A rugby team is a collective, but everyone within that collective is an individual. Those individuals can be, and usually are, very different from each other. Each person in the squad has his own strengths and weaknesses, his own hopes and fears, his own areas of confidence and insecurity. Being able to get the best out of people is key to being a leader. Some people need a kick up the arse every now and then; others need an arm round the shoulder. Knowing which is which is crucial. Get it wrong and you can do more harm than good.
But you can only do this if you know people. You don’t have to be everyone’s best mate or remember the name of their wife’s hairdresser’s second cousin, but you do need to know what’s important in their lives. Warren Gatland was very hot on this, both for Wales and the Lions. Tell us what’s going on at home, he’d always say. If things are good at home they’ll be good here, in training camp or on the pitch; if they’re not, then they won’t be.
No one can keep their home and work lives inseparable, not forever. If your wife needs a scan, tell us. If your kids are ill, tell us. If your parents need help, tell us. Family always comes first. Sometimes leadership is about giving people time rather than taking it from them. And people remember this. Say you lose them for a day or two, even for a week or two. Further down the line, they’ll remember the kindness and sympathy you showed and will work even harder for you.
Ben Youngs pulled out of the 2017 Lions tour because his sister-in-law, Tiffany, was suffering from cancer. Tiffany’s husband Tom, Ben’s brother, had been a Lion himself in 2013, and knew how all-consuming and demanding a Lions tour is. There’s no point having someone on tour whose mind is understandably elsewhere. Besides, family is life. Rugby’s just a game.
As captain, I did my best to be as available and inclusive as possible. If I came into lunch and saw three tables full of people, I’d go and sit at the one where I knew fewest of those people well.
There were three reasons for this. First, it let me get to know them better, which in turn allowed me to help them more, or to go to management and say, ‘X is struggling a bit with this.’ Second, it meant they’d be more likely to come to me with a problem or a suggestion. And finally, it stopped any perception that I might think myself better than other people, or be part of a clique with my own favourites.
Of course you get on better with some people than with others – that’s just human nature – but as captain I couldn’t be seen to be hanging around with just the Blues guys when I was playing for Wales, or just the Welsh lads when I was with the Lions. This was also why, with a few exceptions such as the 2017 tour, I always preferred to share a room rather than use the captain’s prerogative and have one on my own.
That determination to be seen as neutral and unbiased extended to my relationship with Gats and the management staff. I was captain of the team, which meant my loyalty was to the players first and foremost. I never wanted preferential treatment as a captain; I never wanted not to have to fight for my place, or to know things that other players didn’t, or be seen in even the slightest way as representing the management rather than the players.
I got on well with the coaches, of course, but my loyalty was rightly always with the players. So I never sat in on selection committee meetings or the like, even though Gats told me I could if I wanted to (and part of me did really want to, as it would have been fascinating. Sometimes on the Lions videos there’s a clip of the coaches discussing a player who’s obviously not named for their own privacy, and you’re thinking, Ooh, I wonder who that is they’re talking about!).
I also did my best to empower players and give them roles. Any leader who wants to take everything on themselves and not trust anybody else to do anything is harming the team and making it all about himself, in which case he shouldn’t be leader in the first place.
This worked both off and on the pitch. Off the pitch – and especially for the Lions, where you’re on tour for longer and boys start off not knowing each other that well – I’d set up various committees to get people involved and give them ownership of various aspects of the tour. Laundry, ents (find out what to do and where to go in the places we’d stay), fines for various misdemeanours (this was always the easiest one to select; just give it to the front row, as no one argues with them), and rooming.
Rooming I always thought was an important part of leadership. Some people liked to keep mixing players up, so they’d get to know new blokes every time they moved hotel and therefore avoid the danger of cliques. I disagreed. Sharing a room is quite an intimate and personal thing, especially in the tense times before a match, and you need someone you trust and feel comfortable with. It can be stressful if you’re sharing with someone you don’t feel that easy with, or who has different habits to you: watching TV late when you’re trying to sleep, or bouncing around the room at dawn when you want a lie-in.
So I always liked to see guys in with people they knew well. If you want to get to know someone better, there are plenty of places to do it – at training, on the bus, in the team room – and then, as often happened, you can ask to share with each other next time round; but, crucially, because you want to rather than because you’ve been told to.
On the pitch, I was never the sole leader; I always had several others around me. For Wales, there were guys like Alun Wyn, Gethin and Jamie Roberts; for the Lions, Johnny Sexton, Jamie Heaslip and Geoff Parling. In the case of the Lions, men like Sexton and Heaslip in particular were very vocal, which suited me fine. Heaslip was so motivational in the dressing-room, so loud and talkative, that he did much of that stuff for me. Did I need to repeat what he’d said just because I was captain? No.
A leader who trusts in his own position is happy for others to speak up. Before the second Lions Test in South Africa in 1997, who was standing in the middle of the huddle before the match, geeing up the Lions? It wasn’t Martin Johnson, the skipper; it was Scott Gibbs, who was player of the series. As long as the team gets the right message, it doesn’t matter who says it.
As captain, I actually had relatively few jobs on the pitch. It started with the coin toss, where I’d always follow the advice of my old mate and mentor Martyn Williams: ‘Tails for Wales never fails.’ If I won the toss, I’d have to choose whether to take the kick-off or ends. At Cardiff with the roof closed it was easy, as there was no wind to consider, so I’d always take the kick-off; we kick, they catch, we belt the carrier, they clear their lines, we get an attacking lineout 35 metres out. But in other stadia I’d consult with the kickers and the coaches first.
Then, during the game, most decisions I had to make were also in some way dependent on other people. Penalty 45 metres out: go for the posts or the corner? That depends on how the kicker’s feeling. Free-kick: run it or take the scrum? Again, that depends on how the scrum’s going that match, as well as how well we’re attacking and they’re defending, so the pack leader and scrum-half’s opinions might come into play.
The one area where the captain can exert a significant influence by himself is in communicating with the referee, as only the captain can speak to the referee without the referee first speaking to him. And the relationship between referee and captain is one of the crucial ones in the game. Rugby, especially at international level, is a complex sport where judgement calls can be both very marginal and very important. Being on good terms with the referee isn’t an option; it’s a necessity.
I got a lot of attention over the years for the way in which I dealt with referees and the rapport I enjoyed with them, to the extent that sometimes I was seen almost as the Referee Whisperer, capable of making them do what I wanted with some sort of Jedi mind tricks. I wish! If I did have a secret, and I didn’t, it was just by applying the same principles to them as I did to my own team-mates, and indeed to everyone in life. It was basic people skills, nothing more.
Think back to school. In almost every class there was a kid who never shut up and was always badgering the teacher. It doesn’t take long for the teacher – and everyone else, for that matter – to treat whatever that kid says as just white noise. So too with captains and referees. Some captains are always chuntering away, but referees just tune them out.
I asked Nigel Owens about this once – he trains full-time with the WRU so he’s often around with the national team – and he confirmed it. ‘We know what we’re looking for,’ he said. H H Almond, who took charge of the first ever rugby international between England and Scotland in 1871, once said, ‘when an umpire is in doubt, I think he is justified in deciding against the side which makes most noise. They are probably in the wrong.’
I always tried to be well mannered, not just with referees but everyone, and careful not to waste time and energy arguing over every point. It’s what every aspiring lawyer is taught on the very first day at law school: the quiet voice can often be the most persuasive one. Less is more.
Romain Poite always said, ‘you can speak to me twice a half: three times if I’m having a bad game.’ I was like, ‘ah mate, that’s perfect.’ I liked this for two reasons. First, it gave me defined parameters to work with, and in doing so forced me to assess what was worth bringing up and what wasn’t. I didn’t want to spend my chips highlighting something irrelevant if ten minutes later there was something important which I couldn’t bring up as I’d already used my slots. Second, Poite’s acceptance that he could and did have bad games was refreshingly honest. Everyone has a bad game from time to time: players, referees, coaches. Everyone’s human.
Other refs would say, ‘Don’t speak to me when the clock’s on.’ That was fine too, because that also helped me pick my moments. The time to ask wasn’t when the referee had just made a big decision; I’d still be emotional and any doubts would still be in his mind. At the next break in play, when everybody had cooled down a bit, that was the time to ask.
In the second Lions Test in 2013, I wanted to know why Craig Joubert kept penalising Mako Vunipola in the scrums, but I waited not just until there was a break in play but also for my opposite number Stephen Moore to finish speaking with him. It gave me a few extra seconds to calm myself and showed respect not just for the referee but the game too.
And, as always, I asked a question rather than made a statement. Asking a question of the referee did two things. It made him give me an answer, which meant we had dialogue, and it also implicitly accepted his authority. Imagine I was pinged for offside when I was convinced I was onside. I could either remonstrate – ‘No way was I offside there!’ – or ask, ‘Why was I offside there?’ No prizes for guessing which one would have been more likely to get me a favourable response.
My relationship with the referee wasn’t a one-time static thing. At club and international level I came across the same officials again and again, so the better I got to know them, the better I could play when they were officiating. With Nigel, even though of course he couldn’t referee me at international level, I was always chatting to him and picking his brains, not just because he’s an interesting bloke but also because I never knew which bits of information or advice I might be able to tuck away and use one day.
This ongoing relationship also stemmed from one simple fact about referees, and indeed life: I couldn’t change the past. No ref was going to alter a decision he’d already made; it would weaken his authority too much, and that would be no good either for him or for the game itself. But I could influence the present and the future.
In terms of influencing the present: say the opposition had scored a try and the ref had gone upstairs to check that the ball was grounded properly. While that was happening, I could ask him if he could get them also to check a possible blocking or offside earlier in the move. He might not have acted like he’d heard, but as often than not he’d ask anyway. Refs don’t mind having their attention drawn to things; what they mind is looking like they’re giving in to players.
In terms of influencing the future: say my opposite number wasn’t rolling away at the breakdown. I could use a lull in play to ask the ref to keep a lookout for this. Perhaps in 10 or 20 minutes’ time he’d ping that player for precisely the offence I’d mentioned. Would he have done so otherwise? Maybe. Maybe not. But it never hurt to ask.
A wider version of this is the kind of meetings that coaches (and sometimes captains) have with referees the evening before a match, when they raise concerns – tacklers going for a kicker’s standing leg, for example – which they want policed. Both sides in any match do this, and they have every right to. If you don’t, you can be sure that your opposition will.
Sometimes, especially since I played 7 and was consistently contesting the breakdown, the whistle would go against me personally. I would never protest when this happened, but I would ask for clarity. Against Scotland in 2013, when Joubert was once again the ref, he penalised me at a turnover. The rule was that you had to release the player you’d tackled just for a split second before getting on your feet and jackalling over him. ‘Was that for unclear release?’ I asked. He said yes. ‘Do I need to release sooner?’ I asked. Again he said yes. This way, I knew how much he’d let me get away with, and he knew I’d taken his instructions on board.
Nigel Owens once pinged me for the same offence. As I got up, I said, ‘Are you sure, Nige?’ ‘You’re quick,’ he said, ‘but not that quick.’ With a smile, I countered, ‘I’m pretty quick, mind.’ Nothing cutting or nasty. Nothing strident or overtly critical. But he admitted later that the comment acted as a marker, as I’d hoped it would, and he made a point of taking a closer look at the next breakdown.
As a leader, therefore, it’s all about people, whether those people are referees, team-mates or coaches. Treat them with respect and listen to what they want, and not only will you keep them happy, but you’ll also improve the performance of your team, which is – or should be – your ultimate aim.