Japan was isolated from world rugby, and the internet had yet to transform our lives, but I kept in touch with the dramatic changes tearing through the game. Rugby had become professional across both hemispheres and Australia, New Zealand and South Africa were ahead of the northern countries in the format they found for a new competition. Super 10 rugby had been introduced three years before and provinces and states from the three southern hemisphere giants as well as Tonga and Western Samoa played in the inaugural tournament. It was very low key and it needed the injection of a ten-year television deal to transform rugby with the Super 12 in 1996.
Predictably, the island nations of Tonga and Samoa were brushed aside, and all the money poured into the traditional powerhouses. Five New Zealand teams, four from South Africa and three from Australia made up the new tournament. It was obvious the New South Wales Waratahs and Queensland Reds would keep their places, but there been had much speculation over the introduction of a third Australian team.
There was a call to open up the game by starting a team in Melbourne. But Victoria was a state dominated by Australian football – and rugby was always going to be a sideshow in Melbourne. They might have had the money, but they didn’t have the passion or the history. So the Australian board decided to back the ACT Brumbies, a new entity in Canberra forged by people from my past.
Canberra is Australia’s capital city and the home of the national parliament. Sydney was the first site of Britain’s colonization of Australia in 1770 but, by the 1900s, Melbourne was thriving economically. Neither Sydney nor Melbourne would allow each other to become Australia’s capital city and they eventually settled on a compromise. Canberra became the capital, despite being initially not much more than a sheep station between the two giant cities.
From the moment it was established, Canberra copped a bad rap. It was the home of politicians and, consequently, the home of everything that was wrong with Australia. It had neither the beauty of Sydney Harbour nor the wealth of Melbourne, and so it was condemned by the wider Australian population as the home of not only lazy politicians but cardigan-wearing public servants. It was a place of intense and widespread ridicule.
But it was also home to some wonderful rugby players. Michael O’Connor played for the famous Canberra Royals. A player of majestic talents, he featured alongside the Ella brothers in The Invincibles and went on to star in both rugby union and league. David Campese was from Queanbeyan, a city just over the border from Canberra that grew out of the European migrant population after the Second World War. So Canberra and ACT (Australian Capital Territory) was a small but proud rugby outpost which sat in the shadows of the established NSW and Queensland unions.
As I followed professionalism in Australia from afar, I had kept in contact with Ewen McKenzie, my fellow front-row forward from Randwick. Ewen had always been the player with whom I’d had the most searching conversations about rugby. We loved analysing the game and gave the lie to the myth that props and hookers were too dumb to ever think beyond their natural tendency to smash into the opposition front row. Ewen was from Melbourne but he was never going to star in Australian Rules football. He was destined, instead, for great things in rugby. He was a rugby intellectual, a deep thinker and an organized man who helped set up a totally new outfit in Canberra as a player and confidant of the coaching and management team.
The Brumbies were coached by Rod Macqueen – a rugby loving businessman from the Northern Beaches of Sydney. His club, Warringah, had started in the Sydney second division but quickly made an impression. Warringah’s first president, Bill Simpson, was a devotee of Cyril Towers and the Randwick Way. In homage to Randwick, the Warringah jersey was green and white. So Macqueen was dedicated to the running rugby we loved at the Galloping Greens. Rod made a name for himself as a tough loose forward in the 1970s with similar ball skills to Simon Poidevin.
Randwick and Warringah enjoyed a strong mutual respect. They were clubs full of tradesman, builders and teachers. You always knew that when you headed across the Spit Bridge to play against the Rats (Warringah’s nickname came from the famous Australian Second World War unit, the Rats of Tobruk), it was going to be a tough afternoon. Both the Rats and Randwick loathed Manly, Warringah’s closest neighbours.
After his playing career, Rod had taken charge of the Rats and coached them to three grand finals without winning a Premiership. He took charge of the New South Wales Waratahs in 1991 and coached them during an unbeaten season in which they played some of the best rugby in the state’s history. Their performances had a massive impact on the World Cup-winning team that Bob Dwyer led in 1991.
Rod was also the coach who axed me from the New South Wales squad that toured Argentina that year. But, rather than holding a grudge against Rod, I had been impressed by the way in which he broke the news to me. We didn’t know each other then, but he took the time to call before the squad was announced. His reasons for not including me were similar to those which Bob had cited when choosing not to pick me for Australia. I was too small and he had opted for much bigger hookers. I had no complaints.
Five years later, and considering Rod’s obvious intelligence, I was not surprised he had become a Super 12 head coach – of the ACT Brumbies.
Macqueen, ever the businessman, arrived in Canberra with a plan to create a new team from scratch by utilizing shrewd recruitment. As luck would have it, Canberra had just hatched a once-in-a-generation group of young players, including George Gregan, Stephen Larkham, Joe Roff, Rod Kafer and Marco Caputo, who all went on to play for the Wallabies. They were Canberra boys and it was a glorious coincidence that a group of supremely gifted, highly intelligent and fiercely competitive young players had come through the ranks together. I was convinced, even then, that they would have a lasting impact on world rugby. At the same time, there were players from Queensland and NSW who, rather than spending time on the bench in their home states, would take the chance with this new Canberra team. Brett Robinson, Troy Coker, Pat Howard and David Giffin from Queensland were joined by Ewen McKenzie, David Knox, Owen Finegan, James Holbeck, Adam Magro and John Langford from NSW.
They took the Super 12 by storm. On notice to perform or risk losing the franchise, the Brumbies faced the famous Transvaal Lions from Johannesburg in their first home game. Louis Luyt, the bombastic South African rugby hard man, had dismissed the Brumbies as unworthy of a place in the competition. He predicted that his team of Springboks would score 100 points in Canberra. But, in front of 8,000 hearty souls, the Brumbies recorded a famous 13–9 victory.
In that first season in 1996 they also beat the Natal Sharks and the Graham Henry-coached, All Black-laden Auckland Blues. The win against the Blues was particularly special as Auckland included Sean Fitzpatrick, Jonah Lomu, Zinzan Brooke and Adrian Cashmore, and they were regarded as, outside the Test arena, the best team in world rugby. The Brumbies caught everybody off guard and finished the season in fifth place, just outside the play-offs.
Ewen was convinced they would be even better the following year and so, over the Christmas break in 1996, I flew to Australia. I wanted to improve as a coach and I wanted a taste of real professional rugby as the Brumbies prepared for a new season. Ewen had cleared it with Rod that I could sit in on their meetings and watch training.
Another good friend was a key member of the Brumbies squad. David Knox had been a teammate of mine for years at Randwick, and he and Ewen were joined by four other players from our old club. These were either blokes who had been sitting on the bench at New South Wales or promising forwards such as Owen Finegan, who had become a Wallaby after that first year at the Brumbies. It was an indication of Ewen’s ability to spot a talented player.
Rod understood rugby deeply, but he would never claim to be a highly technical coach. He concentrated on creating an environment that got the absolute best out of everyone involved. Rod was in the mould of John Hart and Nick Mallett, who then led the All Blacks and Springboks. They provided a structure and a culture that allowed their players to express themselves. It was no coincidence that the most successful rugby coaches in the earliest days of professionalism were three very smart managers who were all strong characters.
I was different to Rod as I operate mainly as a hands-on coach who pays close attention to the processes around coaching. But Rod was the right fit for the embryonic Brumbies as he had the vision, entrepreneurial flair and managerial nous to set up Australia’s third Super 12 team.
Ewen, who had played under Rod for New South Wales, was the first and the key recruit. He had the respect of every young player in Australia and was a magnet for talent. Ewen also developed the Brumbies in so many other ways. He helped choose their name, designed the shirt, developed the philosophy, and even walked the streets of Sydney and Canberra trying to find sponsors. To this day he still talks proudly of being able to convince his brother-in-law to sponsor the team hats. It was not normal fare for a prop forward.
As the shirt designer, Ewen looked to the All Blacks for inspiration. The black kit of New Zealand always carried an imposing aura, and so Ewen chose the dark blue which dominates the Brumbies shirt around the shoulders and the navy shorts and socks. He was convinced it would make the Brumbies look bigger.
These were simple concepts but, in a still essentially amateur sport, Rod and Ewen were ahead of the pack. They started from a blank sheet of paper and built the Brumbies’ processes, style and standards from scratch. In the move to professionalism the Brumbies had a massive advantage over Queensland and New South Wales in not having to deal with the legacy of a hundred years of amateurism.
On my return to Japan I felt a twinge of regret. I had been offered a new job, coaching Suntory, but it felt as if I was paddling into the backwaters of world rugby while Rod Macqueen surfed the booming rollers in a vast and teeming sea of opportunity.
I must have impressed the Brumbies because, four months after I signed my three-year contract with Suntory, I was asked to join them as a development coach. It was a good step back into Australian rugby, but Hiroko was upset I was even considering another move. She pointed out that I had already persuaded her to uproot our lives in Sydney and move to Japan.
We had struggled to adjust but we had made it work. We were now living just outside Tokyo and I was working in Fuchu. Suntory was a giant brewing and distillery company and its owner loved rugby. He wanted me to turn the company team into the dominant force of Japanese rugby. Hiroko reminded me that Suntory had given me a good contract and for us to start all over again in Canberra was too risky. She was right and so I turned down the Brumbies.
Suntory offered a fascinating challenge. My main task was to overtake their fierce rivals Toshiba, who were Japan’s equivalent of Leicester. They mauled, kicked and punched their way to multiple championships. They were a defensive, forward-dominated club. Based in Fuchu, 30 kilometres from central Tokyo, Toshiba’s players worked for the electronics company. They could be seen around town in work uniforms and on their bikes. They were a working-class club while my players were very different.
Rather than working at the beer factory, my boys were Suntory salesmen. They wore suits and ties and drove around in BMWs. You might think my preferred role would be to coach the working-class club rather than the affluent bunch. But I was on familiar turf as Suntory were the underdogs and we needed to change their attitude that rugby was not important. The president was desperate for us to bring down Toshiba.
For four months I worked our players really hard. They were much better than the students at Tokai – but they were obstinate. I turned up the heat and pushed them through a series of gruelling training sessions. After one particularly tough afternoon a Suntory player came to find me. He was bawling his eyes out. ‘Why do we have to train like dogs?’ he asked.
‘So you can become better rugby players.’
‘Why can’t we just do things nice and slowly?’ he said through the tears.
I sat him down and we had a little discussion. Toshiba were bigger, fitter and stronger and we had to catch and beat them. I had similar chats with many Suntory players and they eventually came around to my thinking. It helped that we improved hugely and made the Japan Cup final. A few myths developed during my various stints in Japan. The stories implied that I was allegedly some sort of devil and the players were so terrified of me they would hide under tables when they heard me coming. It’s complete garbage. Whenever I catch up with my former Japanese players today, we get on famously and enjoy the memories of the hard work and successful times. I’m often painted in the rugby media all over the world as some kind of crazed tyrant. I make no apology for getting the most out of my players. It’s the only way I know how to be successful. Shortcuts don’t work in professional rugby.
As luck would have it, fate intervened. The Wallabies were hammered 61–22 by South Africa in August 1997. It was the end for Greg Smith as Wallaby coach. Rod Macqueen was the obvious candidate to replace him – and his appointment became official that September.
I’ve since heard that I was one of a final few candidates to become the new head coach of the Brumbies. The ACT board were keen on a local coach while the Brumbies’ CEO, Mark Sinderberry, and team manager, Phil Thomson, flew to Christchurch to interview a young coach by the name of Steve Hansen. The World Cup-winning All Black coach was then making a name for himself at the Canterbury Crusaders.
Word started to leak that I was the preferred candidate, but not everyone was convinced. When Rod came to Canberra he brought a few key advisers with him. One of them was David Pembroke – or Pemby as everyone calls him. Pemby was Rod’s right-hand man. Ten years earlier he had played in the first team Rod had ever coached at Warringah. Pemby’s rugby career ended not long after he visited a close friend in Royal North Shore Hospital who had broken his neck playing for a country team. Seeing the impact of injury, Pemby tossed in his dream of being a Wallaby, reached for his commerce degree and headed off in pursuit of his next adventure. He became a political correspondent for ABC Radio and he was working in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery in Canberra when Rod began the Brumbies. Rod, knowing the critical importance of media, marketing and communication, asked Pemby to join the team.
In early September 1997, Pemby got wind of my appointment and headed straight to the coffee shop in Kingston where the players so often met. In the early days of the Brumbies, Queensland coach John Connolly had mocked the Canberra players as the ‘Cappuccino Set’.
It was a beautiful spring day and, knowing that the players would have a real say in the appointment of their next coach, Pemby went to see them even before he approached Sinderberry. McKenzie, Gregan, Larkham, Kafer, Giffin, Roff and the club captain Brett Robinson were having a ‘Set’ as they jokingly called their catch-ups.
Pemby made a beeline for Ewen. He pulled up a chair and said to the cerebral prop forward: ‘Right, so who is it?’
‘What’s “it”?’ Ewen replied wryly.
‘Who’s our next coach?’
Ewen looked at Pemby and then, knowing how much he could trust the team’s adviser, he said: ‘Jones.’
‘Jones?’ Pemby replied in confusion.
‘Eddie Jones.’
‘Eddie Jones?’ Pemby said as he tried to remember where he had heard the name before. ‘The bloke you played with at Randwick?’
‘That’s him,’ Ewen said.
‘Who does he coach?’
‘Suntory.’
‘Suntory?’ Pemby parroted. ‘Suntory, Tokyo?’
He looked at Ewen as if the prop had lost his mind. Was he really suggesting an unknown coach in Tokyo should take over the Brumbies who, under the inspired Macqueen, had just reached the Super 12 final in their second season? The Brumbies were already the best team in Australia. Were the players really going to make such a left-field choice?
‘Yeah,’ Ewen grunted.
‘Are you serious?’
‘Yes, Pemby,’ Ewen said patiently. ‘I’m serious. Eddie Jones is going to be our new coach.’
Ewen explained that I had flown to Canberra a few days earlier. He had pushed hard for my appointment, but it was imperative that the others believed in me as well. Apart from Ewen, I went out for dinner with Robinson, Gregan, Larkham and Kafer at the team’s favourite Italian restaurant, La Capanna in Kingston. We talked about rugby easily and passionately. It only needed me to get on with Sinderberry for the decision to be sealed. I immediately liked Sinderberry and he responded well to the players’ request that I replace Rod.
I then flew back to Japan to discuss the situation with Suntory. Contracts were being drawn up and, once I had gained clearance from Suntory and we had signed the agreement, Pemby could release the news. Pemby still looked worried as Ewen tried to reassure him.
‘Trust me, mate,’ he said. ‘He’s the right bloke.’
Hiroko’s backing was critical, and she had agreed to move to Canberra even before I had arrived back in Tokyo. She understood that this was a huge opportunity and so she was willing to start again in Australia with Chelsea and me. The situation was different at Suntory. I had got the club back on track, and the company president was not going to be happy at the prospect of losing me in the first year of my contract. As the owner of a giant company, he was used to getting his own way, so I had to sweeten the blow.
‘If you allow me to go for the next three years,’ I suggested, ‘I’ll come back in my holidays and coach Suntory for free.’
I was thrilled when he agreed. I have since returned to Suntory every vacation to coach. I have been a consultant with Suntory since 1998 and I became their head coach for three years from 2009 to 2012. The way in which the president agreed to let me go in 1997 cemented our relationship. I think Suntory were proud that someone from their club had been offered such a prestigious job in world rugby. It explains why the link has lasted all this time and why I spend three months every year in Japan so that I can coach Suntory for the sheer joy of the work.
When news broke of my appointment, the media were as stunned as Pemby. I flew into Canberra via Sydney after travelling overnight from Tokyo. My first commitment was to meet the media at the home of ACT Rugby – in modest offices on the first floor of a building above a topless bar in the semi-industrial suburb of Fyshwick. The surroundings were home to some of the largest blowflies you have ever seen. They bred in the grease trap of the bar’s kitchen and buzzed through the office and slammed into windows.
In these unglamorous surroundings, Pemby and Sinders were waiting for me. The media would be with us in an hour, so we needed to prepare. It was clear that this was an important part of my job and, given all the progress made in the previous two seasons, now was not the time to go backwards. Pemby sat me down and ran through some instructions.
‘We can’t ever be boring,’ he said. ‘We’ve got no money so the only way we can get our message out is if we create attention through the media. Make sure you’re entertaining. Be clear and precise with your language and whenever possible tell stories. Journos love stories and they love quotes. Put a smile on your face and look happy. Oh, and by the way, have a shave. The unshaven look doesn’t work on the telly. You’ll look terrible.’
Pemby didn’t know me then but, even now, I remain under the iron rule of my mum. She still tells me off if I don’t turn out looking as neat as a pin. So I would almost certainly have reached for my razor, but Pemby got his reminder in first. I liked the fact he was so clear from the outset.
I absorbed Pemby’s message, read his release and notes carefully, and felt fully prepared for the press conference.
Pemby was pleased I was shaven and looked smart. ‘Presentation is everything, mate,’ he said.
Once the presser began, I relaxed. People laughed at my jokes and they scribbled away as I spoke about the kind of rugby that I hoped we could play. There were plenty of questions but nothing I couldn’t handle. It felt like a bit of fun and I took to it easily.
‘How did I go, mate?’ I asked Pemby.
‘Not bad,’ Pemby replied.
I looked at him and nodded. ‘I know I can improve. I need you to work with me and show me how I get better at this.’
‘With that attitude mate, we’ll get along,’ he said. ‘But it’s a big job.’
Pemby and I had a lot in common. His grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousins all lived around the corner from me in Little Bay. I played rep cricket for Randwick with his cousin Marty Gurr, who was a fantastic rugby league player. Pemby and I had both played at the University of New South Wales and matched each other in loathing Manly. We clicked right away and, over dinner, he provided all the background and insights I needed to understand the Brumbies – and why we had to grow our profile not only in Canberra but across Australia and around the world.
I mentioned the tension between the Brumbies and the Sydney media. Pemby laughed. ‘Every story needs a pantomime villain, mate, and the Sydney media is ours,’ he said. ‘They’re members of the old guard who see us as upstarts. They don’t like the fact we’ve had success, but none of us really gives a toss. If we keep winning, they have to cover us.’
In the Sydney papers, the Brumbies were regularly described as cast-offs, misfits and rejects.
Pemby explained that Greg Growden of the Sydney Morning Herald had started it. ‘Growdo wrote it one day and I couldn’t believe my luck,’ Pemby said with a huge smile. ‘It hit the perfect note because it’s all tied up with the wider Canberra story – that the rest of the country always bags us. It was the best marketing line we have ever had. It played straight into our “chip on both shoulders” strategy.’
Pemby had also written a wider and more sophisticated plan. It was called ‘ACT: Taking on the World.’ He gave me a copy and said: ‘Sounds better than taking on Australia, doesn’t it? By setting up the challenge to be the “best in the world”, you push the players to always improve both on and off the field and you give the supporters, the board and sponsors the opportunity to be involved in something really significant.’
Some of the players had laughed when Pemby first outlined his vision – which upgraded Rod Macqueen’s aim for the Brumbies to be the leading provincial team in Australia to an objective that we would become the best provincial team in the world. He explained that the new television deal gave us a massive opportunity to have a global impact.
Today the original Brumby boys still call him ‘Global’ and tease Pemby about his big-picture thinking. It’s all good fun and the boys are grateful. His vision was a powerful driver of ambition, standards and behaviour, and in a few short years we achieved that goal when we became Super Rugby champions – despite being based in a town of only 300,000 people.
That first detailed conversation convinced me Pemby was the sort of bloke I could rely on to tell me the truth and always have my back. Twenty-two years later, we still speak most days, as he ensures I stay on top of my communication. He’s a brilliant strategist and helps me shape the right message to the right audience at the right time in order to help my England team succeed.
It’s much harder to forge a relationship with the press today because the competition between the various media outlets is so cut-throat that you feel under siege most of the time. Social media has changed everything, and the days when you could have a few beers and a good yarn with reporters have disappeared. The traditional rugby writer now also has so much more to think about with blogs and podcasts, tweets and videos, headline-grabbing stories and internet traffic. Most journalists still want to write decent and even brilliant work, and some outstanding pieces are still produced, but so much of it is mediocre and ill-informed. I also feel that the standard of rugby knowledge amongst the press pack has dipped in recent years.
Back in Canberra, despite overtaking the Reds and the Waratahs, we were still the misfits and outsiders of Australian rugby. I don’t think Growden, Peter Jenkins, or any of the other leading Sydney journalists really resented us, but their narrative bound us tightly together. We were misfits to them, but we planned on changing the way that rugby was played around the world. We were the Brumbies – the most sophisticated and accomplished team in the country.
George Gregan epitomized that sophistication and accomplishment. He had a more interesting story than most blond-haired Australian rugby players. George was born in Zambia to a black Zimbabwean mother and a white Australian father – in echoes of my own background. He had grown up in Canberra which, far from being the bland city described by the Melbourne and Sydney media, was actually a melting pot of cultures and nationalities. The clichéd nonsense from the big city media was that dull old Canberra was run by government bureaucrats and full of politicians and roundabouts. Yet, being home to all the foreign embassies, Canberra is a surprisingly cosmopolitan city.
George also had an understated, urbane manner which didn’t obscure his ferocious desire to win. He was a great rugby player but, at the same time, the butt of constant ribbing from his teammates. When the game went professional, George shaved his head, started to dress sharply and generally changed his look to match a superstar international player. Joe Roff always teased him when he pointed to George and said: ‘See that bloke over there? I used to know him when he was a Kingswood-driving, Afro-haired, purple-suit-wearing physical education student. Look at him now.’
At the Brumbies, no one was allowed to get above their station.
I still knew, after just a few weeks of preseason, that we were in for a testing campaign. The squad was not big enough or hungry enough. Macqueen had made great strides but the set-up was amateurish. With little money to spend and no professional base, we did weight training in a high-school gym with kids running around the hall. It also seemed to me as if the team had peaked, six months earlier, as Super 12 runners-up. Some of the players were too old and they had been clinging on until they were given new contracts.
Rugby, like real life, is not about the surface. The roots, as well as the layers beneath the surface, dictate your chances of success. Macqueen and McKenzie had done an incredible job starting the Brumbies from scratch. The foundations were in place to build long-term success but the middle planks were crumbling. I should have ripped out the ageing guts of the team but I was inexperienced. I had scrambled up five tiers of rugby in one move. So I didn’t trust my own instinct and judgement. I decided to wait and see if the players would prove me wrong.
We struggled from the opening day. On 1 March 1998, I took the Brumbies to Sydney to play our biggest rivals, the NSW Waratahs. They had finished fourth from bottom the previous season while the Brumbies ran the Auckland Blues close at the top of the table. We were heavily favoured but ended up being soundly beaten 32–7 on a beautiful sunny afternoon at the Sydney Football Stadium. It was humbling. In hindsight, our preparation had been appalling. The players’ mindset was all wrong. They wound themselves up and acted like they were on some sort of revenge mission. I didn’t know how to respond. It was a low point.
I worked the players hard on our return and we won our first home game, against the Otago Highlanders, before the Sharks brought us back down again in Canberra the following week. We then beat a very poor Cats team from Johannesburg – but I knew we were up against it with three away games next in South Africa and New Zealand.
We lost 24–7 to Northern Transvaal on a hard pitch in the unforgiving town of Brakpan and then headed for Cape Town. I was plagued by uncertainty – both about my team and my capacity to coach at this level. We faced the Western Stormers at Newlands, one of the great grounds of world rugby. It was a sold-out Friday night game, on 3 April 1998, and the Stormers had very good players like Percy Montgomery, James Small, Breyton Paulse, Chester Williams, Pieter Rossouw, Dick Muir, Bobby Skinstad and Corné Krige. But they were still erratic and I knew we should be able to test them. However, doubt spread through us like cancer.
From the moment the Stormers ran out to the Men in Black theme song, a shiver of apprehension rippled through the Brumbies. Forty thousand rabid Cape Town fans kicked up a storm as the black-shirted home team tore into us. It was an embarrassing night as they scored five tries and all we could muster was a lone David Knox penalty. The final scoreline was 34–3 to the Stormers.
Later that night, alone in my hotel room, I sat on the bed and cried. Tears ran down my face as I looked helplessly around that empty room. I remembered some of the words Pemby had said at our first detailed meeting: ‘Winning is the first, second, third, fourth and fifth most important thing. If we don’t win, the whole enterprise will collapse in on itself.’ His words echoed in my head. I rang him but he didn’t answer. Exhausted, frustrated and seemingly out of ideas, I thought: ‘Shit, what am I going to do? How am I going to turn this around?’
We had lost four out of our first six games and the following day we had to fly to New Zealand. The Crusaders awaited. I knew they were much better than the Stormers and more humiliation loomed. It seemed as if my coaching career at the highest level could be over almost as soon as it had started.
Eventually I splashed water on my face and went for a walk. It was late but it was a beautiful night. I left our hotel in Camps Bay and, in the moonlight, sat on the beach and calmed myself. ‘All right,’ I thought, ‘we’re going to change this. We just need to find a way to get out of this mess and then we’ll get on with it.’
By the time I got back to my hotel room I was fine again. The next morning no one had any idea that I’d been so distraught. I became firmer and more assertive.
Of course there was still pain. We lost to the Crusaders in Timaru but we played much better rugby during a 38–26 defeat. We were crisper and sharper in attack and scored three tries.
The margins were narrow and while we lost the next three games, two of those defeats, against the Wellington Hurricanes and the Auckland Blues, were each by just three points. The Blues were an inspiration. They set a benchmark for teamwork, physicality and skill that, if we were going to become the best team in the world, we needed to equal.
As the losses mounted, the locals in Canberra, who had been so welcoming a few short months before, turned on me. We coached from an open box in the Bruce Stadium grandstand and at half-time you had to walk through the crowd to get to the dressing room. People shouted at me.
‘Go back to Randwick, Jones. You’re hopeless.’
‘Seriously Jones, you’ve got no bloody idea.’
‘Bring back Macqueen!’
It was harsh and, while I kept up appearances, the words stung. I knew we would have done better if I had acted more boldly. We eventually finished third from bottom.
The team remained solid but, predictably, the ACT Board started to get nervous. Twelve months before they were in the penthouse, and now I had taken them to the cellar. Sinders started asking questions. Our captain, Brett Robinson, speaking on behalf of the team, was adamant we were heading in the right direction. We just needed more time; the players were 100 per cent behind me. During the season, Pemby, our team manager Phil Thomson and I met each Monday morning at 7 a.m. to go through our weekly plans and to assess our on- and off-field performance. We could see throughout the whole year that things were tracking well. We just weren’t getting the wins. There were injuries galore but that’s never an excuse. No one cares.
I had made some obvious but difficult changes. One of them was dropping David Knox. We had gone to Matraville High together, played club and rep cricket in the same team and shared so much at Randwick. Knoxy had won the last of his 13 Test caps the previous year and he remained a reliable goal-kicker, whereas Stevie Larkham and Stirling Mortlock were inconsistent. I wanted to build our new and much more structured form of attacking rugby around an axis of Gregan, Larkham and Kafer. Knoxy was one of the most creative players I ever saw but, at three and a half years younger than me, he was 34. He was too old to play at this level and I had to tell him the truth. He was annoyed at the time, but it says much about him that, all these years later, we remain good mates.
Knoxy’s contribution to the Brumbies from the first days in 1996 was immense. He’s a different sort of character and never quite fitted in at the old-school-tie Waratahs. But on the Brumbies’ pirate ship, where opinion, diversity and inclusion were prized, Knoxy found a home. The locals, including the local nightclub owners, loved him. He certainly enjoyed his time in Canberra.
Apart from changing the personnel, I had begun to think of ways we could compensate for the fact we were not as athletic as the Kiwis or as physically strong as the South Africans. We needed to get back to our core strengths of playing smarter rugby. The younger players at the Brumbies were thoroughly engaged in these conversations. Rod Kafer, in fact, became the joint architect with me of how we planned to play the following season.
Wayne Smith, coaching the Crusaders, had already made his own dramatic changes. Until then, Super 12 rugby had often been an unstructured mess where great tries were scored. Smith transformed the dynamics of the game and turned the breakdown into a contest. The Crusaders became Super 12 champions that year after bringing a new physicality to rugby. Their innovation spurred us on.
The mood in our team was calm, despite the fact we had won only three out of 11 games. The players trusted me. Trust is not negotiable in any successful team. With this group, the honesty was underpinned by affection. They just knew each other so well. Some of the traditions the team established encouraged the players to be vulnerable. They spoke openly and often emotionally about what the team meant to them. They felt safe with each other. But they weren’t scared of conflict. They would argue points of detail but, once the decision was agreed, there was little dissent. It was a true collective. They were deep thinkers, with creative imaginations, and they knew I was curious and searching for on-field innovations wherever I could find them.
I also had not panicked. I could have lost my composure after that brief meltdown in Cape Town, but I was patient as I rebuilt the team. I am not sure now if success would have come any quicker if I had acted brutally. I might have alienated more people than I needed to and we would have finished in mid-table rather than third bottom. The dramatic shifts we planned required time to work.
Towards the end of that first year, as we played some interstate games against Queensland and New South Wales, Kafer and I began to experiment with our new way. Our Wallaby players – Mortlock, Roff, Larkham, Gregan, Finegan and the rest – were given a break between the Tri Nations and the November tour of Europe. Kafer and I were free to try different tactics.
Kafe is the smartest player I’ve ever coached – at least in his ability to think strategically and laterally. He and I had conversations about the subtle intricacies of rugby which matched anything I shared with Dwyer or McKenzie. We had hit it off straightaway. When I had flown into Canberra to begin the new season, Kafe picked me up at the airport. He was obviously intelligent and so when he confided in me on our drive from the airport, before the 1998 season, that he was thinking of quitting, I spoke strongly: ‘Don’t be hasty, mate. You’ll be making a big mistake if you retire so early.’
He was only 26 but he felt that, having never played for Australia, his international hopes were over. He’d had the desperate disappointment in 1995 of missing out on making his debut for the Wallabies. He’d been selected as an ACT player, which in those days was no mean feat, to play full back in the second Bledisloe Cup in Sydney. In the final training session at North Sydney Oval he broke his ankle in three places. His Wallaby dream went up in smoke. A couple of years later, and despite having played some great rugby outside Knoxy at number 12, Kafe didn’t feel he could compete with three outstanding Wallaby centres in Tim Horan, Jason Little and Daniel Herbert. Kafe was a different style of player. He relied on sleight of hand and timing to make an impact. I told him he was definitely good enough to play Test rugby and I saw him as one of my key players.
I was right. Kafe was picked for the Wallabies the following year. He was part of the World Cup-winning squad in 1999 and he ended up playing a dozen Tests for Australia. But, for me, his greatest achievement was the way he helped develop a totally new style of attacking rugby at the Brumbies.
Against New South Wales, in September 1998, we played structured rugby and scored two beautiful tries in the first 20 minutes. It felt incredible. We ended up losing the game heavily, but we didn’t care about the scoreboard that afternoon. I can still remember the euphoria as Kafe and I sat in the dressing room and spoke with such belief that we could change the way rugby was played around the world.
At the end of my first season, I convened a session with the team to explore the question of who we were and what we wanted to achieve. While we had the vision to be the best provincial rugby team in the world, and we clearly had a strong culture, we hadn’t written it down. So the boys spent a whole day doing team-building exercises and drawing on butcher’s paper. Late in the day, they landed on a set of values that matched our name. B was for Betterment, R for respect, U for unity, M for mateship, I for intelligence, E for enjoyment and S for success.
Pemby was ecstatic. In their own words, the players had defined the team ethos. It added further clarity to our identity, another layer to our foundations, and created a new framework for our storytelling.
After a rough start to his Wallaby coaching career at the end of 1997, Rod Macqueen settled into his new role. One of his first tasks was to appoint some hard heads to his national team staff. His strength and conditioning coach was Steve Nance – a grizzled bloke who spoke with raw honesty. Steve had won three Premiership titles in rugby league with the Brisbane Broncos and his work was in demand. I liked him and, even though he was much older than me, we mirrored each other in our pursuit of clarity and excellence through hard work and blunt candour.
Steve knew I was in a tricky spot before the start of my second season with the Brumbies. He respected me and so he pulled me aside to give me some advice. ‘Mate,’ he said quietly, ‘if you don’t do well this year, it’s probably the end of your career.’
You might think that’s unnecessarily harsh, but Steve had been a professional coach far longer than me and understood the reality. It would have been insulting if he had suggested I had another season to fritter away. We both knew if I didn’t get the Brumbies back into the top half of the Super 12, the axe was heading my way.
Steve encouraged me to go with my instincts. If I was going to fail, it would be best to stay true to my convictions. I had to take charge of the programme. Our first season had been one where, feeling green at this level, I allowed the Brumbies to drift. The consequences had been dire. I was now in full control and, hearing Steve’s stark pragmatism, I felt far more confident in myself and the team.
The next three months of Super 12 brimmed with promise. We had created an exciting new way of playing rugby which would maximize our resources. The old wood was gone and we also had some of the best players in the world in Gregan, Larkham and Roff. My neck was on the block so I was no longer willing to allow the mistakes of the previous year to creep into our new squad. The past had given us a strong foundation, but it was now in my hands to make the new system work. I was convinced we would be successful.
The Brumbies’ style became the model for how everyone, at least in the southern hemisphere, tried to play the game. We created a highly structured plan which, in essence, aimed to ensure that our best attackers were running at their worst defenders in the third phase of play. It resembled a game of chess and, when it worked, it was devastating. Defences were nowhere near as sophisticated then as they are now and, ultimately, we were able to beat every team in front of us with something to spare. Physically we were not really a match for much bigger and stronger teams. So we attacked them with our new approach. Eventually, everyone tried to mimic our style, and people all around the world had copies of our playbooks.
Like all innovations it required courage to make it work because, as soon as you try something unorthodox and it doesn’t go well initially, you are likely to face enormous criticism. You need to remember that any worthwhile new way of thinking takes time to refine and perfect.
I had always encouraged an attacking style of rugby based around the Randwick philosophy – which is to play as close to the gain line as possible. Randwick were serial winners and so this was not some philosophy devoted to the purity of rugby. It was seriously focused as the best way to ensure we would win game after game. The key was that we believed we could win by unleashing the best in ourselves rather than just by trying to destroy the opposition’s attributes. I think there have been two periods in my career when I’d been able to work with our players and coaches to distil the Randwick Way into fluid, attacking rugby which has suited us. We did it with Japan in the 2015 World Cup and, because we had such intelligent and gifted players, we did it best of all with the Brumbies between 1999 and 2001.
In trying to create a pattern where our best attackers target their worst defenders, it’s intriguing to reflect on the fact that a system that seemed so revolutionary at the turn of the century now echoes much of rugby today. The leading sides in the game today are very sequenced and their players understand their roles completely and bring a great deal of discipline to fulfilling their set plays. We were quite basic in the way we started our new way.
The genesis of the plan was rooted in rugby league. Kafer and I studied a lot of league games and we developed a system in which, ideally, by the end of the third phase we would have someone like Joe Roff running at their biggest and slowest prop forward with a real chance of carving open the field and going on to score a try.
Sometimes it would take more than the three-phase template and that was fine. The system was not allowed to choke the players. If a gap opened up after the first or second phase, then our guys would break away from the sequence. I was happy to back their judgement if an unstructured opportunity arose. But, for the most part, we stuck to the three-phase mantra. It was incredible how often it worked if the quality of ball was good and the execution of play was spot-on. Today defences are far too organized to be ripped apart but, in those early years, once we had mastered the system, the Brumbies were a step ahead of everyone else.
We were in a tight spot early in the competition. The format was not kind and our first three games were away. Two matches in South Africa, where we had always struggled, followed by a visit to Brisbane to play the Reds. We lost all three matches but each was tight. The Reds only just beat us 19–18. We were fourth bottom, as we had picked up some bonus points, but I was heartened by the fact that, after our third straight loss, only three other teams, out of our 11 rivals, had scored more points than the 56 we had accrued.
We held our nerve and won our next two games at home. Against the Stormers we scored a near-perfect try after we peeled them open in three simple phases. A little criss-cross with one of our runners going to the left, and another to the right, left a gaping space for a third runner to burst through a hole. A week later, we crushed the Bulls 72–9. It was a rainy Saturday, on 27 March 1999, and conditions were atrocious. But we were slick and potent, scoring ten tries. Some of the handling and passing, the line breaks and the interplay between backs and forwards was breathtaking. Even though the rain hammered down, it was as if we lit up Bruce Stadium with sunshine.
We climbed to fifth in the table. Yet consistency requires application and patience and we had to win our last game, away to the Blues in Auckland, to have a chance of making the semi-finals. It was our most memorable performance of the season. We were 16–0 down at half-time but we kept faith in our system and stuck to our three-phase plan. I was immensely proud when we ended up winning 21–16 to move into fourth place.
The Crusaders were fifth; but with a game in hand the following day. We needed them to lose to the Waratahs to ensure our spot in the play-offs. Our mistake had been to leave the fate of our season in the hands of a team as ruthless as the Crusaders. They were the defending champions and I was not surprised when they beat the Waratahs to inch ahead of us in the table. Even as the fourth-ranked team at the end of the regular season, they went on to win the tournament. It could have been us – with a little more composure and conviction.
We also made great strides off the pitch, at both grassroots and corporate level, during that second season. I had a great time. As part of his mad plan to colonize the world with Brumby fans, Pemby knew we needed to start close to home. So whenever time allowed we would stock up his car with second-hand rugby gear, boots and balls, shirts and posters, and head off to the rugby clubs in small towns around the ACT. I would spend the afternoon or early evening training junior or first teams. It didn’t matter if it was schoolboy or second-grade rugby. I was just happy to have a whistle in my mouth and watch the boys have a good time. Afterwards, we would get together in their clubhouse or pubs and talk rugby for hours. I always encouraged them to share their views with me and, when the Brumbies had another game coming up, I’d ask them which players they would select. I can’t say anyone ever changed my mind, but it was healthy to hear the divergent views from ordinary people who were fans of the Brumbies.
Curiosity is the heart of invention. Whether you are talking to Pep Guardiola, Alex Ferguson or the person sitting next to you on a plane, you can always learn something. If you ask questions and listen with humility, you will learn something. The older you get, the more you realize the less you know, so being genuinely interested in people and their stories is a wonderful way to finding answers and making progress.
On these visits to the bush it was obvious that our style of rugby had won us new followers and it felt as if we were spreading the gospel of attacking rugby one town at a time. To this day, I love coaching at clubs and schools when I get the time. As a national coach of England, my time with the players is limited so I get the chance to run quite a few training sessions at local clubs and schools. I love it. It’s just so rewarding to see the joy on the faces of the kids as they play the game we all love. Rugby has given me everything. Doing these sessions is my small way of giving something back.
Ahead of the new season, Mark Sinderberry landed us the sponsorship deal we had needed so badly. Computer Associates, the giant American software company based in New York, were expanding their business to Canberra. They loved our story of rejects becoming world beaters. They loved the exposure they would get with a global television audience. We told them that when on tour in New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, we could do corporate events for them. It all added up to the richest deal in Australian Rugby provincial history: $1.2 million per year for an initial three years.
Finally, our ship had come in and we were able to compete against the juggernauts of the global game. Until then we had been stymied by the fact that the Australian Rugby Union Board did not regard us as deserving of parity with New South Wales and Queensland. The two big states received considerably more funding from the national union as they occupied the traditional heartlands of the Australian game. But, now, we were on our way to becoming giants.