Chris Robshaw pauses when he is asked if clinching the grand slam in Paris this month, after all the adversity he has endured, felt so much sweeter than if he had achieved the same feat at the more innocent age of 21. The hurt he suffered as England’s captain over four years, sinking to the low of a humiliating exit in the group stages of a home World Cup last October, was replaced by five successive victories in this year’s Six Nations.
The battered but resilient Robshaw not only overcame the public doubts of his new coach, Eddie Jones, who had dismissed his credentials as an international openside flanker, but he embraced a new position on the opposite side of the scrum and accepted his downgraded status when Dylan Hartley was chosen to lead the team. Despite losing the captaincy, Robshaw played a significant part in England’s first grand slam in 13 years when a wounded squad transformed itself under Jones.
“I think it would have still felt very good at 21,” Robshaw finally says. He then bursts out laughing and echoes himself. “It would have felt very good.”
This is Robshaw’s amiable way of saying that, actually, the pain is still too raw to claim it was all worth it. He is not about to say that he wouldn’t change a thing or that the heartache has made him a better man. Instead, Robshaw would change a lot if he had the chance. If everything could be different he would have led England to an earlier grand slam on the way to winning a World Cup, which would have an incredible impact on his life. He would have loved to have won all those huge matches that England just lost – rather than being hit by disappointment so bad that it felt like grief.
Robshaw once told me that after another bitter letdown, when hearing he had not been picked for the Lions squad that went on to achieve a series win in Australia in 2013, “you just go home and close the curtains for a day.” However, that personal blow felt minor compared to the overwhelming dejection that spread across English rugby after the World Cup.
“This was worse, far worse,” Robshaw says of his devastation last October. “I actually went away for a weekend to the middle of nowhere with [his partner] Camilla and some of my friends – to get away from it all. It did help but you need a lot of time before, eventually, you start to feel better inside. Sean Fitzpatrick [the New Zealand captain who lost a World Cup final in extra time to South Africa in 1995] told me: ‘The sun will come up again. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be next week, it might not be next month – but it will come up again eventually. You will feel good again.’ That’s how it turned out. I feel good now but it did take time.”
How long? Weeks? “Probably longer. The feeling is still there sometimes. Even beating Wales [in the Six Nations] didn’t eradicate that feeling. The World Cup will always live with me and the other guys. It will always be part of me and I will always have that scar no matter the success we have in the future. Even after all the wins recently I don’t think you’ll be able to right those wrongs.”
Was he hard to live with in the months following England’s collapse? “I imagine so,” Robshaw says with a small smile. “You just need time. There is no magic formula. Hopefully you wake up one day and feel good again. I’m at that stage now but I needed the support of Camilla, my family, friends, team-mates here at Harlequins, Conor O’Shea [his club coach] and Eddie Jones. These people drag you back from hell when you’re going through those dark days. They still make you smile. You know, rugby is a great thing. You take the mick out of each other a lot but when guys struggle and need an arm around the shoulder, it’s there. I’ve seen that in spades over the last couple of years.”
Robshaw chuckles darkly when I say his heart must have sunk even further when, deep in his post-tournament blues, he heard Jones was about to succeed Stuart Lancaster – who had backed him to the hilt and made him England captain after he played only one previous Test match. Jones and Lancaster are contrasting figures and ‘Fast Eddie’, the straight-talking Aussie gunslinger, had dismissed Robshaw during the World Cup.
“At international level he just doesn’t have that point of difference,” Jones said of Robshaw. “He carries OK, he tackles OK but he’s not outstandingly good in any area.”
Robshaw remembers his uncertainty when hearing that the coach wanted to meet him for a coffee. “I had seen what he said about me and I was a bit unsure. I’d also heard a couple of stories about him – but Eddie made it very simple. I had played as a 7 but he viewed me as a 6. He told me I needed to move that way and hopefully I’m doing what he wants me to do. The most important point is that he has come in and done a great job.”
At their first meeting did Jones give Robshaw belief he had a real chance of remaining in the England side – even when most pundits were predicting the 29-year-old would never play Test rugby again? “Yeah, very much so. Eddie’s an honest man. He will let you know what he thinks and what he wants and needs you to do. He won’t beat around the bush and that’s what you want. You want to know where you can improve. Look at how the boys are playing now. He’s filled them with confidence – myself included.
“He does work you very hard – but it’s effective, isn’t it? He also allowed us to have a good bit of downtime. When it was confirmed we’d won the championship [after France lost to Scotland on the penultimate weekend] we went out and had a beer together and enjoyed it. But then we were back in the next day working hard for the game in Paris. It was the right balance.”
Many former players under Jones have spoken of their fear of him – and he has reduced hardened Test forwards such as Ben Darwin, the former Wallaby prop, to tears. Did Robshaw and his team-mates feel that fear factor? “Players know it’s there and they want to do well for him. There is a huge amount of respect for him – and so, instead of fear, I would say his best feature is building the players’ confidence. He was brilliant at giving the players the confidence to believe in themselves. It showed in the way we finished off a couple of games. I know we let the Wales game slip a bit but we were pretty ruthless at the start and he breeds that confidence.”
Did Robshaw feel much more comfortable playing at 6? “I’m not sure. People are always talking about ‘a typical 7’ but it’s more to do with having the right balance in your pack to suit the team rather than saying, ‘Your 6 should do this, your 7 should do that, your 8 should do this.’ It’s about having the right framework for how you want to play the game.
“It was funny when James Haskell [who has switched from 6 to 7 under Jones] came out with two shirts for me and him with six-and-a-half on the back. Haskell surprised me with them after the Paris game. Like me, he’s been through a lot. He’s a guy who works so hard and he doesn’t always get the credit he deserves. It’s been great to play alongside him and Billy Vunipola.”
It is striking that 16 of England’s 23-man squad were born in the 1990s. Wales can only claim nine players of such youth in their squad. “A couple of us wise old boys are still there,” Robshaw quips. “But there is a huge amount of talent coming through and we’re now going in the right direction. We’ve won a grand slam but we want to go up another gear. As players, coaches, management we have a lot more to give. It’s going to be a very testing summer tour to Australia but that’s the next step – to beat those southern hemisphere teams.”
England finished the tournament with George Kruis and Maro Itoje locking the scrum. They have the youthful vibrancy to suggest they will be England’s key forwards for many years. “We’ve known for a while how good they are,” Robshaw says. “George scored early on against Scotland and just got better. His lineout leadership and carrying was fantastic. Maro, too. He got his opportunity to come on against Italy and never looked back. They were hugely impressive.”
Itoje can also play in the back row and he and young loose-forwards such as Jack Clifford, Dave Ewers and Sam Underhill will ensure Robshaw’s position remains under scrutiny. “Very much so,” Robshaw nods. “But if we want to compete with the best teams in the world we need a lot of very good players pushing each other. All I can say is that I’m enjoying my rugby.”
Next year’s Lions tour to New Zealand and even the 2019 World Cup remain significant goals for Robshaw. “The Lions are a driving force for me – and for all the players – but it’s a year away. Of course I would also love to play in the next World Cup but I need to focus on the here and now. You can’t drift off to something that might happen in a year or three years’ time.
“My focus is now on Harlequins [who are sixth in the table]. We want to give Conor a good send-off [as O’Shea takes charge of Italy next season]. He’s been great for me and a lot of other players, so we want to end the season well. We’re still in the Challenge Cup and I think we can make the top four again. We scraped in two years ago when we had to win every game and that has to be the mindset. But it’s the tightest Premiership there’s ever been. It’s certainly not going to be relaxing but these are the games you want to play in, don’t you?”
At least Robshaw and his grand slam winning team-mates could relax and have a party in Paris. “We enjoyed each other’s company – let’s put it like that,” Robshaw grins. “I’m very proud. When you look at the teams who have won a grand slam we are only the 13th to do it. So to win it with guys who went through the World Cup and a lot of near misses over the last four years was special. We understood what it really meant when we finally got our hands on that trophy.
“In a winning changing room there are pictures galore, the boys having beers together, Billy Vunipola singing a bit of Backstreet Boys. When you lose it’s heads down, you’re not really talking. In sport and in life you do go through these different times. It’s how you get back up and go again. In the end it really does make the person you are today.”
