Woodward on the qualities he looks for in his leaders…
When I’m looking at a player in terms of leadership and real captain material, I have a tick list of what I want. One, they’ve got to be on the team sheet. In rugby union, it doesn’t matter how good a leader a player is, you have got to know you’re going to put his name on the team sheet. The rest of the players have got to know that he’s in the team because he’s a great rugby player. For Johnno [Martin Johnson] that was a big tick.
Two, you’ve got to know that when you’re not in the room that they’re still delivering your message. Can you trust that they’re delivering the message when you’re not there? Three, they’ve got to have the respect of the players. How are they living their lives? Not just in training or during your time together, but 24/7/365, are these real role model-type people?
Four, respect – you don’t have to be mates with your captain and sometimes it’s good not to be that close to them, but you have to have that bond and respect. You’ve got to look forward to having a cup of tea with them and they’ve got to be someone you get on with. You’ve got to be able to pick up the phone and jump up and down and shout off at him, and he’s got to be able to do the same with you. You’ve got to have that trust. And you’ve got to trust that if there is something he doesn’t like, he’ll pick up the phone and call you to tell you.
On his World Cup-winning captain Martin Johnson…
Martin Johnson is one of the toughest players we’ve ever seen and as a coach he’s a guy you want on your team. They always say when you’re tossing the coin, you want to have Martin tossing the coin. He’s a pretty intimidating person walking out of the changing room. He led by example but he wasn’t a big ego man. Behind the scenes he was always asking people, “What do you think?” That’s a big quality of any leader, listening to other people and then making a decision. Martin would probably be top of the tree just in playing terms – forget his captaincy and leadership skill, he was just a great player. I know he is England’s all-time best second row as a player. Add the captaincy and the leadership and he just becomes the best ever player. I felt lucky to have him in the team.
On how you can grow with each setback…
As the movie [Building Jerusalem] says, we went on this tour of hell in 1998 where we played these ridiculous fixtures where we went to Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, which no teams were doing in the modern era. The captain on that tour was Matt Dawson, the fly-half was Jonny Wilkinson – the amount they learned in adversity, and the amount I learned about them, was incredible. I saw Dawson in a completely different light after that tour. He was immense – he just never, ever threw the towel in. It was a tough tour with our kind of second/third team, and [it helped] those two players especially to go and win a World Cup five years later.
On lessons learned from business…
I think the leadership is no different when running a rugby team from running a business. It’s all about people. Almost all of what I applied with England was learned from business. I had 16 years of experience in business, in Sydney with Xerox, a big multi-national, and with my own small leasing and finance company, which I ran for eight years before I became a professional coach. When I say it was small, we had ten people. There was no HR – it was just ten people in a room getting on with our jobs. A rugby team wasn’t that different except there are 40 or 50 people. It was up to us, no-one else was going to help us. One of the biggest things I learned from my business career was how to deal with people and make decisions. That was massive for me in putting the England team together.
On building a winning culture…
We knew the 2003 World Cup was a chance of a lifetime. The players had the right coaching team, they had everything in place. And we couldn’t have people sitting there thinking, “I don’t agree with that” but be too scared to stand up and say it. It was quite an intimidating set-up if you’re, say, a Jonny Wilkinson coming into that – not all players are naturally confident. You have to get that out of them. I had to ask, “Jonny, what are you thinking? Daws, what are you thinking?” If they didn’t agree with something I expected them to stand up and say it. No-one was going to get penalised, the complete opposite. Some of the team meetings got quite lively, and I loved it. We had blood on the walls at times but to me that was fantastic because you knew we all wanted to win. The most important thing was when we walked out on the pitch we went out holding hands, as one.
On his advice for the class of 2015…
My two bits of advice to the players now are, one, focus on the next game. Don’t get carried away with the game after. The whole of England’s thought process should be on Fiji for that opening game. Second, it’s so easy to get distracted. Distractions from sources you might not even think about, from friends and family, from sponsors, from fans, from the media. They’re everywhere. It only takes one player to get distracted and that can cost you that next game. You lose that game, England will not win the World Cup. You’re not going to win a World Cup by losing any games. So you’ve got to win that game.
On how the players are affected by off-field distractions…
There were a huge amount of distractions before 2003 [when the players went on strike over their image rights]. There always are. When you win everyone forgets. If England had won in 2011 when Johnson was in charge, all that stuff that had happened on those nights [players were criticised for drinking and other misdemeanours] would have been forgotten. We didn’t, we lost to France in the quarter final and suddenly it becomes this huge soap opera.
On the pressure of current No10 George Ford to emulate Jonny Wilkinson…
When Jonny arrived at 2003, he was absolutely the go-to man. He was this amazing player who the rest of the world was like, “Who on Earth is this guy?” We were incredibly lucky to have him. He was the number one player in his position going into the World Cup. George isn’t there yet. He’s incredibly talented. But all I’d say to George is those two key points. In those team meetings, don’t just sit there if something’s not clear. Stand up and shout, “Guys we can’t leave the room until we’re absolutely sure. We’ve got to win this next game. Let’s make sure. And I’ve got to lead on this.” He’s got to really come of age, which he’s good enough to do. I really hope he has a great World Cup.
Secondly, there will be a lot of hype around him but he’s just got to get rid of all that stuff. If, in one of the pool games, he has a poor game and England lose, that hype is going to change. But you just ask him to take responsibility. He’s got to become Jonny Wilkinson in that team room. For a young guy with not a lot of caps, he’s got to really become very mature and lead so the rest of the team looks at him and thinks, “Yes this guy can lead us”.
Building Jerusalem, the story of the creation of England’s World Cup-winning team, is out on Blu-ray and DVD now
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