Remembering Wales Schools v England Schools ’97

At the top of the pile was ‘Wales Schools v England Schools’ from April 12, 1997. Williams tweeted the team sheet and social media erupted, recalling that six years before England’s World Cup triumph at the Telstra, key members of that team were involved in the Nailbiter in Narberth.

Precocious talents both, Williams and England Schools’s fellow future international David Flatman were representing their respective countries’ schools side a year early. Here, they look back on that day 23 years ago.

TWICKENHAM TO TREHERBERT

Williams’s first taste of schools rugby came at U16 level when Wales faced England at Twickenham. “It was the Daily Mail Cup, and funnily enough Andrew Sheridan was at number eight that day,” he remembers. “When he came to Narberth in 1997 he was in the second row, and by the time we met at full international level he was in the front row!”

After that heady introduction to the international schools game at Twickenham, it was a more modest return to South Wales: a meeting with Portugal in the former coal-mining village of Treherbert. “It was the full spectrum,” laughs Williams.

Going into the final match of the schools tournament against England in 1997, Wales had beaten Scotland on the pitch outside Murrayfield, lost away to France – “there were cages around the pitch, it was crazy” – and at home to Ireland in Maesteg. Both were narrow losses.

England, on the other hand, had swept aside all who stood before them, their most convincing victory coming prior to their visit to Narberth when they beat Scotland 55-18 in Preston, Lancashire. Flatman, who made his schools debut three weeks earlier against France, and his side were gunning for the Grand Slam. But first, a trip down west.

“It annoyed us because it was almost like that was as far away as they could take us,” says Flatman of the journey to the picturesque Pembrokeshire town. “The next year we decided to take them to Portsmouth as a form of retribution. In 1997 we turned up with the ‘everyone hates England thing’ in our minds – I’m not sure they really do – and our flanker Michael McCarrick, a future Royal Marine, used it as motivation. A ‘these lot think we’re posh boys’ kind of thing.”

STATE SCHOOL v PRIVATE SCHOOL

Much has been made of how private school-dominant the England Schools squad was in comparison with Wales’ state schools. For what it’s worth, Williams says it wasn’t a talking point in the Wales camp.

“That’s just the way rugby was then,” says Williams, who was one of three players in the squad from what was then Cowbridge Grammar School. “People get really hung up about the state versus private thing, but it just shows where rugby sat within Wales then, and to an extent now. There aren’t that many private schools in Wales that thrive in rugby, we just have good rugby schools.”

Back then, Williams’s Cowbridge team would play the likes of Millfield and Colston’s – renowned sporting private schools in the West Country – and beat them. “We comfortably beat Millfield one year,” he remembers. “They didn’t like that.”

The whole state-private topic is one that Flatman hears often. “I went to a state school until I was 16, then did my A-levels at Dulwich College,” he points out. “I wasn’t imported or given any scholarships. My parents didn’t have any money: they had to sell both our cars to pay my fees.”

He had been desperately unhappy in his previous two years at state school in Kent, where half his school games were called off due to a lack of players. “So my parents asked me where I would like to go. I said, ‘Well, the best rugby team in the country is in London in a place called Dulwich, and I can take two trains to get there and it’ll take less than an hour and a half from Maidstone’.”

Dulwich didn’t offer scholarships – “apparently they didn’t just give big lads a free education because they were in the rugby team,” notes Flatman wryly – but they did offer assisted places. “Even the stars of our team, like Andrew Sheridan and Jon Dawson, had to pay. They both had long pro careers, but they were both hugely bright guys, and we didn’t even know what pro rugby looked like in 1996. I went there because I wanted to train really hard and play with the best players.”

Ultimately, he adds, “the England Schools coaches just want to win, hence why they would have picked a guy like Steve Borthwick who went to a state school. We weren’t posh boys. Jonny Wilkinson went to a good school, but he’s not a posh softie.”

CONTRASTING STYLES

Wales Schools were coached by West Walians Wyn Evans and Richard Jones, whom Williams describes as being “good as gold. At these representative levels you can often find selection being tainted by politics, but looking back now they picked the strongest players available.”

Training was a moveable feast, but he remembers the long drives down to Carmarthen in particular. “It would take ages to get down there and they were always long sessions,” he says. “We played the traditional Wales Schools style of rugby. We didn’t have an especially big pack but we were mobile and had some dangerous runners behind who liked to get the ball moving.”

England, in contrast, had size in abundance complemented in no small part by a burgeoning gym culture that was starting to emerge in rugby. As Flatman puts it: “We trained really hard. When we went into these games we didn’t know what we were facing, there was no analysis. It became apparent reasonably quickly that we were a very strong, dominant team. We lifted a lot of weight, ran a lot. I look back and think that for 18-year-olds we were in seriously good nick.”

He relives the moment their coach, northerner Geoff Wappett, underlined in galvanising fashion his desire to field a physical side. “He got us in a meeting and said, ‘I don’t want young, talented players, I want men who are going to rip up trees. I want men who will stand and fight, and I want men other teams are going to fear. I’m not interested in how talented you are, because talented players are everywhere’. We came out of that meeting and our hands were tingling. He was an inspirational coach.”

THE MATCH

“My abiding memories are Gareth Williams’s explosiveness, Gareth Powell’s verbal abuse, and how incredibly hot it was that day,” offers Flatman. “Rhys Williams had a great game and was one of the players we talked about before the match. It was getting really rough for a school game too, but not as bad as the following year when we met in Portsmouth.”

That game in 1998 was dubbed by one newspaper as ‘the most violent game in schools rugby’, with forwards Dean Colclough and Alex Sanderson two of the main men getting amongst it. Flatman may have been better prepared for it thanks to coming up against Gary Powell in Narberth.

“We were used to bullying teams in the sense that we dominated them on the field, but then we played against Wales Schools and found out what aggression really was at that level,” he says, adding that the Welsh were more streetwise at that age. “They were a completely different species. I was only 17 and I’d never been wound up as much as Gary Powell wound me up that day, chirping at the ref telling him to ‘keep an eye on Flatman, sir’.” Insults (and perhaps blows) may have been traded, but years later the two are friends.

In the closing minutes, Wales were leading 17-15 thanks to tries from Rhys Williams and scrum-half Gareth Cooper, who had picked the ball up from the base of a scrum on halfway and scored. “Bearing in mind we had Iain Balshaw, Lee Best and Jonny, all class defenders, and Coops still managed to score from the centre spot,” says Flatman of the future British and Irish Lion, whom Williams described as “just class, and so quick”.

Mike Tindall, playing opposite Williams at outside centre, scored both England’s tries, while fly-halves Gareth Bowen and Wilkinson had traded points from the tee. Wales looked like they might deny England their coveted Grand Slam.

“We should have won that game,” concedes a rueful Williams. “We were turned over in the last play of the game and Wilkinson slotted a 45m drop goal. The only reason the referee knew it went over was because our fullback, Cerith Rees, was closest to it and could see it drop over crossbar and just hung his head. The ref saw his reaction and thought it must have gone over in that case.”

Rees’s reaction would be the same as the one worn by the Wallabies six years later when Wilkinson took matters onto his own foot. Maybe we can trace the most famous drop goal in rugby all the way back to that day in Narberth. Flatman doesn’t think it would be overly glib to suggest that.

“I had played for Kent Schools against Jonny’s Hampshire Schools, and he scored all 22 points to beat us, but I didn’t really notice him,” he admits. “He did the same against Surrey Schools and so on, but it was only once you knew him and played alongside him that it wouldn’t have surprised you if you were told he was going to kick the winning drop goal at a World Cup.”

AFTERMATH

That summer, Wales Schools embarked on a three-week tour of New Zealand. They picked up some surprise results, including inflicting a heavy loss on Otago Schools. Playing against Central Regions in Christchurch was an entirely different matter.

“It was the first time I ever played against Jerry Collins,” says Williams, “and there were 13 Maoris in their starting line-up. They absolutely hammered us. It was just different rugby on a completely different level. It was ferocious.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nature of the game not long before in Narberth, Gary Powell added fuel to what was an already blazing fire.

“Gary, who was a tough, tough cookie, landed a massive shot on Jerry Collins. Jerry didn’t even blink: he just wagged his index finger at Gary as if he shouldn’t have done that. Gareth Bowen also got his ribs turned inside out.”

The tour culminated with Wales playing their New Zealand Schools counterparts at Eden Park in a curtain-raiser for the All Blacks v Springboks – a Tri-Nations classic that saw 90 points scored between the two sides. “We also got to meet Jonah Lomu after one of our games,” Williams says. “He was out of action because he was undergoing treatment for his kidney problems. To meet him was amazing.”

As for England Schools, their Grand Slam was just the start of a 12-match winning streak that would take in an unbeaten tour of Australia. “We went to Oz and beat every provincial side then battered Australia Schools,” says Flatman of a side that was then considered the best schools side in the southern hemisphere, having already beaten New Zealand.

“In theory we should have suffered in the heat but because we were so much stronger and fitter than them, by the end of the game it was cruelty. They had players dropping left, right and centre.”

Williams would go on to sign a bursary contract with Cardiff after finishing at Cowbridge, his first term with the Blue and Blacks being the ‘rebel season’ when they and Swansea broke away to compete in a league with English clubs. It wouldn’t be long before he faced Flatman again, the loosehead having joined Saracens straight out of Dulwich before becoming a Bath Rugby stalwart.

In another world, the pair might have become teammates at the Recreation Ground.

As Williams explains: “In sixth form I went for a trial with Bath and got offered a bursary there because I’d applied for a physio course at Bath University. Then Cardiff came knocking and I got into Cardiff College of Medicine so that made my decision easy to stay.”

The fondness with which both look back on their schoolboy days is palpable, and an encouragement to all youngsters to make the most of such carefree days – whether they have plans for a future in the game or not.

*Wales Schools featured seven future internationals in its side that day in Narberth: Rhys Williams, Gareth Cooper, Gareth Williams, Adam Jones, Scott Morgan, Duncan Jones and Gavin Evans. Meanwhile, England Schools had eight: Iain Balshaw, Mike Tindall, Tom May, Jonny Wilkinson, Lee Mears, Andrew Sheridan, David Flatman, and Steve Borthwick. Italicised names denote future British and Irish Lions.