Firsts & Lasts: Martin Johnson
England legend Martin Johnson recalls his first and last cap as a Test captain.
Martin Johnson is the only England captain to have won the Rugby World Cup.
As a kid he played rugby and football, watched big sports events on TV and dreamed of sporting glory.
“I had the same reaction as everyone else as a kid, I thought the guy lifting the FA Cup at Wembley was amazing, and that it must be the best feeling ever,” he says. “Although it’s symbolic, lifting the World Cup was really weird. I would as soon have walked off and sat in the changing room with the lads. I didn’t need that moment. We had done the rugby, won the game. It didn’t sink in, that took a long time, weeks, months, years even.”
At 6ft 7, Johnno was hardly able to go through life unnoticed after that unforgettable England victory and he was mobbed everywhere he went. It was his 84th and final England cap, his last England captaincy, having won 34 of 39 Tests, and it followed a long list of accolades.
Born in Solihull and raised in Market Harborough, he joined Leicester Tigers youth team at 17, played for England Schoolboys and Colts. At 19, he went to New Zealand “to see a bit of the world, have an adventure. I only phoned home every three or four months, in those days you wrote letters.”
He still wonders quite how he became part of a New Zealand Provincial team and, fresh off the plane, was playing touring Argentina in a mid-week match, before taking on and beating the mighty North Harbour and the All Blacks captain. By the age of 20, he’d played 30 games for King Country and had met his future wife Kay.
When he returned to Welford Road, it was the end of an era, players like Paul Dodge and Dusty Hare were retiring and, having honed his skills in the Land of the Long White Cloud, he’d “gained notoriety. They thought ‘My God, he’s been in New Zealand, he must know the secret of the Holy Grail!’”
There was also Johnno’s immense talent. By the end of his 16 years with Tigers, he had played 362 games, led them to four Premiership titles and two Heineken Cups. A Lions legend, he was selected in 1993, with just one England cap, for the New Zealand series. Four years later he led the Lions’ triumphant series in South Africa and in 2001 in Australia he became the first player to captain the Lions twice.
One of the best locks ever to grace a rugby pitch and one of England’s greatest players, Johnno could both read a game and lead team mates to victory as it evolved.
First Test as England Captain
November 1988: England 110-0 Netherlands
“My boyhood dreams, like everyone’s, had been about playing for England and I’d been in the system with England Schoolboys and Colts. You never know what’s going to happen though, until it actually happens.
“I got called up by England coach Geoff Cooke as an injury replacement for Wade Dooley against France in the 1993 Five Nations. That was my first cap and I went on to captain the Lions in 1997. When we got back, Phil de Glanville was captaining England after Will Carling had stepped down. There was a lot of speculation about who’d take over from Will and I remember Phil being a really good player and a really good captain, who had a pretty tough job when it was all a whole big deal, bigger than now.
“Then Clive Woodward became coach and there was a supposition that there’d be a different captain. There was so much hype, so many opinions. I didn’t engage in it at all. There were a lot of good players who could do it, Phil, Jason Leonard, me, Lawrence Dallaglio. I wasn’t at all disappointed when Lawrence got it. I didn’t go into rugby to be a captain, didn’t have my heart set on it. I just wanted to play, to be one of the boys, be successful and win games.
“Thinking about those two games in Huddersfield against the Netherlands and Italy, we were fourth in the 1995 World Cup and had to qualify for a World Cup being played in the UK, with matches at Twickenham, the final in Cardiff. What? England not playing, it wasn’t going to happen. It was all a bit weird, I’m pretty sure it was resolved a couple of weeks before we went actually to Huddersfield to play the Netherlands.
“I think Lawrence got injured on the Sunday before and I got a call at home from Clive saying he’d like me to captain the next game. I wasn’t England captain, just temporary captain while Lawrence was injured and, having heard he was, I wasn’t surprised. It would have been between me and Jason.
“My mum and dad came up to watch with some friends who lived in Huddersfield. I think the team was training at a school ground, staying at a city centre hotel. It was all pretty low key, one of those games when there’s no challenge, no battle. You wanted to go out and be seen to play well but you were almost ambassadors for rugby because for the opposition it was going to be one of their biggest rugby games.
“I’d played Belgium in the U21s when we won handily but they are awkward games. You don’t want to be patronising but you are going to score and score, big deal! Dan Luger scored on his debut, Neil Back and Jeremy Guscott scored four each, half a dozen others had a try, even Richard Cockerill.
“How many players in that team were in the 2003 Rugby World Cup final? I must be the only person who can check that straight away on his phone! But less than you’d expect. In that starting XV were Will Greenwood, Matt Dawson, Neil Back, me and Martin Corry. Richard Hill was on the bench - he was never on the bench! Of course, Lawrence was injured, so was Phil Vickery. So just half a dozen of us played in both matches and you certainly couldn’t find two games more different than my first and last as England captain."
Last Test as England captain
November 2003: England 20-17 Australia
“When you have late games, an eight o’clock evening kick-off, it’s like two days. You can’t wake up in the morning full of bounce and ready to go. There are 12 hours ahead of you.
“We went out for a late morning walk through, covered bits and bobs, something to do almost, to start switching people’s minds on pre-match. Then it was back for lunch, a hot buffet over an hour and a half, very much turn up if you want, take it with you. After that I lay on my bed, closed my eyes. I can normally manage to sleep any time and having a sleep in the afternoon meant I could wake up as if it was the morning of the game.
“We were such a mature group, both in rugby and generally, we understood where we were at. I remember talking to Will Greenwood later and he said he was dreading the game because of a fear of making a mistake, but I had such confidence in the team that I had no doubt about our ability to just deal with things as they happened.
“We’d been under pressure during the Rugby World Cup, we’d conceded the first try against Samoa, Wales, France, we had the pressure of being favourites throughout the tournament. We’d dealt with it. We knew Australia very well so we didn’t need to go over the top prepping and we trained just as much as we would for any Test match. What we needed was to get our minds right and go out and play.
“I was as calm as I could have been in that situation. I knew everyone was going to do the right thing, do their job. We could deal with anything. I thought we were a very, very difficult team to beat, that we could play an all-round game. That team could play any number of ways at the highest level, use different tactics as we had against France in the semi-final. That was a long way from what we’d planned to do but everyone on the field felt this is what we do to win the game, let’s do it. You couldn’t have wanted more as a player, as a captain.
“The night before the match, when the nerves were starting to ramp up at the meeting before dinner, there was quite an atmosphere. Clive spoke, we watched the motivational video compilation. He usually said ‘Now the captain will say a few words’ and the coaches quietly left, closing the door behind them. Most of the time everyone would be giggling like schoolkids when the teacher leaves the class but not that night.
“I knew a big speech wasn’t needed. I said to the guys ‘Let’s just go and do what we do, play how we play.’ And that’s what we did, when we got behind we played our way back into the game. When we walked out onto the pitch, within three or four minutes it felt like any Test match.
“We knew the stadium. The week before it was incredible and full of England fans in white shirts, outnumbering French supporters by miles. This was the final and we were playing the home team, with a crowd in Australia’s favour, but we felt very much in control. My dad was there with Kay. Kay’s mum was babysitting our daughter Molly, who was tiny. You’d never know where they were in the crowd. It’s a big former Olympic stadium so the crowd is further away, not like at Twickenham.
“In the first half we had more ball but not a huge amount of territory. We were going at them and as things happened found a way to score, eventually got Jonny’s penalties and Jason Robinson’s try and were nine points up at half time. Then we were fumbling, bumbling and not finishing the game off. People always ask about when the whistle went for extra time. It’s about being an experienced team, having guys who can operate under the pressure of it all. When you are in tight matches, big games, and that was the biggest, you have to keep your head when Elton Flatley is lining up to kick the equalising penalty.
“I was having a conversation with the guys, we’ve got 90 seconds to win the thing and being able to have a coherent conversation and execute it is what it’s all about. It’s about executing it under pressure, giving whoever it is the chance to score and it’s ultimately a drop goal from the 22, which Jonny could do with his eyes shut and the culmination of a huge amount of work and time.
“It comes down to basics, how to score points in the next 90 seconds and yes if we’d had that mind set in the second half, we would already have won the game. In the end it’s very simple, find ways to score points and then repeat. We’d talked about minute aspects of the game and that helped because it was far more of a mental than a physical challenge. I wouldn’t put it on my list of physical battles; Australia were bright, they could play, they tried to negate our strengths and you do what you have to do. We wouldn’t have been able to live with ourselves if we’d lost that game.
“After Jonny’s drop goal I remember falling back for the kick off, shouting to boys who were jumping up and down to get back, get the ball, get it off before Andre Watson gave another penalty against us. If they’d got the ball back we could still be playing now!
“We needed that ball off so they couldn’t equalise and there was Trevor Woodman, a loose-head prop leaping three feet in the air to catch the kick-off, getting the ball to Mike Catt who booted it out. It certainly wasn’t over until the whistle blew but you usually get the result you deserve.
“I looked up at the clock with four or five minutes to go and it felt weird. I thought we are going to win this by three points, and I felt quite flat, even though it as such an exciting game that if I hadn’t been playing I don’t think I could have watched it.
“You do the jumping up and down because everyone else does but it’s not my natural reaction. You lift the trophy and it’s symbolic for people watching but it was really weird. I didn’t need that moment. We had done the rugby, won the game. It didn’t sink in, that took a long time, weeks, months, years even. I would happily have walked off, sat in the changing room with the lads all taking the p*** out of each other as usual.
“I really didn’t take it all in and then when we got back to the crowds at Heathrow, it hit me. It was unreal, insane. Woody rang me about the open-top bus tour and I thought even then that it would be a disaster, just us and a couple of hundred people there! I lived in South Leicestershire and we were brought down very rock n roll in a crappy minibus. We’d been told to wear our grey suits, Italian leather shoes, and we were being picked up early Monday morning at Junction 20 on the M1. I got a call to say they’d missed the turn off and were on the hard shoulder so we had to walk down, me and Ben Kay in our sharp suits and slippery shoes, sliding down the bank."
We were late getting into London and they had to send police outriders to get us to the Hilton Park Lane. It was so quiet I thought, this is just going to be me and the boys and we might as well get some Christmas shopping done in Oxford Street. We got on the bus, drove through Marble Arch, and it was just mind blowing, people hanging from windows, up lamp posts, helicopters, booms.
“We went to the Palace, ended in Downing Street and it was Lawrence Dallaglio’s testimonial that night in Battersea. The demand was so huge they had to stage it over two nights and I agreed to go the second night. As Kay and I left Downing Street, we were looking to get a cab to St Pancras to get the train home.
"I asked a police officer where I could get one and he said ‘I’ll take you home.’ I explained we lived in Leicestershire but he said it was fine, he was taking us. I don’t think he’ll get in trouble now but we headed out of London through the rush hour up Finchley Road with the blue lights going. It was amazing, though Kay hated it. He couldn’t use the blue lights up the M1 as he wasn’t on police business!
“At that point I realised I was in the zone. If you were interviewed and mentioned any product you got it! I was asked what I was reading and it was Lee Childs, the next thing I knew I got a pre-print edition delivered of his next book. We were mobbed. I signed books in Oxford Street and was chased in the car, people banging on the windows. Then I went to sign books in Birmingham Bullring and when I walked in girls were screaming. I thought whoa it’s not a boy band!
“I’d get seen in the local shop and told ‘You’re in a supermaket!’ and I’d say ‘Yes, tried to stay away but we got hungry.’ My kids Molly and Henry are older now and I’m just their dad, annoying them as all dads do. They know I won a World Cup but I get the same reaction as my parents did when they told me stuff. When I’m with young rugby players and they want to know how we did it, I say we were just guys playing rugby on a pitch covered in grass. The skills we practised were the skills you practise.
“I never regard myself as anything other than and ordinary bloke who played rugby. Let’s face it, I wasn’t very good at anything else.”
