slow a ball down for just long enough to allow our defensive line to regroup. They don’t see the tries that my breakdown work has prevented four or five phases earlier, because I’ve helped ensure those tries aren’t scored in the first place.
But whether you’re Team Warburton or Team Tipuric, I can’t deny that right now Justin’s in better form than I am. I’ve always relished challenges like this – nothing makes me raise my game like knowing that my position’s under threat – but for once I’m beginning to doubt myself. The injuries have taken a lot out of me, as has the relentless physical grind: I’ve played 15 Test matches in the past year alone.
It’s a constant drip, drip, drip: the erosion of everything good. Perhaps it’s not that surprising. The margins are so slim at this level that no one can remain on top form indefinitely. McCaw puts it well when he says that we ‘live in that split second of time and space at the breakdown, a collision zone where 100-plus kilogram bodies are hurtling from diverse points of the compass towards a small ovoid focus. Success or failure can be measured in microseconds. Openside flankers live or die in those slivers of time.’
But it’s still frustrating, and it still eats away at me. Nine months ago, I could do no wrong. Now it seems I can’t do much right.
I go away with Rach on holiday to west Wales. For these few weeks, between the end of one season and the start of the next, I’m emphatically not Sam Warburton, Wales captain and rugby player. I’m Sam Kennedy-Warburton, normal bloke.
We go for a walk in one of our favourite beauty spots. I go down on one knee and ask Rach to marry me. She starts crying. I have a moment of panic – I’ve got no Plan B if she says no – but through the tears she nods and says yes.
Amazingly, I manage to get through the whole thing without throwing up.
Saturday, 13 October. I dislocate the middle finger on my left hand six minutes into the Blues’ match against Sale. The doctors in A&E pop it back in for me.
Injury #9.
Friday, 26 October. On the tarmac at Cardiff Airport, waiting to fly to Dublin where we’ll play Leinster in the Pro12 tomorrow.
I’m looking out of the window at the marshal with his paddles, signalling the plane forwards. If that bloke offered me a job swap, right now I’d bite his hand off. Why can’t I have a job like that? Why can’t I have a job with no outside stress, no pressure from others? Why do I put myself through this? If we lose again, I’m going to get slagged off again, and my parents and Rach will worry themselves sick about me again.
Saturday, 27 October. We don’t lose. Rather, we don’t just lose. We get hammered. At half-time Leinster are leading 40–3, and though we make a slightly better fist of it in the second half, we’re playing for pride and pride alone. The final score is 59–22. They put nine tries past us. Our performance is abject: there’s no other word for it (at least not one you can use in polite company).
‘That’s the most embarrassing game I’ve ever played in,’ I tell Jamie afterwards.
He nods in agreement. ‘It was men against boys.’
I don’t see the aircraft marshal when we land back at Cardiff. Just as well. I’d probably grab the paddles off him and never let them go.
Time to stop the rot. We need to start winning again. We’ve got four autumn internationals at the Millennium on consecutive Saturdays – Argentina, Samoa, New Zealand and Australia – and we need to win at least the first two.
Saturday, 10 November. We’re looking ponderous and tired, a far cry from the team that just a year ago was winning hearts across the rugby world at the World Cup. The last time I played for Wales in this stadium was against France in March, when the crowd had roared us to a Grand Slam. Now that same crowd turns on us, booing as we go down to Argentina 26–12.
In the Millennium more than any other stadium, crowd and players are two sides of the same coin. When we’re playing well, that energises the crowd, which in turn makes us play even better; but when we’re playing badly, the crowd goes flat and truculent, which further saps the energy from our play.
Saturday, 17 November. The Samoa match is a war zone, as it often is against them. Hibbs (Richard Hibbard) and Dan Biggar are taken off injured in the first half; Ian Evans doesn’t come out after half-time. With 15 minutes remaining we’re ahead by a point, but they score a penalty and a try to run out 26–19 winners. More boos from the stands.
Saturday, 24 November. I’ve always prided myself on raising my game against the big boys, and they don’t come any bigger than the All Blacks. We haven’t beaten New Zealand since 1953, and that grim statistic never looks like being altered when we play them this time. They blow us away. They’re 23–0 up at half-time, and though we share the second half 10–10, the damage has long been done.
I play much better than before, which is something. With ten minutes to go, I’m walking towards a lineout when I hear the crowd cheering for me. It brings tears to my eyes, it really does. Ten minutes left and I’m crying on the pitch with happiness that I’ve had a good game and some of the pressure will stop.
Saturday, 1 December. Now we have to beat the Wallabies, not just to salvage something from this campaign but also to purge the memory of their two last-ditch victories against us in the summer.
I’m fired up for this one, and it shows. Michael Hooper pins me to the floor by my jersey and won’t let me go, even though the ball’s nowhere near us. After that he’s constantly chirping away, trying to get under my skin.
Suddenly, at another ruck, I’ve had enough. You know when people talk about seeing red? I really do – it’s like the whole world’s taken on the tinge of blood for a moment. I press my forehead against his and start throttling him as hard as I can. ‘Touch me again and I’ll cut your throat,’ I hiss. Then I pick him up, throw him on his back and jog off to catch up with play. At the next scrum, I notice that I’m still shaking with aggression.
With one minute to go, we’re 12–9 up. Surely we can’t lose it from here, a third last-gasp defeat in a row? Sure we can. Kurtley Beale scoots in at the corner with 30 seconds to go, and Australia win 14–12.
‘That’s the worst defeat I’ve ever been involved with,’ I tell the press. ‘To be in control really for the majority of the second half, and in the last play of the game we slip up. It’s really hard to take.’
It’s also left us with another problem, the magnitude of which becomes apparent two days later.
Monday, 3 December. I’m at the Tate Modern gallery in London, along with pretty much every member of world rugby’s great and good. It’s the draw for the 2015 World Cup. Almost three years out from the tournament seems an awfully long time to be doing this, but the logic is that it allows the organisers to make provisions for the visiting fans and official travel firms to block-book hotels.
The downside, of course, is that an awful lot can happen on and off the pitch in three years, which can play havoc with the seeding. A team flying high right now may be on the skids by the time the tournament comes round, and vice versa. Three years is a long time to maintain your form. So the logic, as so often seems to be the case, suits the administrators more than the players.
Our seven defeats in a row – the three summer Tests and the four autumn internationals – mean that, as of the new IRB rankings published this morning, we’re no longer in the top eight. Since the World Cup seedings are done in bands of four, this is a big deal.
We’re now in Band 3, along with Italy, Tonga and Scotland. Each pool at the tournament will have five teams, one from each band, which means we’ll have in our group one of the Band 2 countries (England, Ireland, Argentina and Samoa) and one of the Band 1 countries (New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and France).
They do the draw in reverse order. The countries in Bands 4 and 5 have yet to be determined; they’re still going through their qualification games, and with respect they’ll all be the kind of minnow teams who we’d back ourselves to beat every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
We’re the first name out of Band 3. Into Pool A we go.
Now the Band 2 countries are being drawn. First out of the pot, and coming into Pool A with us, is … England.
There’s a ripple around the room, something between a communal gasp and a collective whistling. England v Wales in a pool match. Talk about spicy. The cameras focus on England coach Stuart Lancaster and his captain Chris Robshaw. They’re both smiling, though quite how sincerely I can’t really tell.
From Band 1 we get Australia. This is now the Group of Death; not just the hardest group of this World Cup but of any World Cup in history. Three into two doesn’t go. Even at this distance, I’m absolutely determined we won’t be the ones to miss out.
Saturday, 2 February 2013. The new year starts as the old one left off – terribly.
The Irish come to Cardiff for the Six Nations opener. For the first half at least, they pulverise us. Simon Zebo scores their first try and then helps set up the second with a breathtaking piece of skill: when Jamie Heaslip’s pass goes low behind him, Zebo backheels it into his own hands without breaking stride. It’s the kind of thing most players couldn’t do in a hundred goes on a training pitch, let alone first time in a match.
The Irish are 23–3 up at half-time and extend that to 30–3 within two minutes of the restart. We’re looking down the barrel of a fifth straight defeat at the Millennium and an eighth in all. Any hope of a second consecutive Grand Slam has also gone. With all that, you might think we’d crumble even further.
In fact, quite the opposite happens. It’s as if we’re liberated, as if everyone simultaneously goes, ‘Ah, let’s just play some rugby.’ And that’s just what we do. We go back to basics, playing the percentages rather than trying to make every touch a Hollywood one. We know we’re better than this. Cuthie, Pence and Craig Mitchell all score tries to bring us back to within eight points, but Ireland hang on and we run out of time. ‘Pride’s a horrible beast,’ Hibbs says, ‘and a lot changes when your pride’s on the line.’
When you lose a match, you like to talk about taking positives from the defeat. Half the time that’s just stuff you say for the TV, but on this occasion it’s true. The shift in momentum during that second half is something that stays with us. Now we’ve got three away games on the trot to the ‘blue teams’ – France, Italy and Scotland. Tough asks, all of them, and we’re no longer defending a Grand Slam; in other words, we’re back under pressure, we’re back with the underdogs, the place where we play our best rugby.
When the BBC’s Sonja McLaughlan tells me during the post-match interview that no one’s won the Six Nations after losing their first match for 20 years – back when it was still the Five Nations – my first thought is, Well, records are there to be broken. The next day, Mike Averis writes some prophetic words in the Observer: ‘If Wales stop giving themselves ridiculous handicaps, they could still be in with a shout when the Six Nations ends next month.’
For me personally, the match is doubly frustrating. First, I don’t get a single turnover, which is both rare and disappointing – I usually target three or four each game. Every time I get over the ball in a ruck, the Irish double-team me and clean me out. Every single time. Just as our back row did a number on theirs at the World Cup 18 months earlier, now they return the favour. They’re definitely the alpha males today, and that hurts. But at least I’m still getting in those positions to compete for the ball. I’d be even more worried if I hadn’t been making it to the rucks in the first place.
Second, I get a stinger injury. You know that feeling when you bite into ice-cream and the cold goes searing through your teeth? Imagine that, but from just below your ear all the way down your left shoulder and arm to the end of your fingers. Now imagine that lasting not just a couple of seconds but a couple of minutes. It feels like my arm’s come out of my socket, and I can’t move that arm or sense anything I’m touching with it. The reason it’s my left arm is that I tend to lead with my right shoulder when I’m making big hits, which in turn makes my neck flex to the left, which in turn jams the vertebrae on that side and pinches the nerves there.
Injury #10.
I miss the next game, the win in Paris, and come off the bench for the last 12 minutes as we beat Italy in Rome. That we’ve done better without me than with me hasn’t escaped people’s notice, and once more the calls for me to be dropped start up again – not that they ever really went away, in some quarters at least. I try not to read most of the stuff, but that’s harder than it seems; people send me links, or texts asking, ‘Have you read what so-and-so’s been saying?’, and then curiosity gets the better of me and before I know it I’m spending hours online trawling through all the criticism.
And because often I can’t see who’s slagging me off – it’s just anonymous people hiding behind usernames – I give some of the stuff more credence than I should. If a fat, pissed bloke came up to me outside a pub and said, ‘Warburton, you’re shit,’ I’d just laugh, because I’d think, You don’t know the first thing about life as a professional rugby player, mate. But if that same fat, pissed bloke is saying it online, and it happens to chime with some negative thoughts I’m feeling, then rather than laugh it off I find that those criticisms can actually reinforce my negative thoughts and make them worse.
As that professional rugby player – and this goes for pros in all sports – you live and die by your results. In most workplaces, being a few per cent off your best won’t make much, if any, difference to your performance. But in professional sport those few percentage points can be the difference between being in the team or not, between having a contract or not, between having sponsor endorsements or not. That in turn means that your professional and your personal identities begin to merge. As long as you’re doing well you’re a good bloke, but as soon as you start to tail off you’re a shit bloke. You can’t rationalise it enough to separate one from the other.
And the logical endpoint of that is where I ended up while looking out of the window at Cardiff Airport, or marching into my in-laws’ house to pick up the dog once, or in a Wellington hotel at two in the morning, or in the middle of a game, or on any of the other half-dozen occasions I’ve ‘retired’ in my career. You just want out, because you’re tired of a life that seems so pressured and unreal.
I watch my local rugby club Rhiwbina play. No GPS chip in a little pouch on their shirts between the shoulder blades, no six-camera set-up capturing everything they do, no heart-rate monitoring, no analysis, no debrief other than piss-taking in the pub. It’s so tempting. All of that is so, so tempting. I’d lose the sponsored car, but so what? I could drive an eight-year-old Ford, work nine to five and live for the weekend.
Snap out of it. Snap out of it now.
I’ve worked too hard to get to where I am just to give it all up. Winners never quit and quitters never win. Anyway, everyone’s career has ups and downs. My time will come again, I’m sure of it. I have to be sure of it. I just don’t know when it will come again.
Rob Howley comes to me before the Scotland match and says two things: that I’m starting at 7, and that Ryan Jones is going to be captain instead.
‘Are you disappointed?’ he asks.
I almost laugh. ‘Disappointed? I’m delighted. To be honest, mate, I was going to have a word with you anyway. I need to get back to my old self as a player and a person. I want to be in the changing-room before a game and just listen to my crazy music for an hour, not say a word, and then go out and smash the opposition. That’s how I approach my game best. I don’t want to worry about press conferences or coin tosses or which way we should play or what I’m going to say to the players. I don’t want any of that stuff. I just want to concentrate on myself and play as well as I can, because that’s what’ll be best for the team.’
There’s another thing, of course. The reason Rob’s in charge for this season is that Gats is head coach of the Lions tour to Australia this summer, and every Home Nations player wants to be on that plane with him.
No one mentions it out loud. It’s almost a taboo: don’t put a hex on it. There’s a day when Cuthie writes his name on the massage sheet, to book himself a massage. Someone, just messing about, writes ‘Lions 14’ next to it. Cuthie comes back in, sees this, says, ‘No chance’ straight away and scribbles it out.
No one wants to say it, then, but everyone’s thinking it. Everyone wants to play as well as they can, not just for their team but for their own chances of being picked for the Lions.
If the tour had been two years ago, I’d have been a shoo-in. Now, I’m not so sure. Yes, I played well against Australia and New Zealand in the autumn, but the Ireland game last month did me no favours, and nor did sitting out the best part of the two matches since then. I’ve got two opportunities left to shine. The Scotland and England matches aren’t just vital for Wales’s chances of winning the championship; they’re vital for my chances of making the Lions trip.
And the Lions, even more than Wales, is what I’ve always dreamed about.
Derwyn, for one, knows this full well. At the height of the criticism of me, when every bloke with a smartphone and an internet connection is weighing in, he sends me a picture of a lion staring down the camera with blood dripping from its mouth.
‘Lions don’t worry about the opinions of sheep,’ says the caption.
Thursday, 7 March. I’m doing a session with Andy.
‘What’s your target for the Scotland match?’
‘To be man of the match.’
‘That’s fine. But what if, even though you have a man-of-the-match performance, the commentary people selecting it don’t see it that way?’
‘Then I’m going to have that good a game that they can’t ignore me.’
Saturday, 9 March. It’s cold, grey and windy at Murrayfield; practically tropical by local standards, in other words.
The match is a dogfight, scrappy and disjointed from the start. We go in at half-time 13–12 up. I’m playing well enough, making my tackles and hitting rucks. I’m solid without being outstanding, but I need more. I need to make an impact. A proper impact, the kind of impact the old Sam Warburton – the real Sam Warburton – would make.
The real Sam Warburton. Find him, and everything else will fall into place.
I’m looking down the barrel here. I’m not thinking about this match, and I’m certainly not thinking about the Lions. I’m thinking about me. Me, and me alone. The coaches are bustling around, talking. I don’t hear what they’re saying. I know what I need to do.
I clamp my headphones on: Anthrax, as loud and angry as I can make them.
Refuse to be denied.
Refuse to compromise.
The guitar, the drums, the singer screaming. Slamming in with the first drumbeat, twatting the nearest bloke. You may as well give up now, mate. No way you’re beating me. No way.
Drum, slam. Drum, slam. Drum, slam.
Refuse to be denied.
Refuse to be denied.
Refuse to be denied.
I come out for the second half like a snarling dog.
Two minutes after the restart. Scotland coming from deep, counter-attacking at pace. Duncan Weir feeds Stuart Hogg. I line Hogg up, stand him up, drive him back, take him to the floor and grab the ball as I jackal. Four Scottish players come piling in to help, but I’m still there, strong over the ball, almost smiling as the hits come in. Bang, bang, bang, bang. Still here, lads. Still here.
Ref Craig Joubert whistles. Penalty against Hogg for holding on. ‘That’s Warburton at his best,’ Jiffy (Jonathan Davies) says on the commentary. ‘Great hit, stays on his feet.’ Alun Wyn, Ianto (Ian Evans), Phillsy, Ryan, Hibbs – they all tap me on the head in congratulations as I get up.
I’m back.
Suddenly, I feel as if I can do anything. I’m a different player: quicker to the breakdown, stronger over the ball, harder in the tackle. Adrenaline coursing through me. I’m everywhere now, winning turnovers and penalties as though I’m on a mission – which, of course, I am. With 90 seconds to go and Scotland camped on our line as we defend a 10-point lead, I win another penalty jackalling on Kelly Brown. ‘Sam Warburton has been absolutely immense in this game,’ Jiffy says as he awards me man of the match, just as I’d told Andy I wanted to be.
After the match, I walk round the stadium with my man-of-the-match medal on. It feels like a talisman, an amulet; not just a reminder of the player I really am, but a huge middle finger to all the doubters. I walk round with it on until I find Mum and Dad in the stands, and I give it to them. They’ve suffered so much, not just from seeing all the negativity aimed at me but also from seeing my reaction to it. This medal is for them.
I think back to how low I’ve been feeling, and how that second half against Scotland has chased away the despair. The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
Tuesday, 12 March. It’s Shaun’s Tuesday afternoon drill to check that we’re mentally primed, making us run into guys holding tackle pads for a minute at full chat. They’re standing on four corners of a grid, and there’s no hiding place. Smash them, smash them again, smash them again. ‘I want to see you twat people,’ Shaun shouts. ‘I want to see that you’re up for it.’
England, this Saturday, going for the Grand Slam, in our backyard. Oh, we’re up for it. We’re up for it all right.
Thursday, 14 March. Gethin does the press conference, as he’s captain for this game. Ryan’s injured, and when Rob asked me if I’d take the role again I said no. Concentrating on myself worked against Scotland. I want it to work against England too.
Ryan being out means that I’ll take his position at 6 and Justin will play 7. After all the debate about which one of us is better, now we get to go in tandem. We’re both in form. Let’s take it to England. Let’s destroy them at the breakdown.
All week it’s been building, and still it builds. Security at the training ground to prevent our sessions from being watched. Fans hanging around the team hotel night and day, hoping for a glimpse of us, maybe an autograph or a selfie. We feed off the energy, but we have to be careful not to peak too soon. For a match like this, it’s easy to get so worked up in advance that by the time match day comes round you’re tailing off down the other side of your mental peak. The match is when it is. Don’t play it too early.
The team room one level below ground is our sanctuary. Only players and management are allowed in here. This is where we have team meetings, and meals, and massages. This is where the daily schedules are posted, so everyone knows where they’re supposed to be at any given time. This is where we wall ourselves off from the world outside, but somehow the excitement still percolates through the walls as if by osmosis. The press, the fans, the public; this game is special, and they all know it as well as we do.
Saturday, 16 March. Six days in the week, I give all the time I can to the fans. The seventh day, today, is mine. Today, I don’t go through the foyer to and from the team room. Today, I use the rear car park and the underground tunnel the cleaners take. I have my routine, and it’s timed down to the minute. Breakfast, nap, lunch, shower, all timed.
This is the worst time, the period between waking up and getting to the stadium. Today’s an afternoon game, which is at least better than a night game. Night games are the worst, as you have the whole day to kill. If it were up to me I’d wake up, bolt down a couple of protein shakes, go out and play first thing, and have it all done and dusted by midday.
These hours are where the nerves really worm their way down into me. I know what I’ll need to put my body through, and it scares me. I make half-bargains in my head. Give me food poisoning so I can’t play. Let the bus crash – not badly, obviously – so I can’t play. Let me turn my ankle on the stairs so I can’t play. Let the game be snowed off, or the pitch waterlogged, or something like that. Unlikely beneath the Millennium’s roof, I grant you.
Three hours until kick-off. We eat the pre-match meal in silence. Normally, team meals are loud and raucous, full of banter and blokes chopsing off good-naturedly at each other. Not today. Today the only sounds are the clanking of cutlery, the high ping of metal on china.
Two hours until kick-off. Our final team meeting. Some of the boys are there early, eyes half-closed as they listen to music in their headphones. Others filter in a few minutes ahead of time. Jamie and Toby come in last with 30 seconds to go, just like they always do. No one is ever late.
Rob slides his chair back and stands up.
‘We’re too big, too physical and too good for them. They’re not as fit as you are, they’re not as strong, they’re not as skilful. They haven’t got the experience you have, they haven’t got the mental toughness you have. You’re working-class lads from normal families, from the valleys. This is your turf. Let’s go.’
On the team bus. ‘TEAM WALES’ and the dragon plastered across the sides, loud and proud of who we are. All the boys with their headphones on. Twelve miles from here to the stadium. Police outriders performing their strangely beautiful ballet, leapfrogging each other to hold traffic in the side roads and let us pass. Their lights reflect along the aisle down the middle of the bus: red and blue, red and blue, red and blue.
The drivers of the cars we pass honk their horns and pump their fists as we pass. On the outskirts of Cardiff the traffic’s thin, but gradually both roads and pavements begin to fill as we approach the stadium. There are air horns now, and flags, and daffodil hats and replica shirts and face paint, and one by one we take our headphones off so we can watch and hear the crowds, because this is firing us up more than any music ever could.
T-shirts on sale. ENGLAND: GRAND SLAM CHAMPIONS 2013. The muscles in my jaw clench so hard you could crack walnuts with them. You know where you can stick your T-shirt, don’t you, mate?
We reach the bottom of Westgate Street. It’s pedestrianised from here on in, to the stadium a few hundred metres away. We’re the only vehicle allowed on here. Two police horses walk slowly ahead of us through crowds 15 or 20 deep. It’s a sea of red, thousands of people all packed into this one street, cheering and waving and clapping.
It wasn’t like this for the match against Ireland last month, or for the autumn internationals, or even for the Grand Slam match against France last year. This is something else entirely, and I know without even needing to ask that not a single one of the squad will ever have experienced anything remotely like it before.
This is one of the best things about the Millennium: that it’s right in the middle of Cardiff. Every other Six Nations stadium – Twickenham, Murrayfield, the Aviva, the Stade de France, the Stadio Olimpico – is away from the city centre. You can be in London, or Edinburgh, or Dublin, or Paris, or Rome on match day and not know the game’s going on.
In Cardiff, you know. Everybody knows. And so it’s not just that the stadium becomes the city, but also that the city becomes the country. Trains with extra carriages bolted on have been bringing people in from Abergavenny and Aberystwyth, from Bangor and Bridgend, from Cardigan and Colwyn Bay, and from a hundred other places too. Many of these people don’t even have tickets for the match; they just want to be here, in the capital, when it’s happening, to watch it on giant screens or in pubs, to feed off and contribute to this insane electricity pulsing through the city’s streets.
These are the people cheering us on. These are the people we’re playing for.
We turn right and follow the road down into the bowels of the stadium. Darkness, and the sounds of the crowd fading behind us. We get off the bus and head for the stairs that will take us up to the changing-room, and as we do we hear something so quintessentially Welsh they should bottle it and sell it at Cardiff Airport: a male voice choir, here just for us, singing ‘Calon Lân’.
Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus,
Aur y byd na’i berlau mân;
Gofyn wyf am galon hapus,
Calon onest, calon lân.
I don’t ask for a luxurious life,
the world’s gold or its fine pearls;
I ask for a happy heart,
an honest heart, a pure heart.
Calon lân yn llawn daioni,
Tecach yw na’r lili dlos;
Dim ond calon lân all ganu
Canu’r dydd a chanu’r nos.
A pure heart full of goodness
Is fairer than the pretty lily;
None but a pure heart can sing,
Sing in the day and sing in the night.
Their voices carry us all the way to the changing-room. On one wall, in three-foot-high red letters, is written ‘RESPECT THE JERSEY’. On the opposite wall, in the same lettering, is ‘DAL DY DIR’. ‘Hold your ground’.
We take up the places marked out by our numbers. Inside the collar of the shirts hanging from the pegs is a single word. Braint. Privilege.
And right in the middle of the room – without telling any of us, Rob’s asked for it to be put here, knowing the effect it will have on us – is the Six Nations trophy, sparkling clean and gleaming like the most precious of metals.
Our trophy.
Our trophy, which we won last year. Our trophy, which we’re still defending, even though the possibility of a second Grand Slam went out of the window almost before it had started.
We know the maths. England have four wins, we have three. They also have a superior points difference. Beating them will deny them the Grand Slam, but to win the championship a simple victory won’t be enough. To win the championship, we have to beat them by eight points.
Joe Lydon, the WRU’s head of rugby, told us what his England Under-18s coach had once said. ‘When you play Wales, remember that they’re not defending their tryline. They’re defending their border.’
Every single one of us has that thought right now, looking at the trophy.
No way. No way is that trophy going back across the Severn Bridge tonight.
Grim faces. Growls, shouts, murmurs. Studs clattering on the floor. The smell of liniment and fear. Tape being ripped and wound and ripped again. Hugs and backslaps. Energy gels, sickly sweet. Blokes spewing in the toilets.
An official’s voice at the door. Two minutes. Two minutes.
Another voice. England are already in the tunnel. They’re waiting for you. They don’t want to go out alone.
Let them wait. We go when the ref tells us to, not a moment before.
Wales out, please. Wales out.
Single file in the corridor, looking at the back of the man in front of you. Something very literal in that: knowing that you’ve got his back just as the guy behind you has got yours.
Thick double doors between you and the playing arena. The crowd noise a distant thunder, rumbling and muffled, as though we’re underwater. They can see us on the screen. They know we’re coming.
Ten seconds, the TV guy says. Ten seconds.
The doors open. The noise is like a chemical blast, breaking down and over us. Red lights and dry ice in our faces. We can’t see further than the end of our arms, but we can hear everything, and we can feel it too. Pressure waves of sound, bouncing and reverberating and sloshing like water in a bath.
Then the dry ice clears, and suddenly the entire far side of the stadium comes into view: three tiers climbing to the heavens, wall upon wall of red. Our people.
Lining up for the anthems. The players’ wives and girlfriends have two rows earmarked for them on halfway, always in the same place. Each time I play here, I look for Rach during the anthems, and each time she smiles at me. Our little routine: I’m here for you, go on, play your heart out.
The English anthem is first. ‘God Save the Queen’, and God it’s loud. I’ve never heard it sung so loud. How the hell did so many English fans get in here? The place must be full of them. How’s our anthem ever going to compete with that? This is going to be embarrassing. Outsung by England before the match has even started – for any proud Welshman that’s humiliation right there.
Then ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’ starts up.
Wow.
Just wow.
No matter how loud the English had sung, that was nothing compared with this. Nothing. It sounds like the whole country’s singing, not just the whole stadium. It raises not only the hairs on the back of my neck but all the way down my spine too. It’s so loud that for a moment I wonder if the stadium can contain it, whether the walls will crumble like those of Jericho did at the sound of Joshua’s trumpets. I don’t sing the anthem – I never sing it – but inside I’m there with every word, lifted somewhere up into the gods up near the roof.
I glance across at the English boys. They’re not that much younger than we are, but they’re a lot less experienced: their starting XV has fewer than half the caps ours does. For quite a few of them, this is their first time playing in Cardiff. Hell of a game to choose to break your duck.
You poor bastards. You don’t know what’s about to hit you. You don’t have a clue. And you don’t have a prayer.
Owen Farrell kicks off for England. Phillsy catches it, it comes back to Dan Biggar who kicks to halfway, and when Farrell tries a grubber to the corner he overhits it and Pence touches down behind the line for a 22.
Normally, the crowd noise from the kick-off subsides by the first break in the play, if not before. Not today. The noise just keeps going and going, an almost unbroken wall of sound, and so does the game. It’s fast and furious, and there’s no let-up, not even for a moment, no chance of hearing the lineout calls, so we use body language. Alun Wyn’s the caller, and we watch where he puts his hands or feet as we line up. Those are our cues, drilled into us all week.
I’m jumping in this lineout. Point your toes down, stiffen your glutes and tense your arse, that’s Alun Wyn’s advice; it stiffens your core and keeps you like a pencil. The lifters throwing me so high that they let me go and I’m still travelling upwards, 12 feet up and climbing, half as high again as a full-back jumping for a bomb, watching the ball all the way.
Hit the rucks as hard as I can. Split-second decisions as I arrive: where’s the ball, where are the opposition, where’s the next threat coming from? If there’s someone there I’ve got to melt him, unload on him, punish him. Front rows might have to wait 10 or 15 minutes until the first scrum, but there are rucks all the time. Rucks are back-row manna. Hit each one as though it’s the last one I’ll ever hit.
Pence knocks over a penalty, and then another, to make it 6–0. Ianto tackles Barritt, and I’m the first man into the ruck, trying to steal the ball. Referee Steve Walsh whistles: penalty against me. I ask why. ‘Straight on the ball, not past it,’ he says. I ask why again, partly because it’s so hard to hear him above the crowd. ‘You were past the ball with your hands on the ground and went back onto the ball. You’ve got to go straight onto it.’
Walsh isn’t a referee who likes to give explanations, let alone to someone who’s not even the captain that day. Though obviously I don’t know this at the time, up in the stands Gats makes a note – a note that will have big repercussions in a month or so’s time.
Farrell nails the kick: 6–3.
The English front row pops up in a scrum, and Pence does the rest: 9–3.
Big hits coming in all over the park. Hibbs puts one in on Joe Marler that wouldn’t be out of place in a wildlife documentary. George escapes down the wing and for a moment looks to be in, but Mike Brown throws himself headlong in desperation and makes the tap tackle. England coming at us, but their passing’s too slow and we’re keeping our shape and numbers well. Dan tries a drop goal from 30 metres out, but it fades just wide of the posts.
Half-time. Still 9–3. Anyone’s game. And anyone’s championship, too. As things stand we’ll win the match but England will win the title.
Both sides pick up where they left off. Slowly, surely, we’re beginning to put the squeeze on them, especially in the set piece. Tom Youngs is chirping as we set ourselves. Walsh is having none of it. ‘Be quiet and scrum,’ he says.
Little cracks in the England psyche. We have to crowbar them wide open. We’re fitter than they are, and we’ve had a day’s more recovery than they have. Keep them moving. Keep them tackling. Keep the ball in play. We might be breathing through our arses, but they’ll be worse. No matter how much we’re feeling the pace, they’ll be feeling it more.
Our pressure, again and again. Jamie has a go, then Ianto, then Hibbs, then Jamie again. Walsh plays the advantage before taking us back for the penalty. Pence, cool as you like, nails it, 12–3, and for the first time we’re virtual champions: that’s a point more than we need.
It’s not nearly enough for what we want, though. We want more, and so do the crowd. They can sense the English dam beginning to crack. Slim margins, but now we’re doing the basics just that little bit better than they are, and in the end that’s going to tell. It reminds me of Ireland in the 2011 quarter-final. There’s not much in it to the casual observer, but down in the thick of the battle, you know. You know it’s coming. Maybe not in the next minute, but in the next ten minutes, and the ten minutes after that, definitely. It’s coming.
And now, with just over a quarter of the match left, it does come. Ken Owens rips like a fiend at a ruck and the ball squirts loose. Justin pounces, scooping it off his toes, and out it goes through the hands: Phillsy, Foxy, Cuthie haring down the right-hand touchline as the crowd rise as one. Brown’s after him, but Cuthie’s got the angle and the pace, and this time Brown misses the tap tackle and slaps his hands on the turf in despair as Cuthie goes over in the corner. It’s 17–3. Bedlam.
Pence misses the conversion. England have a penalty which Farrell slides wide. Gethin comes off, which means I’m captain for the last 20 minutes or so, not that I have to do anything other than keep playing my game.
Jamie bashes through. Foxy skips a couple of tackles. We set up camp on the England 22. The forwards bash it up. I roll Dan Cole out of a ruck to give Phillsy clean ball, and he fires it back to Dan in the pocket. Drop goal, sweet as you like.
Now it’s 20–3.
England kick off and knock on. Walsh plays advantage. Toby comes off the back of the ruck. He steps Tom Wood, then Geoff Parling, then Mako Vunipola – absurdly quick feet for a forward, but then again Toby’s such a gifted all-round player that it’s faintly ridiculous. Parling and Cole take him down. I’m right behind him, ready to pile in as the first man into the ruck, when I see something.
They’ve got no one sweeping.
They’ve got Dylan Hartley to the left and Danny Care to the right, but at the back of the ruck, where there should always be a man, there’s no one.
I scoop the ball up and burst through the middle. Care tries to get to me but I fend him off with ease, and now I’m running free and the crowd roar is like a tsunami at my back. I look right, then left. The speed and suddenness of my burst has taken even my team-mates by surprise. All I can see are seven white shirts, some muddied and dirty and others still pristine, scrambling back behind me.
Ten metres. Twenty. Run, Forrest. Run.
Farrell’s up ahead, waiting for me. Step him, but which way? Left or right? By the time I’ve made up my mind I’m on him, so it’s the old Maori sidestep: bash straight through him. He goes high. Too high. I half-shrug him off and keep going a few more paces with him clinging onto my neck until Tom Croft arrives to help Farrell bring me down.
Alun Wyn and Bomb come piling in. Phillsy fires it out fast while England are still scrambling. The backs running from deep, hitting the line at pace, using the extra men well. Dan to Pence. Pence to Jamie, with Justin on his shoulder. Jamie commits the man and feeds Justin. Justin with Cuthie outside him and Mike Brown trying to cover both of them. Justin drawing Brown, shaping to pass, throwing the dummy and keeping on. Brown twisting desperately to follow the ball. Barritt half-catching Justin, just enough to slow him down and let Brown make the tackle second time round, but Cuthie’s still on Justin’s shoulder and he takes the pass to go in untouched. Second try, same corner as before.
Still on my hands and knees 40 metres away, I punch the ground as hard as I can in happiness.
Game, set, match, championship.
Before the trophy presentation, they turn out all the lights in the stadium. For a moment it’s pitch black: then a spotlight comes on, shining on the podium.
The announcer calls us forward one by one, and every name is greeted by a huge cheer. After all the strife I’ve been through, to hear an entire stadium roaring their heads off at my name is the far side of amazing. I stand on the podium with all the other boys. This time last year, I was lifting the trophy with my one working arm while not really feeling I’d been a part of it all.
This time I do, even though – maybe especially because – I’m not captain. I did the first game and the last quarter of this one, but Ryan did three and Gethin started this one. I let them lift the trophy together and I honestly couldn’t care less. We’ve won, that’s all that matters. We’ve won in a match that none of us, and none of the spectators, will ever forget.
After the presentation, I walk round the field. Not a single Welsh fan has left. I punch the air in triumph at the crowd, and three tiers of people punch the air in unison back at me. I feel like a rock star. I honestly can’t remember being happier on a rugby pitch. Moments like this are what make it all worthwhile. All the bad times, the injuries, the insults, the self-doubt, the pressure, the negativity – I can survive them all for moments like this. They can never take this moment away from me. Never.
After a performance like that, and with the Six Nations all over, the Lions taboo – which has lasted all season – is finally broken. As we come back into the dressing-room, there’s a man slapping us on the back and saying ‘See you in Australia’ to each of us in turn.
Who? Phillsy, of course. Who else?