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James Haskell book extract: Shooting rabbits, 'dwarf-tossing' and hotel maids – the real story of England's 2011 World Cup disaster

James Haskell - James Haskell book extract: Shooting rabbits, 'dwarf-tossing' and hotel maids - the real story of England's 2011 World Cup disaster - GETTY
James Haskell - James Haskell book extract: Shooting rabbits, 'dwarf-tossing' and hotel maids - the real story of England's 2011 World Cup disaster - GETTY
  • Coming tomorrow: Stuart Lancaster's England team was like a school trip

  • On Monday:  Why I ended up naked on a Paris car park - covered in gold paint  

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The disarray that was the 2011 World Cup could be a whole book on its own. In terms of genre, it would be a mix of horror, dark comedy and misery memoir.

Things started to go downhill pretty much the minute we arrived at Pennyhill Park for our training camp, which was chaotic from day one. It doesn’t matter how hard the coaches make you work - and we were all aghast at having sessions scheduled from 6.30am to 9pm - the players will always fill their downtime with mischief.

I brought my rifle and shot rabbits on the golf course - I viewed it as pest control - and soon the lads started bringing air guns in, so that every afternoon you’d hear a chorus of shooting.

Then, one day, we were all called into an emergency meeting. Martin Johnson, our coach, stormed in and roared, “Lads, what the f---’s been going on?”

Silence.

“I’ve been told some of you have been firing guns. Please tell me no-one has brought a firearm onto the property?”

Some idiot tried to deny it.

“B-------! I know you have, because a family was out for a walk and came across a dead fox wrapped around a tree with a paper target on its face!”

Haskell has mixed emotions from the 2011 World Cup - SHUTTERSTOCK
Haskell has mixed emotions from the 2011 World Cup - SHUTTERSTOCK

'The maid sent the RFU into full panic'

If the training camp was problematic, the actual World Cup was a farce. Before our first game against Argentina, Tom Croft got sent a load of chocolate bars which were intercepted by the nutritionist.

One of the players had nicked a walkie-talkie from hotel security so we took to messing about with it and telling whoever was on the other end that we weren’t handing it back until they delivered the chocolate.

One afternoon, our captain Lewis Moody came on the line and started shouting.

“Give the f----- walkie-talkie back!”

“Shut up, you RFU puppet! And stop swearing!”

We called Lewis ‘The Puppet’ because it seemed like Johnno had his hand up his a--- and was working his mouth.

One afternoon, Dylan Hartley, Chris Ashton and I were in Dylan’s room when the door opened and a maid let herself in. She asked where the missing walkie-talkie was, we told her we didn’t have it, but it started crackling and she tracked it down to the wardrobe.

That’s when I made the fateful and inappropriate mistake of saying, “You still haven’t given us the chocolate. And you haven’t given us an Aussie kiss, which is a French kiss but down under.”

The maid replied, “What does that mean?”

Chris Ashton said, “a BJ,” and me and Dylan told him to stop being so rude. He apologised straightaway. This gives you an idea where our heads were at. If we thought any line had been crossed we immediately corrected ourselves.

After we beat Argentina 13–9, we headed to Queenstown for some R&R. I spent the first night Skyping my then girlfriend while some of the lads headed to a nightclub called Altitude for their ‘Mad Midget Weekender’, which meant revellers could combine their drinking with a spot of dwarf tossing.

The lads had a bit too much to drink but there was not a single dwarf tossed by an England player. Unfortunately, the nightclub posted pictures of lads rolling about on the floor with dwarves on their Facebook page and a bouncer sold CCTV footage to a journalist.

When the story appeared, the dwarf-tossing played second fiddle to a stitch-up of Mike Tindall, who had apparently spent the evening “flirting with a gorgeous blonde”. Utter b------s.

What irritated me was that the Irish and Welsh squads went on the p--- far more than the English. Apparently, the Irish were in and out of Altitude for two days (the bar had to close and re-stock to just to accommodate them), and one of their star players had to be carried out at 8am.

But the narrative was that England were a bunch of entitled w------, while the Irish and Welsh were plucky, fun-loving underdogs just taking a break from the rigours of the tournament.

The next day, after a day ziplining, bungee jumping and white-water rafting, I got back to the hotel and was told I needed to report to Martin Johnson.

Haskell, Dylan Hartley, Simon Shaw, Chris Ashton, Nick Easter and Ben Foden of England pose after completing a white water raft run - GETTY IMAGES
Haskell, Dylan Hartley, Simon Shaw, Chris Ashton, Nick Easter and Ben Foden of England pose after completing a white water raft run - GETTY IMAGES
Haskell and his team-mates made the most of their R&R time - GETTY IMAGES
Haskell and his team-mates made the most of their R&R time - GETTY IMAGES

When I walked into the room, Johnno was sitting with the England media manager Will Chignell and the team’s legal adviser, Richard Smith QC. Johnno got straight to the point, telling me that a hotel maid had accused me, Dylan and Chris of making inappropriate comments to her. He asked me for my version of events and I told him the truth: I’d said something I shouldn’t have, Chris had followed suit, before Dylan and I had told him to shut up and we’d all apologised to the maid. I said we had a video of the event but only Johnno watched it (which later came back to haunt us).

When he finished, Johnno started going on about how upset he’d be if we spoke to his daughter like that and how the three of us should never have allowed ourselves to be in a room with a woman, as it was her word against ours.

I pointed out she had let herself in, being a hotel maid with a key, but that was brushed off. I understood why they were twitchy, but when Johnno ordered us to apologise, I said that would make it look as though we were guilty of something far more grievous than an inappropriate comment.

The RFU bigwigs were already in full panic mode, however, and someone came up with the bright idea of me, Dylan and Chris apologising to the maid and presenting her with flowers. I thought it was a b------t idea and told them so, but I didn’t have a choice so, a few days later, the hotel manager led me, Dylan and Chris through a maze of corridors before depositing us in some far-flung room and leaving.

We stood in this room in awkward silence, because I decided it might be bugged, and after about 10 minutes we started to wonder whether we should escape. But then the maid came in, which meant we were alone in a room with her again. The very thing the coaches had told us off for letting happen. They had walked us like Christians into the arena.

One of the lads started to apologise but she stopped him, saying, “I’m sorry for causing you guys trouble, but your team stole my walkie-talkie and I was getting stick from my colleagues.”

When I told her we were sorry she’d had a tough time and gave her the flowers, she started complaining that she’d been banned from working on our team floor. There was no mention of sexual activities or of feeling hurt by what we said.

Meanwhile, all the stuff about dwarf-tossing had burst into flames and spread like wildfire, making it sound as if we were on a stag-do rather than representing our country in a World Cup.

'Foul-mouthed, beer-swilling dwarf-tossers'

Three games in, and having beaten Argentina, Georgia and Romania, I still had an acute sense that the incident with the maid hadn’t been put to bed. Hotel staff weren’t talking to me, the press officers were rushing around looking grave and the coaches seemed off with me.

Then, a couple of days before the final pool game against Scotland, I was informed that my presence was required at another meeting.

It was at this point that things got really dark. We were told that the maid had ramped up her allegations and that we now stood accused of serious sexual harassment. Her story now included the claim that she’d been sandwiched between us during her ‘ordeal’ in Dylan’s hotel room, and that our subsequent meeting had left her “hurt and humiliated”, because she hadn’t received a proper apology. She also claimed I said, “The flowers are lovely, but not as lovely as you are.”

The RFU duly offered to pay the maid’s legal fees as a gesture of goodwill, only for the lawyer to return the following day and inform them that if they didn’t pay her client $30,000, she’d sell the story.

The RFU’s handling of the whole situation was shambolic. I was furious that they’d put us in a room alone with the maid again, that they’d been negotiating a payout without telling us and for telling us we had to pay the maid $30,000. I told them that I wasn’t going to budge, that the woman was a chancer and that if we paid her it would look like an admission of guilt.

But the RFU didn’t seem to care about the truth or our welfare, they just wanted to make it all go away.

After the win against Scotland, which set up a quarter-final against France, we were told that the maid had sold her story to the Mirror, who published it the next day - although the article, while bad, was not as bad as it could have been.

Still, the media were calling us the most shameful England team ever - a bunch of arrogant, foul-mouthed, rule-flouting, beer-swilling dwarf-tossers, who would rather be bungee jumping or sexually assaulting maids than doing the Red Rose proud. And that was before we lost to France in the quarters.

Then, as if we needed another turd on top of a very s--- cake, Manu Tuilagi decided to get p----- and jump off a ferry.

Tuilagi found himself in hot water after electing to jump off a ferry in Auckland
Tuilagi found himself in hot water after electing to jump off a ferry in Auckland

I was below deck, staring out at the harbour, when this shadowy streak flew past the window, followed by a huge splash. A few seconds later, the alarm started going off. ‘WARNING! MAN OVERBOARD!’’

I’m told that someone had said, “I bet you won’t jump in,” and Manu had replied, “Hold my beer,” before stripping off and plunging into the sea. There was lots of whooping, until people realised that he could get sucked into the ferry turbine or hit by another boat. Instead, he was hooked out of the sea and arrested.

'Johnno was a good man but selections were questionable'

A few days after we got back to England, I got a call to come and see ‘Teflon’ Rob Andrew at the RFU. He played the video of our interaction with the maid and after we’d watched it, he said, “How did we get from that to this?”, holding up a copy of the Mirror’s sensationalised front page.

I replied: “Mismanagement, incompetence, miscommunication, weakness in the face of an opportunist, complete disregard for player welfare …”

I gave him a long list of who had f----- up and the ramifications, including the fact that they had set a dangerous precedent. Now, every chancer knew that if they made an allegation against an England player, the RFU would believe them and possibly pay out.

None of the three official reviews that followed that World Cup were pretty - the players, attack coach Brian Smith and defence coach John Wells were all slaughtered, while Johnno got it in the neck for selections and presiding over a “dour, depressing” regime and failing to instil discipline.

People always thought me and Johnno didn’t get on, but that wasn’t true. Okay, we weren’t kindred spirits. He once asked me what I was doing with my day off and I told him I was going to see my James Haskell action figures get moulded. He looked at me like I was the spawn of Satan, and I had to tell him I was joking.

But he was a good man, and all he tried to do was his best for England. However, he showed too much loyalty to old team-mates who I felt didn’t understand how to create a winning environment, or certainly one using the players at their disposal.

Some of the management selections were questionable, such as starting with Jonny Wilkinson and Toby Flood at 10 and 12 against France in the quarter-finals, when we’d never used that combination before.

If we’d made it through to the semi-finals, a lot of the off-field stuff might have been forgiven and Johnno might have clung on to his job. But we didn’t.

Got a question for James Haskell? Your chance to ask it here, before the webchat on Tuesday
James Haskell Q&A
James Haskell Q&A

What a Flanker by James Haskell (HarperNonFiction, £20) is published on Oct 1.

Tales from the 2011 World Cup are laid bare in Haskell's new book
Tales from the 2011 World Cup are laid bare in Haskell's new book