Rugby legend Matt Dawson is known as part of England’s iconic 2003 World Cup winning squad, and as a beloved media personality. How do so many years in the limelight shape his outlook on life?
It would be difficult to speak to Matt Dawson – to any of England’s first and so far only Rugby World Cup winning squad, really – without talking about that evening in Sydney in November 2003. Much as its football team had done 37 years earlier, England’s rugby team created one of those moments that the whole nation experienced collectively – and do you honestly think it would be possible to talk to Geoff Hurst without 1966 cropping up?
“I think I’ve met most people that were there,” jokes Matt, the scrum-half who, in the 2003 final, fed Jonny Wilkinson the ball that he’d fire between the posts to clinch England’s 20-17 victory over hosts Australia with 26 seconds of play left. “And if they weren’t there, they remember exactly where they were in the world. If you’re 30 or above, you pretty much know. You wouldn’t necessarily need to be into rugby – a lot of people wouldn’t even be into sport – but it was a moment, like ’66, where everyone was like ‘oh my God.’ I’m not sure when the next one will be – it was one of the last British sporting moments where it was so focused on terrestrial TV. You had to actively go to the pub or have friends round; you weren’t sitting there on your phone.”
That’s Matt Dawson, the man who helped make sporting history, talking. He, of course, isn’t the only Matt Dawson. There’s Matt Dawson the family man, Matt Dawson the TV personality, Matt Dawson the keen amateur chef and surprisingly adept ballroom dancer, and Matt Dawson, the child who nearly wrote off his mum’s Citroen 2CV while tying his shoelace.
“We were going on a trip from Marlow, where we lived, to my grandparents who lived in Cheshire. I got to sit in the front seat, and I was so excited and got in the car early. I bent down to do my shoelace, and the 2CV had that handbrake that you’d twist and turn. I headbutted it, and off it went down the drive.” (Matt at least had better luck than his sister, who caused the family Ford Fiesta to roll into an oak tree in a similar incident).
That’s one of Matt’s earliest memories of cars, which have played an important role in his life. “That moment of being 17 couldn’t come quick enough. It was March the 29th, 1990 when I passed my test.” Matt’s ability to retain information like this will come up again – in this case, he remembers the date because he was representing his school in the Rosslyn Park 7s rugby tournament. “I took my test and dropped the car off. We lived up a slight hill, and the [school] minibus was picking me up at the bottom. I remember absolutely legging it down the hill with my kit bag, going ‘f***ing yeeeeeeeah!’”
Matt’s car journey kicked off with a Peugeot 205 diesel. The professionalisation of rugby union in 1995, four years after he started playing at a senior level, allowed him to indulge a little more. “I had a Land Cruiser when I was at Northampton in the late ’90s, but when I got to be England captain [in 1998], I bought myself a Porsche Boxster.”
Thanks to a longstanding relationship with Audi, Matt’s car ownership choices have been a lot more straightforward for the last 20 years or so. “I’d struggle to name an Audi that I haven’t had [since].” The latest is an e-tron GT, the striking, swoopy all-electric four-door.
It’s parked outside Matt’s house when we arrive. Inside, in an open-plan kitchen and dining room, is evidence of the happy disorder that comes with family life, of Matt’s dedication to remaining fighting fit even 16 years after retirement, and of his obsession with not just rugby but all sport. A set of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves are stuffed with biographies, yearbooks and stat compilations covering everything from golf to Formula 1.
“When I was very little, I’d read back pages of the papers. I wouldn’t be worried about the front pages, it was just sport, sport, sport. Of course, that was the only access to the information that was out there, so I just retained a lot of the names and moments. It’s a little bit more difficult [to retain] now, because you get so much coverage of all sports, and a lot have pretty much doubled overnight because of the brilliance of women’s sport.”
It’s this obsession and uncanny skill for retention that led Matt to a second professional life, as the longest-serving team captain on A Question of Sport. “I got asked to do it about six months after the World Cup. That was my next ‘oh my God, I can’t believe what I’m doing here.’ It was pretty much equal to playing rugby for England, being on a TV show that I’d watched since I was eight years old.”
There, though, is that mention of 2003 again. Like we said, such a momentous occasion will continue to appear in conversation no matter what. What’s it really like to experience the high that comes with being at the very centre of an entire nation’s celebrations? “Think weddings, big birthdays, those types of things. It’s your function, everywhere you turn there’s someone you know, and there’s just a beaming smile on your face all day. It was along those lines, but supercharged by 10, 20, 100, whatever – there was so much joy and energy around… it wasn’t normal for a long, long time.”
Of course, with big occasions come the inevitable hangover or the post-holiday blues. Matt considers himself fortunate to have continued playing professionally for several years afterwards before being propelled into his hugely successful media career. “I can only talk from my experience. Some players retired and pretty much went straight into a job… they didn’t get that adrenaline buzz by going to be an insurance broker or a teacher. That’s potentially an emotional comedown.”
Still, surely there’s nothing that compares to that elation of sharing a moment like that with 14 or more of your best friends? Matt, never one to shy away from expressing his opinion in his media career, isn’t so sure on that last point. “You can’t get away from the fact that sport is a job. Just because you’re playing in a team doesn’t mean you’re going to be mates with everybody. It’s one of the things that drives me a little bit bonkers when I see current sports teams, particularly international teams. They’re all just [shown as] great, great mates all the time, and I don’t see any friction or any tension, and it’s just bull****. I’m not having it. When it comes to 80 minutes on the field, I’m not interested in being best mates – are you going to do your job? We’re still going to celebrate, and of course there’s going to be certain connections, but when I’m on the pitch it’s ‘don’t let me down, and I won’t let you down.’”
This isn’t to paint Matt as cold or emotionless in any way – sat chatting in the familial warmth of his kitchen, it’s clear that quite the opposite is true. He’s simply speaking openly about a harsh reality of professional sport: these are inherently, aggressively competitive people performing at the very top level of their vocation. A football club or F1 team’s social channels might have their players or drivers laughing with each other in fuzzy, PR-washed skits, but when those athletes are out on the field or the racetrack, are any of them really concerned with anything other than doing the best job possible?
Being in situations like this, especially when they’re under such heavy public scrutiny, make having genuine support systems around him even more important to Matt. “If I make a mistake, be it in sport, or I say something on social media, all of a sudden it becomes news, whereas for a vast majority, you’ll make loads of mistakes… you might think ‘ooh, that was a bit awkward’, but there’s no consequence to it. When you’re in that limelight, you get used to where your safe space is, and it’s really, really small. You have to trust that environment.
“When I was playing rugby, I was a little bit of a bolshy scrum-half, because I had to be on the pitch. I didn’t understand how to maybe not be that person off the pitch, at home, with friends.” We offer up the fact that the polite, thoughtful family man we’re sat with now seems to have worked it out in the intervening time. “I’m a few years down the line now,” he laughs. “And a few people telling me: ‘you’re being a dick, sort yourself out’. Particularly in elite performance, you’re going to have people around you who’ll say ‘oi, you just can’t do that.’ In a weird way, I crave it. You want that environment where you can constantly learn and be better.”
Matt is candid about the turbulence that can accompany a professional life like his. “I look back on not only my sports career but my life, and know that there’s been loads of ups and downs, but I’m very at peace that there are going to be ups and downs. People who have aspirations to be at the highest level forever… it’s just never going to happen. You’re going to think that you’re getting somewhere, and then something you have no control over is going to set you back. It’s about embracing the good times, working towards replicating them – with family, with friends, with work, whatever it is – but also knowing that there are going to be some pretty s****y times as well, and knowing how you’re going to get yourself out of them.”
They’re fitting words on which to end our conversation with Matt Dawson, the man who helped England’s national rugby team to its biggest, most significant glory. And all the many, many other Matt Dawsons.
