Читать книгу Phil Bennett: The Autobiography - Phil Bennett - Страница 10

The catastrophic 51–0 defeat to France at Wembley in 1998 didn’t turn Kevin Bowring grey. He was lucky on that front because he was completely grey when he came in. But the look on his face that Sunday night in London was the familiar expression of a man who knew his time was up. If the Welsh players hadn’t forced him to that conclusion with the abject nature of their pitiful performance then the supporters must have convinced him through the silence that lasted the entire second half. It only pointed in one direction for Kevin and if he hadn’t fallen on his sword a few days later then someone on the Welsh Rugby Union would have knifed him, if only to put him out of his misery.

It was all far removed from the optimism that had developed during the early stages of Kevin’s reign. He wasn’t pulling up trees in terms of results, but there was progress and more importantly his teams began to play with a style and verve that enabled every supporter to feel proud of the side again. Young players – like Leigh Davies, Arwel Thomas and Rob Howley – were given their opportunity and responded by playing with great flair and imagination. The future looked bright and even a defeat at Twickenham to England in 1996 was well received because Wales showed style and adventure before going down by just one score, 21–15. There was a three-year build-up period to the 1999 World Cup and after shamefully wasting the opportunities of the previous two tournaments there seemed a genuine determination to make this one count.

I liked Kevin Bowring. He was enthusiastic and energetic and had plenty of bright ideas on how rugby should be played and how rugby players should be developed. He had come from a background with London Welsh, so the usual accusation of bias towards one Welsh club or another wouldn’t fit. The critics would have to dig a little deeper to find their dirt. I had played against Kevin and remembered him as a good, solid back-row forward who might have won caps for Wales in other eras when the competition wasn’t so strong. I knew he could do well in the job and for a while that’s exactly what he did do.

The sad thing for Kevin is that he knew that his own ability, and that of his players, was not going to be enough. He could see there needed to be change in both the running of the game and the attitude of the newly professional players – fewer easy matches, greater time spent on physical training and conditioning, a back-up of staff on the management – but the WRU turned a deaf ear. It must be very galling for Kevin to know that many of the things he asked for were given to his successor Graham Henry on a plate. Or perhaps it isn’t, because Kevin now works for English rugby and the RFU.

Judged purely on results, the Bowring era was nothing special. In three Five Nations championships he won four matches out of 12. But Wales beat France 16–15 in 1996 and lost narrowly 27–22 in an exciting match in Paris the following season when the French won the Grand Slam. It seemed we weren’t that far behind. He freshened up the team, and youngsters were given their opportunity. Wales were easy on the eye, even if the win-loss column still didn’t make such easy reading.

Things started to go wrong sometime during 1997. Wales finished the Five Nations by losing 34–13 at home to England in the last match at the old Arms Park before they tore the old stadium down. The scoreline wasn’t a demolition, but it was very one-sided and Wales seemed to lack confidence against a side much stronger physically and quicker, with the honourable exception of Rob Howley. In the autumn, Wales had to play New Zealand at Wembley. Bowring had become very taken with the southern hemisphere approach to the game and wanted Wales to try to play a similar ball-in-hand game to the Australians, having taken Wales on tour the year before and suffered two big defeats to the Wallabies. The trouble was that Wales didn’t really have the players to adopt those kinds of tactics. It wasn’t Bowring’s fault. The Welsh club game at this time was slow and ponderous. Players would trundle from one set piece to another and then the referee would blow at the first breakdown in open play. It was all too static compared to the Aussies and the All Blacks.

Rather naively, however, Bowring believed that Wales could take the All Blacks on at their own game at Wembley and run them off the park. It backfired. Instead of running in the tries, the only thing that flowed was Welsh mistakes whenever we tried to counter-attack. Ironically, New Zealand showed the way with a much more pragmatic approach. They ran it when it was on, but Andrew Mehrtens kicked for position on the rare occasions his side were under pressure. The result was a comprehensive New Zealand victory by 42–7.

Things started to slip after that defeat. It’s often the way and it’s up to a coach to try and switch track, to offer something different in approach. Bowring wasn’t able to, or maybe he simply didn’t have the resources. Wales were slaughtered at Twickenham, 60–26, and it was obvious that the players had lost faith in what they were meant to be doing. Wales were okay as an attacking force, but defensively we were flimsy. The breeze, itself, could have blown us away. The Wembley defeat to the French was the last straw and Bowring decided it was time to go. Another decent man had bitten the dust.

Kevin was a capable man, though, and should have been retained somewhere along the line within Welsh rugby. For instance, he could have gone back to looking after one of the age-group sides, where he had proved very successful. Instead, he was thrown on the scrap heap, leaving it to England to rehabilitate him as a coach. He’s firmly in the English system, helping to advise and guide other coaches, and he’s obviously highly regarded by Clive Woodward. That’s a credit to Woodward and England, and an embarrassing loss to our own game. It’s yet another example of waste by Welsh rugby, which can ill afford such flagrant inefficiency. Wales were to pay a heavy price – literally – because the next national coach would cost £250,000 a year, about five times what the WRU were paying Bowring.

Graham Henry was a brilliant coach, a master media manipulator, and an impressive illusionist. He did wonderful things for Welsh rugby, but there was a sense of the illusionist’s routine about Henry because when he went back home to New Zealand in 2002 Welsh rugby was in pretty much the same state as when he was appointed in 1998. For a couple of years he seemed to sprinkle magic wherever he intervened, but by the end people had had enough of the smoke and mirrors show because most of the tricks were no longer paying off.

When the WRU appointed Henry in the summer of 1998, I felt it was a good decision. I’ll clarify that, because I knew they had already offered the position to Mike Ruddock and I had felt for a while that Mike had all the attributes for the job. The Union had asked their director of rugby, my old Wales team mate Terry Cobner, to trawl the world for the right man to replace Kevin Bowring. Cobner got as far as Dublin where Mike was coaching Leinster. He was in no rush to return to Wales, but when your country calls and offers you the top job then it’s hard to resist. Mike said yes and Terry told the WRU general committee he’d found the right man. It was a good appointment as Mike was a very talented young coach who had enjoyed massive success with Swansea. I also felt his decision to coach in Dublin had widened his perspective and would protect him from the accusations that he was too closely identified with one Welsh club. The memory of how people had undermined Ron Waldron because of his Neath associations was still fresh in my mind.

But Mike was never to get his backside in the national coach’s seat. The WRU general committee did an amazing U-turn. Having told Cobner they would back his judgement they then told him to keep looking for candidates because they had heard through a few murky sources that a New Zealander, currently coaching Auckland, might be interested in coming to Wales. His name was Graham Henry.

It was a despicable way to treat Mike and it’s to his enormous credit that he shrugged his shoulders and went back to coaching Leinster. He later became the Wales A-team coach, and although he’s finding it tough going at Ebbw Vale at present, where there are major financial problems, I’ve no doubt he would still make a very good Wales coach if given a crack after the 2003 World Cup.

If Ruddock would have got around his Swansea connection because of his experience in Ireland, Henry was a complete outsider. He was coming from the other side of the world and in that sense the slate had been wiped clean. But he has always been a man who could negotiate a good deal and since Wales were desperate, and he had just led the Auckland Blues to two Super 12 titles, he didn’t come cheap. England had wanted him the year before but he had turned them down because he wanted to coach the All Blacks. But in the summer of 1998 the politics of New Zealand rugby seemed to be making that a less likely proposition. Henry was in his mid-fifties and knew the clock was ticking. If he was going to complete the transition from school headmaster to top coach then Wales was his big chance. So he took it. In countries where rugby matters, there is always a political agenda, and Wales were fortunate in that the politics of New Zealand rugby suddenly helped them sidestep the political problems at home of appointing another Welsh club coach. I was amazed when the press revealed Henry would earn £250,000 a year, making him by far the highest-paid rugby coach in the world. After all, Henry was hardly a name that conjured many memories within our rugby culture. It wasn’t as if Colin Meads was coming over. But if that was the price of success, then, like most Welshmen, I was prepared to pay it.

There was a huge sense of expectancy before Henry’s arrival and the character of the man was the perfect foundation on which to build a myth. He was very charismatic, clever, and hugely entertaining. He delivered great one-liners, normally deadpan but always followed with a twinkle in his eye and a knowing half-smile. Because he was an outsider he said things that no Welsh coach could have got away with. He challenged the way our rugby was organised, made observations that were brutally honest, and, most importantly of all, the results were spectacular.

In June 1998 Wales lost 96–13 to South Africa in Pretoria. It was the time before Henry’s arrival and following the U-turn over Ruddock. Dennis John was the caretaker coach put in charge for the tour and a busload of players had dropped out before they had even left Cardiff. A few more injuries while they were out there left Wales threadbare and the Springboks simply tore us to shreds. It was so one-sided and utterly contemptuous that the crowd booed when the Boks spilled the ball near the Welsh line in the final seconds because it denied them 100 points. After the game the South African coach Nick Mallett described Wales as the worst international team he had ever seen. We had reached the bottom of the barrel and the only sound I could hear was the scraping and splintering of wood.

Into this mess strode Henry, a hired gun from out of town. It was a fresh start; a new era was about to begin. Those players who had cried off the summer tour now all claimed their various aches and pains had healed. So it was a full-strength team that took on the Springboks again at Wembley in November. Henry had told them they could beat South Africa and they very nearly did. Only a lack of concentration in the final few minutes saw Wales throw away the lead and eventually go down 28–20. After the game, people were euphoric, including the media and even some of the Welsh players. The only man who kept perspective and seemed mildly irritated was Graham Henry. ‘We lost when we should have won,’ he said. I realised then that his standards were much higher than ours. He wanted to be a winner and he wanted Wales to be winners again. I liked his style.

Things started quite slowly after that initial jolt. Wales were beaten by Scotland in the opening match of the 1999 Five Nations and then lost at Wembley to Ireland in a rather shabby and disorganised display. With France and England to come there seemed every possibility we were going to be whitewashed again in the championship.

But then something quite extraordinary happened. Whatever message had temporarily lifted the players against South Africa, suddenly returned. Henry’s claim that Wales could play a fast, open, expansive style was gloriously proved right with a thrilling 34–33 victory over France in Paris. The first half of that match was rugby of the highest standard and Wales were simply magnificent. Scott and Craig Quinnell tore into the French pack, Colin Charvis was everywhere, and Neil Jenkins controlled things from outside-half. The French darling, Thomas Castaignede, had a chance to win the game for the home side with the last kick of the match but struck it wide. Wales had won in Paris for the first time since 1975 and the scenes inside the Stade de France, and in Paris that evening, were wonderful. So many people had waited so long for that victory that they were ecstatic.

Who knows what might have happened if Castaignede had put that ball between the posts? Wales would have lost and may then have been beaten by England in the final match of the championship. Sometimes matches, reputations, whole careers can turn on such small margins. But Castaignede missed and a newly confident Wales beat Italy in a non-championship match a fortnight later. Then came the unforgettable 32–31 victory over England at Wembley and that astonishing last-gasp try by Scott Gibbs. Wales had turned a corner and the players believed Henry was the man responsible. Whether it was he or not doesn’t matter. It mattered only that the players thought he was the reason for their change of fortune. They believed in the Henry factor.

After beating France, Italy and England, Argentina were beaten twice in their own country – the first time any team had whitewashed the Pumas on their own soil. The Henry bandwagon rolled on. In June of that year, Wales beat South Africa for the first time in 93 years of trying. Then Canada and the USA were brushed aside before Wales proved the Paris result was no fluke by beating France again just prior to the World Cup. At this point, a month out from Wales hosting the tournament, Henry was undoubtedly the most popular man in Wales and probably the most instantly recognisable. He was mobbed wherever he went. He was a guru, a national hero, a huge celebrity, and a prophet all rolled into one. People outside of Wales were unable to realise just how overblown this profile became. Henry didn’t ask for it. It just happened. He actually called for some realism and perspective. But the more he growled and grumbled like a dour Kiwi, the more praise would be heaped on him from every corner of Welsh society. It was the natural overreaction of a nation starved of success suddenly gorging on victory after victory.

I met Henry a few times during this period of heady optimism. He had a presence about him, and a nice line in dry wit. He was impressive and yet there were odd moments when glaring gaps in his rugby knowledge would suddenly emerge. But he had some very good ideas and his drive, energy and sense of purpose made you feel you wanted to be alongside him on this incredible journey.

He was shrewd, too. All Welsh coaches take it as read that they will suffer a lot of stick from former internationals. It goes with the territory. It’s not simply the regular voices in the media; there are always plenty of ex-internationals who will gladly be stirred by a poor performance into saying that the current coach has got it all wrong and things were so much better in their day. It’s not that all ex-Wales players have a mean, vindictive streak. It’s just that we care enough to want the team to do well.

Henry was obviously aware that this could present a problem for him and as he was an outsider the criticism might become harsher than normal if things went badly.

His solution was to invite a whole host of former internationals to attend a series of trial matches at Swansea one Saturday afternoon and then ask them to sit in on selection. Glad to be of service – or perhaps flattered – we all trooped along. There must have been around thirty of us. We enjoyed a pleasant lunch in the clubhouse before the action and then took our seats.

Henry had asked us all to concentrate on our own particular positions. I sat alone in the stand, with David Watkins sitting not far from me, and we watched the four guys vying for the Wales No. 10 shirt. It was hard work as we were required to watch one player constantly whatever action was taking place. But I also felt it was a useful exercise in establishing how we regarded the players in our positions. They were under real scrutiny. Afterwards, everyone was invited to join Henry for a selection meeting at which all the positions and various candidates were discussed in detail. JPR Williams gave his view on the four full-backs, JJ Williams and Ieuan Evans chatted about the wings, and so on right through from 1 to 15. Henry listened to all shades of opinion and made occasional notes. Finally, he thanked everyone for coming and every ex-international in that room went home thinking they were now part of the inner sanctum.

They weren’t, of course. I don’t think for a minute that Henry pored over our opinions. He probably folded his notes, put them into his pocket, and promptly forgot all about them. I don’t imagine our musings made the slightest difference to the Wales team he eventually picked. But the point is that he had charmed us, won us over, and made everyone feel part of the action. There was an element of an elaborate con trick to try to muzzle his potential critics and for a time it probably worked. Yet even then there were certain things about that afternoon that made me suspicious. He wanted to charm us, but he also wanted to put a few of us in our place. Henry asked me which outside-half had impressed me. I told him Neil Jenkins should be his first choice but that Shaun Connor had caught my eye and explained why. Henry stroked his chin and said, ‘That’s interesting.’ Then he turned to Leigh Jones, one of his advisors at the time and now coach of Newport, and asked, ‘What do you think of Connor, Leigh?’ ‘Not up to it,’ said Jones, without looking up. Henry glanced back at me, with a smile on his lips and then moved the discussion on.

I felt hurt by that. Henry appeared to be trying to de-value my opinion in front of a large and illustrious gathering. I thought, ‘Who the hell does this guy think he is?’ But I bit my tongue as I genuinely felt there was a useful point to the whole meeting and I didn’t want to be seen as someone who was trying to undermine things. Within a week or two, Henry had developed his elaborate trick a little farther. He invited the same bunch of ex-internationals to the Vale of Glamorgan Country Club and Hotel just outside Cardiff, which had become headquarters for the Wales management and the team. A grand title had been given to the project now. I think they called it ‘The Mentors’ Scheme’. Basically, this involved making every former Welsh international present a personal advisor to the man who currently played in their position. In theory, this was a perfectly good idea. I’ve always felt that current players could benefit a great deal by talking to some of the older ones. For instance, young Welsh props like Iestyn Thomas, Ben Evans and Darren Morris could learn so much from informal conversations with a legend of the front row like Graham Price, someone who has not only achieved great things but recognises the finer points of that area more deeply than anyone else and commands such complete respect.

Henry, however, wanted to formalise that kind of relationship and guide it himself. Again, there was plenty of good food on offer and the wine flowed freely amongst the invited guests. Gareth Edwards sat and chatted to Rob Howley, while I enjoyed the company of Neil Jenkins and Stephen Jones. I knew Stephen well as I had followed his career closely since he was a young boy in Carmarthen. I had met Neil on a couple of occasions and found him a likeable bloke. Quite what I was meant to teach Neil, who had done pretty much everything in the game, I wasn’t sure, but he asked me for my phone number and I gladly gave it to him. I joked that if every he wanted a good tip on the horses he should give me a call. It was all very relaxed and light-hearted, just exactly how that kind of relationship should be if it’s going to work.

But Henry wanted something more structured, with reports and assessments. He talked about how they did this kind of thing in New Zealand and what a good system they had in place. I had an entirely open mind and was willing to be part of anything Henry wanted to do, but three months down the line it was as if that evening had never taken place. There were no follow-up conversations with me, or any of the other mentors as far as I could gather; no one from the Welsh management ever asked for a single word or opinion on how the boys were performing or what feedback we had given them. There were no files or paperwork. The system that Henry had trumpeted simply didn’t exist.

Looking back on it now, perhaps it was just that Henry and his large back-up team simply had too many other things on their plate to concern themselves with the mentors’ scheme. Or maybe they had second thoughts. It would have been nice to know, because the nagging thought is there in my mind that perhaps it was just a cynical exercise in silencing potential critics. Former internationals were hardly going to slate Henry if they were supposed to be in partnership with him. But the reality was that none of us were briefed by Henry or by his team manager David Pickering, any more than we were briefed by Tony Blair. It was a sham.

In professional sport, however, the real judgements are not of a person’s sincerity. You are judged on your record. And Henry’s record throughout 1999 was incredible as he took Wales on an amazing ten-match winning streak. He restored pride and dignity to the team after the depths of a year before and I, for one, will always be grateful. Suddenly, during that summer of 1999, everyone in Wales was talking about the rugby team again and was proud of their efforts. Even the fact that two of his players – Shane Howarth and Brett Sinkinson – were New Zealanders who had no right to be in a Welsh shirt didn’t seem to matter. I felt uneasy about their presence, but like most of the Welsh media I was swept along with the euphoria of success and it took newspapers from outside Wales to expose their bogus credentials in early 2000. Looking back, I feel a certain sense of shame that I did not voice my concerns and discomfort about the two Kiwis before the Kiwigate scandal had broken and it was discovered that their grandparents had no Welsh connections after all. I admire guys like Byron Hayward who spoke up and was critical of their selection. At the time Byron’s complaints were dismissed as sour grapes because he wasn’t in the team, but he was completely right to be concerned about the tarnishing of our heritage.

Whether Henry knew he was breaking the rules we shall perhaps never know. The International Rugby Board cleared him of misconduct and found the WRU guilty of administrative incompetence rather than cheating, but it was certainly a stain on his reputation. He misjudged the mood of a nation when he expected the public would be as flippant about the issue of Welsh qualification as he and his management team had been. The team had begun to lose its sparkle and now one of the great magician’s tricks had been exposed.

Strangely, that summer of 1999 when Wales beat the Springboks for the first time, was the pinnacle of Henry’s achievements and influence. The World Cup of that year showed the team had already begun the descent that would finally end with that humiliating defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations of 2002.

Part of the problem at the World Cup seemed to be that players began to believe their own publicity. They thought they were better than they were and the hard work that had led to such huge improvements was obviously on the wane. Almost every individual Welsh player at that time began to let his own standards slip. Wales lost to Samoa in the pool stages and were bundled out of the tournament in the quarterfinals by the eventual winners Australia. I noticed, for the first time, that Henry had begun to criticise his own players for their mistakes and shortcomings. Cracks were beginning to appear.

In 1999 Wales had beaten England at Wembley, but 12 months later, just as the eligibility scandal was about to break, we were thrashed 46–12 at Twickenham and it could have been a lot more. To Henry’s credit, Wales recovered to beat both Scotland and Ireland that year but the coach had already fallen out with some of his key players, like Rob Howley. Things were starting to spin out of Henry’s control. When he was interviewed on TV the sparkle had gone, the self-confidence was draining away. The defeats mounted up and although there were a couple more highlights, such as another victory in Paris in 2001, these were temporary blips on the graph, which was now heading steadily downwards. The autumn of 2001 was awful, with a shocking home defeat to Argentina and a pathetic thrashing at the hands of Ireland in a match that had been postponed due to the foot-and-mouth crisis. Ireland were first up at the start of the 2002 Six Nations and the 54–10 defeat at Lansdowne Road must rank as one of the most passionless Welsh displays of all time. There was nowhere for Henry to go after that disgraceful performance and he knew it. Within a few days he had resigned.

On reflection, Henry should not have accepted the offer to coach the Lions to Australia in 2001. The invitation was made in the summer of 2000 when things had already taken a turn for the worse with Wales. He should have realised what a massive job he had on his hands and told them to appoint someone else. But he was human, fallible like the rest of us, and I don’t hold it against him for allowing ego and ambition to get the better of him. After all, I accepted the offer to captain the 1977 Lions when I should have turned it down. Henry’s employers at the WRU should have been stronger and persuaded him to concentrate on the job in hand. As things turned out, the Lions tour took a massive toll on Graham, both physically and emotionally. He came straight back home to the Wales job and it was plain to everyone he was never going to be the same again.

After the 2002 Dublin defeat, Henry was interviewed for BBC Wales’s Scrum V programme on the Sunday morning at the team hotel. He looked physically diminished, weary, his voice quiet and apologetic, and there was a haunted look in his eyes. I had seen that look before … in Kevin Bowring, Alan Davies, Ron Waldron and John Ryan. Now there was another name to add to the list. An impossible burden had again resulted in the only possible outcome. When Henry was made Wales coach in 1998, Glanmor Griffiths, chairman of the WRU, had used the phrase ‘last-chance saloon’ when discussing the future of the international game in Wales. Only three-and-half years into his five-year contract and Henry was pushing through the saloon-bar door, while Griffiths and others continue to sit comfortably at the table.