A year ago on Monday England were leading Wales by seven points entering the final 11 minutes of their pivotal Rugby World Cup pool game at Twickenham. Everyone remembers the punchline – Gareth Davies’s party-pooping try, the doomed decision to kick for the corner, the painful Wallaby coup de grace. For Northampton’s Tom Wood who has not featured since the tournament, it will always be a subject laced with nagging regret.
Wood is still a professional rugby player, instinctively programmed to look forward rather than back. He knows “what ifs” are the currency of delusion; as captain of a Saints team preparing to host Wasps, he has more pressing priorities than wallowing in self-pity. A resurgent England are also due to unveil an autumn international squad next Friday and the ever-competitive Wood has not yet abandoned hope of a recall.
Is there not a part of him, either way, that occasionally wonders what might have been? The hirsute flanker, for one, will go to his grave convinced England were a decent side who could have gone much further. “We had a very good team capable of doing better and the team over the last year has proven that,” he says evenly. “They’re not vastly different sides. You can’t say one player playing over another is the difference. It’s just not. The players who are there now are not 10 times better than the ones who were out on the World Cup pitch.”
Closer inspection, in fact, reveals seven changes and one positional switch from the XV against Wales compared with Eddie Jones’s regular lineup. Brad Barritt, Sam Burgess, Tom Youngs, Geoff Parling and Wood have not reappeared for England, Jonny May has been injured and Courtney Lawes has slipped to the bench. The big winners under Jones have been Dylan Hartley, James Haskell, George Kruis and George Ford, with Maro Itoje bringing a further fresh dimension, but all save the suspended Hartley were available to Stuart Lancaster.
“The outcome was unbelievably disappointing because we had such high hopes,” continues Wood. “It’s easy for people to laugh at that now but we’ve achieved – and when I say we, I mean England – quite a lot since then. That’s what we’re capable of and, by and large, it’s with the same group of players. That’s what we were envisaging for ourselves [but] we didn’t quite nail it. We had such high ambitions that didn’t amount to very much.”
So what did go wrong? Wood, who turns 30 in November and has won 42 caps for his country, dismisses suggestions the squad were not fit enough. “Physical fitness was not the issue, I can absolutely guarantee that. Whether it’s mental sharpness or application … well, there’s always improvement to be made in those areas.” Would he change anything with hindsight? “From the players’ point of view, no. And it’s not for me to criticise the coaching regime or discuss the rights and wrongs of selection. There genuinely isn’t anything I look back on and think: ‘That was why it went wrong’ or ‘I wouldn’t have done that.’ For a number of reasons, it just didn’t happen for us. Often it is something indefinable. There is just a feeling you get when things are going well and you’re happy with everything about the regime. I don’t think it’s something you can always define or say: ‘Get that right and you’ll win.’ That’s just sport.”
Like many he is glad Lancaster is finally back in rugby with Leinster. “He’s got too much to offer the game to not be involved. Leinster are lucky to have him.” If Wood, now cured of the neck problem that “bogged me down” last season, can also resurrect his international career it really would be a victory for cussed warrior spirit. “There’s not been a huge amount of dialogue,” he acknowledges.
“Eddie wished me well for the start of the season but that could be a generic message he sent to half the Premiership. He did say he’d heard I was feeling good following my operation and was looking forward to seeing me play. As far as I’m aware the ball is in my court.”
It will not be easy. Jones has successfully redeployed Chris Robshaw at No6 and back-row pretenders such as Teimana Harrison, Nathan Hughes and Dave Ewers all have youth on their side. Harlequins’ Jack Clifford has been ruled out of the autumn internationals, bumping Wood one rung up the ladder at least.
The Saints captain, nevertheless, is not ready to go rocking-chair shopping: “I look back with a huge amount of pride at what I’ve achieved … but I’m not suggesting for a second I don’t care about playing for England [again]. I do care and I do want it. If I get the call I’ll be ready to train and play. But I know my best route back, if it were ever to happen, is to have my head down here at the club and get Northampton somewhere near the top of the league.”
That ambition will hinge on weekends like this against opponents such as Hughes, the Fijian-born Wasp now eligible to represent England. The twist is that Wood hails from Coventry, where Wasps are now based, and he has a keen sense of the shifting tectonic plates in Midlands rugby. Had Wasps moved 10 years earlier he would probably have worn black and yellow – “I do look back and think how much more convenient it would have been” – and he senses sceptical diehards will come round eventually: “There was a lot of talent in the area that was probably overlooked in the past. Playing Wasps will soon become a derby fixture if you’re both challenging for top four spots.”
There has always been much to admire about Wood, the most articulate of rugby soldiers. He has a lust for life away from the game – archery, shooting, off-roading – and has fought his way back from some soul-sapping injuries. So when he insists “my best rugby is yet to come” and talks about the desire of England “outcasts” such as Ben Foden, Luther Burrell and himself to resurrect their Test careers as their team-mate Dylan Hartley has done, it feels churlish to doubt him. “There’s no part of me that wants England to fail so I can climb the ladder somehow. If and when I play for England I want to play on merit in a top-quality team, not because there’s nobody else and we’re doing awful. That’s not my aspiration.” The past 12 months, if anything, have made him even more determined to deliver for both club and country.
