Читать книгу Gavin Henson: My Grand Slam Year - Gavin Henson - Страница 5

It’s a strange thing about being a professional rugby player that I find it a lot more difficult to sleep the night of a big game than the night before. On the eve of the match I rarely feel nervous. I’m usually quite calm. I have my routines and once I’ve gone through those then I can normally nod off without too much of a problem. But the night of the game itself is a different matter altogether. It can take me hours and hours to get to sleep and even then it’s quite normal for me to need a sleeping tablet from the team doctor. I normally lay in bed and go through the entire game minute by minute, replaying every move and every tackle. I’ll analyse what I did during the 80 minutes and think about any mistakes I might have made and what I would like to do differently next time. Sometimes I can go over the whole game again and again. I think it must be some sort of combination of my own character in searching for the perfect game and all the energy drinks we take in during the course of a match day. The result is that long after most people who attend a game have forgotten all about it and are sound asleep, my brain is working like a video player on automatic rewind.

That Saturday night of 5 February 2005, the sensible thing to have done might have been to celebrate like three million other people. A good few beers alongside friends who are all in celebratory mood is normally more than enough for ordinary people to sleep well into Sunday morning.

Whenever Wales beat England there is cause to celebrate. Had Cardiff not been so manic that night then I might have partied for longer, but, like the rest of the boys, I was very aware that this was only the first match of the championship. We were still in camp at our Vale of Glamorgan base just outside Cardiff and our second game – a trip to Rome to play Italy – meant we would be flying out in just five days’ time. I also think we were far too excited about our rugby, about what we were now capable of achieving on the pitch, to waste much more time toasting one victory. You could feel the confidence of the group. Everyone looked relaxed but very determined to keep things going on the course we had set for ourselves. We were a young bunch of players who had only been together for two or three years. I had come in at the end of that period but most of the others had been through some really bad times when they had been absolutely slated by people in the street as well as the media. I know that during the 10-game losing sequence suffered under Steve Hansen a lot of the players used to dread stepping out of their houses.

We now had three away matches – against Italy, France and Scotland – followed by the last match of the championship at home to Ireland. The Irish game always looked the big one to me. Before the tournament began I felt we would beat England, have enough to win in Rome and Edinburgh, but maybe come unstuck in Paris. Even if we lost to the French, though, I felt the Ireland game would still be the critical one, the match where the championship would be decided. As it turned out, I was wrong about France and that, for me, was the game of the championship – the day we came of age.

Bur first stop was Rome, where Wales had lost 30–22 under Hansen two years before and a game I had watched on TV during the time when I was very much out of favour. That defeat was a real low point for Wales as they went on to suffer a Six Nations whitewash and Colin Charvis lost the captaincy. I was viewing it from the outside but the team of 2003 seemed to lack all the things we now had in bucket-loads – self-belief, confidence, faith in all the systems drilled on training fields and a general level of contentment throughout the squad.

We all felt we could beat the Italians this time but recognised they were a physical team who played with a lot of commitment, as they had shown the week before when they had run Ireland very close. I felt the important thing for us was to play with the same freedom and fluency that we had shown in those opening 15 minutes against England. If we did that, I felt sure that our skills would be too much for the Italians and we’d score plenty of tries.

The first thing that struck me at the Stadio Flaminio was the number of Welsh supporters who had made the trip. Rome can’t be a bad place to spend the weekend, even when the weather’s not great, but the victory over England appeared to have given more impetus to the numbers who had made it over. When we ran out before the kick-off there were Welsh flags everywhere and red jerseys seemed to be outnumbering blue ones in every part of the ground. Maybe that gave us a feeling we wanted to put on a show because we soon got into our stride and played some lovely stuff. Shane Williams was as lively as he had been against England and within five minutes his run allowed Tom Shanklin to create the position from where Michael Owen put Jonathan Thomas in for the first try.

The Italians were unable to get near us. We were all over them. In fact, we should have scored two more tries before my mistake gave them a way back into the game. I took a pass and drifted wide past a couple of players but I was running out of space. I decided to try and chip the ball over Luciano Orquera, the Italian No. 10, but he got his hands to it. Suddenly, instead of creating something that might have given us a try, I was watching Orquera run back from where I’d just come and he kept going all the way to the line. If it had come off then I think I would have been more or less clear to the Italian try-line and either scored myself or put someone else in. But Orquera jumped early and snatched the ball out of the air. Maybe I should have dummied to kick at the last moment and run around him, just like Joe Rokocoko did to us in the previous November when New Zealand beat us by a point in Cardiff. I suppose it was a bit careless on my part, but sometimes these things will happen when you try and take risks and that was always the style that Mike Ruddock and the other coaches had encouraged. So, although I was annoyed with myself for not lifting the ball over Orquera, I wasn’t down on myself for trying. If people criticise my game because I like to take chances then I don’t really care. That’s just the type of player I am and that’s the way I think rugby should be played. From the point of view of Wales, our rugby is high speed and high risk, but as Mike always stresses, it’s also high reward. And I knew our reward would come later in the game.

By half-time Italy hadn’t added to their five points, while we were up to 19. We had them pinned back at a scrum and when I spotted the support in the corner I knew this time my kick would cause them problems. It may not have been the best option, but it worked. Tom Shanklin jumped to catch it. 12–5. I had a go with a penalty from much further away than the one against England, but it fell just beneath the crossbar. I was happy with that attempt, though. I remember I struck it well but they use a different type of ball in Italy and it behaves slightly differently. In Wales we use the ball manufactured by Gilbert, but in Italy they are provided by Mitre. I don’t feel the Mitre ball travels quite as far as the Gilbert and although I hit it really well, and it stayed dead straight, it just dropped beneath the bar. It was a difficult kick, but it wasn’t a bad effort. No worries. Just before half-time I put Hal Luscombe through to cut inside their defence and a brilliant piece of quick-thinking from Martyn Williams gave us a third try when he touched the ball against the foot of the post. Stephen Jones converted and we went in with a 12-point lead.

They pulled back three points with a penalty early in the second-half but they still couldn’t lay a finger on us when we really flowed. Shane tore them to pieces with another of his fantastic runs and the space opened for Brent Cockbain to go over. Two minutes later we scored an even better try. Alfie and Kevin Morgan wrecked their defence again and Shane ran it in. 33–8. It was all over even though there were 25 minutes left. We eased off after that although Rob Sidoli scored our sixth try in the last few minutes. It finished 38–8, a thrashing by Six Nations standards and proof that we could now live with our own reputation and the expectancy it had brought. We had shown confidence and plenty of ability. Mike Ruddock calls it ‘licence to thrill’ and we had certainly done that.

Italy are probably the weakest team in the tournament but the pleasing thing was that there had never been a hint of complacency on our part. We had kept our feet on the ground, even though we were coming off a victory over the world champions. I think the fact that Wales had lost in Rome two years before helped us in some ways because it was mentioned as a kind of warning whenever we discussed the Italians. We paid them a lot of respect, but at the same time we knew that we had not really performed that well against England. We were capable of much better and we delivered it in Rome.

I had enjoyed the whole day. The Stadio Flaminio may not be the biggest international rugby ground in the world but it’s got character and creates plenty of atmosphere. We had gone there and put on a show and it felt good to come off after a job well done. The team management were happy enough, so were the players, and I could tell the fans were very glad they had made the trip. Once again, the call from the management was for everyone to go back to the hotel after the official post-match dinner and once again it didn’t quite work out that way. After the dinner had ended, we were chatting to some of the Italian players who were great company. They invited us to jump on their team bus rather than go back to our hotel on our own and myself, Shane Williams and Jonathan Thomas didn’t need to be asked twice. There are some traditions in rugby that I still feel are very valuable and relaxing with the opposition when you occasionally get the chance is definitely one of them. I got on well with Aaron Persico, the Italian flanker, who is a really good guy. He’s from an Italian family, but he grew up in New Zealand. He and our own Kiwi, Sonny Parker, knew each other well from their younger days. Aaron and his mates showed us a little bit of Rome, a city which, unlike Cardiff, is comfortably big enough to lose yourself in if you want to escape the rugby crowds for a while. We stayed out until around two or three in the morning, but again the main purpose was to avoid a sleepless few hours laying in bed rather than go on a drinking session.

We flew back to Cardiff on the Sunday morning and discovered the feel-good factor produced by the victory over England had now gone into overdrive. Everyone wanted to talk to us and the newspapers were full of reports stating the significance of our win in Rome. It was the first time Wales had begun the championship with back-to-back victories since 1994, they said, the last year when Wales had actually won the tournament even though they lost their final game against England. Some of the papers actually speculated on our chances of winning the championship, while one or two even mentioned the Grand Slam. There was an air of disbelief about the coverage, though, as if they couldn’t quite believe it. For me, there had been nothing at all odd about our two results so far. I felt we would beat England at home and I was equally confident we would do the Italians in Rome. The next game, though, a fortnight later, was against France in Paris and I have to admit I wasn’t so sure about that one.

The two-week gap in between suited us down to the ground. It gave us an opportunity to really work on things in training but also to get plenty of rest before the trip to the Stade de France. We watched a few videos of the French and most of us came to the conclusion that they had actually been playing pretty poorly. Like us, they had won their opening two matches of the championship but they had been no better than average. They had won 16–9 at home to Scotland but only thanks to a late try and they had been saved from a shock defeat by a few dodgy decisions that went in their favour. After that game, the Scotland coach Matt Williams had gone nuts about the referee and it was hard not to feel sympathy.

France had then gone to Twickenham to play England a week after we had beaten them. Once again, the French played virtually no rugby but they somehow managed to win by a point, 18–17. They were 17–6 down at one stage so you had to admire their resilience but there was nothing very stylish about them. They never looked like scoring a try in the whole game and had to rely on six penalties from their scrum-half Dimitri Yachvili. So long as we didn’t give away too many penalties it was obvious that we would be in with a chance.

The Stade de France in Paris is one of my favourite stadiums and I was really looking forward to playing there. It’s an awesome place, like some gigantic spaceship from the outside and just as stunning when you are in the middle of the pitch. It’s intimidating. But some things were in our favour. It was very cold that day, which was fine by us. You don’t want to be playing France in Paris when they have the sun on their backs.

We came out for the warm-up and the noise was unbelievable. The crowd sounds mix in with horns, a French brass band, a manic French voice on the stadium speakers, and firecrackers going off. The French national anthem also really fires things up. I have a confession about our own Welsh anthem, ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhadau’, or ‘Land of My Fathers’. Part of the reason I don’t sing along before the game is that I want to remain in control and a little bit detached from things. But partly, it is because I don’t actually know the words. It sounds terrible but I was never taught them in school for some reason and I’ve just never felt the need to learn them. The foreign players in our squad, Sonny Parker, who grew up in New Zealand, and Brent Cockbain, who’s an Australian, probably know all the words backwards, but I’ve never made a point of learning them. I’ve been tempted at times to join in for a couple of lines but I never do. I like to have set routines and as I wouldn’t sing the national anthem before a training session, why do it before a game? It certainly doesn’t mean I’m not patriotic because I am. I’m fiercely proud to be Welsh and I think it’s great that we have our own language. It’s part of our identity as a nation. But even if I sat down and learnt the words then I still wouldn’t join in, either at home or away. For me, the pride comes from looking out at the crowd and recognising the passion on the faces of the Welsh supporters. I like to take all that stuff in. I get a buzz from seeing what it means to them but I don’t want to be like that myself just before I play a rugby match. I want to be in control – calm and cool. It’s at that stage that I really focus on what I’m about to do and that was how it was in Paris.

No matter how much any of us had focused, though, I don’t think we could have done much about that opening 15 minutes of the game. France were on fire. They were all over us. Things actually started off quite well. I put a kick in along the ground and the French had to defend. But our pressure lasted about 60 seconds. After that we just couldn’t get the ball and they came at us in wave after wave of attack.

We were on the rack and they scored a try after just four minutes that had been building and building. It ended when Dimitri Yachvili crossed under our posts and he then converted it to make it 7–0.

The French coach, Bernard Laporte, had recalled their powerful wing Aurelien Rougerie and it was obvious the idea was to run at Shane Williams and do some damage physically. Rougerie caused us lots of problems early on and it was he who scored their second try which made it 12–0 after just 12 minutes. That try, though, angered me because they shouldn’t really have got away with it.

Serge Betsen, the French flanker, took me out off the ball by stamping on my foot. I’ve still got the scar, a little reminder of the day that will probably take some time to fade. Betsen is renowned for being a tough character, although as this was the first time I had played against him I didn’t really know what to expect. I’ll know next time, though. France had possession and Betsen came on a dummy run. I could see that he wasn’t going to be given the ball so I tried to slip off marking him to take the next player. As I tried to step across, though, Betsen stamped on the inside of my foot. My boot came off and my foot was trapped under his studs. I had to hand it to him. He did it perfectly. There was just a little glance to see where I was, then his foot came down hard on mine. But just before the impact he looked away to make it appear as though it was an accident. It was judged so perfectly that the referee, Paul Honiss, and his touch judges all thought it was just an accidental collision. Fair play to him, I thought. He’s done that well.

The other thought was how close he had been to breaking my ankle. My foot turned straight over but, luckily, my ankles are pretty flexible. I’ve stretched the ligaments so often that I’ve now got quite a lot of give in that area – enough to avoid a serious injury on this occasion, anyway. I was on the ground, in quite a bit of pain, but what made me angrier was looking back to see Rougerie scoring France’s second try. Betsen had done his job so well that the hole created by my fall had opened up the space for France to score. The ironic thing is that Betsen had come very close to missing this international. He was expected to get a big ban for tripping Stuart Abbott during a Heineken Cup match between Wasps and Biarritz. Abbott had been left with a broken leg. Somehow, Betsen had escaped. I hadn’t – but maybe in one sense I was fortunate that my ankle was still intact. The skin was cut, but the bone was only bruised and fortunately there was no damage to the ligaments.

I put my boot back on as France missed the conversion but at 12–0 down in as many minutes it already looked a very long way back for us. France were flowing, the crowd were loving it, and we were defending for our lives. They came again in sweeping attacks from one flank to the other. They were awesome. When French teams are in that kind of mood there’s not much you can do except try and ride it. Thankfully, although we couldn’t get our hands on the ball, we defended really well and made our tackles. Gareth Thomas, in particular, was magnificent. Unfortunately, in making one of those tackles, Alfie broke his thumb and had to go off. I could see it was a bad injury and was starting to think that maybe this wasn’t going to be our day. We were being completely outplayed … stuffed. Rougerie looked about seven feet tall every time he had the ball and Shane was getting run over. Julien Laharrague was a big threat every time he came into the line from full-back, Yannick Jauzion and Damien Traille were powerful in their midfield, and our pack was being out-muscled. Traille went over our line again, but luckily, they were called back for a foot in touch.

Somehow, during all this pressure we got out of our own half and Stephen Jones kicked a penalty to make it 12–3. Then, Yachvili kicked one. 15–3 to France. More pressure, more bouncing around as we tried to take down their big men with the ball, but amazingly we survived without conceding another try. In fact, we had the last word in the half when Stephen put over his second kick to make it 15–6.

I can remember sitting in our dressing room at half time thinking, ‘This is bad. This isn’t supposed to be happening. They are meant to be a poor, out-of-form team and we’re supposed to be super-confident. We’re losing, more than that, we’re being over-run, and our captain is in the room next door having his thumb put back together.’ Doubts were definitely starting to set in. And yet we were only nine points behind when, from the balance of play, it should have been about 30.

Those players who weren’t too knackered to speak made the point that we were still right in the game and that we hadn’t played. If we could just keep hold of the ball and get into the match then it was still there to be won. Mike Ruddock had his say and kept it brief and to the point. ‘Three Ts,’ he said. ‘Turnovers, tackles, territory. Don’t turnover the ball. Make your tackles. And make sure we stay in their territory when we kick.’ It seemed like a fair summary.

Alfie’s thumb turned out to be broken in five places, so Michael Owen, our No.8, took over the captaincy and gave his own little pep talk before we went out for the second-half. There was mention made of doing it for the skipper. Kevin Morgan moved from the wing to full-back to replace Alfie and Rhys Williams came on to take Kevin’s place on the wing. We needed something to spark us straight away and it came just a minute into the second-half. I made a tackle on the French centre Yannick Jauzion deep in our half and he spilled the ball. Stephen Jones got hold of it and I think all the French team expected him to just hoof it downfield. Instead, Steve ran and made a fantastic 50-yard break. The attack continued and when Shane Williams skinned Rougerie on the outside, to get a bit of revenge for the first-half, then Martyn Williams was on hand to score our first try.

Now, we had some real belief and the French looked a bit shaky. Stephen had put the conversion over so there was only a two-point gap between the sides. We attacked them again and they didn’t like it. You could see there was a bit of panic in their body language. When we were given a penalty, a few of the French players seemed to freeze, and so Martyn tapped and ran and forced his way over for another try. Suddenly, from being under the cosh at 15–6 down, we were 18–15 ahead. It was incredible.

Of course, a mature team used to winning would have kept on attacking at that point. They would have gone for the jugular and scored a third try to demoralise the opposition. But we weren’t a mature team. We were still very naive in our approach in many ways and so we started to defend. It was as if there were only two minutes left in the match and we had opted to try and hang on to our two-point lead. In fact, there were actually still 34 minutes left and it was a ridiculous idea to think we could hold what we had. We stopped playing positive rugby and went into a negative frame of mind, just as we had done against England.

It took them awhile, but France eventually drew level through a penalty from Frederic Michalak, who had been sent on to try and win them the game. It was now extremely tense and came down to a battle of nerves. Steve, as ever, kept his and kicked another penalty and then struck a superb drop goal to put us six points clear at 24–18. That was a crucial kick because it meant the French felt the need to go for the try and the conversion to try and win the game, rather than kick three times for goal. They put us under loads of pressure but we kept them out. John Yapp, our young prop, had come off the bench and really did well as part of a great forward unit. A year before I remember watching the Welsh scrum being crushed by France and the turf at the Millennium Stadium being churned up as we were driven back. But in those last 10 minutes in Paris the boys up front were so solid. Martyn Williams had an immense game and so did Stephen at half-back. It was fitting that Steve should have the last word when he booted the ball over our own dead-ball line, although there were a few anxious glances until Honiss put the whistle to his mouth and blew up.

I’ll admit there were a few moments during that last five minutes when I thought things looked bleak. They were mounting attack after attack and scrum after scrum. As a back it was out of my hands. I was just hoping the forwards could hold out. And they did – magnificently.

I love playing against French teams. They combine strength and power with great skill and flair. When you beat them, it’s very satisfying. I had found Jauzion and Traille very difficult opponents in the centre because of their size and their pace, but to come out on top against them felt great. I looked at the scoreboard. France 18, Pays de Galles 24. We were all on a massive high and I think it was then that we really believed we could not only win the tournament, but also do something very special with a Grand Slam.

This time they would have needed to put road blocks around the hotel to stop us from going out, but the strange thing was I felt a bit subdued. I went over the road to a quiet bar with a couple of the boys but it never developed into a big night. Maybe we were all just too exhausted. Or perhaps we were just too stunned by what we had done in the space of three games.

I had a load more text messages on my phone, from family and friends, but this time there were also some from Charlotte. My rugby career had really taken off in a new direction over those few weeks of the Six Nations, but life off the field was changing, too.