Matt Dawson: Nine Lives - Matt Dawson

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the while I was developing as a rugby player in general and as a scrum-half in particular. I learned some hard rugby lessons in New Zealand, the most important of them never to make the same mistake twice. New Zealanders are passionate rugby people and they want you to do well, but they are very unforgiving. If you make a mistake, they’ll tell you all about it.

      When Te Awamutu failed to make the end-of-season playoffs I said my goodbyes, but not before meeting up in Hamilton with the touring England B squad. I also took the opportunity to hook up with Wayne Shelford, the former All Blacks captain who was playing for Northampton but had flown home during the off-season. We went to the B Test together at Rugby Park and an amazing thing happened. As we walked into the stand and up to our seats the whole place stopped to look at Buck. Talk about a national icon.

      No rugby player has impressed me more than Buck. I have played rugby with some hard men, but Buck was in a league of his own, to the point of being slightly mental. He came into the changing room one day at Northampton with really long hair tied in a ponytail, having vowed not to get it cut until Phil Pask’s wife Janice had given birth. He was late for the pre-match meet and in a hurry. He took off his shirt to change into a training top, and we saw that his back and arms were covered in scars. There must have been hundreds of them, each with a couple of stitches in. He explained that that morning he had been to hospital to have surgically removed all the bits of gristle and scar tissue that had built up over the years of his playing career. His back was like a bloody road map. It was horrendous. He then put his shirt on and went out and played.

      Another time Buck played in a game against Rugby where he got the most almighty shoeing – real proper stuff in the days when a player would really get it if he was on the wrong side of a ruck. Most people would have got up and started throwing punches, but Buck just clambered to his feet, looked at the fella with the guilty feet and smiled. I swear the guy shat himself. We didn’t see him for the rest of the game. We knew Buck was just biding his time until opportunity knocked, and so did he.

      That stay in New Zealand was a crucial time for me, because when I got back to England my scrum-half apprenticeship was complete. I was selected by the Midlands at number 9 and was set on a course which would soon lead me to a place on the full England bench and a World Cup winner’s medal.

      ‘England,’ said Andy ‘Prince’ Harriman, ‘were a scratch side who hadn’t played together before, an unknown quantity even to ourselves.’ Then he went off to collect the Melrose Cup as captain of the winning side of the inaugural World Cup Sevens. The day was 18 April 1993, and according to those present at Murrayfield, at the time the half-built home of Scottish rugby, it should be remembered as one of the greatest in English rugby. Not only was I there, I was a member of the triumphant squad.

      Over the course of three extraordinary days that April the 10-man England squad lived out a Cinderella-style fantasy. Unloved and unrated, we took on the world’s best in a format of rugby barely recognized by the powers-that-be at Twickenham and came out on top. We had been given so little chance by the Rugby Football Union that they hadn’t considered it worth sending us to the Hong Kong Sevens beforehand. Unlike Scotland, who had warmed up for the tournament by globetrotting around the sevens circuit and promptly fell at the first hurdle, we just turned up in Edinburgh that spring. I wouldn’t say that we gave ourselves as little chance of winning as everyone else, but it did start out as a bit of a jolly – until it dawned on us that we were actually good enough to go all the way.

      To this day, few people remember who played for England in that tournament, other than Andy Harriman and maybe Lawrence Dallaglio. It was not that we had a weak squad, because we didn’t, despite the fact that only Prince and Tim Rodber had been capped. It was more that we had relatively little experience of sevens at the very highest level. I had made the squad because I was naturally fit and could keep running all day. I could also play anywhere in the back line, as well as kick goals. Nick Beal, Ade Adebayo, Dave Scully, Chris Sheasby, Justyn Cassell and Damian Hopley completed our squad, and we were put up in the George Hotel in Edinburgh, which was the nicest hotel I had ever stayed in. I shared a room with Hoppers. There was a Playstation plugged into the television, we had all our laundry paid for, and we ate some lovely seafood. I was there for the ride really, a wide-eyed 20-year-old not really able to believe that I was playing for my country in a World Cup.

      In the days preceding the tournament all the other teams seemed to be locked into the sevens mentality. We were more likely to be locked in bars. We had a bit of a tour mentality, and that was how we bonded, from the first evening when Prince declared, ‘Right, boys, we’re going out to have a good night.’ A good night? It was carnage. But when we eventually woke some time the next day we were all mates. Then, all of a sudden, we were a really good team.

      In Prince we had the fastest man in the tournament and, as it turned out, its outstanding player. He was extraordinary in every way. Our training drill was one-on-one over five and ten metres, trying to step your man. Andy would be skinning people. It was phenomenal. You just couldn’t catch him. He was more elusive than Jason Robinson. Jason has very small steps, but Harriman was bang, bang, gone – big steps like Iain Balshaw, very explosive and powerful. Awesome, actually.

      After the first and second days we started to believe. Drawn in Group D, we made light work of Hong Kong (40–5), Spain (31–0), Canada (33–0) and Namibia (24–5) with me playing in all but the Canada game. We lost to Western Samoa (10–28), who had come into the tournament on the back of winning the Hong Kong Sevens for the first time, but still went through to the quarter-finals, which were contested in two round-robin groups of four. We were drawn in Group 2 with New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, while Western Samoa joined Ireland, Fiji and Tonga in Group 1.

      The Samoans surprisingly lost two of their three matches, the Irish pulling off a major shock by beating them 17–0 before Fiji edged them 14–12 to put the tournament favourites out. No such problems for England: we began the second phase by scoring three tries against New Zealand in the first seven minutes, through Harriman, Scully and Beal, and won the game 21–12. Against South Africa we had to come from behind following Chester Williams’s early score for the Boks, but managed it with Prince and then Hoppers crossing and Bealer converting for a 14–7 win. When the Aussies were wiped out 42–0 by New Zealand in their last game before we met them, conceding six tries in the process, the omens looked promising, but against us David Campese escaped for an early try and the Wallabies led by 14 points before we got on the scoreboard. Despite tries by Justyn Cassell and Dave Scully, we went down 12–21.

      Annoyed at a result which meant Australia topped the group even though we’d both finished on seven points, we went into our semi-final with Fiji determined to regain our momentum. We decided to introduce some real physicality, and to get hard with it. Sheasby, Rodders, Hoppers and Lawrence outscrummaged the Fijians from the outset and they didn’t really react to it. We started to press them and put them under pressure, and opened up a 14–7 lead through tries by Prince and Lawrence. Fiji came back at us and threatened to draw level when Rasari went on the charge, but Dave Scully planted a spectacular tackle on the big man which knocked him backwards. The ball sprang loose and Ade put Prince away for the try which settled the issue in our favour (21–7). Dave was awarded the Moment of the Tournament for that tackle, and he deserved it.

      That said, it could have gone to Andy Harriman for his opening try in the final against Australia, who had come so close to losing to Ireland in their semi before stealing victory in the last move of the match through a try by Willie Ofahengaue. Prince absolutely flew past Campo and his mates as if they were wading in treacle. It was his twelfth try of the tournament which, not surprisingly, made him top try scorer.

      I was not involved in the final; instead, I played the role of cheerleader on the sidelines. And there was much to shout about as tries by Lawrence and Rodders, who outran Campo to score under the posts, extended the England lead to 21 points before half-time. It seemed too good to be true and, sure enough, the Aussies powered back after the break, scoring three tries as our legs went. Critically, though, Nick Beal had converted all three England tries, whereas Michael Lynagh managed only one for the Wallabies. After a frantic final minute in which they threatened our line again, the whistle brought blessed relief, and the small matter of a World Cup winner’s medal.

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