BY PHIL CAPLAN
As the Ashes disappeared over the horizon almost as quickly as it had arrived after such a long wait, what better to prepare for the Second Test than, the night before, being in the company of one of the Kangaroo’s greatest, Andrew Johns.
Now 51, the eighth Immortal, as part of a tour, was at the Cedar Court Hotel in Bradford for an evening of honest appraisal, eyebrow raising insight and ribald tales in conversation on stage with his close friend Brian Carney.
The two played together at Newcastle Knights – Carney the Dally M winger of the year while there in 2006 – and their chemistry helped make the evening.
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It lasted over two hours and included a raffle and auction, one of the items, appropriately, a signed bottle of Moet by the man himself.
Two in the audience wore NSW Blues shirts, a Johns passion, but the initial talk was of the game in Liverpool.
“I’d love to see them put a stink on early, a good old-fashioned punch up to try and put the Aussies off their game,” said Johns, presciently as it turned out.
“They’re going to get smashed,” he ventured, off the mark with his 40-point prediction. “Australia are way too good, the gap between the Australian and English game, unfortunately, over the last 15 years has got wider.
“Footy’s huge back home so any kids with aspiration and athletic ability are playing rugby league – from 1995-2005 these games were really tough.”
Revealing exclusively that he had been asked on the Australian bus and into the coaching box for the clash at Everton by Kevvie Walters and Harry Grant, he took aim at Shaun Wane’s selection.
“You’re changing the key positions in the spine, the master craftsman and architects, the rest of them are laborers, the big boys. You have to have stability and known habits in combinations’” he opined.
Clearly a lover of the game here having won a World Cup as a makeshift hooker in 1995 and again in 2000 and played a memorable three games for Warrington, “I’d have swim over for that sort of money,” his advice was to the point.
“They need to sort out who are the best 16–18-year-olds in those key positions in the country. I’ve worked with a young guy who is touring out in Australia at the moment, Warrington’s Ewan Irwin and if I was English RL, I’d be sending him over to live with me for three months and I’d be working with him every day to make him a better player. Already there are five NRL clubs circling around him.
“Once you get the technique and basic fundamentals right, then you can build blocks on your game.”
“You put your eggs in one basket, find out who the best young fullback is, five-eighth and dummy half and coach the years out these kids, that’s the only way you’re going to compete with Australia.”
Johns pleaded: “We need England. We’ve got Tonga and Samoa who are going to regularly beat Australia, the Kiwis are strong and Fiji are getting better, PNG are coming into the NRL and in ten years they’re going to be better, we have to have England if international rugby league is going to be up there, that’s the most important thing.”
To do that, it may well need the wholesale involvement of the NRL and Johns is absolutely for that. “This will happen. I’ve spoken to Peter (V’landys) about it and told him you have to do it. The first thing he wants to do is sort out the TV rights which will bring more money into the game and the grassroots.
“What I’d do in Super League is piss off all the Australian coaches, make sure every one of them is English because you’ll never beat Australia playing their style of play.
“Back in the 80s with Ellery, Garry Schofield, Andy Gregory, Martin Offiah you played a unique, unstructured, unpredictable style of play.
“Now it’s poor imitation, you need to find your own DNA and stop importing reserve grade players and build from within – that’s the key to England getting back.”
Johns was set to run a coaching clinic before the Third Test, “because I want to do something for Rob Burrow and his family.”
A known hypochondriac: “There was always a problem with Joey he has the numbers of nine different doctors in his phone,” said Carney, the British game was an early influence on Johns.
“I was a Wests fan and the thing that sparked a lot of kids of my era was Ellery Hanley who came to Balmain in the late 1980s and lit it up. Everyone wanted the Tigers number three jersey.”
Carney called Johns the best he’d seen and structured the even around him being the GOAT – focusing on Grounding, Origin, Australia and Trials and Tribulations, with a circus always surrounding him.
“The days before mobile phones the world was such a better place. Are there any of my kids here? Touring is the best time,” Johns laughed.
Recalling a tough upbringing in the mining town of Cessnock, he told wonderful anecdotes about need a suppository to play in Newcastle’s 1997 Premiership win under Malcolm Reilly, messing up a date with Kylie Minogue, and the full story behind his arrest in London for having an ecstasy tablet on him – all because he forgot to pay a tube fare.
He’s always lived on the edge, been a risk taker and, in the mid-90s was diagnosed as bi-polar which made his transition out of playing to a broadcast career “almost unbearable.”
He also revealed that he was going to come back to the Wolves for a year in 2008 but had to retire because of a neck injury.
“I have great respect for the English game; I love the way the fans follow it and applaud good football.”