When I discuss Martin Johnson, the thing I don’t want to do is hero-worship
the guy. If you do that, you miss what he’s about. Martin has always
understood that in a sport like rugby, nothing is achieved without a group
of people working effectively together. He will be uncomfortable with all
the attention that is going to come his way over the next few weeks, but he
is now England’s team manager and there is a tremendous buzz about what he
and the team may produce over the next few years.
The first thing people see in Martin Johnson is a great leader of men. Of
course he was that, but as one of those who served under him for a while,
his quality was more basic and simpler than that. You remember that answer
he gave to the question of what was going through his head when the six-man
England pack defended a five-metre scrum against the All Blacks in
Wellington in 2003. “Almost my spine,” he said. That’s Johnno.
We get bogged down in complexities, his mind is clear. Rugby is mostly a
straightforward game. You get your head down and you push; you hit rucks,
you make your tackles; you get up and make more tackles; you play with
energy, and you play with aggression. You do your opposite man and if enough
of your teammates do that, you should be okay. We talk of strategy and game
plans and very clever stuff, and he will concentrate on basic principles.
And the most basic of all is fitness.
Before you can impose your game on the opposition, you must have the fitness
to even attempt that. When England were the best team in the world, we were
also leaders in fitness. I’m not so sure we are now. This is not a criticism
of our club system, but if you want to be the best in the world of
international rugby then you need a different standard of fitness than that
required at other levels. If you were to test the fitness of the top 22 or
23 players available to England right now, the results would be interesting.
We used to talk about fitness for a club player, fitness for an international
player, fitness for a top-class international player and, finally, there was
fitness for an England player and, in our minds, the fitness required for an
England player was the ultimate level. The question to every player in the
squad was, ‘Where do you want to be?’ An England player had to be fitter
than the fittest, better than the best, and when you went back to your club,
you were comfortably the fittest player there.
That isn’t how it is now. In his matter-of-fact way, Martin will see this as
something he has to improve. He will have spoken to Calvin Morriss, senior
fitness trainer at the Rugby Football Union, and promised Calvin more
support in getting the players to where they need to be. Martin has also
brought in Paul Stridgeon from Wasps to work with Calvin and this was an
important appointment because Paul brings energy and a sense of fun to
fitness training that helps to get guys through tough physical sessions.
Fitness is so basic you might not think it worthy of much debate, but I
guarantee you it underpins everything. When Clive Woodward took over in
1997, he wanted England to play more of a running game and to be prepared to
attack from inside our own half. Like Martin’s team is about to do now, we
started under Clive with four extremely tough Test matches: Australia, New
Zealand, South Africa and, for a second time, New Zealand.
After drawing with the Aussies, and then losing to New Zealand and the
Springboks, Clive decided to throw caution to the wind for the final Test
against the All Blacks. “Let’s just tap everything, let’s absolutely go for
it. Let’s get some real p a c e i n t o o u r game.” He then wrote “three
tries” on the whiteboard in front of us and said that was the target.
It was a brilliant approach. We felt we had the freedom to have a real go at
these guys, and through the first half-hour we blew the All Blacks away. We
scored three tries in no time and were 20-3 up against the best team in the
world.
The crowd gave us a standing ovation as we left the field at half-time, but
you needed to have been in that changing room to see the reality of where we
were as a rugby team. I felt sick and was retching, other guys were worse,
and everyone was physically shattered. We had played the game Clive wanted
us to play and realised in the process that we weren’t nearly fit enough.
In the end, we got out of that game with a 26-26 draw but the lesson was far
more important than the result. We had to go away and make ourselves the
fittest team in the world. It took about three years because it was only in
2000 that we were fit enough to properly compete against the best sides in
the world and were in condition to play back-to-back Tests at the pace we
had managed for 40 minutes against the All Blacks that afternoon at
Twickenham.
Rugby, of course, has moved on, guys are in better shape now than we were in
1997. But, in my opinion, England’s best players have fallen a little behind
the best in the world in terms of fitness and this will be a big issue for
Martin, as it must be. And it may be appropriate at some time in the future
for Martin to sit down with the players and say that although he doesn’t
like to make comparisons, these are the fitness scores achieved by the
England team five years ago and let’s see how you rate against them. And I
bet the next question Martin would be asking his players is, “How
comfortable are you with these figures?” Any No 7 who wants to be as good as
Neil Back must first achieve some pretty extraordinary fitness levels. And
Martin Johnson himself was one incredibly fit second-row forward.
Calvin Morriss and Paul Stridgeon will already have set things in motion, but
the supreme fitness we’re talking about only happens when players start
pushing each other and boundaries are extended. The benefits will be
enormous: confidence comes when guys know they’re part of an extremely fit
side, other teams start realising how fit you are and they take that into
account when deciding how they’re going to play against you. Most of all,
you will still be thinking clearly and still be performing properly in the
80th minute.
Martin has also got an excellent rugby mind. Not scientific but simple and
very perceptive. He will look at his England perform and immediately know
what they’re not doing, and when he makes his points, people will be
listening because he keeps it simple and players like that.
Always remember that how you play rugby is normally a good reflection of who
you are as a person. That was very true of Martin. His work-rate was
phenomenal, his technical ability was outstanding, he did everything very
simply, there was a huge honesty in the way he played and he was very
self-effacing as well. Martin has always known the things he can’t do and,
in this respect, the appointment of Brian Smith as the England attack coach
is very important.
Martin will have spoken to all of the coaches about how his England team will
play, he will be definite about it, and Smith will have the responsibility
of translating that vision on to the training ground and then making it work
in the heat of a Test match.
Over time, Martin and his coaches will identify a core group of senior players
with whom they will communicate a lot and that will be an important element
in creating the environment where most things are player-driven, because
that’s what happens when things are working well.
People say the current England squad lacks leaders but I don’t necessarily
think that is right. It is just that the current leaders need to find their
voice and that will happen as the team establishes itself. For today’s
England players, this is their time and they will be asking themselves how
they want to be remembered. For the number of caps they accumulated or for
what they achieved while they wore that England shirt? They must look at the
legacy left by the team that won the 2003 World Cup and think, ‘Well,
actually, they weren’t that good and there are areas in which we can be
better than them’. As a young international, I remember looking at
Will Carling’s team and counting the Grand Slams they won and feeling
immensely proud of what they had achieved. I also noted there were a few
things they hadn’t done: they hadn’t won in Australia, they hadn’t won in
New Zealand, they hadn’t won a World Cup. So I hope there are plenty of
today’s guys looking at the 2003 team and making a mental note of what we
didn’t do.
There will be fun along their journey because despite his exterior, Martin
loves his rugby and enjoys the company of rugby players. I mean he has a
sense of humour, even if it took me about five years to find it. If his
players do things that make him happy, he will be a fun guy to be around. If
they don’t, he won’t be.
Martin’s coming in at a good time because England have fallen a bit in world
rugby, Twickenham has become a soft touch for visiting teams and the
fantastic effort of making the 2007 World Cup final can not really mask the
reality. I think it’s a bit like Harry Redknapp going to Tottenham. You know
there’s scope for improvement. I believe Martin will take England forward
simply because he has never taken a backward step in his life. Why would he
start now?
13
is the number of wins, out of 76 Test matches, that the Six Nations countries
have enjoyed against the Tri-Nations teams since the 2003 World Cup final.
Of those 13 victories, France have five, England four, Ireland three and
Wales one
