5
37.8166°S, 144.9475°E
Saturday, 29 June 2013. British and Irish Lions v Australia, Second Test
Liam Gill takes the ball into contact. I go to jackal on him. Rob Simmons comes piling in on me. The hit rocks me slightly, but I stay in position. A split second later Ben Mowen smashes in, and now I’m half off the ball with my head down by my left knee, and that leg’s trapped and extended straight.
If I get another hit now, I’m in trouble. If Genia clears it and the ruck breaks up I’ll be OK, but one more hit with my leg caught like this is going to put me in a whole world of pain.
And that’s when James Slipper makes the third hit.
It’s like someone’s taken a butcher’s knife and slammed it into the back of my leg. The pain is white hot and almost indescribable. I have a brief image of my hamstring being cut clean off the bone, as though I’m nothing more than a carcass hanging from a ceiling hook.
Two words go through my head. Get up. Get up. Get. Up.
Andy Farrell’s words: ‘Unless you’re unconscious or your femur’s snapped, you’re never injured in defence. If you can stand, you can get in line.’
I push myself upright.
The British and Irish Lions: the most special, the most unique, the most important thing in rugby.
The Lions are different, in every way. They have no home ground, no permanent coaching staff or players. They play almost all their matches on the other side of the world from where their personnel are based: they go to South Africa, Australia and New Zealand in turn, a tiny invading army far from home. They take players from four nations who are deadly rivals at international level and demand that they play for each other rather than against each other. Their kit is a mish-mash that reflects and includes all four of those nations: Wales in the shirt, England in the shorts, Scotland and Ireland in the socks.
For all but two months every four years, the Lions don’t even exist, not really; but for those two months they are like a returning comet, blazing brighter and hotter than anything else in the rugby firmament. Lions tours take place in the year after the Olympics, the year before the football World Cup, and equidistant between Rugby World Cups. A Lions tour is arguably the biggest sporting event of its year; only the Tour de France can rival it.
In many ways, the Lions shouldn’t work. Putting together a side from scratch to take on one of the big three southern hemisphere nations is a tall order at the best of times. Now take a bunch of players who are coming off long seasons for club and country, and condense the time they have together down to a few weeks. Mission impossible? By most rational yardsticks it should be, and sometimes it is.
But there’s a reason not just why players would sell their own grandmothers to be a Lion, but also why tens of thousands of fans spend their life savings to come on tour and follow the team, and why the southern hemisphere players regard facing the Lions as up there with the pinnacles of their own careers. The Lions are a romantic sporting adventure with a long and cherished history. When you become a Lion, you want not just to live up to that history but add some of your own too. When the Lions get it right, it’s the best feeling in the world.
For pretty much as long as I’ve played rugby, I’ve wanted to be a Lion. I’m so proud to play for Wales, yet I feel myself British quite as much as I do Welsh. My father’s entirely English – Warburton’s a good Lancashire name (that’s where the bread comes from) – and my mother’s great-grandparents were from Scotland, as her maiden name, Kennedy, shows. If I delve deep enough, I’m sure I can find some Irish in the family tree top. Hence my obsession with the Lions.
Now all I have to do is get picked. Problem is, every other Home Nations player has exactly the same aim.
I haven’t had any contact with Gats throughout the entire Six Nations campaign this year. He’s come to a few training sessions, as he has done for all four home nations, but I didn’t speak to him at those; I didn’t want to look like a kiss-arse or make it awkward for him if he was thinking of not picking me.
As for the captaincy, I’ve honestly never considered myself in the running. Sure, Gats appointed me Welsh skipper, but that means nothing. I’m still young, and I’ve never been on a Lions tour. If you ask me, either for my opinion on who Gats will pick or for who I’d pick if it was up to me, it would be one of the two previous captains: Paulie (Paul O’Connell), who did it in 2009, or Drico (Brian O’Driscoll), who was skipper in 2005 and whose tour ended when his shoulder was dislocated after being spear-tackled 41 seconds into the first Test.
And people do ask me, again and again and again. Some days it seems as though every journalist I’ve ever met rings up to ask if I’ve heard anything yet. No, I say, I haven’t, and that’s the honest truth. What I don’t say is the second bit: even if I had, mate, I’d hardly be telling you.
Dad rings and says the local bookies have stopped taking bets on me.
‘Dad, I don’t even know what that means.’ I’ve never placed a bet in my life.
‘They think you’re such a dead cert that they’d have to pay out on every bet involving you, so they just don’t accept those bets any more. Someone must have caught wind of something.’
‘Well, if they have, they haven’t told me.’
I know, of course, that there are people who’ll know the decision maybe even before the designated captain does. The coaching staff who between them make that decision, of course. The commercial and social media teams, so they’re primed to get the news out quickly and efficiently. People love knowing things. Any one of those people might mention it to their wives in bed, who in turn will tell a friend or two, who in turn will tell another friend, and before you know it the gossip’s going round like wildfire. Right now, having inside and advance knowledge of the identity of the Lions captain is the holy grail of any rugby fan. If you know, you’d find it almost impossible to keep your mouth shut. No one will believe you once it comes out if you say, ‘Ah, I knew all along.’
Saturday, 20 April. We lose 24–6 to the Scarlets in Llanelli. I’m put up for press duties afterwards. Do the journalists want to talk about the match? Do they heck.
‘Sam, what do you think about the bookies suspending betting on you becoming Lions captain?’
‘I can honestly say, on my mother’s life, I have no inkling of anything. The players are often the last people to find out about these things, so I’ll just keep my head down for the Blues. One minute it’s O’Connell, the next minute it’s O’Driscoll, the next minute it’s myself. It’s difficult from a player’s point of view. The decision is completely out of my hands.’
‘Do you even want to be captain?’ It might sound a silly question, but it’s not. It’s no secret that I’ve been a reluctant captain for Wales, and in fact – the last 20 minutes against England aside – I haven’t skippered the side in any of our last four matches.
‘It’s a no-brainer. It’s the biggest honour for any player. It’s mind-blowing when you think about it, to have that accolade. Everybody who has done it has been a legend and it’s flattering to think you are in contention for it. I still don’t see myself as one of those players, really. It’s quite strange, especially at twenty-four. If somebody had told me when I was watching the last Lions tour that I could be in this situation as a potential candidate, I’d have laughed.’
Sunday, 21 April. Rach and I are round at Mum and Dad’s. I’m recovering from last night’s match, Mum’s on the phone to a friend, Dad’s on shift at Whitchurch Fire Station. My mobile’s charging on the kitchen table.
Just a typical quiet Sunday afternoon.
My mobile rings. I pad over to it without much urgency. It’s probably just a mate calling or something. I don’t get there in time before it rings off. I look at the screen.
Missed Call: Gats.
That quiet Sunday afternoon’s just gone straight out of the window. I haven’t had a call from Gats for ages, and I know he must be calling in connection with the Lions. What I don’t know is whether he’s calling to offer me the captaincy, or to tell me why he’s gone with someone else, or maybe even explain to me that I’m not in the squad at all.
I unplug my phone and run upstairs to my old bedroom, which my folks now use as a nursery for my little nephew Harrison when he visits. I shut the door and ring Gats back.
‘Gats, it’s Warby.’
‘Hello, mate. How you feeling?’
‘Good, thanks.’
‘How was the match last night?’
‘Ah, you know. Always disappointed to lose.’
Get on with it.
‘How’s your body feeling after it?’
‘Never better.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
‘Good.’
For the love of God, Gats, just get on with it. One way or the other, just tell me.
Silence. I don’t say anything. Gats clears his throat.
‘Do you want to be captain of the British and Irish Lions this summer?’
I just laugh, equal mixtures of relief and disbelief. ‘You bet. Yes, of course, I do. What an honour.’
We quickly discuss how things will pan out from here on in – where I’ll need to be and when, how it’s absolutely imperative to keep things secret until the official announcement nine days from now – and then he rings off.
I run back down the stairs, punching the air in delight.
‘I’m Lions captain!’ I blurt out to Rach.
Mum’s still on the phone. I type I’m captain of the Lions! C U later. Bye into my mobile and hold it up so she can see it. Her mouth falls open and she totally loses the thread of what she was saying.
‘I’ll call you back later,’ she says to her friend, before hanging up and giving me a huge hug.
I ring Dad to tell him.
‘Gats has just phoned up and told me I’m going to be Lions captain,’ I say.
‘Ah, great,’ he says, but he doesn’t exactly sound overjoyed. ‘Brilliant. OK.’
‘Dad, did you hear me right? I’m going to be Lions captain.’
‘That’s great, Sam. I’ll give you a ring back in a few minutes.’
When he phones back, he’s much more enthusiastic. ‘Sam, that’s unbelievable news.’
‘It’s amazing, isn’t it? There’ve been so many people asking that …’
‘Yeah, OK. I’ll talk to you later.’ And he hangs up again.
For a moment I’m baffled, then I twig what must be happening. His colleagues at the fire station love their rugby and have all been desperate to find out if I’m going to be captain. Dad simply can’t let on to them why I’m phoning, so he has to play it cool until he can get to talk to me without being overheard; but pretty much the moment he phones back someone walks into the room, so he has to act all nonchalant again. I know he must be as thrilled as Mum and Rach are.
The three of them are the only ones I tell. I can’t tell anyone with any connection to rugby, so that rules out even Ben, who’s a physio for the Dragons, Andy and Derwyn. It’s not that they’d tell people off their own bat – I trust them with my life – but they could easily give it away accidentally by their reactions if people press them on it.
Wednesday, 24 April. Derwyn comes round for a catch-up.
‘No word about the captaincy yet?’ he asks.
‘Not a dicky bird.’
Thursday, 25 April. The Cardiff Blues boys are still asking whether I know anything. I feel bad at having to lie to them, but I’ve no choice. Imagine if I let it slip, a couple of the boys went to put money on me, and all that came out. I’d be in serious trouble, even if I hadn’t made any money myself, and rightly so.
I certainly can’t tell the front-row players, as they’d doubtless be dense enough to go to the Paddy Power right across the road from the Arms Park.
‘Ten grand on Warby to be Lions captain, please.’
‘Right you are, sir. Hold on a moment while I call the cops.’
Friday, 26 April. The announcement’s due next Tuesday. I really have to let Derwyn know before then. I ring him and tell him.
‘Mate, that’s great news,’ he says. ‘I’m delighted.’ He pauses. ‘Did you know when I came to see you a couple of days ago?’
‘No. I didn’t.’ I’m glad he can’t see my face.
I do decide to tell Andy after all, though. I guess it’s because he has fewer direct contacts in the rugby world than Derwyn so I worry less. He’ll have less opportunity to give the game away.
Monday, 29 April. I’m taken up to Syon Park in London in an unmarked Range Rover – no Lions branding on the side, of course, and they don’t want me to drive my own car in case people recognise the number plate. The Lions team are so paranoid about leaks that they don’t even let me come in the main entrance. Instead, I’m escorted in through the delivery entrance, through the kitchens and laundry, and up to my room via a back way. All very James Bond. I bet 007 would have made a decent openside, and not just because of the number. Tricks of the trade, skirting close to the edge of the law, not afraid to get hurt …
What with this and the secret cut-throughs I’ve discovered at the Vale to avoid the fans on match day, I should start compiling a list. Not so much Warby’s Winning Ways as Warby’s Wormy Ways: a guide to hidden passages in hotels throughout the rugby-playing world. Niche, perhaps, but there must be a market for it somewhere.
I have to stay in my room all the rest of the afternoon and evening. There’s a revolving door of people coming to see me: press officers, photographers, social media operators and so on. I have to have dinner in my room and stay off social media in case my location comes up – though even that causes gossip in itself, with lots of people tweeting things about how suspiciously quiet I’m being just before the Lions announcement.
Tuesday, 30 April. Just before the announcement, I’m smuggled back down through the kitchen and into the back of the conference room. The place is packed.
Gats stands up and tells the world that I’m Lions captain. I walk up to the stage. TV lights and applause.
This is huge. This is so much bigger than the World Cup was.
I’m the only one who already knows I’m in the squad. With national teams, there are texts and emails sent before the news goes to the press. Not with the Lions. This is another subtle reminder that the Lions are different. The players find out the same way everyone else does, by watching the announcement live on Sky Sports. They gather with their families and friends at home, or with their team-mates at their clubs, and their joy (and their despair, if they haven’t made it) is spontaneous and visible.
For weeks, perhaps months, players, fans and reporters alike have been picking their Lions squads, tweaking their selections after every round of the Six Nations to take account of form and injury: who’s playing themselves in, who’s playing themselves out? But only one selection matters, and it’s this one.
Sky Sports’ Alex Payne interviews me on stage. ‘It’s going to be new for me,’ I say. ‘I’m going to learn along the way. It’s an experience that I just can’t wait to get under way now. I’m always the ultimate optimist. I’ll go out there with the intention to win every match. That’ll be the great challenge for the players, as no other Lions team has done that.’
There are 10 matches, including three Tests. I mean every word of what I said, but I also know that Lions tours are first and foremost about the Test series. The provincial games are all well and good, but if you lose a couple because you’re trying out new combinations or because you’re using your midweek team, so be it. It’s not even about winning an individual Test. It’s about winning at least two of them, so you win the series. The Tests are the climax of everything that has gone before.
Gats talks about that moment in the England match when referee Steve Walsh pinged me for dragging at a ruck. ‘Walsh allowed Sam to go to him three times to question that decision, to get some clarification. Now, if you know Steve Walsh, he doesn’t allow that from anybody. Sam wasn’t captain that day and you’ve got to be pretty special to be able to do that, because knowing Steve Walsh, he normally gives it the old “get away!”
‘It was a big signal to me that either referees had been talking or it was about respect. There are only two or three players in the world that referees would allow to do that. It’s the ability Sam has to communicate with referees; and when I saw that against England, it really stuck in my mind that this guy could do a job for us and potentially have a positive influence on the game with his relationship with referees.’
Thursday, 2 May. I’m with Derwyn.
‘You know when I came to see you last week and asked if you were captain?’
‘Yes. And I did know, and I should have told you.’
He smiles and winks. ‘Thing is, Sam, I knew too.’
‘You did?’
‘I did. And I didn’t put any pressure on you to tell me. I know it must have been a hell of a secret to carry.’
‘How did you know?’
He smiles again. ‘I’m a very resourceful man.’
Friday, 3 May. Phil Davies, coach of the Blues, asks Pence and me to go to Heath Hospital in Cardiff. There’s a seriously ill lad in there who’s a mad keen rugby fan. He loves the Blues, he loves Wales, and Pence and I are his favourite players.
This lad’s in a bad way. He’s missing a couple of limbs, his face is misshapen by all the tumours on it, and he can’t speak. It’s only three miles from my house to the hospital, but the way his eyes light up when he sees us, I’d go 300 miles to see that look. We sign all the shirts and flags and balls he has, and chat to his mum and dad, and pose for photos. It’s only half an hour or so out of our day, but we can see that we’ve made this lad’s year, and it humbles both of us.
We walk out of the hospital in silence. It’s a trite and easy thing to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true: we take so much for granted, and we are so lucky.
Friday, 10 May. Phil Davies phones. That lad who Pence and I went to see last week has died. Thank God we went to see him and did what we could for him. I know it meant a lot to him, but it meant just as much to us.
Monday, 13 May. It’s Messy Monday: when all the boys selected for the Lions gather at Syon Park to get our kit and suits, and to meet each other, the coaches and the sponsors. If watching the announcement live must have been like waiting for GCSE results, this is more like the first day back at school, full of banter but also apprehension. ‘I can’t believe how nervous I am!’ George North says.
I thought I knew most of the squad already, but that’s partly because there are more boys from Wales than from any other country. Now I realise that, apart from a quick post-match handshake here and there, I don’t actually know that many of the others: a few of the Irish boys (Paulie, Jamie Heaslip and Sean O’Brien) and Manu Tuilagi, but that’s pretty much it. And that seems to go for most blokes here. People tread carefully, sizing up each other’s personalities without giving away too much of their own. It’ll take time for everyone to relax.
Adidas are supplying the kit, and they’ve really gone to town. There are personalised boots, and a laser instrument measures the exact size of our calves and ankles to make recovery skins for us to wear on flights throughout the tour. The attention to detail is remarkable.
One by one, the management team stand up, introduce themselves and say a few words. I’m the only one of the players to do the same. I talk about the lad who Pence and I went to see in hospital, the lad who died only a few days ago.
‘Imagine the joy we gave to that boy. If only I could have had the power to say to him: “You’ll be OK. You’ll play for the Lions one day.” That’s what we’ve got. We’re doing something that so many people would love to do. This is our opportunity. Let’s not waste it.’
Andy and I go up into the woods near my home in Rhiwbina. There’s a bench up there that I call my ‘happy place’. I come here on my own or with the dogs, and I like to sit on the bench and just reflect. It overlooks the whole of Cardiff and the bay, and I can see the Millennium Stadium from here. It’s only about five miles between the two places, but the contrast between the nerves and emotion of a match day and the tranquillity of this bench up in the woods is enormous.
‘There’ll be plenty of times on tour when you’ll need to switch off,’ Andy says. ‘And it’ll be hard with so much going on. So this is an exercise to help you with that. Close your eyes, do the controlled breathing techniques we’ve practised so often, and relax. Clear your mind completely. Tell me when the first thing comes into your head.’
I do what he says, but it’s only about five seconds until I think of something and blurt it out. He makes me try it again, and again, and again. Gradually I let myself take in the peace and calm of the woods around me: listening to the birdsong, feeling the breeze on my face, smelling the earth. It’s not long until I’m managing a couple of minutes, my mind totally empty and my body relaxed.
I take a photo of the view, and Andy takes a picture of me standing and looking out over it. ‘Keep these on your phone,’ Andy says. ‘Whenever you feel under stress on tour, look at these photos and take yourself back here.’
I drop my dog Gus off at Mum and Dad’s and say goodbye to him.
Later that day, I’m driving past when I have a sudden thought: I should say goodbye to Gus again. So I go in and give him another hug.
Mum doesn’t bat an eyelid. She’s quite used to how soppy I am around dogs.
I quickly realise that something I thought might be a problem – getting the boys to overcome their national rivalries – isn’t going to be an issue at all. Everybody’s so thrilled to be here in the Lions camp, so determined to make the most of the opportunity, that they just put aside anything which might hinder that.
Maybe that’s not too surprising. There are four regional teams in Wales – the Blues, the Dragons, the Ospreys and the Scarlets – and the rivalries between them are fierce, but when boys from those teams come together for Wales, there are never any problems. The same principle applies here. For four regions, read four nations. As far as Home Nations rugby’s concerned, the players selected for the Lions are the best of the best, and we all want to prove that.
Jamie Roberts puts it well. ‘It’s about handling pressure well, it’s about complete enjoyment, getting along with everyone on the tour, taking every opportunity that comes your way and giving your all to the shirt. If you don’t give your all, you are doing an injustice to all those that have been selected before you.’
No one knows the Lions better than Geech – Sir Ian McGeechan – who’s been on seven tours, five as a coach (including four as head coach) and two as a player. No wonder he called his autobiography Lion Man.
‘The crucial thing about the Lions,’ Geech says, ‘is that every tour is different. Every time a tour party is announced, that group of players has no identity, character or meaning until they actually meet up. Some tours might have a rump of players who were on the previous tour, but generally every tour is different because the players are always different. It is not one team that on the field looks the same or plays the same. It is a team that on its day creates a very unique sort of character and characteristics. It becomes distinguished and identified by the year it took place: “the 1974 Lions” or “the 1989 Lions”, or the like.’
We are the 2013 Lions, and this is our chance to make our year a vintage one.
All Lions tours come with pressure, but this one more than most. It’s been 16 years since the Lions last won a series, the 1997 tour to South Africa. Since then, the Lions have undertaken a complete southern hemisphere cycle – Australia in 2001, New Zealand in 2005 and South Africa in 2009 – and lost the lot.
Even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Of the nine Tests over those three tours, the Lions lost seven in a row and won just two: the first one in Australia and the last one in South Africa. But the latter was only after the series had been lost, which means that of those nine Tests the Lions won only one when the series in question was still live.
It’s not quite true to say that the Lions’ survival rests on us winning this series – the amount of money the Lions generate shows that the concept is still very much a viable one – but if we lose again, especially with what already looks like a very tricky tour to New Zealand in four years’ time, then people will start to question whether the Lions still have a place in an increasingly crowded international calendar. I don’t want to be the captain who history shows presided over the beginning of the end.
Winning isn’t just important for the Lions as a whole, of course. It’s important for each and every player as an individual too. It reminds me of the conversations I had in New Zealand during the World Cup with locals who said, in all seriousness, that they wouldn’t consider McCaw a true great until he’d won the World Cup.
The same applies here. For Drico, this is his fourth tour, and he’s yet to win one; the previous three have comprised that complete cycle of southern hemisphere losses. ‘It’s about time I won one of these,’ he says. ‘I’ve certainly had enough cracks at it. Until you win a series, it’s difficult to place yourself in that elite group of great Lions players. You’ve got to win a series to be properly remembered.
‘I’ve talked to Matt Dawson about that dummy over-the-head pass that secured the first Test win in South Africa in 1997. How many times have people spoken to Scott Gibbs about his big hit on Os du Randt in Durban? These moments are timeless – but they’re only timeless because of the victory that followed. To be considered a great and a custodian of Lions rugby you have to achieve that success. It’s not enough to produce one-off performances or be nearly men. I’m definitely not going to be involved in the next World Cup, so this is my last big moment in rugby.’
All successful Lions tours have two things in common. First, that the guys selected are not just good players – that’s taken for granted – but also good tourists. If boys go off reservation or turn negative, usually because they haven’t made the Test team, that can cause disharmony. Every second counts on a Lions tour, for good and for bad. Faith and trust are just as important as skill and fitness. Out on tour, thousands of miles from home, all you have is each other.
Second, that everyone feels they have a fair crack of the whip in pressing their claims for Test selection. Clearly the coaches have a Test team in mind even before we leave Heathrow, but that team may change, perhaps drastically, depending on how people play on tour.
On the 1997 tour, Geech and Jim Telfer picked purely on form; how many pundits would have had Tom Smith and Paul Wallace in the front row, or Jeremy Davidson at lock? But they were the best players in those positions on tour, and so they were picked (and, not coincidentally, helped win the series).
Conversely, the 2005 New Zealand tour saw Sir Clive Woodward widely criticised for relying too heavily on the English players he’d coached to the World Cup two years earlier, even though many of them were not playing as well either as they had then or as some of the other boys in the squad. The Lions lost that series 3–0.
Gats has emphasised time and again that this is a squad more like the first of those examples, one where everyone can compete for a Test starting place. That’s the best way to be, putting everyone on edge in training. Watching the boys working on weights and fitness, you can tell people have lifted it from international level. The bar has been raised, quite literally.
The strength and conditioning guys say that they’re looking for our KPIs, our key performance indicators, to be between eight and ten metres per minute higher than usual. Over the course of a match, that means we’ll be covering half a mile extra. It might not sound a lot, but trust me, it is.
Saturday, 1 June. We batter the Barbarians 59–8 in Hong Kong, a match in which the weather conditions – high 30s and 95 per cent humidity – prove far tougher opposition than the guys we’re playing against. We have to have breaks midway through each half so the players can take on liquid and cool themselves in front of giant fans spraying water droplets.
The strength and conditioning coaches say the stopover will help with the jetlag, and they talk about the fitness benefits of working our bodies in such extreme conditions, but we all know the game is primarily a money-spinning exercise – after all, our shirt sponsor is the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. And fair enough. The Lions wouldn’t be viable without large-scale commercial backing, and we’re all used to having to fulfil sponsor commitments.
I don’t play, as I’m still recovering from my knock, but even so it’s nice to get some kind of revenge for the Barbarians defeat two years ago. Some of the Barbarians players here today seem to be sweating out neat alcohol, if the smell’s anything to go by, so their preparation methods clearly haven’t changed too much.
Sunday, 2 June. We’re flying from Hong Kong to Perth, but there’s a slight problem. There’s one less business-class seat available than there are players, which means someone will have to travel economy. I volunteer to do it myself – it would be a small way of emphasising that I really don’t see myself as better than or different from any of the other boys – but I’m carrying a slight knock to my knee, and the physios say I need the extra space in business to stretch out and aid my recovery.
Gats decides to have some fun. At the squad meeting before we leave for the airport, he gives it some X Factor-style suspense, whittling the candidates down bit by bit. First he rules out anybody playing in the match against Western Force on Wednesday. Then he rules out any of the second rows, as they’re too tall. Then he rules out anyone like me who’s even slightly injured. Finally, we realise there’s only one guy left – Hibbs.
Everyone gives Hibbs some good-natured abuse, and being Hibbs he gives it back with interest. Every tour needs a character like Hibbs: a joker, someone always up for a laugh, a character on and off the pitch. In four years’ time in New Zealand, Kyle Sinckler will take on this role. Maybe it’s a front-row thing. But as Hibbs, grumbling away and giving us the finger, turns right at the entrance to the plane while we all turn left, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know that guys like him on tour are worth their weight in gold.
Wednesday, 5 June. Western Force don’t provide any more opposition than the Barbarians had. We beat them 69–17. It’s always hard to get a decent handle on how well the boys are playing when you have walkovers like this, but there are a lot of guys out there who look very good indeed. Pence kicks 11 from 11, more than half of those from out on the touchline. Drico and Manu play well together in the centre, George and Mako Vunipola look like seasoned veterans rather than Lions rookies, and I’m going to have to work hard to get a Test spot ahead of Sean O’Brien on this form.
We all know that sterner tests await, not just the Tests themselves but matches against the better Super Rugby franchises, and we can’t wait for them, even if the Wallaby management has ensured we won’t face some key players until the Tests themselves. ‘We’d like to be playing against stronger sides,’ Gats says. ‘If we can’t, then we’re going to have to replicate that at training. It’s something we learned from 2009. We arrived at the first Test thinking we were in good nick and found it was a big step up. We won’t get caught this time.’
The scale of a Lions tour has to be seen to be believed. There are 40 players and 40 support staff, and no stone is left unturned.
There’s an entire team of staff we never see, as they’re always either ahead of or behind us, making sure everything’s in place at the next venue, packing things up at the last one once we’ve left. We each have five bags of stuff, and whenever we get to a new hotel room they’re already laid out neatly for us. We get fed five times a day. The social media guys are forever churning out content to help us connect with the fans in the country with us and with the public back home.
The video analysts in particular are amazing. I’m not sure they ever sleep; they’re already there when we come down to breakfast each morning, and they’re still working when we turn in for the night. They send clips to our phones that show our opposite number in the next match we’ll play; in my case, the carries he’s made, the tackles he’s executed, the ruck cleanouts he’s done.
Look, these clips tell you, here’s where he competes and doesn’t compete, these are the patterns to his play, these are his strengths you need to counter, these are his weaknesses that you might be able to exploit. You might not get the chance in the game itself, of course, but if you do then you have to take that chance quicker than thought itself.
After our own training sessions, clips are available within three hours, with the coaches talking over the footage, explaining which parts were successful and which need more work. Then there are the PDF documents on the referees, outlining the number of penalties they give and the percentage of each specific offence within those penalties.
If a ref gives a high proportion of penalties for not rolling away, for example, then come the game I can point out to him that the opposition aren’t rolling away, knowing that he’s hot on that anyway. Probable result: he pings them a few times and I look like I know what I’m talking about.
Yes, every club and national team runs versions of all this stuff. You won’t find a professional outfit these days that doesn’t have nutritionists, video analysts and the like. But not to this extent, not really. With the Lions, everything is bigger, better, slicker and quicker.
Saturday, 8 June. Queensland Reds, Brisbane. Third match in, but my first runout; I didn’t play in either Hong Kong or Perth, and I’m choking to get involved. When you haven’t played you do feel out of the loop slightly, no matter how much you say that you don’t. But I know I don’t need too much game time to prove myself for Test selection, and I also know that after a tough season, rest is just as important as anything else. Missing the first two games won’t have harmed my chances of making it through the tour; quite the opposite, in fact. Not that I can say any of this publicly, of course.
Every Lions player gets a cap number. The plaque above my spot in the changing room here at the Suncorp says: ‘Sam Warburton. 800.’ An easy number to remember.
We want the Reds to give us a good game, and they certainly do that, even without their seven Wallaby squad members. They come at us hard and fast right from the off, and take the lead when Luke Morahan snaffles a Faz kick, spins away from Cuthie, surges past Ben Youngs, fends me off, chips Stuart Hogg and wins the race to touch down. Seventy solo metres from start to finish – a brilliant try that justifiably has the crowd on their feet.
We gradually assert ourselves. Ben snaffles the ball from the back of their scrum to score from close range, and then George beats four men in a 50-metre run before passing it out to me. I step the first man and think I’m in, but then two defenders scrag me just short of the line. We turn round 16–7 up, and though they score another try, we hold our nerve and kick our points to win 22–12.
It’s a good win against tough opposition, and we’ve learned more from that game than from the previous two combined. For my part, at least I can say I’m a proper Lion. But that’s not enough. It won’t be enough until I take that 7 jersey into the Test matches. Oh, I’d take a minute of a midweek Lions game up country over playing for Wales, but for me it’s always been the Tests above all else. It won’t be enough until I start those Tests with that number on my back, and finish them as the victor.
Tuesday, 11 June. We play a combined New South Wales and Queensland county side, and it’s a complete mismatch. They’re part-timers – students, engineers, removal men and plumbers among them – and they’re not nearly fit or strong enough to cope. It’s more or less a semi-opposed training run. In fact, most of the training sessions are tougher than this game, because our skill levels are so high.
The boys run in ten tries in a 64–0 victory, and perhaps we could and should get our score up to near the century mark. Justin in particular plays well. Perhaps a few months ago this would have worried me in terms of thinking about my own place, but I’m in a much better mental space now. It’s good that he – and Sean, for that matter – are playing so well, as it forces me to up my game still further.
And if everyone on tour does that, then we’ll be raring to go once the Test series starts.
Hibbs is in charge of fines, and when Gats is 30 seconds late for a meeting, Hibbs makes him roll the big fluffy dice that we use for forfeits.
Gats rolls a four. Make your own way back from training. You may not carry either money or a phone. You have to walk if need be.
Gats has only just recovered from breaking both heels when falling off the roof of his house in New Zealand. But Hibbs shows no mercy. He’s been waiting since that flight from Hong Kong to Perth to get his own back on Gats. He’s also probably the only person in the whole squad with the bottle to do this.
At least if Tom Youngs starts the Tests ahead of me I’ll know why, Hibbs says.
Saturday, 15 June. For the second Saturday in a row I’m in the team, this time against the New South Wales Waratahs. The first Test’s in a week’s time, and there’s only one more match between now and then, so this team is looking very much like the one that will probably start that first Test.
The Waratahs are a good side. This close to the Test series, we’ve got to beat them and beat them well. We’ve got to put down a marker: we’ve beaten the joke sides you’ve offered up, and we’ve beaten the good ones too. We’re here, and we mean business. ‘In this country,’ Gats says, ‘you need a strut, a swagger. That’s what they respect.’
We don’t just beat the Waratahs. We wallop them. We boss the show up front, and when they put in some cheap shots we don’t retaliate. We score five tries, with Pence bagging two of them plus eight kicks for a personal haul of 30 points; as one report says, Pence ‘is playing like JPR Williams, Gerald Davies and Jonny Wilkinson rolled into one’.
Foxy plays out of his skin, winning man of the match and attracting praise from a bloke who knows a bit about playing at outside centre. ‘Man, how good was Jonathan Davies?’ says Drico. The only downside is that Jamie Roberts hobbles off with 13 minutes left having done his hamstring.
Dave Dennis, the Waratahs’ captain, seeks me out afterwards. ‘If you play like that again next week,’ he says, ‘the Wallabies will struggle to compete.’ He’s a good bloke and it’s a nice thing to say. It gives me confidence that we’re heading in the right direction.
Tuesday, 18 June. We’re playing the ACT Brumbies in Canberra. It’s our last game before the Test series, and we lose it.
Yes, it’s close: only two points in it, 14–12. Yes, none of the guys likely to start on Saturday are involved. Yes, both centres and both wings (Barritt, Billy Twelvetrees, Christian Wade and Shane Williams) are injury call-ups who’ve only just arrived in Australia. And yes, Gats said he’d swap a defeat here for victory on Saturday. The last time the Lions lost to a provincial side was against Northern Transvaal in 1997, and they came back from that to win the series.
But a loss is still a loss. And at this stage of the tour, a loss can be more than a loss. It can derail momentum and sap confidence. The boys out there tonight looked tired and a little flat – if nothing else, the travel schedule’s been pretty hectic: Hong Kong, Perth, Brisbane, Newcastle, Sydney, Canberra – and at one stage they were 14–3 down. They don’t even score a try, the first time that’s happened in a Lions match since the final Test in New Zealand eight years ago.
It’s important to salvage this right now rather than let it fester. The boys who weren’t playing pile into the changing-room to offer condolences and try to pick the spirits up, but the room’s got a slightly weird design – each player has more or less an individual cubicle rather than just a marked space on a bench – which makes it hard to get everyone together.
I’m just thinking about what I should say when Geoff Parling gets up.
‘F*** what’s just happened,’ he says. ‘It was bollocks, but it’s gone and we can’t change it. We tried our best. Shit happens. Crack on. Now it’s up to us to help the Test team so they can do a job on the Wallabies on Saturday.’
It’s not just what he says but the way he says it. Instantly, the mood’s transformed. Whatever I’d been about to say I keep to myself. I’d be jumping in on the back of him and just saying something for the sake of it. Geoff has said it all, and it’s another example of every good team needing leaders in multiple positions.
In fact, given the way he is both on and off the field throughout the tour, Geoff would have made a great Lions captain himself.
Wednesday, 19 June. The team for the first Test is announced. No matter how much you prepare for this, no matter how few surprises there are in selection – and most players are pretty good at working out where in the pecking order they stand – this is always a divisive moment. Up until now, the tour has been about players competing for those coveted Test match jerseys, and no decisions have been set in stone. Now they have, and half the party’s missed out.
Most of those who miss the cut aren’t used to it; they’re first choice for their country, let alone their club. There’s no way of soft-soaping that, even if you wanted to. Yes, there are three Tests and yes, things can change – form and injury mean that the team that starts the first Test is very rarely the one that starts the third – but right now the final game seems a long way off, whether you’ve made it or you haven’t.
The training session immediately afterwards is the most savage one we’ve had yet. Not in terms of the coaches beasting us – they keep it short and sharp, with the Test only three days away – but in terms of the passion and frustration that all the boys bring to it. Those who’ve made the Test 23 are determined to show they deserve it; those who haven’t are royally pissed off and determined to show the coaches they’ve made a mistake. The intensity leads to mistakes.
The coaches don’t seem that bothered. It’s clear they’ve seen this kind of thing before, and in fact the only thing that would worry them was if it wasn’t like this.
Thursday, 20 June. With yesterday’s aggro now out of everybody’s systems, today’s training session is as slick as yesterday’s wasn’t. We’re looking good.
The fans are here in their thousands, thronging the bars on the banks of the Brisbane River and singing songs that remind the boys of home: ‘Fields of Athenry’, ‘Swing Low’, ‘Flower of Scotland’ and ‘Cwm Rhondda’. On a national summer tour you get a few expats and diehards. This is light years away. Wherever you look, all you can see are red shirts.
Drico remembers the wall of red here 12 years ago, which so alarmed the Australian Rugby Union (ARU) that they spent $200,000 on green and gold T-shirts to give away in Melbourne and Sydney during the last two matches.
‘That genuinely felt like a home game that day,’ he says. ‘We didn’t even think that would be a possibility, and then we ran out and the ground was three-quarters red. The crowd have a huge role to play. They put extra pep in your step. It can be that little bit of extra incentive and inspiration you need to have the game of your life.’
Friday, 21 June. ‘Red wall in D,’ Andy Farrell says. ‘Defence is the start of our attack. Make it positive. Don’t just sit back and wait for them. Red wall in D, and f*** ’em up second phase.’
I’d have loved to have played with him in his heyday, He’s a seriously hard bloke. You want to put your body on the line for him.
The coaches are calling on me, Paulie and Drico to lead: the current captain and the two previous ones. We need to show intelligence, energy and passion. There’s a reason why we wear the Lions badge over our heart.
Geech hands us our jerseys, one by one. ‘The jersey will come alive,’ he says. ‘It will demand more from you, as it has demanded more from all the others who have ever worn it. It’s the most personal jersey you can wear, as it asks different things of you. It reflects your character.’
I’m last up to collect mine. As I walk to the front, I catch a glimpse of Jamie Heaslip. He’s looking down at his jersey and stroking the badge softly.
Rala, the baggage man who’s one of the Lions’ real characters – ‘My door’s always open to you, 24 hours a day, except when it’s closed’ – asks me whether I want to give the jersey back to him to put in the changing-room tomorrow as usual, or whether I want to keep it with me and bring it to the game myself.
‘No one’s taking this from me,’ I say.
I go back up to my room and put the shirt on my bed, face down so the number 7 is staring up at me, just like it had on the replica jersey I’d been given by my parents when I was 15. I remember putting that jersey away, vowing that the next time I wore it would be for real.
Now it is. It’s almost as though I willed it into being, the replica shirt becoming the real one. In between the two lie years of sacrifice and hardship, of relentless self-improvement and occasional self-doubt, of refusing to be denied.
I leave the shirt on my bed and go to leave the room and join the others; but before I open the door, I go back to the bed to have another look. This beautiful, precious, priceless shirt.
I go to the door for a second time, and again I go back to look at the shirt.
Only on my third attempt do I manage to leave the room.
Geech’s words.
What is a Test-match animal? Well, he is never prepared to be second. He knows what is required, and he does it again and again and again, and he does it in such a physical, determined and focused way that he is never going to be beaten. His instinct is just that little bit more ruthless than others’.
You can be a good international player, but what a Lions Test does is find out something more about a player. It is about that animal instinct. He is there not just for survival but also for control. He has an instinct to do the right thing that makes a difference. It is not in every international rugby player, but it is in every successful Lion.
It is about playing on the edge, but with intelligence and awareness. It’s a combination of execution and decision-making. You can have all the skills and techniques from training. You can build experience from playing. But the instinct to do the right thing at the right time is inside you – that’s the difference. To have that animal bravery, to know what you are doing is probably stupid, but to do it anyway with the conviction that it will tilt a game, is a special gift.
Saturday, 22 June. Brisbane. A sign on the wall. IF YOU DON’T TAKE A CHANCE THEN YOU DON’T STAND A CHANCE.
‘Let’s go into their house and smash them up,’ Gats says.
In the changing-room. Rala’s table piled with boxes full of everything we need: tape, scissors, studs, strapping, cotton pads, energy drinks, protein bars. Gathering the boys around me. I’m in the zone now, and my blood’s up. Looking each man in the eye, knowing that they’ll do what it takes. ‘If they’re into you, you f***ing pile into ’em,’ I shout. ‘Every single collision. Get up off the floor, work f***ing hard for your team-mates.’
Walls of red in the Suncorp, just like there’d been 12 years ago when Drico scored his famous try.
The match starts with a bang, almost literally. There’s less than a minute gone when Christian Leali’ifano goes to tackle Foxy and knocks himself out on Foxy’s hip. Foxy sees it immediately and calls for play to be stopped. You don’t want to see anyone go off so early in a match, and it’s a relief to both sides when Leali’ifano gives a thumbs-up as he’s stretchered from the pitch.
Twelve minutes gone. Australia have a penalty deep in their own territory. Their scrum-half Will Genia has the ball. He’s their danger man, the one we need to watch. He’s not big, but his power-to-weight ratio’s insane: he can bench double his own bodyweight. He ran Wales ragged at times last summer. He’s got pace, he’s got an eye for the gap and he links well with his back three. We need to keep him closed down, shepherd him back into the areas where we’ve got numbers and can smother him.
That’s what we need to do. That’s exactly what we fail to do.
Genia taps and goes, setting off on a mazy run. A dummy takes out Phillsy and Tom Croft, and now Genia’s running at George and Pence. George is looking to the men outside: stay in or go out? Pence holds his position, trying to show Genia the outside; and as George and Pence converge on Genia, he pops a little grubber through to take them both out of the equation. Israel Folau scoops it up and runs round to score under the posts.
We can’t say we weren’t warned.
Just a little over ten minutes later, Berrick Barnes hoists it high to George just short of our 10-metre line. Two weeks ago George did his hammy, grade 1. To come back from that within two weeks is nothing short of amazing and shows how brilliant our physios are. This is another thing about the Lions: it’s not just the players who are the best of the best, but all the staff too. Coming back from a hammy in two weeks is one thing, however. Putting that hammy under the stress of a Test match and seeing if it holds up is something else entirely.
‘Off the pitch I’m not that confident,’ George once said. ‘But once I smell that whitewash, once I cross that line, I’m in a different zone. I find myself quite aggressive. Confident but not arrogant, and generally quite mad at everyone on the other team. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like they’ve done something.’
George is already moving when he takes the ball. I can see the intent in his eyes. I know what this means. When George is on, he’s on.
He steps between two players, is half-caught by James O’Connor, stumbles, regains his balance, and keeps going. The Aussie cover is coming across, but George is too big and too quick for them. He skins Barnes with a step off his right foot and gestures at Genia as he goes in at the corner. It’s the greatest individual try in Lions Test history, shading even Drico’s effort here in 2001.
And George is still only 21. What were you doing aged 21? What was I doing aged 21? Coming on as a sub in Six Nations matches. Not scoring tries like that.
Together with a couple of Pence penalties, we’re 13–7 up with just over five minutes to go until the break when Folau decides that anything George can do, he can do better. He beats Corbs (Alex Corbisiero), Johnny Sexton and Pence on his way to the tryline. Perhaps the rest of us should just stay in the shed at half-time and let George and Folau play one-on-one for the second 40.
At half-time it’s 13–12.
The next score could be crucial, and it’s ours. Johnny has the ball, Drico’s decoy run takes O’Connor out of the picture, and Cuthie runs a beautiful angle back against the defence. Genia and Kurtley Beale both dive at him and both miss. Cuthie’s mobbed by the subs in their orange tabards behind the in-goal area as he touches down. Lions 14, someone had written next to Cuthie’s name back in the Vale during the Six Nations. Try-scoring Lions 14, as it turns out. Pence converts and that’s 20–12: more than a score between the sides for the first time in the game.
No Aussie side knows when they’re beaten, and this one’s no exception. Two penalties bring them back to 20–18 just after the hour mark. Then they’re pinged for being on the wrong side of a ruck, giving Pence a hard kick out on the right-hand side. Pence drills it through the posts as though the ball’s laser-guided, making it 23–18.
Beale runs half the length of the pitch, jinking this way and that through the traffic. Their skipper James Horwill takes it on. I jackal him at the ruck. Roll away, referee Chris Pollock tells me. Australia take it into contact again, and this time they do get the penalty: 23–21.
This is a proper arm wrestle now: brutal, oscillating and enthralling. Huge efforts for tiny gains.
Two minutes to go and we’re still holding out when the scrum wheels and breaks. Pollock blows instantly. Penalty to Australia, 45 metres out. It’s difficult, but definitely kickable.
I can’t believe it. My mind flashes back to Cardiff last autumn, and Sydney and Melbourne last summer: three games in a row when Australia took it from Wales in the dying seconds. It can’t be happening again, it just can’t. I look at the other Welsh boys on the pitch – Pence, Cuthie, Foxy, George, Hibbs and Lyds – and see that they’re all thinking exactly the same.
Beale lines it up. Here we go again.
There are 20 seconds left on the clock when he starts his run-up.
In the last stride he plants his standing foot, but the ground’s wet and chewed up from where the scrum’s just been. Beale’s foot slides from beneath him – shades of Hooky in the World Cup semi-final two years ago. Beale’s already falling when he connects with the ball. For a moment I think it still might have the legs to make it, but then it starts to drop and it’s clear that it’s going to fall short and wide. Pence shepherds it over the deadball line and that’s it.
We’ve won.
Not by much, and perhaps not totally convincingly, but neither of those matter. We’ve won, and for once a last-minute kick has gone our way and not Australia’s. Defeats right at the death are so hard, psychologically. If we’d gone down like that again today, it would have been very hard to pick ourselves up again in time for Melbourne. I hug Pence and Cuthie. The Aussies are down on their knees, beaten and deflated. I know just how they’re feeling, as they’ve made sure I’ve felt it several times myself.
Hooper, probably mindful of what happened between me and him in Cardiff last autumn, doesn’t ask to swap shirts.
Sunday, 23 June. There’s an enormous – and by enormous, I mean twice the size of a rugby pitch enormous – advert waiting for us in a field visible from the approach into Melbourne airport. ROOTING FOR THE WALLABIES, it says, above a picture of what Sportsbet, the firm responsible, describes as ‘a wallaby hugging a lion from behind’.
So that’s what they call it these days.
Tuesday, 25 June. The midweek team put 35 points past the Melbourne Rebels without reply. The win, and the manner of it, are important for two reasons. First, it’s the last non-Test game of the tour, and keeping momentum ahead of the second Test is crucial. Second, there are places in the Test team up for grabs – Paulie’s out for good with a fractured arm, Corbs will definitely miss Saturday with injury, and Phillsy’s been struggling with a knock to his knee. Even without these problems, we didn’t play well enough in Brisbane for the coaches not to consider making some unforced changes to go with the forced ones.
Lyds in particular has done his chances no harm at all. He was captain for the day, and his pre-match speech was like something out of a Vietnam war movie. On the pitch, he played like a man possessed, tackling everything that moved and quite a lot that didn’t. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see him packing down on the opposite flank to me on Saturday. Assuming I make it, of course.
Wednesday, 26 June. Lyds is indeed in, with Tom Croft dropping to the bench. Tommy Bowe comes in for Cuthie at 14. The three injury changes are pretty much as expected: Mako for Corbs at loosehead, Geoff for Paulie in the second row, Ben for Phillsy at 9.
That’s five of the starting XV – a third of the team – changed between the first and second Tests. When coaches say that Test spots are still up for grabs right until the end, those aren’t idle words. It can and does happen, and it’s up to every player to be ready to take their opportunities the moment they arrive.
This is the Lions, and it does special things to people. There’s no way, for example, that you could play a club match with the intensity of Lyds’s performance against the Rebels and then do it all over again in a Test four days later. But for the Lions, you do. You just do. You do anything. Your body finds a way to go beyond.
Thursday, 27 June. A Lions tour can be all-consuming when you’re in the thick of it, so now and then it’s good to get some perspective. I’m walking with Rach, George and his fiancée Becky (James, the GB track cyclist) around Melbourne, and we don’t get recognised once. Not that we’re complaining. It’s nice just to be able to chill out without being stopped every five seconds for a selfie.
We see a big posse of Lions fans in the distance, but we’re too far away for them to spot us. An Aussie woman sees us looking at the fans and comes up to us.
‘Who are all those guys in the red shirts?’ she asks.
‘They’re Lions fans,’ I say.
‘Lions? What’s that? AFL?’ Aussie Rules, to you and me.
‘No. Rugby.’
‘You mean league?’
‘Union.’
She looks sceptical, as though union’s a long way down the pecking order. Maybe she’s right; in terms of player numbers, it’s behind cricket, Rules, league and soccer.
‘These Lions – where are they from?’
‘Britain and Ireland.’
She shakes her head in good-natured bemusement at people flying halfway round the world to watch a game of union, and goes on her way.
Friday, 28 June. I see Mum and Dad. They wish me luck, but they seem a bit quiet and distracted, not quite their usual selves. I put it down to jetlag, nerves about tomorrow, or both. Besides, I’m beginning to gear myself up for tomorrow’s match, so maybe I’m not quite as attentive to their moods as I could be.
Saturday, 29 June. Some of the locals might not have any idea who we are, but the Lions fans here in the Etihad do. They’re so desperate for us to win that it seeps through even into the warm-up. As we go through our pre-match drills, I find myself blinking back tears.
The second Test in a three-match series is always a titanic one, just because of the maths. One side’s fighting to stay in the series, the other’s fighting to close it out and make the final Test redundant. ‘We have to finish them off now,’ Drico says. ‘Not next week, when it’ll be much harder. Now.’
But in some ways it’s easier being 1–0 down than 1–0 up. At 1–0 down you have to go for it as though there’s no tomorrow: it’s shit or bust. At 1–0 up, though, if you’re not careful you can find yourself being too cautious and conservative, trying to reduce risk rather than embrace it. Even at 1–0 up you have to play as though you’re 1–0 down.
We certainly start that way, fast and furious. Noise and pressure, putting Genia in trouble and forcing Beale to clear hurriedly. Up a level from last week, that’s our message to them. Whatever time and space you had in Brisbane, you won’t find them here.
Hooper takes the ball into contact. I jackal for it. Me against three of them, but I’m still there and Craig Joubert pings Hooper for holding on. Pence hits the bar with the penalty and Australia clear. We keep the pressure on, piling backs into a 13-man lineout, big driving mauls, kicks to the corner. Again Hooper takes it into contact, and again Mako and I wrestle it clear for another turnover. Eighty-five per cent of the first ten minutes is played in their half, and Pence’s second penalty attempt goes over.
I’m playing hard and smart. I go to compete at one ruck, before seeing that there are enough bodies there already and backing off into the defensive line. James Horwill comes through and bashes into me. I take him down, go to jackal, slow the ball down enough for our line to get back in place. Beale, frustrated, tries the cross kick, but Folau knocks on. That was all our defence, soaking up their attack and forcing them to try the risky plays out wide.
Quarter of an hour gone, and they have a penalty. Leali’ifano slots it: 3–3.
I tackle Ben Alexander and jackal him. Beale and Adam Ashley-Cooper pile in on me, but I’m still there. I’m on my game today. They go round the short side and Kane Douglas knocks on, again because we’ve left them with no options and are making them snatch at their chances.
Joubert’s not happy with the way Mako’s scrummaging, and Leali’ifano does the rest. Now we trade penalties: 6–6, 9–6 to us, 9–9 when Lyds strays offside. We’re on the attack just before half-time and force them to concede the penalty. Pence makes no mistake, and we go in 12–9 up.
There’s nothing in this, just as there wasn’t last week either; and just like last week, we know this is likely to go right down to the wire.
‘Let’s have the f***ing courage to see this out now,’ Drico snaps.
Fifty minutes gone. I surge through. Drico has men outside, but Folau picks off his pass and suddenly Australia have the attack with men on the left. Douglas crashes through inside the 22, Mako and I bring him down, he spills it and Pence clears. This is end-to-end stuff. The crowd are loving it.
Into the last quarter. Drico flicks it through his legs to George. Folau grabs George’s shirt. For a moment the two men grapple each other before George, still holding onto the ball, hoists Folau in a fireman’s lift as though carrying a stroppy kid up the stairs to bed, and starts running upfield with Folau on his shoulder. I’ve seen George doing reps up and down steps with 100 kg barbells on his shoulders, so I know he has the outrageous strength to pull this off, but to have the audacity to do it to an opponent an hour into a draining Test match is something else entirely. The crowd go nuts.
We have a scrum. We drive them back. Penalty: 15–9.
We need more. We need to be at least a score plus a bit ahead.
Quarter of an hour left. Liam Gill takes it into contact. I go to jackal on him. Rob Simmons comes piling in on me. The hit rocks me slightly, but I stay in position. A split second later Ben Mowen smashes in, and now I’m half off the ball with my head down by my left knee, and that leg’s trapped and extended straight.
If I get another hit now, I’m in trouble. If Genia clears it and the ruck breaks up I’ll be OK, but one more hit with my leg caught like this is going to put me in a whole world of pain.
And that’s when James Slipper makes the third hit.
It’s like someone’s taken a butcher’s knife and slammed it into the back of my leg. The pain is white hot and almost indescribable. I have a brief image of my hamstring being cut clean off the bone, as though I’m nothing more than a carcass hanging from a ceiling hook.
Two words go through my head. Get up. Get up. Get. Up.
Andy Farrell’s words: ‘Unless you’re unconscious or your femur’s snapped, you’re never injured in defence. If you can stand, you can get in line.’
I push myself to my feet. Even putting the tiniest bit of weight on my left leg feels like a lightning strike. I hop into the defensive line. Hooper comes through and I can’t get to him. He’s taken down and I fall to the ground.
Have to get up. Have to stay in D. I grit my teeth against my gumshield and ride another wave of pain as I stand up once more. Hobble to the side of the ruck, in the guard position. This could be the last thing you ever do as a Lion, so make it good; defend the phases, do your job for the team.
Pointing at Genia, shouting ‘I’ve got 9.’ Kidology, pure kidology. A toddler could get through me right now. Please don’t come down my channel.
They spin it wide, Beale knocks on, the whistle goes, and I slump to the floor once more. It’s been 55 seconds since Slipper hit me. It’s felt like 55 years.
Lying on my back, looking up at the stadium lights. That’s it for me. Tour over. I can try and kid myself that it’s not that bad, but I know it is. This is not something I’m coming back from in a few days. Injury #11.
The medics come on. ‘Don’t even bother assessing me,’ I say. ‘Just get me off.’
‘Stretcher’s coming,’ says head doctor James Robson.
‘No way. I’m walking off.’
‘That’ll only make it worse.’
I almost smile. ‘Doc, it’s screwed anyway. Walking off won’t make a difference.’
I struggle to my feet. I put one arm round James’s shoulder and the other round Prav’s, and together we make our slow and painful way off the pitch.
I don’t know it at the time, but Clive Woodward is calling the 65 minutes I played ‘the most outstanding performance I have ever seen from a Lion’.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is that we hold on for the win.
And the Aussies are coming. Even though we’re six points up, they’re making all the play. Ten minutes left when Folau, even though he has no space to work in, beats two players before Pence brings him down. Genia runs sideways, Stephen Moore straightens, Tom Croft makes the tackle. Genia cross kicks for Joe Tomane, and Tommy snaffles him.
Back they go for the penalty. Eight minutes left. They take the scrum, keep the pressure. There’s a scrum cap on the ground, ripped clean off someone’s head in the frenzy. The ball’s coming quicker for the Aussies now. I so want to be back in there, slowing it down and eating up the minutes. But I can’t even walk.
Genia marshalling his troops. Now going left, now going right. Folau comes short off 9 and Lyds chops him. Men crowding the narrow side. Pick and go, make the hard yards. Five metres out. Genia sends it left again, and now they have a man over and they have space. O’Connor runs the angle, delaying the pass, waiting for Drico to make the hit – and here’s Ashley-Cooper on the cutback as Foxy and Tommy are caught going the wrong way on the drift, and Ashley-Cooper’s sliding over for the try and the crowd are roaring with him.
Australia one point down with the conversion to come.
Leali’ifano ignores the charging defenders and nails the kick. Australia now a point up, 16–15. Three minutes for us to pull something out of the fire.
O’Connor clears from inside his 22, but Genia was outside the 22 when he made the pass, so we have the lineout near their line. Poor game management from the Wallabies – you wouldn’t expect an amateur club side to make that mistake – but it just shows how fatigue and pressure can scramble the brains of even the best players in the world.
We have to secure ball off this lineout. Have to.
We don’t. Gill does brilliantly to take the ball one-handed at the tail – he used to play American football, and it shows – and win the penalty.
The hooter: 80 mins. Next time the ball goes dead, the match will be over. We’re on the attack. Joubert pings them for holding on, just inside our half. Too far out for Pence. We run it. Johnny takes it up to halfway. Conor Murray digs into the ruck and appeals to Joubert – they’re holding on again. Again Joubert blows, and again he gives the penalty.
If we trusted our lineout we’d kick deep, but we don’t. On halfway. With the angle, 53 metres. Right at the edge of Pence’s range. He nods. He’ll have a go.
We thought this would go down to the wire, and it has. For the second time in a week, a last-minute, long-range kick to win the match. In Brisbane it was them; in Melbourne it’s us.
Pence tries to steal a metre or two. Joubert’s having none of it.
Eighty-two minutes gone. Whatever happens, this is the last play of the game.
Sound and fury fading away. Just one man, one ball, one set of posts.
Pence hits it well. It’s high, it’s hanging …
… it’s falling. It’s falling. It hasn’t got the legs.
Genia catches it and kicks it out. Horwill’s in tears. Pence is on his knees, crouched over as though he’s been hit in the solar plexus.
One-all. Echoes of 2001, the last time the Lions toured here. Both times, the Lions won in Brisbane and lost in Melbourne; both times, the Lions’ openside was forced off before time in the second Test.
The Aussies won that series. They’re not going to win this one.
‘A tough, tough Test,’ Gats says.
‘As tough as they come,’ adds Robbie Deans, the Aussie coach.
‘At times,’ Johnny (Sexton) says, ‘it felt like we were just wishing for the game to finish rather than going after it.’
Hard to argue with any of that.
I see Mum and Dad in the stands.
‘Gus has died,’ they say. That’s why they were so quiet yesterday: they’d just got a text from Ben telling them, and they didn’t want to distract me before the Test. After they saw me they went out to dinner at the nearest Wagamama, and were both in such floods of tears that the waiter thought they must be going through a hideously traumatic divorce or something.
I remember going to say goodbye to Gus twice before I left. At some deep level I must have known that I wasn’t going to see him again.
I hobble back to the changing-room. Doing my hamstring, losing the Test and now this: a triple-decker shit sandwich all in the space of half an hour. I slump in the corner and burst into tears.
‘What’s wrong, mate?’ says Jamie Heaslip. ‘It’s only a hamstring.’
Sunday, 30 June. We go to do some recovery work in the sea at St Kilda. It’s freezing, and we’re all feeling pretty down.
There’s a bunch of women in bikinis there, and they come over to chat. Our security guys aren’t impressed. They think it’s a set-up, and that somewhere in the dunes will be snappers with long lenses who’ll get pictures of us – many of us married or with partners – chatting to women in bikinis when we’ve just lost a Test. A cheap trick, but no less effective for that.
‘Back on the bus,’ the security guys say. ‘Now.’
The coaches protest. ‘They haven’t done enough time in the water yet.’
The security guys are ex-Special Forces. They win the argument. They usually do.
Tuesday, 2 July. At a team meeting, Andy shows the clip of me hobbling my way around the field after being hit by Slipper.
‘That’s what keeping your line in D means,’ he says. ‘Eight centimetre tear in his hammy, and still he’s in there.’
‘I’m not quite sure how you managed that,’ Prav whispers to me.
If I wasn’t captain I might have gone home, but we’re near enough the end of the tour and I want to help in any small way I can. I do my best to be around for the boys without getting in their way. ‘We’ll win it in even better fashion now,’ I tell them. ‘What’s a week more when this’ll last for the rest of our lives?’
I’m saying it to be positive, of course, but there’s some truth in it too. As a player, of course you want to close things out as quickly as possible. But you also know that the spectators want nothing more than to have a decider, a shoot-out, and to a degree so do you. To play in a match that will settle everything is such a thrill. If the series is over after two games, whichever side of it you’re on, your mind turns to the plane home, even though you’ve still got one more Test to play. You can’t play a Test properly if you’re thinking about other things. So a decider keeps the boys keen, and sharp, and honest.
I walk round Sydney in sunglasses and a cap. A decent disguise, I reckon.
‘Hello, Sam,’ say about a million people.
Turns out my nose really is that big.
Wednesday, 3 July. Gats announces the team. Pence, Tommy, Foxy, Jamie, George, Johnny, Phillsy, Corbs, Hibbs, Bomb, Alun Wyn, Geoff, Lyds, Sean, Toby. Subs: Tom, Mako, Dan, Richie, Tips, Conor, Faz and Manu.
Because people are listening out for their own names, and because even when you know you’re not playing you’re paying attention to who has been selected rather than who hasn’t, it’s a moment or two before I realise something.
Drico’s been dropped.
Not just from the starting XV, but from the 23 altogether. I wonder whether it’s the first time he’s ever been dropped from any team. If not, then it must be close. The man’s a legend of world rugby.
Foxy’s played so well in the first two Tests, and out of position at 12 rather than 13 to boot, that he’s made himself pretty much undroppable. Now Jamie’s back from his hamstring injury, and he was in great form before that, plus Gats wants his physical presence in the midfield. It’s the same reason he’s gone for Hibbs at 2 ahead of Tom: Hibbs is the most physical hooker we have, and Gats wants us to impose ourselves wherever we can. Beat them up first, then beat them out wide.
The sentimental thing for Gats to do, of course, would be to put Drico on the bench. But Gats doesn’t do sentimental, and in any case Manu can cover 12 and 13 so as a bench option he’s more versatile. No one in the camp thinks it’s too much of a big deal. We console Drico, of course, and tell him ‘hard lines’, but people get dropped all the time, no matter who they are.
Back home, it’s a different matter entirely. To judge from the reactions, you’d have thought that Gats has done whatever the rugby equivalent of pissing on the Alamo is. Keith Wood calls it a ‘terrible mistake’. Willie John McBride says that Australia ‘must be laughing all the way’ and that the Australian media have convinced Gats to make the decision. David Campese inevitably pops up to say that Gats has ‘just handed the series to Australia’. If dropping Drico is the answer, one reporter writes, what on earth is the question?
Gats isn’t bothered, or at least he doesn’t seem to be. He knows better than anyone that this game is about more than just one player. ‘It’s only hard because you’re making the decision using your head and not your heart,’ he says. ‘I have to put hand on my heart and say it’s the right rugby decision. I would hate to think we had made calls to avoid criticism or for reasons of public popularity.’
And Drico, being a man of substance, reacts just as you’d expect him to. ‘Having seen others react in the past to being dropped has given me an insight into how to respond and behave properly. I’ve seen guys who are dead men walking on tours when they’ve not been selected and you cannot be that person. The tour is not about you. For you, the decision is huge. For everyone else, you are just one component of it. You deal with your own disappointment in your own way, behind closed doors, but publicly you have to realise that the bigger picture is not your selection, it is about winning the series.
‘It is about doing the right thing for everyone, setting the tone around the lads, doing what needs to be done at training, trying to be positive when you have a big inner disappointment. Credit to squad players who have had to do this sort of thing before me, put on the defence bib at training and really mean it out there. It’s not easy, keeping your standards up at training. I said all along that it’s the contributions of everyone that will make or break the tour. That was true and remains true. Suddenly I am that person. You can’t say things one week and then behave differently. You have to suck it up. I hope I’m doing my bit.’
He is. We all are.
Saturday, 6 July. ‘It’s taken too much out of them to win the second Test,’ Gats says. ‘They won’t peak twice again.’
Andy Farrell surveys the room with steel in his gaze. ‘We are taking them boys to the hurt arena.’
In the bus on the way to the ground, I put my headphones on, just as if I were playing. It’s the only time in my whole career that I feel this way. Normally when you’re not playing you manage to keep some distance. But I’m so involved in this, so desperate for it to end on a high, that I’m every bit as nervous as if I were playing.
Alun Wyn is captain today. He gathers the boys round in the changing-room. ‘No separation in defence, no separation in attack. Keep moving. Don’t be lazy. Don’t give up. And that’s not on the 60 or 65, it’s from the f***ing first minute to the 80-plus. You don’t give up. On a kick-chase. On a jackal. On filling in. You don’t give up on anything. For 80 minutes.
‘The biggest mark of respect you can have is to be pulled off, blowing out your arse, with nothing left to give. Do not give up on anything. There’s a tomorrow with this jersey and one without. We’ve got 80 minutes to decide which one we want.’
They come out and down the tunnel. I’m screaming at them as they come past. No matter how much I hate match day when I’m playing, I hate it much more when I’m not. It’s funny: I think I’d do anything to get out of it when I do play, but I’d do anything to get back into it when I don’t.
The boys come out of the blocks at a rate of knots. Corbs scores from a forwards’ drive inside two minutes, and he’s so pumped up that he barely notices the congratulations. Two minutes later, Hibbs and George Smith clash heads. Hibbs’s blond, Thor-like mane flies everywhere, but he must have a bonce of granite. Smith goes off for a head-injury assessment (HIA) while Hibbs carries on.
Pence keeps the scoreboard ticking over: 10–0, 10–3, 13–3, 16–3, all inside the first quarter of an hour. We’re running at more than a point a minute. It’s 19–3, when Ben Alexander is sin-binned for persistent infringement at the scrum. Our front row are taking theirs to the cleaners.
Just when we think it might be getting easy, Australia come back. Beale makes a break and it takes two men to bring him down. Then Jesse Mogg comes flying through the middle, and only a desperate tap tackle from Geoff stops him from scoring. Danger signs.
Australia lay siege to our line, and on the stroke of half-time they score, O’Connor taking a high pass, stepping inside Johnny while Tomane bundles Sean out of the way, and then goes through Phillsy and George.
The score is 19–10 at half-time. The biggest lead of the series. But this isn’t over yet.
They get another penalty within moments of the restart: 19–13. Then another: 19–16. We need to staunch this. With half an hour left, we get the shunt on at a scrum, and Pence kicks the penalty: 22–16. A bit of breathing space. Not enough.
Finally, we start to play again. Toby steals the ball off Smith, Johnny chips on, George gathers and feeds Foxy, who takes two men with him into touch. From defence to attack in a heartbeat – one of those moments that turns matches, one of those moments that wins series.
We win the lineout and work the phases. Tommy comes off his wing into midfield. Foxy passes to Pence in heavy traffic. Pence dummies and goes. Johnny on his inside, hands out and screaming for the ball. Pence feeds him and Johnny scores, saluting the fans behind the goal: 29–16 with the conversion.
This is ours now.
Pence fields the ball on halfway, dummies again and sets off up the narrow side. Outside Genia. Inside Tomane. Draws Beale and pops it out to George for the score. In the coaches’ box, Andy hammers the table in celebration and Rob punches the air. Four minutes later, Conor runs flat, Jamie Roberts runs straight, four men miss him, and he’s in too: 41–16.
The Aussie fans begin to stream out of the ground.
I lift the trophy with Alun Wyn. I know I’m tour captain, and I know I’ve more than played my part – we haven’t lost a match when I’ve been on the pitch – but it still doesn’t feel right. I want to have been there in the trenches with the boys, battered and bruised and muddy and sweating, not togged up in my suit as if I’m just off to a drinks party.
If I hadn’t had to come off last week, I’d have been man of the match, we’d have clung on to win, and I’d have lifted the trophy in a proper way. Those ‘if’s again. That’s the third year in a row I haven’t finished a climactic match, after the World Cup semi in 2011 and the 2012 Grand Slam.
I’m with Paulie and Drico, also in their suits. The three men who’d been tasked with leading the line in the first Test, and now only a fortnight later here we all are, or rather here we all aren’t: a broken arm, a torn hamstring and a selection decision. Cruel game. Narrow margins.
‘You can’t write your own script,’ Drico says. ‘Other people write it for you.’
Maybe. But now, with the series won and able to call myself not just a winning Lion but a winning Lions captain, I make a small, silent vow to myself.
Sunday, 7 July. Pence and Phillsy are still in the shirts they swapped with Beale and Genia respectively. They haven’t slept, they’ve drunk their own bodyweight in booze, and the shirts haven’t been washed. The smell is indescribable.
We’re not due to fly home until Tuesday, and the boys make the most of it. They go out three nights in a row, but after the first two I physically can’t manage another one. So Lyds and I order room service and have a quiet night in like an old married couple.
Tuesday, 9 July. ‘Are you business class or first class?’ the Emirates stewardess asks Phillsy.
He gives it a second before giving her a megawatt smile. ‘I’m world class.’
The party breaks up in dribs and drabs. Some of the boys get off in Dubai, some in Dublin, some in London. Then it’s just us Welsh lot on a bus, and when we see the Severn Bridge we all start singing ‘The Green, Green Grass of Home’.
From being on tour with 80 people to driving home in my car alone. Quite a change. Quite a shock. As I pull up outside my front door, I remember the vow I made to myself on the pitch after the victory in Sydney: that in four years’ time I’m going to New Zealand, as skipper, to win the series, and to be on the pitch at the end when it happens.