LIKE EVERY OTHER Irish rugby player, Keith Wood hasn’t tasted victory in a World Cup quarter-final, but he has been through pretty much everything else in his tournament experience.
Facing Australia in their own back yard, facing them in Lansdowne Road – “the most stressful game I’ve ever played” – Partisan crowds for and against, familiar beds, elongated trips and camps, short journeys, the joy of avoiding disaster and the crushing disappointment of ending a career in defeat; two weeks earlier than you had hoped.
The latter is a feeling nobody wants the current captain to be experiencing this October. With Paul O’Connell set to play his last game for Ireland – hopefully not before the tournament ends – we asked his predecessor how knock-out, win-or-hang-up-your-boots Test matches should be approached.
“You don’t approach it,” Wood says matter of factly, before giving a preview of what we can expect from O’Connell next month with his own approach to the 2003 quarter-final against France.
I hadn’t fully made up my mind. It was likely I’d retire, but not 100% certain. I hadn’t been talking about it. The press were asking me and I was just saying: ‘Go way, leave me alone I’m not discussing it.’
“The first real time it hit me was about 10 minutes before full-time in that game [France].”
Wood’s competitive instinct kept him going to that point. Supporters, be they in Melbourne or watching on with bleary eyes at home, knew it was over for both the captain and his at half-time with Les Bleus leading 27 – 0.
“I was living in hope up until that point. I was thinking: ‘We could get another try here and turn it around.’ They had pulverised us, but we did get a couple of scores back in the second half and I held out a small bit of hope that there was a miracle in the offing.
“But with 10 minutes to go? No, that was too much. I remember thinking ”I just need to keep going for 10 minutes, up my effort for 10 minutes.
“It’s kind of sad. I really only had the realisation walking off the field. I shared an embrace with (France scrum-half) Fabien Galthie and we had a giggle beforehand that either he or I would retire, but I fully didn’t think it was going to be me.”
That was a low point. Wood uses the word ‘razzmatazz’ about the World Cup in general.
For his stand-out individual memory, he fittingly plucks a moment when his showmanship added to the entertainment. Fitting too, because it was a prime example of Wood showing forwards that they didn’t have to solely act as piano movers, with a little ambition and a lot of bravery, they could play a bit too.
“I had one in that Australia [1999] game where the ball scooted over our dead ball line. I sold a dummy and hoofed it down the field.
“It’s nice looking back on it now, whereas at the time, I was absolutely quaking with fear that I had done the wrong thing. It was over almost instantaneously.”
As a team member, one of the collective, Wood has a very different sort of stand-out memory. A game when all hands were called off the keys so that shoulders could heave and scrap the most stubborn of instruments out of the way.
“When we beat Argentina in the World Cup in the Don Bradman stadium. I’ve seen the pictures since, but all I can remember how unbelievably tired I was.
I don’t think I’ve ever been as tired, I was ready to cry I was so tired.
“But how relieved I was. I just raised my arms above my head – no jumping or anything I was too tired – and it was only there for a couple of minutes because I really was exhausted.
“It was fantastic, because that meant we had qualified for the quarter-finals and we had an opportunity against Australia to get an easier quarter-final. There was a moment there where it felt pretty good.”
That hard-fought win was followed by a hard-fought loss against Australia, sending Ireland into the quarter-final demolition against France.
The experienced World Cup players and watchers alike will warn you: this tournament can give you a career highlight and cruelly follow it up with the worst feeling of your life minutes, days or weeks later. Only the four winners have ever left happy.
