THE New Zealand press has not been a pretty scene. From what I can gather, it has been almost as ugly in Britain and Ireland. That is inevitable after such a disappointing performance by the Lions in the first international on Saturday.
On Sunday morning, for the first time since we had booked into our Christchurch hotel, we had complementary newspapers outside our doors. “Try spinning that, Alastair” was the headline that looked up from the carpet, a trailer to page upon page setting out how marvellous the All Blacks were and how woeful the Lions.
The spin theme followed on to the front page of The New Zealand Herald the next day. “ABs win, Sir Clive spins” was the front-page headline over pictures of Woodward showing the video analysis on which we based our belief that Brian O’Driscoll was put out of the tour by an illegal tackle that warranted a red card.
It kept going into Tuesday, The Dominion Post presenting Tana Umaga, O’Driscoll’s assailant and national hero, as the victim of a shameful spin operation. The theme has been running through the UK media, too. I got an e-mail from home: “Near-death picture of you on the front of Guardian Sport, headline says, ‘Nice PR, shame about the rugby’.” The Dominion Post went farther, with a barbed observation that the best Lions performance came from the team’s spin guru and indignant head coach.
I suppose the media team should take it as a compliment — we all have our jobs to do, after all — but no amount of words can hide either the reality of a poor performance or the massive disappointment that every member of the party felt.
It was inevitable that my appointment as an adviser to the Lions would raise the profile of so-called spin issues. But for me, there are only three legitimate questions. Was our anger at the attack on O’Driscoll justified? Were our actions in the aftermath justified? And did they have an impact on the way the incident was judged by public opinion?
I’m aware that the cynics think we stoked up the debate to deflect attention from the performance, but I would make two points about that. First, no one has tried to pretend that it was not a poor performance, or that the most important statistic from Saturday was anything other than 21-3. Secondly, the loss of your captain in those circumstances is a huge story. You owe it to supporters, and to him, to do what you can to get a fair hearing and understanding of your case.
With the exception of Gareth Thomas, who could be seen on the video arguing with the touch judge about why he was refusing to take action over an incident that drew him on to the pitch to warn off the players involved, none of the Lions party saw what happened. That is why, at the post-match press conference, Woodward said we would review the tapes before commenting further. When he, Richard Smith, the Lions’ lawyer, and I watched the tapes, we were in no doubt. Smith was pretty sure there would be a citing and in any event he put in a formal complaint.
Much has been made of the fact that, around midnight, Woodward and I went to the UK media’s hotel for a second press briefing. Two points — first, we had promised to respond further once we had seen the tapes, and secondly, it may have been midnight in New Zealand, but in Britain and Ireland it was the middle of the day and a lot of our interest was explaining to our media and public what was going on.
We had lost our captain in an incident that the head coach and an experienced lawyer thought to be a dangerous and illegal act. Why should we not express our anger and explain what actions we were taking to get redress within a system that gives you only 12 hours for an initial judgment? We were also being pressed for words from O’Driscoll. I spoke to him at the hotel. He was clear that he was “spear tackled”. He was angry and was shocked that Umaga was involved. We put out his words expressing that.
The next big moment was around 3am, when we got a phone call from an Irish journalist telling us that the citing commissioner had rejected our claim. By now we were also dealing with the allegations of biting against Danny Grewcock. We tried to get clarification from the commissioner, who would not take Smith’s call. Shortly afterwards came official confirmation — the only citing would be against Grewcock. So our player was to be cited over an incident not seen on video, while a spear tackle that could have broken our captain’s neck was not even to be put before a hearing.
I was beginning to realise why Steve Thompson and Josh Lewsey had said, when I told them we had complained about the tackle, not to hold my breath — we are in New Zealand. Ali Williams had been cited for stamping on Lewsey’s head when England were here two years ago, but was cleared.
I got to bed around 4am. Already in the diary — even before a ball had been kicked — was a 9am Woodward press conference. I had breakfast with O’Driscoll, who was due to leave for a scan. I asked him if he wanted to join Woodward for the start of the press conference. He did and spoke powerfully about what happened. He left for the hospital and Woodward was quizzed about O’Driscoll and the poor performance. Again, he made no effort to shy away from the latter.
As we left, the press were asking to see the video we had handed the citing commissioner. We assumed that Sky would be showing it, but most of the media had not seen it. We were due to leave for Wellington and hold a press conference there to announce the team for the match against Manawatu, so I told them we would screen it later. Thomas had by now been told that he was O’Driscoll’s replacement as captain, so he joined the press conference.
Woodward went through the video, saying what he thought. He said the team announcement was being delayed because we did not know if Grewcock would be available. Thomas talked through how the touch judge had shouted at the New Zealand players to “leave him alone, the ball has gone”, and how his subsequent complaints were ignored.
In questions that followed came a couple of pieces of New Zealand spin — how did we react to the claim that the All Blacks were especially fired-up because of our response to the haka? (In fact, our response was an act of friendship.) And was it true that Gavin Henson had been kicked off the tour? (No, and no amount of false rumour-spreading will change it.) So that was how we came to do four press conferences in less than 24 hours. Three had been prearranged and only one was impromptu.
As to whether it had any effect, it is hard to judge. Certainly many of the papers here led on Umaga being at the centre of the row and the pictures from the video we released were prominent on many front pages. Some former Lions players-turned-hacks did their best to persuade the rest that we were making a fuss about nothing, with mixed results. By and large, I reckon most Brits and Irish think that O’Driscoll was speared and a lot more New Zealanders think it than admit to it. The New Zealand Herald had an editorial critical of the All Blacks.
On Monday night I watched one of the TV discussion programmes. The presenter, Murray Deaker, said that in an hour-long phone-in after the match there had not been one call about the incident. On Tuesday we had nothing else after the pictures from Sky were screened. Stuart Wilson, a former All Black, said that it was not good enough for Graham Henry’s team to say nothing about it. O’Driscoll has taken their silence as an admission of guilt.
So in PR terms we did as well as we could. But far more important is the effect this has on the players. They share O’Driscoll’s anger. The headlines about it don’t matter. What matters is that our captain is out of the tour. A new captain will lead out a team on Saturday fired with anger and a desire to show the world that the Lions are better than last weekend’s performance.
