Brive is a small town of about 50,000 souls in the department of Corrèze in the Limousin region. The town is picturesque, the countryside beautiful (Brive is just a few kilometres to the east of the Dordogne), and the food excellent, but there is not a lot going on—apart from rugby: the stadium seats 15,000 and is often full. The Club Athlétique Briviste Corrèze Limousin, to give it its full name, has been around since 1912 but has never won the French championship, despite making it to the final on four occasions, most recently in 1996 when it lost to Toulouse 20–13. Its big claim to fame is winning the European Cup in 1997, with a comprehensive 28–9 victory over Leicester Tigers.
The following year, having made the final again, they narrowly lost to Bath, 19–18. Internal political strife and a slump in performance led to their being relegated in 2001, but they came back in 2003 with a new president, Jean-Claude Penauille, who didn't seem to be afraid of putting his hand in his (deep) pocket, and they now have a respectable budget of nearly €7 million, and a team to match. They play in black and white striped shirts, and are currently placed tenth on 12 points, while we are still in twelfth on just five points. The previous week, while we were playing appallingly in Pau, they nearly pulled off a huge upset in Paris, leading against Stade Français throughout the game until crumbling in the last ten minutes.
I finally get to start a game: if I hadn't got a look-in after the débâcle at Pau, the toys would really have gone out of the pram. Playing against Brive suits me perfectly. It's an away game, so we won't be suffering from performance anxiety, and although they play a relatively open style there is a bit of drizzle before the game and the ground is soft, so my aging bones aren't going to have to cart themselves to all four corners of the field trying to keep up with a really quick game.
Their forward pack are not bad but they're not man-eaters either, and I think we can put the squeeze on them up front. We start badly and are trapped in our own territory almost immediately, getting out only after conceding a penalty to their young fly-half, Maxime Petitjean. David Bortolussi does the same for us a few minutes later, and then Petitjean replies: 6–3 after about ten minutes. We are putting pressure on them now. I pick up a ball from the base of a ruck, wrong-foot the defence and get the ball out to Régis, who chips through for Alex Stoica, who duly picks it up and falls over the line. After only quarter of an hour it is 8–6 to us. Petitjean puts another one over, but then their captain, Jérôme Bonvoisin, collects a yellow card. During our ten minutes of fifteen players against fourteen we manage a penalty from Bortolussi, and we go to the break ahead by 11–9. However, we should have cashed in more. To win an away game you can't afford to let slip moments where you have an edge.
As you would expect, Brive come out much more purposefully in the second half, while we seem strangely lethargic. Slowly, they start to impose a stranglehold on the game. Under pressure we give away penalties, Mika Bert sees yellow, and the points start piling up. It is now 18–11 to them. We seem to have blown a wonderful opportunity. With ten minutes to go we kick another penalty, and perhaps the game's not over yet as the pendulum swings back in our favour.
Meanwhile, though, I am in trouble. A few years ago at Perpignan I suffered a stress fracture in my foot. Now, as I try to hold up one of our scrums that has gone into reverse, the injury bites again, and after limping around for five minutes I ask for a substitution. I go off, and Gorgodzilla comes on. He might be just the man for the job as we are bashing away at the line without success; it would be nice to see him fling a couple of black and white jerseys out of the way and go crashing in under the posts. But Brive lost at the death last week and they're not about to let it happen again. Their desperate defence holds up, and we have to be happy with the bonus point. It would be easy to be happy with the bonus—it is, after all, better than nothing—but I am gutted we didn't win. During the long bus ride back to Montpellier we have time to think of the 20 odd minutes in the second half where we unaccountably went to sleep.
If I'm unhappy about the loss, from a personal point of view I'm pleased with the way I played. The good-game gods smiled on me for my return in the number five jersey, and I should start again next week. I had a bit of a run-in with Lionel Mallier, the former French international flanker with whom I used to play in Perpignan; he was a bit dark about my pulling down a maul, but there was nothing in it. It was a scrappy game, neither side managing to hold on to the ball long enough to build up any real momentum, but I was in my element. I would like to be able to tell you that my natural game is haring upfield with the ball in hand, throwing off would-be tacklers with sledgehammer fends, and bamboozling the defence with my crazy-legged running style, but that just isn't the case. I do my thing in the darkness of close quarters, hitting rucks, trying to speed up the recycling of our possession, or slow down theirs, and perhaps snaffle a ball or two, grunt-work in scrums, taking a few line-outs or kickoffs, setting up mauls and making tackles close in, and occasionally out wide, in cover defence. If I get to run with the ball three or four times in a game I'm happy, and it isn't normally for more than a few yards.
From the club's point of view there was also the big positive of successfully blooding a newcomer from the Espoirs: Fulgence Ouedraogo, our 20-year-old flanker, was thrown in the deep end and swam like a fish. He is blessed with a remarkable natural athleticism, all lean, rippling muscles, and seems to have discovered the secret of perpetual motion. Lifting him in line-outs is a joy because he leaps like a salmon heading upstream. And, crucially, he has a good head on his shoulders—he's well disciplined, learns fast and runs good lines in support, adapting quickly to rugby at élite level. We should be seeing much more of him in the first team, and there's no reason he shouldn't play for France in the next few years. Of course, all these gifts alone would be worth nothing to him if he didn't work hard at it, and he does.
It is not enough in rugby simply to have physical attributes, although this gives you a head start. Three elements make up a player: physique—basically explosive speed, stamina and strength, although flexibility and balance are also important; technical skills—all-round skills such as catching, passing and tackling, and position-specific skills such as line-out throwing for hookers; and psychological skills—discipline, decision making and mental toughness.
It is not a question of 'nature versus nurture'. Nature sets the parameters for your abilities—it's no use wanting to be a winger if you run as though you're towing a caravan, or hoping to be a lock if you have to stand on tiptoe to reach the kitchen cupboards. But in truth the physical entry barriers to rugby—at least at club level, if not for international sides—are relatively low, provided you are prepared to train hard. If you start young and are pigheadedly determined to succeed, have access to good facilities and are well-advised, you have a shot. The pigheaded bit is important, because mental strength is at least as important as physical strength.
Professionalism in rugby has led to enormous advances in physical performance as each team and each individual looks to get an edge on the competition. Coaches tend to love fitness sessions and weights tests: the latter are easy to measure, so they can line up a list of figures next to every one's name and see who is stronger than whom, who is progressing, and so on.
I am not a fan of the weights room—perhaps I would be if I were better at it. In the good old amateur days when this kind of training was optional, I would usually take the easy option. This was a mistake; if there is one thing I regret about my career, it is that I didn't do enough work on basic explosive strength in my late teens and early twenties. When I was eventually forced into a serious weight-training regime, because it was part of my job description, the results were not spectacular (I am known to some French players as 'épaules de serpent'—'snake shoulders'), but I did gain extra confidence in the contact area, which has become a battleground. When I started playing for Wellington in 1994, offensive tackles were still relatively rare; today a tackle that is not offensive is considered a wasted opportunity.
Obviously, though, strength is useless unless you know how to channel it well. My team-mate, our prop Antony Vigna, for example, is almost as hopeless as I am at pumping iron, but in a scrum I would back him against any of the guys in the team who rack up great rows of 20-kilogram weights, squatting or bench-pressing until the bar sags. Often players —particularly props—who are phenomenally strong in the weights room try to bully their opponents with muscle, ignoring technique, and get themselves in trouble. For these kinds of practical skills there is no substitute for being well coached and then endlessly repeating the same movement, both in training situations and in games, in order to assimilate all the subtle variations you may need to call upon when you're under pressure and the guy opposite is trying to get an edge on you. This is why experience is so highly valued, particularly in the forwards. You can train all you like to do things right—passing, catching, kicking, and pushing are all relatively straightforward to master—but on the field it's what you do in the very short space of time you have before someone stops you doing it that shows whether you're really up to it.
This is where the brain comes into play. What is referred to in New Zealand as 'the top two inches' is without any doubt the most important part of a player's rugby armoury. It's no use having silky skills and a rippling torso if you don't take the right options. Rugby is a relatively complex game, and much of its richness comes from this complexity.
Let's say a halfback has a ball in front of him at the base of a ruck, the sort of thing that happens maybe a hundred times or more in a game. He has to decide what to do from a multitude of possibilities. He can pass it to his fly-half. Or, if he has a big enough blind side, he can decide to change the direction of play by passing it to a winger or fullback. He can pop it up to a forward coming in on the charge, or he can run with it himself. He can try to organise his forwards into a driving maul, or tell one of them to pick and go; or he can choose to kick high into the box for his winger to chase, or hoof it further down the ground for position. He has a split second to decide which of all these options is the best, given the field position of his team, the speed at which the ball is delivered, and the defensive positions of the opposition.
If he has only one defender on him and a hole outside, he may back himself to have the speed to get around him, particularly if the defender is a tight forward. So let's say he goes himself, and makes a half break before being caught from behind. Does he try to stay on his feet to offload a pass to his support, who will run into the breach he has created? If he can do this he will have gained some ground and created forward momentum, which will make it easier to continue the attack. But there is the possibility of a second tackler arriving and trying to rip the ball off him before he can get it away, so perhaps he should choose the relative security of going to ground and setting up a ruck.
You get the picture. Over the space of a couple of seconds he has had to calculate all the various possibilities, decide which is best for the team, and act. Top sides now programme play through several phases after the original set piece, so players are in prearranged positions with their roles mapped out for them. Even so, you still need to be able to adapt your choices to the situation, and the complicating factor of the opposition means things don't always go as planned.
The number of choices are greater for the guy with the ball in his hand, but every player has to be constantly assessing his own actions and maximising his value to the team. In defence, for example, you find yourself on the inside shoulder of a guy who's made a tackle. As a ruck forms, you have to decide: should you go in to try and win the ball and take the advantage for your team? The problem is that, while doing this, you are leaving the other defenders a man short if you don't succeed—a potentially disastrous situation if the ball comes out quickly and your lot have not had time to reorganise.
Even in a maul, which looks like a lot of uncomplicated shoving and sweating, you need to think about the angle on which you are pushing, both vertically and horizontally. If, while defending, you go from down to up, taking an opposition player with you, you are reducing the efficiency of the opposition's driving platform—it is difficult to push effectively when standing up—but you are also less efficient. If you try to force them down you run the risk of being penalised, but if you can make it look as though they fell over themselves you have stopped them in their tracks, and may even recover the ball. You can push them towards the touchline, limiting their options so they are obliged to get the ball out before taking it into touch, or you can wheel the maul towards the open side, forcing the ball-carrier into the open, and a position where he can be tackled. Or, if you like vanilla, you can just try to push straight.
Clearly, no one spends time consciously calculating any of these things. Everything happens so fast you run purely on instincts you have honed over the years, and hopefully some useful advice from your team-mates, who may be able to see things that you can't. (Good teams communicate constantly: players help each other choose the right options by letting others know what is going on around them.)
To be really good you have to consistently make the right decisions, and have the physical ability and technical know-how to execute them. Deciding to attempt a drop goal from halfway is a good option if you kick it over. But if, like me, you have two left feet and the ball goes spinning off into the arms of the opposing winger, who then scores under your posts, it is a bad option.
During breaks in play there is time for a breather, and a chat with team-mates, where you can reassess your options in relation to your strengths and weaknesses and those of the opposition with a little more lucidity. This analysis is a particularly important task for leaders, and should also have been mapped out to a large extent in the game plan you will have discussed with the coach after watching video analysis.
The other great thing about the human brain is that it can keep driving you forward when your body is starting to flag. Your legs may be full of lactic acid and your head in oxygen debt, but you will continue to perform. This is often described as courage or 'guts', but it is more than that. For a player, courage is simply a prerequisite: if you are playing rugby year-round you can't shirk, because the opposition will quickly start exploiting your weakness. If you turn up to a game thinking you will get by on courage alone, you may get lucky if the other lot are feeling cowardly, but this is unlikely.
So courage has to be supplemented by mental toughness and intelligence. Mental toughness means you are always looking to get more from yourself and your team-mates, setting targets such as holding on to the ball for a given number of phases, disciplining yourself to get a lower penalty count, or staying an extra half-hour at training once the coach has called it a day, because you want to get the preparation absolutely right, not just get home in time for dinner. When you get knocked back by a loss, or being beaten in a one-on-one situation, rather than bleating about the referee or the ball being slippery or generally feeling sorry for yourself, you need to be able to analyse why it happened, and how you can avoid it happening again.
Intelligence, too, is essential. In martial terms, a full frontal assault on the enemy can be described as 'courageous' but it may be stupid as well, particularly if you end up getting slaughtered in front of the guns when a simple flanking manoeuvre would have been successful.
There are any number of great players in world rugby, but while we have some quality players in Montpellier, I would struggle to say, hand on heart, that any are 'great'. One I particularly respect though, because of his hard-nosed attitude, is Olivier Diomandé. I wasn't pleased to see Olivier when I arrived at Montpellier: we had spent an afternoon trading cheap shots in Paris while I was playing for Racing and he was at Nîmes. In those days he was an average prop playing for a below-average side, and his game seemed to revolve around head-butting and eye-gouging. He went on to have a couple of seasons at Bordeaux, then came to Montpellier, which was then in the second division.
Here he started to convert himself into a hooker. He still played most of his rugby at prop, but he wasn't guaranteed a first-team place as a prop. He wasn't guaranteed a first-team place as a hooker either because the captain, Didier Bes, was hooker, but Bes, at 36, was coming to the end of his career, and Dio felt he could establish himself as first choice after Bes left. He was in his late twenties, which is pretty long in the tooth to be looking at positional changes, and he could easily have refused to move, but he threw himself into it, slimming down to become more mobile, practising his line-out throwing relentlessly, and weight-training like a man possessed. He was open-minded and humble about learning from other people, and grew into a key role, playing nearly every game in the last two years.
This year Olivier has been faced with a new challenge: Nico Grelon, an excellent player, has arrived from Perpignan to compete with him for the hooking berth. The two have different strengths: while both are good at bread-and-butter scrummaging and line-outs, Dio does a lot of work in the tight and Nico is more of a ball player. They complement each other perfectly as options, but both want to wear the starting jersey.
Hookers tend to have forceful characters and are often entrusted with leadership roles. These two are no exception, so there has been a good deal of alpha-male rivalry about who gets to be the top dog. There was an illustration of this recently when we were having live scrummaging training— two packs against each other. It is difficult to overemphasise the psychological importance of the scrum in French rugby, and as the keystone the hooker is responsible for the scrum. The two packs were evenly matched, so any slight advantage counted.
As we got ready to pack down for the first scrum, Nico's eight (which I was in) was bound and in position first, giving us an edge in preparation for the initial impact—which is 60 percent of the scrum. Seeing this, Dio started undoing his binding, saying that it didn't feel right, broke up the scrum behind him, and started the whole process again about 30 centimetres off the mark. This is an old trick, seldom spotted by referees; it means the opposition have to either shuffle over on to the new mark, or break up again and reform. Either way, the team that was initially late is now ready first, and so have the slight edge.
As you would expect, there was much moaning about this level of cynicism at training, and I wasn't happy about it myself since we were the ones being disadvantaged. However, Dio stood his ground, grinning, and Nico broke us up and we moved. What I grudgingly admired was that Dio wasn't prepared to cede the slightest advantage to his competitor, even in the relatively unimportant context of training. That is his mindset. It isn't necessarily pretty and he may not be making any friends, but it is effective.
One of the most talented people I've played with is New Zealander Manny Edmonds, who plays fly-half for Perpignan. Manny, whose family moved to Australia when he was six, played for New South Wales in the Super 12 and two tests for Australia before coming to France at the relatively young age of 25. He had more or less blown his chances in Australia by banging down the door of the coach, Bob Dwyer, at five in the morning, after an evening out, to have a chat about why he hadn't been selected for a couple of games in South Africa. Apparently Dwyer was not convinced by his arguments.
Manny, too, is a fierce competitor, although with him it's less obvious because of the sheer joy he exudes when playing. While the rest of us are pounding around the track, running into people and generally slogging our guts out, he is throwing long cut-out passes, dinking little chips through for himself, dummying, then turning on the gas: he seems to be having a great time.
Even the serious nature of professional rugby, and rugby is taken very seriously in Perpignan, doesn't seem to curb his enthusiasm. When he first arrived, he would throw the occasional pass behind his back out of the back of his hand at training. Olivier Saïsset, the coach, was unimpressed, and Manny was told we didn't need any of that flashy Super 12 rubbish so he stopped doing it at training. He just did it in games, more out of instinct when he saw a hole opening up as he ran diagonally across field than from outright insubordination, although there was always a hint of this as well. The problem was that often the player receiving the pass was so surprised he dropped it, even though all he had to do was catch it and trundle 20 yards upfield into the space that had been created. (I have a particularly vivid memory of this because I was one of the offenders.) But what was good was that Manny was trying to drag the rest of the team up to his level, rather than reining in his own talent so we could keep up.
Throwing passes out of the back of the hand is pretty banal these days, but what clinched Manny's genius for me was the Heineken Cup final against Toulouse in Dublin in 2003. I was coming to the end of my time with Perpignan. We were rooming together, and on the d ay of the game we watched the build-up to the Super 12 final between the Auckland Blues and the Canterbury Crusaders on Sky Sports. Stuart Barnes was talking about Carlos Spencer's innovative tactic 'the banana kick'. Spencer would receive the ball from the right and shape to kick left behind the defence, luring the blind-side wing and the fullback across in cover. But the ball would come off the side of his foot—looking as though he had mistimed it appallingly—and bend out on a curve towards the now vacant right wing, where the right winger would stroll through and pick it up.
It was only an hour or so before we were to leave for the ground, so there was no time to practice the move, but as we went down to the team meeting Manny asked our right wing, Pascal Bomati, if he'd seen it. Pascal was enthusiastic and the two of them decided to try it if the opportunity arose. We had a nightmare first half against the wind, for which Manny was partly to blame, falling off a tackle on Jauzion, who went on to feed Clerc for Toulouse's try. At half-time the score was 19–0.
We ground our way back, and with a quarter of an hour to go it was 22–12. We hadn't been able to pierce their defensive wall by orthodox means. Manny got a ball from the right, and shaped to kick left, looking as though he'd mistimed his kick. Everyone was wondering what the hell was going on, except Pascal, who scooted in, picked up the ball and scored. It was a brilliant example of intelligent risk-taking and perfect execution. (Unfortunately it wasn't enough and we lost 22–17.)