Five consecutive matches and five years without a victory to speak of. That was England’s grim record against Australia for half a decade after rugby union turned professional in 1995.
Victory in the quarter-finals of the last amateur World Cup, in 1995, was followed by defeat in Sydney, a draw at Twickenham, a record 76-0 shellacking in Brisbane – on the aptly named Tour of Hell – a narrow loss at Twickenham and a defeat back in the Australian capital.
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Then the Wallabies arrived in London in the autumn of 2000 after conquering the world a year earlier, and Sir Clive Woodward’s side knew they needed to get the monkey off their backs.
Australia’s side was littered with world-class talent. Chris Latham, Joe Roff, Daniel Herbert, Matt Burke and Stirling Mortlock behind the pack; and John Eales, George Smith and Toutai Kefu in it.
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The Wallabies had England on the ropes in the Twickenham drizzle. Australia, even with lock David Giffin in the sin bin, took a 19-12 lead thanks to a Burke converted try. With England trailing by seven points, the 75,000-capacity Twickenham crowd had seen it all before.
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At least, they thought they had. At the end of eight minutes of injury time, with Australia having two further players yellow-carded, England clinched victory in the most dramatic of circumstances. Martin Johnson charged, Iain Balshaw chipped over the defence and Dan Luger dived to – just about – touch the ball down on the slippery Twickenham turf and send the crowd into raptures. After a check from the television match official, of course.
With testimonies from Richard Hill, Balshaw, Luger, Herbert and Sam Cordingley, Telegraph Sport tells the story of that thrilling finale, of how breaking the Aussie hoodoo set England on a path towards global domination three years on.
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“We were not a team at the time who were consistently winning our November Tests. We had won some games against southern hemisphere teams but it was not consistent; nor were we winning away from home. We got the one win in the second Test against South Africa [in 2000] but then it became very much a period when we needed to become consistently successful against these teams home and away.
“Australia, at the time, were the world champions and they were the team to beat. You want to beat the world champions and make a statement. We’d always spoken about Twickenham being a fortress. We had the lead and then gave it up. We had to come back and fight.”
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“They were the best team in the world at the time and there had been a lot of talk about us having to deliver in a game like that. There was pressure on us. They had some unbelievable players, nine or 10 of the best in the world. We had been trailing but we just hung in there. I came on in the second half and we kept the pace of the game up; we played a bit quicker as the game went on. It put them under a lot of pressure.”
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“I remember when Balshaw came on. I’m certain it was in this game… he was just moving differently to everyone else. I felt like we were trudging through the wet and he was just gliding on top of it. It was like that scene from Lord of the Rings where Legolas is walking on top of the snow and everyone else is digging into it. I remembered thinking, ‘Jesus, he’s got a lot of gas’.”
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Iain Balshaw’s pace changed the game in England’s favour – for The Telegraph/Russell Cheyne
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“I love Balsh. We see each other a lot and we still talk about how good the back three was at that time. We maybe could have expressed ourselves even more in a different era.
“Balsh was an off-the-cuff player who was fantastic; he reminded me a lot of Christian Cullen in the way he played and ran. What he did at the end was completely off the cuff. I saw him go and for me it was: head down, chase. If it had bounced the other way he would have scored himself and taken all the glory. I’m glad I got a bit. If I had been watching I probably would have thought ‘what are you doing mate?’ but on the pitch you didn’t have time to think. It was obviously the right call; there was space there. A bit of flair.”
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“I was just thinking, ‘F—, don’t lose the ball!’ I think I had realised they were expecting us not to kick and, with 13 players, all of their defenders were in the line.
“Twickenham has a big dead-ball area and I had Luges and Neil Back outside me and I spotted a massive space in behind. I thought we were in with a good shout of scoring as long as the ball bounced kindly. As I chipped, I was confident that I was going to get to the ball and I was probably celebrating a bit too early. It bounced left and completely missed me and Sam [Cordingley]. I remember turning round and seeing Luges jump up as if he had scored, but not really knowing whether he had.”
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“I found myself on the short side and Balshaw put the chip over. Dan gassed me – I wasn’t really in the competition for his speed. I did get close! But Dan was pretty quick and the bounce beat me. It popped up at the last minute. There was a fair old roar after.
“I didn’t realise the space that was behind me! I thought we had them well covered but it was a decent enough kick to isolate that space, and I was the lone man to have to try and get back. The kick was a bit of a risk; but there was no one covering. It was pinpoint. I could have tried to bat it into touch but it probably would have been a penalty try, wouldn’t it.”
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“When it first happened, I was 100 per cent sure I’d scored, but as the TMO check went on I remember speaking to Daws [Matt Dawson] and saying, ‘Mate, actually, maybe I didn’t?’ And he just went, ‘No, don’t worry, you definitely did’. But it was tight. There was downward pressure. Definitely a try.
“I played with Daniel Herbert in Perpignan after the 2003 World Cup and whenever that try was brought up he was still fuming about it. ‘It wasn’t a try – bulls—’. He was so easy to wind up about that score. ‘Ah, mate, I think I ran through you to score that try?’ ‘Oh no you didn’t!’”
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“I always used to have a sly dig at Dan about that try, but it was on the scoreboard and that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter now but at the time I was pretty sure it wasn’t a try. Dan was adamant it was.”
Luger is adamant he touched the ball down – Getty Images/David Rogers
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“My recollection is that Twickenham, at the time, claimed to have all the camera angles going, all the whizz-bang technology, but for some strange reason there were only one or two in the replays which managed to get through to the TMO.
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“All of your readers will be saying, ‘just another whinging Aussie!’ It was a bit of a blur. I just remember thinking, ‘s—, we’ve lost the Test’. I also remember Matt Dawson giving us a gob full after the try was awarded. A painful memory. It was more the gestures Matt was making with his hands than what he said…”
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“Jonny [Wilkinson] celebrated his conversion with a double heel-flick!”
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“Everyone took the p— out of him for that. The atmosphere when we scored was just… it was insanely loud. For me, that game gave us confidence and belief in what we were doing as a team and a squad. We came from behind in lots of games after that – Samoa and Wales, both in the 2003 World Cup. We knew we could deliver even if we were not playing well or if we were trailing by 10 points.”
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“I remember once playing at Twickenham against Jason Robinson and there was a centre-field scrum. Neither me nor Matt Burke wanted to mark him so we played rock, paper, scissors. Matt lost and Jason Robinson burnt him! He came back and had a bit of a crack at me. ‘You lost, that’s what you get’.
“Those years felt like a bit of a changing of the guard in our team. And at that stage we knew that England were building something quite special; they were on the march. The hardest games we ever had were England at Twickenham, South Africa at Ellis Park and New Zealand at Eden Park.”
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“If we had lost that game, we would have still been on what we believed to be a trajectory towards being successful in 2003 – but there were still plenty of bumps in the road over the following three years. The 2003 summer gave the bigger confidence boost, where we walked into a game to be told by a knowledgeable Australian public that we didn’t stand a chance and that we were quite a boring team. We then picked them apart in Melbourne.”
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“Loads of people have told me they were there in that corner when I scored. Either there were around 300,000 people in the stadium that day or a few have lied! I still think we’d have won three years later regardless of the result but I think this game was one of the most important building blocks towards becoming that team that won the World Cup in 2003. It was one of the most important games in the history of that squad, giving us the confidence to go on and become world-beaters.
“The beauty of sport; right place, right time, and someone doing something magical around you. A fantastic moment.”
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