LITMIR.BIZ

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analyst, and the man in charge of finding video footage on all our opponents, had done well to find me some clips of Tait which I watched on the Friday. I could see that Tait was a quality player with quick feet and good hands. I also couldn’t help thinking about his age. Eighteen! I was still used to being described as a youngster myself and yet I had turned 23 at the start of that week. Here was a kid five years younger than me. I’ve always had a strange feeling about coming up against players younger than me. It creates an extra little competitive edge in my mind. It’s almost as if they are a bit of a threat to me and at the back of my mind a little voice is telling me to put them in their place. Or at least try to put them in their place. I suppose it’s a desire to try and set the standards rather than allow someone new to come along and set them for you.

      We had been defending well and I was feeling confident when Tait tried to run straight at me. It meant I had to make a head-on tackle which is the type I have always enjoyed, right through from my earliest days as a kid playing age-group rugby. I like the aggressive side of the game and those tackles give you the chance to get right in someone’s face. When a player runs right at me, I don’t have many worries about the contact, I feel comfortable making that form of tackle and I must admit I enjoyed that one on Mathew. I managed to stop him and pick him up at the same time. Suddenly, his momentum was gone and it was me moving forward with him horizontal in my arms. Someone said afterwards it looked as though I was moving a shop-window dummy but at the time these things happen so quickly you don’t imagine that they will become a talking point. After the game, I was asked if I’d planned to embarrass Mathew but that was rubbish. It had nothing to do with the fact that he was 18 and making his debut. It was just that he was running straight at me and I was the one who had to stop him. It wasn’t as if I had singled him out or anything because I had also put in those solid hits on White and Cueto, too. But I’ll admit that tackle on Mathew did feel good. I liked the surge of adrenalin it gave me because this was a player we had talked about before the match as a possible danger man. Mathew had been bragged up in the Zurich Premiership and is quite a physical player himself. I had seen one try he had scored for Newcastle against Sale where he had bumped off Jason Robinson so he obviously had strength to go along with his general sharpness and good feet. So we did our homework on him and it paid off.

      In the days afterwards there would be T-shirts printed with the picture of me holding Mathew in mid-air with a few mildly insulting captions on them. I don’t suppose Mathew minds too much. He shouldn’t. He’s a lot younger than me, he’s going to be a very good player for England, and I know that one day he’ll get his revenge. In fact, later in the game he made a tackle on me that denied us a try. I had made a break on the outside of Mathew and thought I had got away from him. But just as I tried to accelerate away he stretched out and got a hand on my jersey to pull me down. That was careless. Next time, I thought, I’ll make sure my shirt is fully tucked into my shorts.

      We increased our lead to 8–3 at half-time thanks to a penalty from Stephen Jones. People have often asked me whether I mind having to share the goal-kicking with Steve but I’m more than happy to do so. A lot of people might view me as an individualist, a loner, and in many ways I suppose I am. But what I most want from playing for Wales is to be part of a successful team. That’s the priority. It always has been for me. I want to stand out but I want people to look at me as someone who catches the eye within a winning team. Stephen is a fantastic kicker, one of the best in the world, so there’s no way I would resent it when he’s asked to kick at goal. A lot of people don’t actually realise that kicking can be tiring because you are the only player on the pitch actually doing anything for 90 seconds while everyone else is having a rest. The nice thing about having Steve take all the short and medium-range kicks is that I get to have a breather like everyone else.

      Shortly after Stephen kicked his penalty, Danny Grewcock and Gareth ‘Alfie’ Thomas both ended up in the sin bin. Grewcock decided to plant his foot across Dwayne Peel’s head at a ruck and Alfie came running in to try and chin him. They both ended up in the bin – something for which Alfie was very apologetic about afterwards – but this was a Wales-England game after all and you don’t get many of those without a few sparks flying. With Alfie off the field, and both sides down to 14 men, I was moved from inside centre to cover for his loss at full-back. I felt perfectly comfortable with that. It’s a position I’m happy with and I’d played there lots of times before. I like to kick the ball out of hand because I know I can send it a long way – further than most players. When I managed to put England right back on their heels with two big kicks to touch then I started to feel really confident about the way things were going.

      Sitting in the dressing room at the break, I felt a bit disappointed and so did most of the other boys. We had scored the only try but we hadn’t really played much rugby other than that. We hadn’t taken the game to them as we had planned. We promised ourselves that we would keep the ball in hand and run England around more in the second-half to try and stretch them and tire out their forwards. But it didn’t really happen. I think the occasion got to us and the match became quite scrappy. England dug in and found they had gained a territorial advantage which we didn’t seem able to do much about. Hodgson kicked a penalty to make it 8–6 and then with the game going into the final stages he slotted over another and suddenly we found ourselves 9–8 down. I have to admit a little bit of panic set in. Everyone became quite nervous, there were too many mistakes being made, and there was also the added factor of worrying about the clock. Back in the autumn against New Zealand there had been a mix-up over exactly how long was left in the game. The clock was being halted every time for stoppages so that while we all felt there was some injury time left to play, the referee blew up when the exact 40 minutes was up. When you are losing, although you should be able to remember whether it’s a stopped clock or not, that kind of thing goes flying out of your mind in the general panic that takes over. There was part of me that also realised England were much more used to holding out and winning tight games than we were. But as a team something gave us that little bit of calm in the final moments that day in February and I think it was this. We had all believed in the days before the match that we would beat England and I think every Welsh player on that field still believed it as the seconds counted down. We had the individual players and collectively we had the character. All we needed was one more chance. And then it came.

      Gareth Cooper, who had come on at scrum-half for Dwayne Peel, made a break from a scrum and rolled a kick into England’s half. Jason Robinson tried to tidy up but got swallowed and when he was unable to release the ball quickly enough the penalty was given.

      That kick changed my life and I’ll remember it forever. But I’ll also remember those feelings as the seconds were counted down to our victory. We were playing with a freedom we hadn’t managed since the opening few minutes of the match. We were back in the lead and the confidence came flooding back, helped by the crowd who lifted us higher again. We could easily have scored another try – perhaps we should have – but it was obvious we were not going to lose. It felt to me as though that last four minutes could have turned into 25 and England still wouldn’t have come back. It was our day and we knew it.

      When the final whistle went, and we had won 11–9, the excitement I felt couldn’t be diverted into running, kicking and tackling anymore. So I ran about, jumping in the air. So did everyone else. We all went nuts. It was an amazing feeling and an incredible atmosphere, the best I had ever felt.

      I did my utmost to savour those feelings, including later on in the evening when we were among the Welsh supporters. To see so many happy faces on the streets and around the stadium, to know that you can have that effect on people, made me feel fantastic. It was awesome. Like the players, the fans had been through so many bad times they deserved this moment – and they were going to make the most of it.

      We spent quite a while celebrating before coming off the field, which was understandable given that Wales had not beaten England for six years. Eventually the rest of the boys headed down the tunnel and turned left towards our dressing room but I was grabbed by the BBC for an interview as I’d been given the man-of-the-match award. By the time I got back to the boys, Alfie had given his post-match chat to the squad but I did catch him giving the call that no-one was to go out that night to celebrate. We had another game in seven days against Italy which would mean flying out to Rome on the Thursday. Alan Phillips, the Wales

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