Giant Dallaglio lays it down the line: I nearly answered Ireland’s call
A STRAIGHT-RUNNING number eight on the field, Lawrence Dallaglio is proving a straight talker off it.
His autobiography, ‘It’s In The Blood’ is refreshingly frank about life as a top sportsman, dealing honestly with emotional issues like relationship difficulties and his sister’s early death in the Marchioness boating tragedy. Dallaglio describes himself as an “emotional retard” due to his focus on getting to the top; does he think most people are aware of the toll sporting excellence takes on an athlete’s family life? “I’m not sure you can be unless you’re involved in elite sport.
Everyone’s different, obviously, I just tried to convey my opinions about what happened in my career.
“From the outside people probably look and think ‘that’s a very glamorous life, it must be very enjoyable’. And many aspects of it have been very enjoyable — certainly any time we’ve played in Ireland it was a lot of fun — but there’s another side to it. A lot of pressure is put on you, and in any sport a lot of people help you to become the player that you are, so I thought it was an interesting part of the story, and one that I wanted to tell.”
On the field of play, Dallaglio played in two World Cup finals with England, but it could all have been so different. That surname couldn’t be more Italian, but his mother’s people came from Mallow. Which led to an interesting phone call...
“I was at home one evening in the early 90s and my mum picked up the phone and said ‘there’s a guy on called Noel Murphy who wants to talk to you, but I can’t understand what he’s saying’. Noel and I had a very honest and frank discussion, and while I laugh about it now, he offered me the opportunity to play for Ireland.
“I said I was incredibly flattered and asked for a day or two to think about it, and by pure chance I got a call a couple of days later from (England manager) Jack Rowell, inviting me to play for England.”
Come on. Dallaglio of England singing Amhrán na bhFiann. You couldn’t have been serious?
“I took it very seriously! Every player wants to play international
rugby, and at the time I was deeply frustrated that I wasn’t able to play for England — there were a lot of very good back row forwards around at that time, the likes of Tim Rodber, Ben Clarke, Peter Winterbottom and Dean Richards, and I wasn’t getting a shout.
“I sat next to Noel at the top table of the Berkeley Court in Dublin about four years later, having captained England against Ireland, and we had a good laugh about our conversation.”
Dallaglio’s club career has run in parallel with a fine career in the white of England, and he readily identifies a day three years ago in Lansdowne Road, when Munster and Wasps’ thunderous collisions shook the stands of the old ground, as one of his stand-out memories.
“One thing you’ve got to remember is that we had a bit of history going into that game, with our coach at the time, Warren Gatland, being very familiar with Irish rugby from his time as national coach.
“He put us in the centre of Dublin for that game, in Jury’s, just a short walk from Lansdowne Road so we were able to stroll down to the stadium that morning to practice our line-outs.
“But the game was absolutely incredible: you had 55,000 people in the ground — about 54,000 of them from Munster — and they created one of the most amazing atmospheres I ever played in.
“It was a game that had everything — tries, players from both sides being sin-binned, the lead changing hands six or seven times and we were lucky enough to win the game, but Munster contributed hugely to a phenomenal occasion.
“It didn’t take Munster long to go on and win the Heineken Cup either after that. Wasps and Munster are two teams which are synonymous with the competition now, and it’s a wonderful fixture to open the tournament — last year’s champions against the 2006 champions.”
True to form, Dallaglio has in the past pointed out inequities in the Heineken Cup qualifying system, in which Irish clubs have an easier passage into the competition than their English counterparts, who have to scrap their way through the Premiership to qualify. Mindful of today’s game, perhaps, he stresses the structural problems rather than personalising the issue.
“It’s not that I have any particular angst with the Irish teams, my issue is with the structure of the competition, that’s all.
“It’s our own fault in England. We choose the structure of the game here, and as we slog away against each other in the Premiership, often the Heineken Cup becomes secondary to that competition — whereas the Celtic teams are able to focus on the Heineken Cup, and the Magners League is often secondary to that.
“It’s not that I have an issue with any of the Irish provinces as much as the structure of the game — I think that going forward, that needs a bit of a review.
“Look at our group this year: ourselves, Munster, Llanelli and Clermont-Auvergne, runners-up in the French championship. It makes Ireland’s group in the World Cup look relatively easy, doesn’t it?”
And just to wind it up...that musical background?
“Go ahead...”
The rugby star reveals in his book that as a young choirboy, he and his friends backed Barry Manilow at the Royal Festival Hall, and sang at Andrew Lloyd Webber’s marriage to Sarah Brightman in 1984.
They also went to Abbey Road Studios and sang the backing track for Tina Turner’s song “We Don’t Need Another Hero”.
Frankly, the opportunities for sledging look too plentiful to avoid.
“Yeah, that was one I considered long and hard before I put it into print, I can tell you. I’ve not had much stick about Tina Turner, but Barry Manilow . . . the lads weren’t too happy with that!”
It’s In The Blood by Lawrence Dallaglio is published by Headline Book Publishing and is on sale now.
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