At my lowest, when absorbing the blow of not being picked for Australia, nothing could console me. I had to work through the pain as if it was a grieving process. It helped that I thrived on the responsibility of being the deputy principal at IGS. It allowed me to forget about rugby for a while, because being a deputy head is a tough task. You’re basically running the school for the principal, and so I needed to keep the teachers motivated and in check while forging a relationship with the kids. The parents presented a different challenge, as IGS slotted in between the big private schools and the more routine government schools. We offered an alternative education but the mix was complicated. We covered a wide socio-economic spread from quite poor families to extremely affluent parents. Some parents were pushy and expected us to handle everything.
I did not realize it then, still licking my rugby wounds, but the lessons and skills I picked up at IGS would help enormously in my later career. As a coach you’re also dealing with a very mixed bunch of people, and you have to find the right operational mode, one which allows you to move forward as a team while you try and get the most out of each individual.
I taught PE, geography and even maths to the lower-ability classes, where motivation and behaviour were problematic. As they were the opposite of high-achievers, I had to find ways to engage them. I was a pretty effective teacher and I loved it when they became excited about the subject. Their behaviour improved and, with that combination of discipline and enthusiasm, it was inevitable that their grades rose sharply.
My personal life also changed. I’d had a few girlfriends but, between rugby and teaching, there was little time to become too serious about anyone. I guess it was a sign of how consumed I was by rugby that my future wife, Hiroko, and I had been at IGS together for about seven years before I even spoke to her. It was a big school and we rarely crossed paths. I was looking after the high school and she was teaching German and Japanese to the junior students.
The first time I really noticed her, and talked to her, was soon after her father had died in Japan. I met her properly one evening at a school function and, after I had expressed my condolences, we began to talk. Hiroko was fascinating and pretty and I wondered how I had not noticed her for so long. She was good friends with Rita Field, the head, and their friendship continues today. Hiroko had an inquiring mind and a fiercely independent streak which was unusual, then, for a young woman from Japan. She was a qualified German teacher who had studied linguistics at university. Hiroko had completed her Masters and she then worked for a television company just outside Tokyo. She did that for a year, but the hours were ridiculous. Hiroko had had enough and so she quit her job and went backpacking in New Zealand and Australia.
It was then that fate intervened. She found her way to Sydney and, needing to earn some money, applied to IGS. Hiroko loved the school but, as she told me, it had begun to feel like time for a change. We began to go out and it felt just right being with her.
We had not been in a relationship for long when I surprised her with a question. It was not the most romantic proposition but, as casually as I could, I asked Hiroko if she fancied coming to Leicester with me for eight months.
Hiroko had never heard of Leicester before. I had to explain that Leicester was in the heartlands of English rugby.
She looked at me for a while, and then nodded and smiled. Why not? It would be an adventure and Hiroko was always open to new experiences.
I was thrilled even though, so early in our relationship, neither Hiroko nor I could have guessed that this would be just the first of many rugby adventures we would take together over the decades as a married couple.
Leicester are one of the great clubs in world rugby and, after they had played against Randwick during a preseason tour of Australia in the late 1980s, a bond was forged. The two clubs might have been very different in the style of rugby they played, but Leicester and Randwick were united by their competitiveness. Both clubs were also well run, and so it was natural that we would collaborate.
I was one of the earliest beneficiaries of a player swap. Leicester’s Matt Poole, a promising lock who was nine years younger than me, was offered the chance to play a season of first-grade rugby at Randwick while I went in the opposite direction. In Matt’s case, it was a significant step in his rugby education. Martin Johnson, for whom Leicester also had high hopes, had become a much better player after his years in New Zealand rugby. I think the Randwick interlude benefited Matt because he and Johnson would go on to lock the Leicester scrum 129 times, which is a club record for a second-row partnership.
My career was at the opposite end of the scale. Randwick offered me the chance to go and play for Leicester in 1991 as a thank-you for my years of service. I had never been out of Australia before and I was keen to immerse myself in a radically different rugby culture.
IGS were also generous in allowing me this sabbatical, but I sweetened the break by agreeing that, while I was in England, I would visit numerous schools. As deputy principal it would enhance my knowledge to see how schools in a different country approached education. I visited most of the big public schools in the East Midlands and I was impressed. They were well set up and there was a consistently high level of education.
I also enjoyed the much more rough-and-ready work I did as an amateur rugby player in Leicester. I helped out Matt Poole’s dad, Dave, with his furniture delivery business. A driver and I would go all over the Midlands, and I enjoyed the hard labour and seeing a lot of the English countryside. I remember that, between jobs, we would kick around in the warehouse, having a laugh and drinking lots of tea. Whenever the supervisor walked in, we would jump up and look seriously busy as we moved random pieces of furniture around. We went back to having a laugh once he had disappeared.
I loved the rugby most of all. At Randwick we won all the time. Our mindset was ruthless and our belief unshakeable. I found the same conviction at Leicester. But, rather than playing in the sunshine and sea air alongside Coogee Beach, Leicester rumbled through the cold and the rain on muddied fields. But everyone understood the culture of the club, with a clear focus and strong work ethic, and they had some great players from Dean Richards to the young Johnson. He was pretty quiet then, and there was no sign that he would become one of the great captains of Test rugby and lead England to victory over my Wallabies in the World Cup final ten years from then, but Johnson was already on his way to becoming a seriously good lock forward.
I played three league games for Leicester, and nine reserve matches, and the rugby was interesting. I wore the famous B shirt in Leicester’s A-B-C front row. These were still the days when Leicester wore letters rather than numbers on their shirt and I enjoyed packing down alongside two very good props in Graham Rowntree and Darren Garforth.
The conservatism of the game in England was apparent, but it made me appreciate that there was more than one way of playing rugby. During one game I ran to take a quick lineout. One of the forwards growled at me, ‘We don’t do that at Leicester, mate.’
It was good enough for me to play in a team that had a blend of hardened experience, in the form of Richards and others, and bright young talents like Neil Back, who had just broken into the first team. Tony Russ was the coach, although in those amateur days he was more of a manager, and Leicester echoed Randwick in the way in which the players ensured that high standards were maintained. The experience refreshed me. It would have been much more difficult for me to coach England without that brief taste I had of Welford Road.
Hiroko and I also had a really good time. We saw a lot of England. But our stay was cut short by three months because I took an unexpected call from IGS. Rita Field had already left the school as she wanted to pursue her passion for teaching art. I didn’t get on particularly well with the new head. But there had been more changes in my absence, and would I be prepared to step in as acting principal? I was surprised, but flattered, and the lure of a new challenge meant we said goodbye to our life in Leicester after five happy months.
It had been an important time together and, soon after we returned to Sydney, Hiroko and I were married. Our greatest adventures were about to begin.
I decided to have one last season of playing rugby while I settled into my new headmaster’s role. It was time for another change so, rather than going back to reserve-grade rugby at Randwick, I joined Southern Districts. They were in the first grade but, compared to Randwick and Leicester, they lacked the competitive edge. Most of their guys were just happy to play and it did not matter too much to them how many games they won or lost. They were lackadaisical because they saw rugby as a mainly social activity. I could socialize and drink with the best of them, but I hated that attitude. Still, I found it quite educational.
The discipline and hardness you take for granted at Randwick and Leicester is not for everyone. Some players are just not willing to put in the kind of effort we did at those two illustrious clubs. I knew I was only going to be there for a season, so it was not down to me to change the culture of the club. We played Randwick twice and, somehow, in the game where I spooked Joe Picone by kissing his cheek and telling him I loved him, we beat them at home. I played all 22 games and I was a busted flush by the end of that 1992 season.
I took a break from rugby and did little in the game throughout 1993. Work at IGS took over. Towards the end of my 18 months in charge, and soon after our daughter Chelsea had been born, Hiroko said I needed to make some changes. I was spending too much time at work. I found a way to increase my efficiency at IGS so I could spend more time with my wife and daughter. It was a valuable lesson that helped me in my later coaching career. You have so much discretionary time as a coach that it’s easy to let the job take over your life. I learnt from that experience as a headmaster to use my time well so that my family would not feel neglected.
I made a hell of a lot of mistakes while headmaster, but I learnt that you need a vision – and to implement that vision you have to set standards and continually match them. It was very demanding as the school went from kindergarten to Year 12. I faced problems that stretched from pre-school children to teenagers who were on the cusp of finishing school and heading off to university or work in the real world. I was 32 years old.
After 18 months the school asked me to become their projects director and I set up two new entities. I began an English-language college within the school for foreign students, mainly from Asian countries, and it became a money-spinner. I then set up an international school under the IGS banner in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. I travelled to Vietnam every three months to oversee the school. Most of my problems came from English parents who were working in Vietnam.
Our school was based on Australian lines and some of the snootier parents wanted a system more in tune with English public-school education. I remember one woman would come into each meeting with everything minuted from our previous discussion, and with masses of correspondence covered in coloured Post-it notes. These parents were high achievers, who were paying a lot of money to the school, and so they were challenging. It was bloody hot and humid and I could feel the sweat pouring down my back while I was being harangued. I would look at the overhead fans whirring above us, while I tried to remain patient and diplomatic; it felt like I was in a movie set in southeast Asia.
I had appointed Peter Gibbons, a tough Australian, as the principal. He was a good operator but he could be a bit rough and tumble. I had to find a way to prevent the whole thing from blowing up and reach some kind of consensus instead. It was another great learning experience.
But I knew it was time to get back to rugby.
My nine years at IGS had taught me so much that nothing could faze me when it came to coaching. I applied for the job, which would be unpaid of course, as Randwick’s reserve-team coach in 1994. Once I was appointed, I was intent on doing it as professionally as possible.
I had a good team, captained by Paul Cheika, Michael’s older brother. James Holbeck, Tim Kelaher and Peter Jorgensen would all play for Australia. With that calibre of player, and me working harder than any other coach in the competition, I was not surprised that we dominated the entire season. We won the grand final at a canter.
Hiroko suggested that it might be a good idea if I could be paid for all the time I gave to Randwick. She had a point, but I had to explain that rugby was still an amateur game. We did not know that the World Cup the following year, in 1995, would be the last tournament before professionalism changed rugby for ever.
Even in the amateur game, opportunities emerged. Tokai University’s rugby team flew from Japan to Australia to sample a slice of the Randwick Way. I was asked to take them for three training sessions. I already loved coaching and so I found it easy to make time for the Tokai boys. Apparently they enjoyed my sessions – so much so that, at the end of the Australian season and in the school holidays, in August, they asked me to go over for a month to run a summer camp.
They paid for me, Hiroko and Chelsea to fly to Japan. I loved it even though they were a really weak team. It was very intense and I worked for 28 out of the 31 days I was there, coaching twice a day, up in the mountains in a town called Sugadaira, nearly 200 kilometres from Tokyo. Every high school, university and company team based themselves in Sugadaira in August because there were 130 rugby pitches in the town.
We did nothing but train and play rugby all day, every day. It was heaven for me, even if it was brutally hard and conditions were Spartan. There would only be two meals a day – at ten in the morning and at six at night. We would train in the morning and play matches in the afternoon. It was crazy but it was also the best experience I’ve had in coaching. At the end of a demanding but exhilarating month I thought: ‘I wish I could do this all the time.’
South Africa hosted the 1995 World Cup, which they won by beating a far better team in New Zealand in the final. I had been impressed by the All Blacks throughout that tournament as, beyond the rampaging force of a young Jonah Lomu, they had such smart and skilful players, from Frank Bunce to Zinzan Brooke. Sean Fitzpatrick captained them and they swept into the final where, watched by Nelson Mandela and a fevered home crowd in the bear pit of Ellis Park, they hit a green-and-gold roadblock. The Springboks won 15–12, after extra time, and I admired the way they had been coached so skilfully by Kitch Christie. It was a beautiful reminder that the most talented teams do not always win the biggest games in rugby.
Bob Dwyer, assisted by Glen Ella, had coached Australia, the defending champions. They had lost to South Africa in the opening game and had been shocked by England in the quarter-finals.
As the sport turned professional, I was hopeful that I might find a place for myself in this new world. Apart from coaching the Wallabies, there were only three big jobs in Australia – with New South Wales, Queensland and ACT. Glen and I applied for the New South Wales vacancy, as a coaching team, with Super 10 rugby on the horizon. We had no real experience but we got to the final three in the interview process. Chris Hawkins, who was a teacher like me, got the job. Glen and I weren’t too disappointed as it had been a long shot.
My life was about to turn upside down anyway. As soon as the call came in from Japan, I was convinced. Tokai University wanted me to return to Japan to become their full-time rugby coach. I said to Hiroko: ‘I really want to do this. It just feels right.’ She was reluctant at first because the idea of returning to Japan did not appeal. She was settled with me in Sydney and it felt like a backward step to live in Japan again. But, luckily, she loves me and she has always backed me. She suggested we go out for a year and see how we felt then.
It was still a massive risk. I was earning around $80,000 at IGS and I was well established. Working for Tokai would see me take a significant pay cut. But I just wanted to become a professional rugby coach. I went to see Gerry Gleeson, the chairman of IGS, who was a great guy, a six-feet-eight-inch, 18-stone hulk of a man who had previously been a fine Aussie Rules player in Melbourne. We had a good relationship because we respected each other and we both loved sport. I told Gerry about the Japanese offer and that it felt as though I was at a crossroads in my life. If I stayed in education, and wanted to progress further, I needed to get a Master’s degree. The alterative was to take a punt and try and become a full-time rugby coach.
Gerry looked at me for a long time and then he said the words I wanted to hear more than any other. ‘Mate, I know what you want to do. Go and coach professionally . . .’
We lived in Hadano, 70 kilometres west of Tokyo, and the first six months at Tokai University were probably the toughest of my coaching career. Even though I am part-Japanese, there were cultural and language problems from the outset. There was also a bizarre situation because, while they were paying me to improve their team, they did not want me to do any coaching. At our first training session the manager took me to one side just as I was about to begin work.
‘You just watch,’ he told me.
I watched the first session, which the captain ran. It was chaotic but I didn’t say anything.
On my second day, at the start of training, I said, ‘Right, I’ll take the session.’
The manager, who was actually a very nice bloke, said: ‘No, no. You watch.’
This went on the whole week. On the Friday night I was pretty upset. ‘What am I going to do?’ I asked Hiroko.
‘Resign,’ she said.
Hiroko, being Japanese, understood the strictly hierarchical nature of her society. She knew it would never change unless I did something dramatic. And if it didn’t work we could go home to Sydney. I knew she was right.
I took my resignation letter into training. The manager was ready to tell me to watch again, but I beat him to it. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this is my resignation letter.’
He was stunned. ‘Why?’
I spelt it out. I had come all the way to Japan to work as their coach. I was not willing to stand by and watch when I should be coaching.
While the training session began with me on the sidelines again, the manager asked if I would wait while he spoke to his superiors. I nodded but shrugged too – as a way of reinforcing the point that I was not in the mood to negotiate.
An hour later he returned with a promise. I could begin coaching the team the very next day.
‘Unless I have full control, I’m leaving,’ I stressed.
‘Yes, Eddie-san,’ the manager bowed respectfully. ‘Full control.’
They kept their promise and, the next morning, I took charge. There were about 80 kids and their standard of play was hopeless. The positives were minimal, but it was imperative I brought some structure to training. I split them into three groups. I trained the first group from 2 to 4 p.m., the second from 4 to 6 p.m. and the final set from 6 to 8 p.m.
Six hours of straight coaching were physically draining but, as a young coach, it was the best thing I could’ve done. I was training them on a dirt pitch and by the time I got home at nine I was shattered. It then took me around 30 minutes to wash the dirt and the red dust out of my hair and off my skin. I would have a quick dinner, go to bed and start again the next day.
The mornings were not any easier. I was supposed to be studying Japanese but I found it difficult. I was in a class of 50 and the other 49 students were all Chinese. The Japanese alphabet uses adopted Chinese characters and so they were immediately at home while I was all at sea. Despite having been part of a linguistic school for so long, the sad truth is that I have never had an aptitude for languages.
While I have basic Japanese today, enough to convey instructions to a team, it remains woeful. After all these years my wife forbids me to speak it at home. Our dog in England only understands Japanese and my wife doesn’t want me to even speak to him.
In 1996, my Japanese was so atrocious I gave up the classes in Hadano. I concentrated on rugby. The level of play was so low that, early on, I thought: ‘What the hell have I got myself into?’
I am often accused now of generating conflict as a way of making an impression on my teams. But I don’t seek conflict. Conflict is only useful if it gives you the opportunity to be creative. I learnt that lesson at Tokai. I began to understand that if you wanted to change something there was no point trying to do it at a meeting with the whole group. Players would look at you impassively and nod meekly. But they never acted on your instructions. You needed to get in the faces of small groups and turn them around that way or, even better, target the key guys individually. They would accept it more readily if it was done in private and they did not have to worry about losing face in front of everyone else. My aim became to get the senior players on board. Once I had them believing in my methods, then they would run the team.
I’ve used the same strategy with every squad I’ve coached. When I took charge of England I knew that, before I even started to change the mentality of the group, I needed to capture the big characters – Dylan Hartley, Owen Farrell, George Ford, James Haskell and the Vunipola brothers. Once you’ve got the leaders and the dominant personalities then the rest will follow.
The most obvious change I forced on Tokai was a stipulation that they were not allowed to kick the ball – under any circumstance. I wanted them to run and pass because we had a tiny team. Our biggest prop weighed only 85 kilograms and we played against university teams who had 120-kilogram props. We were getting monstered so we had to move the ball. I tried to instil the Randwick game into them, even though they did not have the skill to replicate that style successfully. But it was better than them playing an orthodox kicking game. I wanted them to play very fast and nimble rugby, attacking with a flat backline, which went against the grain of the methodical style they had been taught. Japanese and English rugby players are not that different – even if the gulf in rugby tradition is vast. In both countries they have been raised on regimented rugby with little room for innovation.
I had to break that down at Tokai and I did it by force. I really pushed the university players hard and insisted they change. I’ve used a much more subtle approach in England and tried to change the mentality in stages. At Tokai I was draconian – as underlined by my law that they could never kick the ball even if hemmed in close to their own try line. If they failed to listen to me, I would respond ferociously. In England I’ve learnt to encourage them to discover the right way for themselves.
There was no such subtlety in Japan. I took a dictatorial approach. I knew the players could train hard and absorb punishment. It was part of their cultural make-up. Punishment engenders obedience. It helped me develop the squad but when it comes to leadership you need more than obedience. I faced the same problem with England more than 20 years later. How do you develop leadership? It was testing at Tokai but their previous experience of coaching had been so poor I improved them.
The logistics made it taxing. We only played seven games that season. I needed more time, and many more games, to make the improvements we needed. We came second last in the university first division but, considering our lack of size and my insistence that they run everything, they were a much better team at the end of the year. Our results didn’t reflect their improvement, but you could see the pride in their faces. It was gratifying.
It seemed incredible that two boys from Matraville High, Glen Ella and me, would coach Japan in 1996. While I was at Tokai University, Glen drafted me in as the forwards coach of the national team. He was an assistant coach of Japan and responsible for the backs. We worked with Iwao Yamamoto, the head coach who came from Suntory. He loved Australian rugby and wanted Japan to play with a flat backline. Yamamoto was right, but he was not really a great coach and his players lacked the skill and the moral courage to play that style of rugby.
I had watched Japan get smashed 145–17 by New Zealand in the 1995 World Cup. They conceded 21 tries and only started playing a little, and scoring a few points, once the score was humiliating. It was a familiar pattern in Japanese rugby. They only looked like a team once another massive defeat was assured. At 40–0 or 50–0 they got off the floor and played with some gumption. But I always remembered Bob Dwyer saying that it takes no courage to try to win the game when you’re beaten. Real courage is to try to win the game when it’s on a knife-edge. The Japanese were happy losers. If they tried hard near the end, defeat was acceptable.
After Bob and Glen were fired by Australia, my old friend had taken a circuitous route to Japan. Glen had been coaching Stourbridge, the English club side, when the Japanese Rugby Union contacted him and asked whether he would consider working as a technical coach with the backs. Glen is always up for an interesting challenge and so he said an immediate yes. Soon after his arrival they asked him if he could suggest a forwards coach. Glen laughed and said, ‘You’ve got one of the best coaches I know already in your country.’ He was talking about me and so, while coaching Tokai, I worked as a consultant to the national team.
Yamamoto allowed us to do all the coaching. We also picked the team but, the following day, we would discover that someone in the union had changed the selection. We were just young assistant coaches so we had to swallow it.
There were many frustrations. In Japanese rugby, if one team is successful everyone copies them. It’s very peculiar. They do the exact same warm-ups as the champions and try to do the same set moves. I was not going to allow that to happen and so, just as I had done with Tokai, I insisted we stopped kicking the ball. They took to the running game but it was difficult to instil the necessary aggression and boldness into their play. I began to understand that the Japanese had been educated to be passive and subservient because, in the past, they had been such an aggressive race. That aggression was obliterated along with so much else by the ending of the Second World War and the atomic bombs which fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was as if the Japanese had decided that meekness was better than annihilation.
Complexity shrouded that subservience. I could understand rudimentary Japanese but the nuances went over my head. It always felt as if, while talking to the team, other conversations were unfolding. I was told that the Japanese don’t like foreigners telling them what to do. I was half-Japanese so I thought I might be accepted – but it was actually harder for me than for Glen.
We had immediate success when we won the Asian championship in 1996. It was the first time that Japan had won the competition without any foreign players. We insisted on picking purely Japanese players and, on this point, the management backed our judgement. We played some beautiful rugby. Glen had the backs purring and we beat Korea who, then, were stronger than Japan. There were some memorable tries and we celebrated properly with the boys after we lifted the title.
The Japanese Union told Glen and me that they wanted to appoint us as head coaches so that we could take the team into the 1999 World Cup in the United Kingdom. We were still young guys and we thought, ‘This is bloody exciting!’ Three years before the World Cup we could make real progress. But they kept us waiting and then, suddenly, it was announced that they had appointed Seiji Hirao as Japan’s new coach. He was a good bloke but our being dumped hit hard. It made me understand that I should never trust rugby administrators.
I also held on to an ambition that, one day, I would return to Japan as their head coach.