“Alastair Campbell? THE Alastair Campbell? You must be bloody joking!”
But Clive Woodward wasn’t. The Lions head coach didn’t do gags. He didn’t do mundane either. Big gestures. Expect the unexpected. The Clive Way.
But even though I had headed up the 2005 Lions tour media committee alongside Stephen Jonesof The Sunday Times, neither of us had anticipated Woodward appointing the most famous spin doctor in the land for the tour to New Zealand.
The All Blacks celebrate as Lions loosie Lewis Moody leaves the pitch after the second test in 2005. Photo / Getty Images
It is true we had badgered Woodward about beefing up his media operation as the Kiwis would be throwing everything at the tourists from the moment they touched down in Auckland.
We even joked when the process was dragging on that Campbell must be the target, never actually dreaming that it was true. Alastair b----y Campbell.
It was a vanity appointment by Woodward. And there was nothing wrong in theory with that. Go big. Go hard. And Sir Clive did that on every front.
More players (44 initially), more back-room staff, split coaching teams, one for midweek, one for Saturdays, Auckland base, fly in and out. Gigantism was the modus operandi. And it all fell terribly flat as the Lions were ‘blackwashed’, 3-0 in the Test series, 67 points differential between the sides, 12 tries to 3.
Not even Campbell could spin that story. The Lions were a distant second on the field of play. That was the bottom line.
The media game didn’t strike gold either. Campbell took it upon himself after the abysmal loss in the first Test to address the squad, invoking military metaphors from the Iraq war. The squad was not impressed.
There was plenty of fiddling and faffing on the practicalities, too, a mid-tour crisis meeting in Wellington with Woodward and manager Bill Beaumont, after press relations had hit the buffers because of too much stage management from Campbell’s team. He had actually (briefly) returned to the United Kingdom at that point for a sanctioned bit of political business. While the cat’s away…
We did manage to get the media-players interaction loosened. My own final bargaining gambit was to tell Woodward at our pow-wow in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in New Zealand’s capital that even the man from The Times reckoned this press operation was worse than the one Graham Henry had overseen as Lions coach in Australia four years earlier.
That was the clincher for Woodward and thereafter there were fewer of Campbell’s minions – ‘Ben from No 10’ as one of them was dubbed – listening in on interviews and fewer overbearing briefings given to players before their conversations with the press.
There was nothing intrinsically wrong with Campbell’s presence on the tour. There is invariably friction between a press corps and media officers. It just all felt a bit de trop, willy-waving is the term on the streets, I believe.
It came to something when it was claimed post-tour that the media had missed a trick in not approaching Campbell and tapping into his vast experience. “Er, what do you think of the Kiwis’ dual-playmaker approach, Al?”
To be fair, Campbell did acknowledge that he knew nothing of rugby. Perhaps that was why Lions (and longstanding Scotland) doctor James Robson ignored a request to hold back on releasing injury details during his first Sunday-evening press conference.
“I’ve known most of these [media] people for 20 years and I’m not going to change the way I operate,” was the gist of Robson’s stance.
Woodward and Campbell were at pains to present a harmonious front in the camp. Photo / Getty Images
There were various moments when the Lions massaged the message – the attempt to soft-soap the fact that Gavin Henson had not been selected for the first test (Jonny Wilkinson was picked at 12, the first time in six years he had played at inside centre in a test match) by orchestrating a seemingly relaxed photo-op chat between himself and Woodward – but, in truth, no one was duped.
There was, of course, one major intervention – the fallout from the spear tackle that ended Lions captain Brian O’Driscoll’s tour after just 40 seconds in Christchurch.
The double-hit from his opposite number, All Black captain Tana Umaga and hooker Keven Mealamu, created rugby’s equivalent of cricket’s Bodyline controversy. It was Campbell’s territory – get on the front foot and dictate terms.
The Lions did that all right, arriving at the media hotel at midnight following the evening kick-off for an impromptu conference to express their outrage.
There were two further press conferences the next day as video footage emerged. By that time, the South African citing officer, Willen Venter, had decided there was no case to answer for the two All Blacks, although Lions lock, Danny Grewcock, did find himself in disciplinary hot water for a biting incident (coincidentally on Mealamu later in the game) and was to be banned for two months.
‘Campbell just hacked us off’
Rage, rage, rage – but no matter the merits of the Lions complaints, it got them nowhere. In fact, the New Zealand management felt it had the opposite effect.
“Campbell was brought out here to woo New Zealanders and all he’s succeeded in doing is hacking us off,” said All Black assistant coach Steve Hansen, who had only just finished a two-year stint as Wales head coach.
“It has been counter-productive. The Tana business galvanised the whole team. There is no doubt that it was done to distract from the Lions’ own problems, hiding the things that Clive wanted hidden.”
Campbell was never a sharp-end issue for the media, nor, for the most part, for the players. It was meddlesome at the start but his presence did lend a veneer of difference.
The Lions players took it on the chin, too, although Neil Back was not alone in finding Campbell’s exhortation after the first test to be beyond the pale.
Campbell was debagged by Ireland lock Donncha O’Callaghan at one public function – japes or a lack of proper respect? Stand-in Lions captain Gareth ‘Alfie’ Thomas managed to get a word on Campbell’s phone with Tony Blair.
The tour was a car crash. The All Blacks were in their pomp. Or were allowed to be.
Woodward was pilloried for the whole mess. Perhaps it all had to be tried once – the size, the expense, the Power of Four anthem, the Alastair bloody Campbell schtick – for the Lions to realise that it should never be done in that over-the-top way again. And it hasn’t been.
