But I think we played superbly
But I think we played superbly.”Unsurprisingly, Bracken is full of enthusiasm for the philosophies of Rowell and his assistant, Les Cusworth. Some might say that Canada aren’t on the same level as the teams in the Five Nations’, but they’re a good side and they caused us problems. And, to crown it all, there was Bracken’s first try for England, at the end of a dazzling nine-pass move which raised the roof as England’s supporters bore witness to the fruit of Rowell’s strategy.”Yes, it was my sort of game,” Bracken said “There was a lot of expansive rugby The pack were firing on all cylinders. I think Jack was experimenting.”At the time he won his first cap, Bracken was still at university.
When he returned, he was in his first month as an articled clerk at a firm of Bristol solicitors. And he could hardly have hoped for a more auspicious resumption. Canada provided good enough opposition to make a serious game of it, while the 60-19 scoreline ensured plenty of entertainment for the capacity crowd. He did say, `Well done,’ but I can imagine he wasn’t too happy It was no reflection on his play He’d had a good game against Romania. .’ and it was me.”I’d had the operation on my knee, and I didn’t go to South Africa, and I was thinking, goodness me, where’s this come from? Fortunately the game went well.”And how had Dewi Morris taken the news?”I didn’t get to speak to Dewi, really. He sat us down, told us he was ready to announce the team, and said, `There’ll be two changes.’ That was a surprise because we’d beaten Romania comfortably.
We were all thinking, `Is it me, or who is it?’ He said: `First, at number eight .’ and he told us he was bringing Dean Richards back And then: `At scrum-half. For Jack to turn round and make two changes was a bit of a shock. Not the best fun.”You can sometimes assume from the way you’re training that that’s going to be the team,” Bracken continued “So the rest of us resigned ourselves to being on the bench. The team that had played against Romania were the team that were training, and the rest of us spent the whole session on bags” – meaning that the six replacements were used as cannon fodder, holding up the tackle shields for Rodber, Clarke, Richards and the rest to run into at full tilt. They still hadn’t picked the side to play the next match, against Canada. A 54-3 winning margin did nothing to prepare either of them for what was to come next.”Three weeks after the Romania game,” Bracken said last week, “there was the usual weekend of training at Twickenham.
When England played their first home match under Rowell, against Romania in November, Morris was in possession of the No 9 shirt and Bracken was on the bench. Introduced in place of the injured Dewi Morris for the match against the All Blacks at Twickenham early last season, he followed that explosive debut with two less impressive performances, leading the England management to revert to a trust in Morris’s experience and appetite for a scrap. Bracken’s studies forced him to miss the summer tour of South Africa, which marked the beginning of the Jack Rowell era, and a knee operation interrupted his preparations for the new season. For the RFU’s marketing men, he shows the potential to be a rugby-playing Ryan Giggs: it’s not hard to imagine 12-year-olds around the country putting up the posters, pestering their parents for the video, copying both the reverse pass and the hairstyle.
For a while, though, the Bracken experiment looked like a failure.
For Jack Rowell, he is clearly a vital component in the machinery of a restyled team with its eyes on the World Cup. Bright, confident, good-looking, guardedly articulate and affably circumspect, the 23-year-old Bristol scrum-half could be the product of a Twickenham test-tube. IF ENGLAND, more than ever, are the team everyone else loves to hate, then Kyran Bracken is a natural choice to ensure that the distinction – the most explicit of backhanded compliments – is maintained into the next century. We want to go there, play our best and show that rugby is in good health in the Ivory Coast.”Form Guide26 Oct 1993 Tunisia 16 IC 19 (Tunis)30 Oct Morocco 3 IC 15 (Tunis)14 June 1994 IC 9 Morocco 17 (C’blanca)16 June IC 13 Namibia 12 (C’blanca)18 June IC 17 Zimbabwe 10 (C’blanca)World Cup run-in: South Africa tour (matches against three provinces, March); two-week camp in French Pyrenees (May).Odds: 750-1. Everybody considers France and Scotland the best in our group and that’s no problem. The World Cup, though, is just a chance for us to participate.
