Andy Robinson

He actually...

No, so when I first went up to the England squad, Andy Robinson was still the coach.

And they should have put me in then, really.

And they didn't because I think, you know, the coach is under so much... that they don't want to, you know, they're sticking with Martin Corey and even Alex Sanderson.

Martin Corey, what can you say? Brilliant.

But like some guys, people, so they were sticking with the players they had.

I wasn't, and I wasn't going to get a chance under Andy Robinson.

But luckily, Brian Ashton got appointed coach and he came and watched me play.

tested

you so you couldn't just run everything because I loved running and I said let's run and so funny enough it was the culmination of the best years of Bath rugby because what happened is Clive Woodward Andy Robinson were the coaches and the whole team was stacked full of British Lions and England players.

So my cat.

He's this

So they sort of came and were like, wow, man, how did you do that and this and that? And for me, it was nothing.

It was stuff I'd done naturally and I see the game in that way.

So after that, then Andy Robinson and Clive Woodward sort of sat me down and said, listen, we've watched you now in two games and we're going to put you into the first team squad and stuff.

But what we've picked up is that You're excellent when the game gets unstructured and there's chaos.

The fact that I didn't push harder on some of the coaches that I didn't believe were implementing the right game plan.

And I've joked about it on the RugbyPod before, around Andy Robinson and my time with him at Scotland.

I did not believe in the game plan that he was trying to implement going into a World Cup.

And the issue that you have as a young man is that unless you are the best player in the team, unless you're the captain or the 10, you can't really challenge that.

But in that environment, no one believed in the game plan.

Yet we were going to a World Cup with a thistle on our chest and everyone had confusion around the training schedule, just how hard we were being flogged and the game plan, which again, how can you do anything? We nearly did actually, if it wasn't for Wayne Barnes giving Conte Pomi the benefit of the doubt when he charged Dan Park's down and he was a mile offside, we would have made it to the quarterfinal and who knows, maybe won the World Cup.

So maybe it was Wayne Barnes, nothing to do with Andy Robinson.

James Cade06, if you could only have one player in your team, Peter Seftetoy or Ardy Surveyor? Hard question, Peter Seftetoy or Ardy Surveyor.