Peter Jackson: Take note Johnny, great captains never seem to lose their cool
If Sexton still feels miffed at his treatment late last Saturday night, he could do worse than consider the fate of several less fortunate Test captains and count his blessings, says columnist Peter Jackson. Picture: INPHO/James Crombie
Had he been in a different place at a different time, Johnny Sexton’s glaring strop over his premature exit in Paris would probably have cost him the captaincy.
A game devised by the English and exported to the Empire as recreation largely for the upper classes took a dim view of any overt display of disrespect: ‘Not the done thing, old boy.’ The catch-all phrase, covering a multitude of sins, survived long after the Empire had gone.
If Sexton still feels miffed at his treatment late last Saturday night, he could do worse than consider the fate of several less fortunate Test captains and count his blessings. The more notorious cases involved Englishmen forced to carry the burden of over-expectation.
Other countries placed a similar demand on their captains. Over the last half-century of amateurism, the IRFU often gave an impression of belonging to the same reactionary boat as their counterparts at Twickenham.
There was a time when the Welsh Rugby Union outdid both. Long before their kangaroo courts imposed life sentences on those who dared to consider offers from Rugby League, they subjected losing captains to draconian punishment.
The Welsh had played 21 matches and chosen a different skipper for every one in the six years before Harry Bowcott took his turn, against England at the Arms Park in 1930.
By all accounts, the butcher’s boy from Cardiff had a pretty decent match.
"The captain was the first to be kicked out," he told me some years before his death in 2004 at the age of 97. "It didn’t seem to matter whether you’d had a good match. After losing to England, I knew I’d be for the high jump."
The Corinthian spirit, as embraced by ‘Rugger’ in general and England in particular, required captains to beyond reproach. Will Carling never glared at the committee box at Twickenham but as far as the RFU high-command was concerned he committed the cardinal sin of rebranding those who sat in the same box as ‘old farts.’
In Carling’s defence, it was a throwaway remark at the end of a television interview made on the assumption that the camera had stopped rolling.
Instead of summoning their captain for a full and frank discussion, the RFU sacked him on the spot in May 1994 within a week or so of England taking off for South Africa.
The refusal of every other senior player to accept the captaincy left the Establishment no option but to do a hasty volte face. Not the done thing, old boy. As a result, the dictum had begun to fall into overdue disrepute but not before it had claimed another victim.
Wales v England for most of the 80s required a heavier police presence on the field than off it, a time when the boys in blue turned out in red and white for a bit of mayhem. Their collective propensity for breaking the law instead of enforcing it turned one match into a particularly uproarious scrap.
The following Monday one English policeman, Wade Dooley, wound up being carpeted by his Chief Constable for putting a Welsh policeman, his opposite number Phil Davies, in hospital. A third copper, Steve Sutton, had his nose broken by an elbow belonging to his Welsh team-mate Robert Norster, a non-policeman.
The RFU banned Dooley and two other England forwards, Graham Dawe and Gareth Chilcott. Richard Hill, the Bath scrum-half not to be confused with the Saracens flanker, was also banned for unsportsmanlike conduct, i.e. over-motivating his team with anti-Welsh rhetoric.
Hill never captained England again. On the basis that it takes two to tango, the RFU expected a similarly hard-line reaction from Wales. Instead, they took much delight in doing nothing.
Martin Johnson in full thundering glare would have made the Irish captain’s expression at being subbed last weekend seem almost like a look of endearment by comparison.
He was also the supreme team player and therein lies a salutary lesson for Sexton. A proper captain, like Keith Wood and Brian O’Driscoll to name but two, each of whom has been critical of Sexton, understands that the role requires taking a hit for the team, however unjust that hit may feel.
Hindsight’s confirmation that Andy Farrell made the wrong call is irrelevant. Sexton ought to have been old enough and smart enough to have kept a lid on his anger until later.
Sexton’s claim that ‘normally the cameras go on the player coming on’ sounded too naïve for words but nobody can doubt the sincerity of his apology. While still hugely in credit given his service to the national cause, he now has to wipe out any doubts as to his emotional suitability to captain a Test team.
In that respect he need only look at another Dubliner, a contemporary from the same south side of the capital.
Eoin Morgan’s command of England’s multi-ethnic World Cup-winning cricketers has taken him closer to perfecting the art of captaincy than just about anyone else in team sport.
Morgan, a year younger at 34, is responsible for deciding who bowls when and for how long, constantly making strategic changes to his field while calculating ever-changing run rates on the hoof.
Great captains never seem to lose their cool, at least not in public.
