MALLEYMAN

Andy Lee, world WBO middleweight champion, 2014.

Are defeats more interesting than victories?

Andy Lee lost his world crown to Billy Joe Saunders in December 2015. I heard him being asked a year or two later if he’d watched the fight back. ‘No, I don’t want that in my head. You’re getting beaten up by another man. Why would I want to see that?’

That’s kind of how I feel about the New Zealand game. Yeah, I understood in advance we were not going to be competitive against them. They’ve been playing the game since they were youngsters. It’s a learning experience. But you also have your pride, your competitive ego. The game was streamed. I didn’t send it to anyone.

vs New Zealand

This morning when I was getting ready to go down to the pitches, I couldn’t find my wallet anywhere. I was getting stressed. I didn’t have more time to look. As I left, it was worrying away in the back of my head. I got the tram down to the pitches, watching out for an inspector because the weekly pass I’d bought was in my lost wallet. More stress.

Last night, I’d gone to the Milano’s express around the corner from the Airbnb where we’re staying to get a take away pasta dish. Maybe I’d left my wallet down on the seat beside me while I was waiting. That was the only thing I could think of. This is not what I wanted to be focusing on preparing to play, bar Australia, the best team in the world.

In the warm up, I then noticed the sole of my right boot had detached slightly, it was catching in the grass as I was running. If I caught it wrong in the ground, it could tear off. That happened me once in a big tournament before. Another little needle into my focus. Dammit.

At one point early in the game, as I was turning sharply in defence, I could feel my legs moving weirdly under me and my knee jarring under me, like I’d forgotten how to use my legs. What the hell is going on?

My mind is racing, trying to judge what they’re doing, how to counter it. They’re doing it at a speed, with a fluency we’re not used to. Here’s a microcosm. Their female link is sweeping on from the box. I shoot up to make the touch on her for fourth touch, she throws a dummy and in the same motion side-steps me and drives another seven or eight metres. They flow straight into their line attack as I’m scrambling to get back onside and into defensive position. All our defensive shape is struggling and they go immediate long ball on the run to the wing and score.

Why did I get stepped? You’re not used to female players having those skills and speed. You get used to expecting a lot of female players to just run in and make the touch on you. And if there is a player that good in European touch, you’ll know all about them and be prepared.

That’s the only time she stepped me in the game. The next times I was ready, watching her body shape, not buying the dummy or the step and not over-committing so she can make the pass and get around us that way. Making the touch. Job done. That’s pretty basic though. And that was one thing from one player. There were about fifty other things to try take in and adapt to .

And then there are the annoying, stupid unforced errors that you make because you’re scrambling physically and in your head to get to grips with the game. I did one where I just threw the ball to nobody for a turnover. I’m wincing now thinking about it.

By the end, we did begin to work our way a little bit into the game. These two were not too bad at all. Two tries from our pod.

Mixed 30 | New Zealand vs Ireland | World Cup 2024 (youtube.com)

I’ve watched them. I won’t be watching any of the rest. Not for a long while if ever. I don’t think I’ve ever watched our loss to New Zealand at the last World Cup at 40s.

I would love to be playing teams like New Zealand all the time. You’d gradually get used to the speed and the skills and that’s the level that would become the norm.

vs Chile

This was a completely different type of game. One that we could have won. I was walking across to the pitch beforehand for the warm-up and this was the first time I could begin to feel the tournament effect. My body was feeling a bit sore, getting myself up emotionally for a big game for the fourth time in two days began to feel hard. A lethargy begins to take over. I recognised all those familiar feelings. By the end of the warm-up I’d pushed through that low energy and tiredness and felt I was really good, ready to go.

Maybe others with less experience struggled. I don’t know. Our coaches had a go at us about the energy of the group and they can see it a lot more clearly. I’m in the middle of it just focusing on myself.

In the game, we did a lot of defending on our line, myself and my midfield partner Gareth and I think we’ve stepped it up from starting out yesterday. Good communication together. They ran loads of tight quickie plays on us. It’s challenging and exhausting concentration-wise more so than physically but it’s also containable if you are on it and we were. The tries were tending to go in where our defensive systems were breaking down a bit elsewhere . In other areas of the game, I still did a couple of stupid things that really annoyed me, which showed the fault lines of not having enough game time at high levels in the build-up to this tournament. I have to eradicate those stupidities, do my job better.

On the attacking side, as middles, myself and Gareth both have weapons and we’re not quite getting the most from both of us. I’m happy often to lead an attacking pod and I’m even happier sometimes to be led. At times, Gareth has taken too much on himself and I’ve taken on too little. This is what it’s like trying to form and gel a partnership under pressure at the highest level. There’s very little time to forge those understandings. Ideally, you’d have all that at club level where you’ve time to work through your mistakes and go over things again and again.

In game four, I finally ran one dive on a quickie against the grain. I should have scored and didn’t, a moment’s hesitation and the moment’s gone.

In terms of our tournament, we could have beaten Chile. They lost to Italy. They narrowly beat Scotland. Both of whom we need to beat to make it into a quarter final. That’s all I care about because making a quarter final gives us an extra game in this World Cup. That’s the obsession right now until another thing replaces it.

On the cover of Andy Lee’s autobiography he used a picture of himself walking away victorious having knocked down an opponent. He said this about it:

“I went out of my way to have the face changed because I didn’t want him to have to see it,” he says. “He doesn’t deserve that, it wouldn’t be right. It could easily be me lying on the floor. And this could be him writing a book about the career he went on to have. And if somebody did that to me, if someone put me on the cover like that, I’d be going mad.”

When you play sport, one person or team win and the other loses. When you’re super-competitive, you winning seems to be the normal functioning of the universe as it was meant to be. When you lose, everything is wrong, some fundamental law of nature has been broken. It needs to be rectified immediately.

Nietzsche said, “He who fights too long against dragons becomes a dragon himself.”

As I get older, I try neither to define myself by the competitiveness nor eschew it. You can still shake the hands of the referees at the end, can still congratulate the other team, in English or Spanish. You can be gracious in defeat on the outside. Even when you’ve lost 21-3. What goes on on the inside, though, belongs only to you.

Don’t complain, don’t whinge, get on with it. And remember, you didn’t spare a thought for the person you beat all those times when you won. That was just the normal working of the universe. Expect no thought spared for you.

This evening, I got my wallet back from Milano’s express. I superglued the sole of my boot tightly back on. The universe continues apparently.