Matt Dawson: Nine Lives - Matt Dawson

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the onslaught but assured us that if we absorbed the best they could throw at us and stay patient, our time would come, and we would go for the kill. ‘We have proved that the Lion has claws and teeth,’ Geech said. ‘We have wounded a Springbok. When an animal is wounded it returns in frenzy. It does not think. It fights for its very existence. The Lion waits, and at the right point it goes for the jugular and the life disappears. Today, every second of that game we go for the jugular.’

      What unfolded at King’s Park was probably the toughest encounter I’ve ever experienced. But it did not cross the line between fair and brutal, unlike the way South Africa played at Twickenham in autumn 2002. They weren’t cheap-shotting, but they were certainly throwing their bodies around. The surge of power that came our way was unbelievable. As had been the case in the first Test, the home side lost it in the fourth quarter through indiscipline. Amazingly, given the end result, we didn’t threaten their line once. In fact, we got nowhere near it. They scored three unanswered tries and Jenks kicked us to victory from our own half. Yet tactically we were fantastic, not only to amass 18 points with the limited ball we had, but to shut them out in the last half-hour. Admittedly their goalkicking was so shocking as to be almost unbelievable, but let that not detract from one of the greatest defensive displays of all time.

      We knew the home side would be like men possessed after blowing up in Cape Town, and that if we got too loose they would punish us. So we set out to frustrate them. We had John Bentley and Alan Tait chasing my box kicks down the touchlines and smashing into the receivers, while on the occasions we did run it, Scott Gibbs blasted up the middle. Time and again South Africa would let frustration get the better of them; we would then kick the penalties to touch and drive upfield from the set-piece, where the Boks would kill the ball and Jenks would kick the points.

      With four minutes to go, and the scores locked at 15 apiece, Gregor Townsend drove for the line and the ball came back to me. The last thing on my mind was a drop goal. It hadn’t been mentioned. You tend to either hear the call at the previous set-piece, or a trigger call from your fly-half in behind you. But we were driving and driving and I thought it had to be on out wide. Someone must be open. So I was looking for a wide ball to a first receiver. Instead I found Jerry Guscott getting ready for the money shot. It was a case of, as he would say, make it or break it. He made it. After a score I’m usually the first to yell ‘Concentrate!’ but when that ball soared between the posts we all went absolutely nuts. We had to somehow regroup, slow our pulses and refocus on defending our line. There was still plenty of time for the game to be lost.

      It was then that we drew on the inspiration provided for us by the midweek boys, who had scored 52 points at altitude against Orange Free State four days before. The Test team had not travelled to Bloemfontein for the game, and I watched it in the room I was sharing with Gibbsy back in Durban. It was an awesome display, described by our team manager Fran Cotton as ‘one of the all-time great Lions performances’, and it gave us all a massive lift. The feeling was that if they were playing rugby like that we had to live up to their example. Here was a team that had flown to altitude on the day of the game, had endured the sickening loss of Will Greenwood to an injury which could have cost him his life (‘James Robson thought he had lost him,’ Fran admitted. ‘He thought he was going to die on the field. He was unconscious, fitting. He’d swallowed his tongue and was biting on his gumshield. He could not get any reaction from his pupils at all for a minute. He thought he’d gone’), yet had still managed to score six tries. As we dragged one another into position to repel yet another Springbok assault on our line, we tapped into that defiant spirit. Our bodies cried out for mercy, but we held firm. Against all odds, the series was ours.

      Ellis Park, the spiritual home of South African rugby, was supposed to host the party to end all parties. And so it did, but the hosts had anticipated Johannesburg celebrating a Springbok series triumph rather than a Lions drink-up which left the management with a £3,000 bar bill and me nursing the mother of all hangovers. South Africa won the third Test, having finally realized that it pays to play a goalkicker. A combination of injuries and a couple of days on the piss after the second Test proved our undoing. We were still desperate to win, though; there was no feeling that it was just a jolly. Even though we had won the series there had been the usual southern-hemisphere bleat of ‘at least we scored tries’ and a feeling around the place that they were better than us.

      But try telling that to the record books. History will not remember it that way.

      1997 Lions to South Africa: squad and results

      Forwards: Jason Leonard (England), Dai Young (Wales), Graham Rowntree (England), Tom Smith (Scotland), Paul Wallace (Ireland), Mark Regan (England), Keith Wood (Ireland), Barry Williams (Wales), Simon Shaw (England), Martin Johnson (England, capt.), Jeremy Davidson (Ireland), Doddie Weir (Scotland), Richard Hill (England), Neil Back (England), Rob Wainwright (Scotland), Lawrence Dallaglio (England), Eric Miller (Ireland), Tim Rodber (England), Scott Quinnell (Wales); replacements: Nigel Redman (England), Tony Diprose (England).

      Backs: Neil Jenkins (Wales), Tim Stimpson (England), Tony Underwood (England), Nick Beal (England), John Bentley (England), Ieuan Evans (Wales), Allan Bateman (Wales), Scott Gibbs (Wales), Jerry Guscott (England), Alan Tait (Scotland), Will Greenwood (England), Paul Grayson (England), Gregor Townsend (Scotland), Matt Dawson (England), Austin Healey (England), Rob Howley (Wales), Kyran Bracken (England); replacements: Mike Catt (England), Tony Stanger (Scotland).

      (P13, W11, D0, L2, F480, A278)

      Eastern Province Invitational XV 11 Lions 39 (Port Elizabeth, 24 May)

      Border 14 Lions 18 (East London, 28 May)

      Western Province 21 Lions 38 (Cape Town, 31 May)

      Mpumalanga 14 Lions 64 (Witbank, 4 June)

      Northern Transvaal 35 Lions 30 (Pretoria, 7 June)

      Gauteng 14 Lions 20 (Johannesburg, 11 June)

      Natal 12 Lions 42 (Durban, 14 June)

      Emerging Springboks 22 Lions 51 (Wellington, 17 June)

       1st Test: South Africa 16 British Isles 25 (Cape Town, 21 June)

      Orange Free State 30 Lions 52 (Bloemfontein, 24 June)

       2nd Test: South Africa 15 British Isles 18 (Durban, 28 June)

      Northern Free State 39 Lions 67 (Welkom, 1 July)

       3rd Test: South Africa 35 British Isles 16 (Johannesburg, 5 July)

      Sitting on the sodden turf at Newlands, it was hard to believe I was back at the scene of my greatest moment in rugby. The blindside break, the dummy pass, the try that had decided the first Test for the Lions against South Africa a year earlier seemed a lifetime away. England had just lost to the Springboks, our seventh defeat in seven matches on what will forever be remembered as the Tour from Hell. Much had changed since my last time in Cape Town. Then I hadn’t been able to get into the England side; now I was captain of my country.

      The call had come two months earlier as I walked my springer spaniel, Freddie, in the fields around Tim Rodber’s home just south of Northampton. My mobile phone rang and I immediately recognized the voice. Clive Woodward wanted to know if I would meet him the following day at the Compleat Angler, a hotel on the banks of the Thames in Marlow, a couple of miles from my parents’ home. He wouldn’t say why. Weeks earlier he had threatened to drop me and my Northampton team-mates from his squad in response to Saints’ owner Keith Barwell withdrawing us from England tour duty, claiming the summer trip to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa was a ‘tour too far’. My England career might have been over there and then had not Ian McGeechan saved the day by persuading Keith to back down.

      Clive, who had succeeded Jack Rowell as coach the previous autumn, had picked me for the last two games of England’s

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