Gavin Henson: My Grand Slam Year - Gavin Henson

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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.

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