Will Greenwood
My old man jumped in a car, drove down and said, don't be the bloke at the end of the bar in thirty years who said, you could have, should have, would have. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Can I ask you about the losses? Do they still hurt? 

Will Greenwood
I'd struggle to remember all the wins. I remember which particular point in the game we lost. It was a good decision. There's a bad decision. There's no decision. The one that kills you is no decision in life. Strategist. Blue skies thinker. I realised that is not me. However, I'm a really good number two. You blue sky thing you do crazy. Set me in that challenge and I'll find a way to get us there. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Welcome to the smokeless word. Today I'm joined by none other than Will Greenwood, former England rugby player and two thousand and three Rugby World Cup winner. Will and I cover loads of terrain, including what it means to work with and not against the grain of your own psychology. Coming back from the dead, metaphorically and quite literally. And why great teams will always outperform talented individuals. This podcast is intended for regulators, scientists, policymakers, and investors only. The views expressed in this podcast are the personal opinions of the speaker only. Any references to products having a reduced risk or reduced harm are based on the weight of evidence, and assume no continued smoking. This material is not intended for US audiences. Welcome. Welcome to the studio. What do you think of it? Is this is this sort of what you expected? 

Will Greenwood
I mean, the part of London I didn't know existed. I'm a southwest London boy. Fulham. Chelsea? Yeah, Wimbledon. For a long time. I say that I'm from Blackburn. I went to Durham, did a degree in economics and maths. Ended up in the city. Working for it was Midland Global Markets. It'd be a good pub quiz question. 

Kingsley Wheaton
What is what is it now HSBC,

Will Greenwood
HSBC, Midland yeah of course. um I wore a funny colored jacket, shouted and screamed on the trading floor. My most fearsome boss was a guy called Terry Crawley, whose son now opens the batting for England. Zak Crawley. So T.C. was, uh. He ran the Italian government bond pit. The BTP pit. Uh, it was an incredible, incredible time. Loved it. Rugby was amateur. Lived on Roswell Road just by the fire station in Clapham. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah, the fire station 

Will Greenwood
did would, uh, go to the gym at Broadgate Circle on Mondays and Wednesdays, go rugby club Tuesdays and Thursdays. All the lads in the city like you're not coming to the pub. So. No, no it's training. Yeah, they say it's training every night. I said I know I want to do, I quite like my sport. Um and then rugby turned pro in ninety six and I was going to stay in the city. Give it up. Yeah. Play for Rosslyn Park. And then my old man jumped in the car. I don't think he asked me a question yet 

Kingsley Wheaton
and just keep going. 

Will Greenwood
This is my old man jumped in a car, drove down and said, don't be the bloke at the end of the bar in thirty years who said you could have, should have, would have. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. Good advice. 

Will Greenwood
So I asked the boss of HSBC, a guy called Guy Heald, asking for a two year sabbatical and put some caveats on it and say, if you haven't played for England within two years, can you have your job back? And I said, sabbaticals are sort of normally reserved for people who've worked for the bank for thirty to forty years and made the money. I lost one million dollars on a dollar yen trade last week, so I don't know how he's going to take it, but asked politely, asked politely. They said, sure, we'd love to support you, but I look back at ninety four to ninety six working in the city. Rugby, amateur trading every day, training every day, trading and training, And I wasn't a mis pronunciation of the word trading and training every day. I don't think it got better than that. Loved it. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Now I've been doing a bit of research on you, Will. And um, it's funny isn't it, because, you know, as an avid follower of rugby, I. I thought I knew a bit about you until I started reading about you, and then I found out new things, some of which may or may not be true, but I was reading about your. Your start with Leicester Tigers and I think there was this sort of sense I got that it didn't quite all click. You know, that perhaps you. I don't know whether on the periphery was the words that you would use. What why was that. Why, why, why didn't that work out. 

Will Greenwood
So you're part. Right? So I will I will not in any way, shape or form, put down the interviewer with a daft, dull question within the first 30s of chatting. Um, it ended up as a bit of a train crash. It started like I was going to rule the world. First year we had an incredible year. Bob Dwyer had taken over. Uh, rugby had just turned professional. I'd actually, on the back of my dad's chat, I decided, where do I go? A great friend called Austin Healey. We played at Waterloo together. He'd been at Leeds, Leeds Poly. I'd been up at Durham, we'd been great pals. He was at a rugby club called Oral, which now no longer exists, and we rang each other and said, right, where do we go? Because we had a yin and yang uh empathy for how each other played. We. We were big communicators, but could also communicate with with body action and feint and move and a wink and a thumbs up and just trusted each other on the field. So I don't think it's an exaggeration to say we just got on the phone and said, where should we? Where should we go as a pair? And the decision was made by who? Who's the nastiest? I mean, if you're an American football fan, it's the Pittsburgh Steelers from the nineteen seventies. It's the Leeds United Football Club from from the seventies as well. That sort of gnarly miserable. Nasty. Always winning all their own ball and fifty percent of the opposition. So you get a platform. And it was Leicester Tigers. Bob Dwyer joined as the Australian coach, and the first season we nearly played fifty games, but we made a European Cup final. We actually lost the European Cup final to brave. There was a our version of the FA Cup was in those days was the Tetley Bitter Cup. I think it's now the PowerGen Cup. It's had different, different names. We won. That one came second in the league, but because of battling on so many fronts and a small squad. But we just at our best that season we were an outstanding side and it got me picked for a Lions tour before I'd played for England. Yeah. And I think then I look back on it with hindsight and you try not to make the sort of refit, rewrite history, but you see my physique now and most people see me and go, well, you played rugby. You know, my nickname was Stickman. Twiggy. Um. Montgomery Burns, Rodney Trotter. You know, screech from saved by the Bell. I have an extraordinary amount of nicknames. None of those nicknames resemble Hercules or Geoff Capes or anything like that. Strange use of the word not said the name Geoff Capes. No, I was going to say so. My physique didn't fit. And I look back on it now and I just I fell, I literally my body fell apart, right? Uh, I got knocked out in South Africa at the same time I did my shoulder, which they didn't pick up because they were so worried about my head. I went back to Leicester. Yeah, my shoulder was in pieces, then started picking up niggly things. My hamstring went. There was a there was was it under. There was an accusation from some of the players. He's saving himself for England, right? Right. The head Bob left. Dean Richards took over. I got what's called osteitis pubis. So my groin. I couldn't sprint. I had nine months out. I went to see the the German doctor of of off my own bat. Leicester wouldn't help me. England wouldn't help me. This is how it was. It was totally wild West. It was called 

Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt. He'd picked. He'd fixed Olazabal, he'd fixed Michael Owen. Yeah, um, he'd fix Jürgen Klinsmann. I think Usain Bolt later went to see him. He was the Bayern Munich and the German team doctor. He had different ways of doing things, but he operated on one groin on the Tuesday, another groin on the Thursday. Three weeks later I was playing played in the World Cup, came back from that tweaked hammy and it just it just meant I after that first year, over the course of the next two or three years, I never really played fit, which most people would say, well, no one ever plays fit. I just never could be me again. And so it just needed a reset. And, um, whether it was a mutual decision or I was quietly shown the door, it was probably closer to the latter. My England career was sort of fading into the background. I was twenty eight, nearly twenty eight years old. Um, and so I went back to Harlequins. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. In what year was that? 

Will Greenwood
That was that was two thousand, two thousand. I got a piece of luck. I started playing, I started to get a run of games together. Yeah, a piece of luck as always. You try and remove luck from life. But yeah, my piece of luck was three days before an Argentina game. A legendary rugby player called Mike Catt had popped a rib in training. I wasn't even in the team. Yeah, Clive said, you're in. Yeah, I mean, I scored against South Africa. We won. I had bleached, had peroxide hair. 

Kingsley Wheaton
That's right. I remember the peroxide hair. 

Will Greenwood
And he never, never looked back. Never dropped me again. And that was it. Five from there. Five years we won everything. We beat everyone. We. lost a couple of games along the way. Of course, we beat everyone home and away as a better way of putting it. We did lose the occasional game. Um, so Leicester was an interesting period, which was it mentally gave me. I mean there wasn't a lot of pastoral care. Yeah. Gave me a huge amount of resilience, mental resilience and physical resilience. And that's that's what Leicester gave me. I also met some great people along the way who I would then play with for England for many years. Um, obviously Martin Johnson and Neil back right at the heart of that. They were there with me for sort of the next four or five years. Austin was there for most of it. Graham Rowntree great people. But um, success isn't sort of binary. It's not Y equals X. Um it's not a straight line. Mine. Mine was much more like a cubic graph that sort of had a nice little rise at the start. A positive y equals x cubed. I love maths. It went up a little bit. 

Kingsley Wheaton
There speaks the mathematician 

Will Greenwood
Then dipped below zero and then went on an exponential rise up until eventually, eventually the mind, the body, the mind wouldn't tell the body to go to places that it had been to before. And once that happens, you realise, go do something different. 

Kingsley Wheaton
And then I just want to ask you will, um, you know, the little theme through this transformation, little transformations. Leicester, Quinn's, Quinn's, you know, Lions, England, you know, coming out of rugby when I read, you know, bits and pieces, I felt this quite strong, self-reflective side, you know, and again,

Will Greenwood
Paranoid. 

Kingsley Wheaton
You sort of bore that out in that answer. I mean, is that 

Will Greenwood
It's paranoid neurosis. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Right. Okay. Tell me a bit more about that. 

Will Greenwood
Uh, what would people say about can't settle. Right. Um. What's next? Um, today was good, but it could have been better, right? Nice win. Good enough to get us here. Is it good enough to get us there? Um, who have we got next week? Bang! Uh, so. And that's just that's again, we live with neurodiversity at home. That's just how my brain is wired. When people say, oh, that's an incredible. How have you worked on that? Or, or that's a crippling Achilles heel to have you unable to smell the coffee and celebrate success now. It's a twin edged sword. Yeah. But it's sort of just it's actually just who I am. And when I was at I was at the rugby club. I'm fifty three now. I was down my local rugby club last night and it's lads, this is it, right. I've got a big game Saturday. Yeah I can't. How are we going to be better. Yeah. What are we going to do. And it drives a few people crazy and they've. They've since deleted my number and refused to pick up my calls. And then there's others that go, actually, let's harness that. And so I think something of interest. 

Kingsley Wheaton
I think it's awesome. 

Will Greenwood
And I would go having that as an understanding that that's who I am. Yeah. Made me realize about fifteen years ago. Yeah. Yeah. I think you had Zach Brown here who is an incredible CEO. Yeah. Correct. Yeah. Strategist, blue skies thinker, thirty six thousand feet. What's going on? Where are we going to be? In energy. I realized that is not me. However, again, where I've become increasingly confident is I'm a really good number two. Are you blue sky thing you do crazy come up with daft ideas, which everyone will go, oh my God sent me that challenge and I'll find a way To get us there. And that's always been how I've played and how I've worked on it. So. Um, I avoid at all costs being put in charge, but I align, I try to align myself. And get alongside great people who have vision, who have long term thinking, long term strategies and go, okay, it's a decent challenge, but get me on the side and, and I'll work out the small steps that get that, get us there. The next twenty four hours, the next forty eight hours, once it gets beyond a month, right? It's back on your court. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Do you get frustrated with people not like that? I mean, presumably the entire England team weren't all like that. And you must have sat there sometimes and gone. No. That guy's. Yeah. 

Will Greenwood
So where I mean, rugby is the greatest. It's a metaphor. The right word. I'm good at maths. Not necessarily good with English. And it's great as sport. I know that celebrates difference. And there's half a chance if you had an American footballer he would say the same thing. So you need short guys, fast guys, tall guys, thinkers, pessimists, realists, optimists, cynics, dreamers. Um, paranoid insecurity. Numpties. Um, you need ball handlers. You need people who can't pass you. People who whack things, you people who want to avoid being whacked. And if you then break that down, it's. The reality is every kid in a playground has a place on a rugby field. Yeah. And um, what Clive then sort of bringing back to that team what Clive did was bring together units that celebrated difference. And again, you have to you have to sort of make it slightly black and white and precis it perhaps a little bit too much. But you might look at the midfield where me and Mike Tindall. Yeah. Um he couldn't pass and I couldn't tackle. He, he didn't know any of the moves and I knew all of the moves. He was more relaxed than brie on a hot day I couldn't get I couldn't get out of bed on a Wednesday before a game because I was wracked with just doubt about what was going wrong. And that balance that we brought an understanding of each other that allowed me to be me and him, to be him. And I wouldn't make him make the clutch passes and he would tackle everything for me. Again, 

Kingsley Wheaton
it's it's a caricature. 

Will Greenwood
Yeah. And you go to our back row and we had. Yeah, they were called sort of Holy Trinity of Back the Hill and we had others obviously Lewis Moody and Martin Corry, but the famous three back to back, you know, Lawrence couldn't tackle below head height. We didn't really know what Richard Hill did. And Neil Back struggled to pass the ball two yards. But you pick on their individual strengths and Lawrence was as good a decathlon as Daley Thompson. Richard Hill was like Gary Lineker, like Mr. Benn, the shopkeeper for those. Yeah. As if by magic, Mr. Benn appeared. And Becky was our own version of Bruce Lee or let's go English. Let's go. Charles Dickens and Great Expectations. Oliver Twist, Bill Sikes. Dog. Bullseye. Yeah. He was like bullseye. Just jumping around at knee height, demanding and just getting into everything. And so that whole. So there wasn't an element of frustration where we sat comfortably as a team was we really all polished our super strengths. Yeah. And of course you don't ignore. I still had to practice tackling because I would have to tackle. Mike had to practice passing because he would have to pass again. This caricatures, but we were allowed to be the best version of ourselves. Yes, rather than try and be multi-taskers. 

Kingsley Wheaton
But I mean the presence of I think I in your book, differences, times, togetherness equals growth, I like that. But to say all of that will, at fifty three, with hindsight and wisdom and maturity, to be doing that in an England squad at a pretty young age, right where there isn't, you probably would have felt mature, but you probably look back. I mean, there's quite a lot of 

Will Greenwood
but great leaders though. I mean, because Clive, we lost the World Cup in ninety nine. We got beat by South Africa in the quarterfinal. That's right. And Clive nearly got sacked. Yeah. Again this isn't like I don't do these interviews for you to say no, no don't be that. I can guarantee you if he'd got sacked, I would never have played rugby for England again. My the what what he saw in me and he picked me when others wouldn't. Um, and he understood what I could bring to the team. And the next gen of English coaches would have gone, no, he's a skinny beanpole. He's got a dodgy left shoulder. Um. We can't you can't, can't carry him. And he went, no, no, no, you don't get it. I'm going to pick him for what he can do then. Yeah. As a captain we had Martin Johnson who just said look do you do you do your job? What is it you do for this team and just do it? Don't worry. We've got others who can do bits and pieces. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. Can I ask you about the losses? Yeah. Particularly with that sort of, you know, neurosis. Do they still hurt? Do you remember? 

Will Greenwood
They're the only ones I remember. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Really? And are they, like, more vivid than the. 

Will Greenwood
Yeah. Uh, sort of post two thousand. I mean, again, it's always like everyone goes ninety nine. I didn't play two thousand. I didn't Scotland, I didn't play. The big one for me was Dublin in oh one. We played them in October because of foot and mouth. I played on my, it was my birthday, right? And that was a real puncture. So that year, actually having started the year unbelievably well. Oh one we still France might beat it this year. We still hold the record for number of tries in the tournament. Number of points scored in a tournament. That's that still stands from oh one. And people say oh no, you lot just kicked it. We didn't just kick it. We we were quite good. But Benny Cohen, you know, Robbo, Jason Robinson, Josh, Lucy, Ian Boswell, Dan Lucas, me they they played man and our forwards played Trevor Woodman, field rookie. Their comfort on the ball. So those records still stand and still stand the test of time. But there was a Lions tour that year And the week before the first test, I snapped all my ankle ligaments, got fit again for the third, but the ankle didn't hold up. So I had this again, talking about resilience. I'd had this sort of time at Leicester that had been. Ah ah. Then you get back in the England team, you start beating everyone. And then I went through another four month period where my ankle went. Didn't get to play a test in oh one because of it. And the midfield the week before the first test was Johnny at ten, me in the middle and Brian O'Driscoll outside. It was like, this is the stuff. Stuff you dream of. Snatched away from me, snatched away, you know. Uh. And then then we lose the slam in oh one on my birthday. Yeah. Uh, but it's really interesting. So perhaps with age and perhaps at the time, my old man was just creating a narrative that would help. But he says he genuinely believes that if we'd won that series in oh one, which was a predominantly English, there's a lot of English players have to be careful what I say. Predominantly a lot of English players in the oh one tour and we win that slam in oh one, he says. He says, I think you peaked too early. I says, I think you're losing. I think you lose half a percent. You lose one percent of. And, and and he goes, and I look at. He knows. He knows most of the lads really well. He goes, you are competitive. Horrible people to play five a side football against anything you got. You didn't you just everything was ferocious. Yeah. And that's what got you there. You know three to go to extra time and find a way to win. And he goes and you know what? The sliding doors moment will never know what happens if we turn left instead of right and we win. And I get to play and we win or we play, we win that slam. Yeah. But I sort of look back on it and go, yeah, I can understand the argument. And and if it did keep us grounded then thank goodness. Yeah. It keeps, it kept us grounded. So that might be the Celts saying, oh, you're even recrafting us beating you as helping you to win. Uh, but that's sort of something in a mindset capacity. Absolutely. Um, I'd struggle to remember all the ones that all the wins I remember which particular point in the game we lost it. Uh, I can remember the play. We made it at the moment. Is there a sort of a and you go let it go and say, well, if I let that stuff go, there's always there was always a funny one because I'm a city fan, but, you know, they wanted to take the edge out of Rooney. Yeah. So you can't. But if you take the edge out of Rooney, he's not Rooney. Yeah. I'm not comparing myself to Wayne Rooney. 

Kingsley Wheaton
But I understand. Yeah. Authenticity. 

Will Greenwood
It's what is it that um when they take out the competition the word competitive is a word I dislike and I may have used it before and I'm not, not trying to be inconsistent, but I didn't. And you speak to us. You speak to Martin about it. He didn't mind losing. And you go, what are you on about? And everything you just said. I didn't mind losing as long as it was to a better team. Yeah. Yeah. And therefore, every time we played, we tried to maximize what we had as an individual and collectively. And then people go, oh, isn't he competitive? Want to always win that doesn't want to always win. And what I sometimes rail against at schools and you don't want to get into politics too much, but schools and un of taking away competition, not of taking away a results based or something where you ask better pupils just take it easy. It's like no, you're taking away part of who they are and at that age they don't understand and say no, no, they can't, they're not strong enough to stand up and say, that's that's like telling a, a kid who's good at English not to go away and read books, like telling an artist to put in his easel down. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. And let me just I wanted to ask you about ninety seven and the Lions. So I think you just said you hadn't been capped by England. That's right, isn't it. He had a great season at Leicester. That fifty. That must have been quite a thing wasn't it. 

Will Greenwood
Oh brilliant timing. I didn't know anything about the Lions. Really. Yeah. It's been on the TV ever since ninety seven. Living with the Lions. But ninety three was in Australia. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah that's right. 

Will Greenwood
No, ninety three was New Zealand, eighty nine was Australia was that. But they weren't. That were. The grubber was eighty nine. That's right. Yeah. They lost the series two one. Rory scored in under up the left hand side but they lost two one in ninety three. Yeah. But at those stage TVs really were obviously satellite. They had afternoon games, so they were in the middle of the night. So you didn't see them? Yeah, ninety seven was the first time it was the same time zone. Then once they went to oh one, they had evening kick offs. So lines are built into something. But historically because of where they were. Yeah. No one you sort of get black and white footage would come back and that sort of stuff. The other side of the world. So I found myself surrounded by English, Welsh, Irish, Scottish and even English players I've never met before. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Um, nerve wracking or?

Will Greenwood
Yeah, it was nerve wracking in the build up to it because of my character and thinking, just don't be a fool. Don't do something stupid. Um, catch the first pass. Just that sort of stuff. All the sort of simple stuff. And you catastrophize. Um, and then I turned up and the first sort of human being I met was Scott Quinnell, whose dad was Derek Quinnell. And Scott always laughs and jokes that he was the seventh best rugby player in his family, and his uncle was Barry John and his godfather was Merv the Swerve. I mean, it's a joke. His lineage is extraordinary. And it just gave me, I think the Welsh phrase is coach a big cuddle. It gave me this terrifying Welsh played rugby league for Wigan before Wigan. He'd come back. He was back at Richmond. Yes, yes. Playing Wales and and he gave me a big cuddle and I was in. I was rooming with Allan Bateman, who was this brilliant scientist from from Maesteg. Um, and he'd played for Cronulla in Australia and within 30s your parochial English siloed hat had been taken off and thrown away, and you had the badge of the lions and the red training shirt or the red shirt. Yeah. And you're off and running. So it was we did the living with the Lions when they gave us some guy came up with an idea to give us four cameras. Yeah, yeah. No one had a clue what was going on. And John Bentley and Austin and Rob Wainwright and Doddie Weir, of course. Yeah. And we create One of the great sporting documentaries because it's so supremely naive. When we took the cameras everywhere and we didn't really understand and the authenticity of the of the Jim Telfer speeches. Yeah. So that was that was it was great. I mean, it didn't end great for me with the injury. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. Yeah. Um, you remember that or is that...

Will Greenwood
No. I was knocked out for about seventeen minutes. The doc thought I was dead. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Wow. 

Will Greenwood
Um. Swallowed the swallow tongue is an incorrect medical term. I think when you get knocked out of that, it just sort of collapses. Yeah, and you lose muscle control. So it blocks airways as opposed to that. Um, and the medical team were great. The amazing thing is the reality is I was feted as some sort of brave human being for coming back from that and playing again. Yeah. If you don't remember anything, there's nothing to be afraid of. 

Kingsley Wheaton
That's true. 

Will Greenwood
There's nothing to be scared of. What I what I see, I see Lindsey Vonn coming back and and and skiing. Yeah. With with an ACL bust and then fractures her leg in six places and nearly loses a leg. And she she was she's aware those people I go, oh my God, you are the bravest human being I know people who've blown knees out or shoulders and seen or with Zac, people who've been in high speed crashes and the cars flipped over and they're present and conscious for all of it. That's brave. Coming back from stuff like that, coming back from something you don't remember is actually relatively easy because there's no there's no trigger. There's no oh, I've been here before. Therefore this can happen. Therefore, I'm not going to stick my head there. Because if you're not playing with your head forward in rugby, if you're not playing on your toes with body language, trying to take space the whole time, if you're on your heels and tall and back. You're dead before the game starts. 

Kingsley Wheaton
I want to take you to the World Cup final and actually made me laugh because I looked at something yesterday. Probably not the question you weren't expecting when you did that table duck at the end of the game. Yeah, for DOS to get the pass, was it to Katie for the spiral? 

Will Greenwood
That's right. 

Kingsley Wheaton
And you sort of laughed about the fact that the whole team were going, what on earth are you doing? But I just thought it was an interesting moment because it was a it was a strategy of itself, wasn't it?

Will Greenwood
Yeah. So look, they we. Johnny drops the goal twenty six seconds left. They make an error. They'd been winning kickoffs to Lottie to carry all day. Yeah. Which is up the left hand side. Don't change it. Go there again. You'll win it. They changed the kick. They go to the middle. Trevor Woodman catches it. Well then in the middle of the field we've got to get the ball off the field. And my my view is I'm stood next to Mike Catt and we're not. We have the same size hooters, a large schnoz. And the last thing I wanted was doors to turn and see two hooters schnauzers and get caught because the what do I say? Always say the road of life is paved with flat squirrels that couldn't make a decision. Right. There's. Just get off the road. Just don't stand still. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Get out of the way. 

Will Greenwood
So then again, I always talk about these three decisions you make on a rugby field. There's a good decision. There's a bad decision. There's no decision. We all love good decisions in life, aren't they? In hindsight. You go. That was a great decision. We actually don't mind bad decisions. You mitigate the cost of failure. You realize it's a bad. But you execute as well as you can. And then you bail out and you get out. The one that kills you is no decision in life. Yeah, yeah. In any walk of life, just not make just being unclear, lacking clarity, no strategy, standing still. All these sorts of metaphors or use of ways of describing or of stagnating and being a sitting duck. And at the cost of years of ridicule. I stand by, I stand by, I stand by what I did because I just thought, yeah, yeah, we need one job here. Yeah. He needs to pass to him. Yeah. He's going to kick it off. Yeah. We win. Yeah, yeah. Remove to me. Remove all catastrophize. Remove all externalities. Take any possible indecision out of it. For Matt Dawson. So when he turns around, he sees one human being. Therefore, he has one job. Therefore he executes it and he passes to Catty. Catty walks it off and again. 

Kingsley Wheaton
It's a beautiful spiral, 

Will Greenwood
a great spiral. So did you see it or was your head? Yeah, yeah, totally. Totally conscious at all times. Um, the reality is I could have kicked it off. Yeah. Um, but. That's in a nutshell. Yeah, that's sort of. thought process is who I am. Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. You know, I was my fastest one hundred meter time is about sixteen seconds dropped off a cliff. Uh, I have a one rep max on a bench press. The lads literally like, you're giggling now. They do bench press day and the lads would be laughing. They'd come on like when you when you're putting the weight on I'm going, no, no, that is my one rep. 

Kingsley Wheaton
I always thought you had that sort of, you know, slightly subtle turn of speed on the pitch. 

Will Greenwood
No. Was it just drift? 

Kingsley Wheaton
Was it was it was it sort of. You just seem to find the outside of people. 

Will Greenwood
I think the it's a bit like I always say, I try and coach lads and girls when I'm involved in sort of coaching. Rugby is fast. Slow. Yeah. Not stop. Go right. So most kids get somewhere, stand still and then try and accelerate from zero. Sure. The reality is, if you can understand the game and the ebb and flow of a game, like a wave up and down. And it's moving. It's quick. It speeds up. It slows down. The reality is I'm I'm constant movement. It's constantly moving. Little foot so that at no stage am I ever having to go from a standing start. So my negating of a lack of straight line foot speed is to. What you'll see is therefore my ability to get. Perhaps my strength was to get into a space. What will absolutely reinforce my point is I very rarely then finish it off. 

Kingsley Wheaton
You're usually looking for. 

Will Greenwood
I get through and give. I get through and then give and you'll say, well, you scored thirty one tries, total yardage, probably thirty seven, which makes my average yardage one point two per try. Um, and but back to celebrating difference. Uh get through. Give it to Jason Robinson against Wales. He's His straight line. Foot speed makes the break. I'll just be on the far side waiting. I know where he's going because I've seen it in training. I jog in from ten yards. In we go and that's um. Yeah, it's it's not trying to. I'm not trying to. There's two ways of looking at it. Is it. One is you stop playing the fool and talking nonsense. I'm trying to reinforce my point that so many different ways to win a game of rugby. And there's so many different styles you can bring into it, but. So what's my point? My point is, uh, what are you bringing to a team in any organisation? What, what are you bringing? And, um, there's a great friend of mine called Jeff Dodds who now runs interestingly, he runs formula E, so, uh, he's the CEO of formula E. He used to work at Virgin Media O2 and, um, he would always again to plagiarize his words and Slightly bastardize them a little bit. He would talk about playing top trumps. Every time he found himself at a strategy table for every organization he's working. What the heck's top trumps? If you know top trumps? It's it's. You might be playing dinosaur. Top trumps. And the most ferocious would be the Velociraptor. And the scariest would be the T-Rex. And the. The longest would be the Diplodocus or Diplodocus, according to where you're from, you know, and the Olders would be the Ankylosaurus. They'd all have a superpower. Yeah, yeah. That's right. And what he would look understand is what's the decision we're making today and what verticals or what columns or what parts of our business do we need. So we get a full three hundred and sixty degree view of this mountain of this opportunity. And therefore we're not making a decision, assimilating to the boss or assimilating to the CFO because he sees coin at the end of this, but doesn't understand delivery or data or logistics or commercial or whatever it might be. And that that's where. What are you bringing to the table? Anytime there's those going on and fight for. Fight for your voice. Uh, don't just follow the herd. 

Kingsley Wheaton
You said recently I read, and actually, it was the second part of your comment I liked. You said I don't think any of today's crop would get into the A-three team. And I think you went on to say, I don't think any of the A-three team would get in today's team. Yeah. So I was wondering what you meant by that and also wondered, were you around today? What what? Yeah. 

Will Greenwood
The second part of the if you take the first part in isolation and you cut it, I sound like a complete tosser. Not one of those slots would get in our team. Um, but and I actually said it around the twenty nineteen World Cup. It was before the twenty nineteen World Cup final. They just pulled off the greatest performance ever. They'd beaten New Zealand in the semi final. And so having said and I said not one of them would get in our team. But I would like to think that not one of us would get in theirs. Um, what I'm trying to say is it goes back to the trust, the loyalty, the teamship, the camaraderie, the spirit, the resilience, the bloody mindedness that you create within any organization or within any team means under pressure. Now, if I'm suddenly thrust onto a rugby field, I want Daws at nine, I want Tins at thirteen, I want Jason at fifteen. I want Jono in the second row like behavior. You could have Marrow or, um, you could have George Ford or you could have Tommy Freeman. I mean, they look, they're twenty eight years old and they're unbelievable athletes. And I say you can keep them. And if you ask them, they want one of us because they've created their on their own little. And it's it's it's going back. Even though I then said that I do remember the defeats, I don't remember many of the tackles or the tries, but I remember how each one of those players made me feel and they made me feel invincible. Like a million bucks. 

Kingsley Wheaton
That's powerful. 

Will Greenwood
And, and so I would hope that if this England team have any chance of succeeding, they're creating that spirit. And we were again, I won't go into detail because it's it's we were asked to to come in very kindly and spend some time. It's been I wouldn't have mentioned it at all. But of course, everything finds its way in the newspapers. A long time before they'd lost a couple of games that England lost to Scotland and Ireland. Steve Borthwick had reached out to a few boys, so just come and spend some time with us. And of course it's now been rehashed. England have lost two. They're looking to the old guard. What can these duffers bring to it? And it was never about that. It was actually spending some time sharing some ideas. Because just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. But conversely, quite rightly, you can have your own opinions because it all doesn't mean it's good. But if you're not exploring how different teams or studying your history or heritage or finding extraordinary teams. Yeah. Um, and we went in and I'd never talk about what was discussed, but at one stage it went, uh, Lawrence addressed the boys, then Martin, then Lewis Moody, then Phil Vickery and Paul Grayson. I was going, I'm ready to play. I don't know what these young lads are feeling now. Maybe it's because they're my crew. Phil Vickery, he's beautifully fitting. Right. Must just. He's fifty one. Oh my God. Yeah. Lawrence still barrel chested. Yeah. Johnno sort of hobbling a little bit, but razor sharp. Yeah. Grace already thinking, lads, have you thought about doing it like this? Louis just being Louis, who was just the character, just the lovable rogue that was our donkey from Shrek just bounced just energy. And it was a, you know, I've, I've, I've talked for years about not one of them would get in our team talked for years about the character of our players. And actually on Wednesday night, I was sat there going, what a privilege, just listening to. And I go, no wonder. I promise you, the thought going through my head when I was sat in that changing room with the current crop, I thought, no wonder we won. Literally. No wonder we won. Have you seen the human beings we got who we could draw on? Now, of course, their story has become a little polished over time and the points they're getting across, they've been on podcasts, they've learned how to articulate it, but they might have been slightly clumsy with their vocabulary twenty years ago, but they were still as authentic and vulnerable then as they are now. They were just being themselves. 

Kingsley Wheaton
And how important is that vulnerability? 

Will Greenwood
Vulnerability, I think. I don't think you follow someone. I mean, what's the great power paradox? Leadership isn't imposed. It's granted. Yeah. Uh, the followers grant you the power to lead in times of stress. Now, there's lots of different ways you can go out about being a great captain or CEO that will create this followership. You go into organization and go my way or highway. This is what we're doing. Of course, there will always be times where you'll get quick wins, but there's no legacy. There's no longevity. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Could I ask you about, you know, this transformation amateur to professional. You know, the ambition to win the World Cup. You know, you talk about purpose and maybe even mission, I think in world class, you know, was was the squad of early post ninety nine. The South Africa loss was the mission to be world champions. Or was it be the best in the world? Or was it, you know, do a PB every time? You know, how did you guys think about that 

Will Greenwood
Really, simply win the next game, right. What's next. Yeah. Because we've got coaches. Yeah we've got Clive. Yeah. Who's managing it and working out. Yeah. With warm up games we're going to play. Yeah. Who we're going to play, where we're going to play them, where we're going to train, what facilities, which coaches we've got. They've already came in kicking coach. He was learned. He was still at I think he's nearly late sixties seventy. He could now he could still do a seventy metre spiral bomb. It's incredible. Had Cheryl Calder come in, she was a vision coach. Dave Campbell was the chef who was. We picked up from Penny Hill Park and he went with us everywhere. I'm going to leave someone out here. But Phil Larder was defense. Andy Robinson was contact area and forwards and Brian Ashton was in for a time and apologies. Louise Ramsey was making sure we were in the right place at the right time as players. I cannot reiterate it enough. It didn't mean we were Full Metal Jacket at training every day. But it meant what are we trying to get out of today? How do we finish the day better. And we talked about white line mentality. Laugh, joke. We had some idiots in our in our camp. I know obviously I just removed the word idiot before I then say the next name because I love what he does. But we had our jokers. We had our guys who would wind up the opposition. Henry Pollack's. We had Austin and Ian Balshaw. We had others. There just wasn't social media for the outside world to see him. Trust me, we had him. Yeah. With a with a multiplier on with a scale factor of six on it. Do you think if you think Henry's annoying. Oh my God. Bosch and Oz took it to different levels. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Um, and the white line mentality?

Will Greenwood
But the white line mentality was be that kid. Yeah, but the second you step on that pitch. Yeah. You're in. And what we had again, going back to military terms, we had battle reliable troops who had been through. Again, I apologize for using military terms because like we didn't go to war, but these are the best vocabulary is battle hardened troops who had been through campaigns, who had lost but been given a second chance and learn and gone the textbook of how we set up our formation. It doesn't, nice, but doesn't work. We need to tweak it and just do it like that. So it's a sort of virtuous loops of results based success or defeat into what we're doing back into the system in the modern world. New algorithm pops up. Iterate. So I've always talked about how we did it. Iterate, iterate, iterate. No, no. One thing we didn't do one thing one hundred percent better. Clive's phrase do one hundred things one percent better. We iterated and we took it. And and we would understand. There were times when a question. And then there were times under the most intense pressure. Everything we've been through, he makes the call now. And whatever he makes, we go with it. Benny Kaye makes the line out call. Um, more often than not. Uh, the different people in charge, we had scrums, lineouts restarts, counterattack, attack, defense with leaders in each of those areas under pressure, with it being stress tested with training when your heart rates are one hundred eighty. Stress tested by winning in New Zealand. Winning on Australia, winning in South Africa, winning in France, winning in Ireland. We won everywhere. We came from behind in games in the World Cup. We played seven games. We were losing five of them because under the most intense pressure, we had a chain of command that trusted each other to make the big calls at the right times and a complete faith. Back to my flat squirrels. Yeah, we made a decision and it was good. And it was brilliant. It was bad. We fixed it, but we never got caught. Or no was no decision or decision making by committee. Snake committee's smoky corners. You know the old fashioned way. Power corridors..

Kingsley Wheaton
cabinet responsibility

Will Greenwood
..everything open in a room. What are we doing? We're all in. Great. Go. Next job thing. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Let's say it must have happened. You know, you you're struggling to get your point across to a, you know, another player. You're trying the immediate feedback, you know, talking to them. It's just like you're just bashing your head against a brick wall because someone you know. Yeah. Is there a workaround or is there another player you'd go through? You'd speak to Jonas as the skipper. Is there an influencing sort of thing that goes on? 

Will Greenwood
And I can't remember the teacher or the leader who said it. So I have a little. Um, every time I see I'm a plagiarizer of good quotes that. Because the reality is I was listening to a brilliant author yesterday. She was amazing. And she said people who write great novels actually struggle to. Or they're, they're people who write great novels are terrible at writing short stories. Because the reality is, that's the short story is the dream world, right? So again, I'm hoping that you understand what I'm saying. Um, so that again, without getting the words wrong and I'll go back to my maths in a second. Every kid can be taught. And if a kid's not learning, find a different way to teach him. Yeah, yeah yeah. Uh, and I, and I, and my argument is, and you go, don't go. Every, every kid can do maths, right? And you meet people now and I and it's not my like my, it's not a party trick. It's not my party. I promise it's not a party. But I go to people and say, I hate maths. And I go at the age of five or six. Did you have a terrible teacher? No, no, when I was eight. And then when you lose, when a teacher stops trying to connect, or a coach or a leader or someone who's trying to get a point or stops trying to connect with a human being or just gives up, in those instances, you find a different way to connect. Yeah, yeah, find a different way to articulate it. Yeah. Some people need it written down. Some people need a picture. Some people need to do it. Some people need to see it. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Brilliant segue into my final question, but just before I get on to a quick fire round. Yeah. Well-Being is not a badge of honour. What was it? Was it wellbeing? Burnout is not a badge of honour. I think, you know, and you were kind of going there, weren't you? Wellbeing. I can't remember whether you were sent home from a tour or time off and high performing, your high performance group understood that people needed to recharge and to rest. And just just talk a bit about that, because I was really struck by that because I perhaps wasn't expecting to read that. 

Will Greenwood
The trust we had in our squad in oh three would have been such that we would be training super hard, and there might be someone might say, I think you're training a bit hard, and we'd check the pulse of the team and go, no, no, we're not. We go again. We go again. Then there's other times. So you're empowering people to make the decisions. You have to then turn up and face the sort of live fire from the Springboks. Then there were other times when it was actually, we're done here and that level of trust and it goes back to sort of crying wolf and and when you keep pressing the cry wolf, you lose the trust of the leaders because they're not quite right. So great teams Self-police great teams know when 

Kingsley Wheaton
self policing. 

Will Greenwood
They know when to bite the hand that feeds. We had a great trade union leader in Martin Johnson. Yeah that's right. He was not afraid to go back up the food, the chain of command, the food chain and go we're done today. Yeah yeah, yeah. Pull the plug. Or actually you're about to pull the plug. We're not we're not ready to finish as opposed to training last twenty seven minutes. We're going to do four minutes of defense, eight minutes of attack. We'll do a little sit down. Then we're going to go into that bang stop, finish, go, which I get. It's important. You have to have those parameters parameters. But good teams suddenly go on a on a certain day they'll get to twenty one minutes and go, we're done. Yeah. Nothing more. We're not ticking boxes for coaches. Yeah. You don't need to just this isn't about making you feel as though we've done everything. We're good. And conversely, we're not done. Yeah, we got to go again. Um, and honest again comes back to authenticity and vulnerability about being honest and transparent the whole time allows you to be that brutal with each other to go. Now we go again here or on different occasions, less so under Martin. We've actually done enough. That's right. We can stop early. I mean, that was the exception rather than the rule. But he still did it. And that. Yeah, that two way street was extraordinary. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Very good. Will. Thank you. Um, I've got a quick, quick fire round your, uh. Your accent, Lancaster, Lancashire. Burnley. 

Will Greenwood
Blackburn. Yeah. 

Kingsley Wheaton
My mum's a Lancaster. 

Will Greenwood
What would you say? Oh, how would I say it. So I'm reading a passage. It's 

Kingsley Wheaton
either either I 

Will Greenwood
or it doesn't matter is it. I've got or in here. Is that right? Yeah. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Okay. Guscott or Tindall. 

Will Greenwood
I'll go back to my point. Has to be Tindall. Okay. But Guscott, Jerry was I think Jerry was the greatest. Yeah, yeah, but you're asking. So I'm interpreting the question as who am I playing with next week? It has to be Tindle. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Tindle. 

Will Greenwood
Someone else could reinterpret the question, and I could. I could answer both. Yeah, but you don't. It's the. I interpret that as. 

Kingsley Wheaton
I think that's the right interpretation. There's a wine question. Red or white? 

Will Greenwood
Are you going. Champagne. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Champagne. Okay. You could do that. That's right. This is a good one for, uh, a Burnley lad. Curry or fish and chips. 

Will Greenwood
Uh, so and I know I've got a we've moved to Leicester, the Leicester Heights go on holiday in Norfolk. So we know we go spend a lot of time in Norfolk and Eric's fish and chip shop right in Thornham is unbeatable. Right. Okay, now I have to be fair to Malik's in Cookham, which is decent. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah, that's that's true. 

Will Greenwood
Under pressure. I'm going Cod and medium chips. Lovely. From Eric's. 

Kingsley Wheaton
I can almost taste it as you were talking about it. This is unfair, because I didn't realize one of the photos you shared was about fives. But tennis or squash? 

Will Greenwood
Fives. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Okay. I like I'm doing well so far. I've got you to answer none of the questions, so I. 

Will Greenwood
Tennis or squash, I have to answer. I'm agnostic to both of those. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Okay, we'll leave that part. Fives. Yeah. Snow or sun? 

Will Greenwood
Uh, snow mountains. Mountains. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Mountains. I think I know the answer to this one. World Cup win or live series win. 

Will Greenwood
Uh, world Cup win. Yeah, world Cup win. I, I actually think I look back on the game I love the most. Actually wasn't in the World Cup was winning in New Zealand. Um, um there was a, there was a seven day period where we won in New Zealand and won in Australia at that stage in the summer of oh three, England had won once in New Zealand in nineteen seventy three and had never won in Australia. And I loved the All Blacks. Yeah, always have because I grew up. I know Springboks are the last two world champions, but I grew up at eighties and 90s and Bookshelf and that crowd and Zinny and Jonah, they were they were the benchmark for me. So World Cup win, if that's trying to ask me which is my favorite game, it's actually neither of those. It's winning in New Zealand. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Very good, cinema or feet up TV. 

Will Greenwood
Uh, now it's I mean, it's all on Netflix, isn't it? 

Kingsley Wheaton
So Netflix and a final one, your Telegraph column. If it is a column, I don't know if it is a column or a podcast. 

Will Greenwood
Do you know what I take seventy actually now twenty years. I'm going to go Telegraph column. Yeah, twenty years. I always believe in transparency as I've got older now, seventeen years of Monday morning, blank sheet of paper and a thousand words required in a pretty simple sport. I have no idea how I've written one and a half million words on the game of rugby. So I take great pride in approaching two million words. Yeah. Um, on, on a sport 

Kingsley Wheaton
that's a lot, a lot of people don't like a lot of words. For a mathematician, 

Will Greenwood
yes it is. I wasn't very good at either or was I? 

Kingsley Wheaton
No, I thought it was quite entertaining. 

Will Greenwood
I mean, I just I don't like the word being binary. 

Kingsley Wheaton
No, I know, I could see that this flummoxed you from, uh, from an early stage. 

Will Greenwood
You know, I like margins. I like finding optionality. Yes. Differences. 

Kingsley Wheaton
You know, um, final question. 

Will Greenwood
Don't you call me big nose. Life of Brian. That's what you call me. Big nose. One more time. I'll take you to the cleaners. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Transformation. Um, there's the there's the said Durham. Durham. Leicester. Leicester. Quins. You know Lions. England. I think you reflected a bit on coming out of sporting life, having climbed the mountain. Uh, pundit, Telegraph columnist, sky pundit. You know, is there a is there a Third world-Greenwood episode? 

Will Greenwood
Uh, my wife would say, is there a fifty second? Yeah, that's probably, uh, Will Greenwood. Uh, what have I found? What is my thing now? Find good people and doesn't matter. You can do anything with good people. Um, first who? Then what? Um, so I, at the moment, I work for an AI business in call centres. And the other role I have really is with a financial wellbeing app. And why am I there? Because good people asked me to go and see if I could help. And, um, I've talked about I'm not a CEO, I'm a, I'm a good number two. 

Kingsley Wheaton
So that was the most amazing bit of our conversation for me and the that bit I wasn't expecting to hear that really interested me. 

Will Greenwood
Yeah. I'm terrible. It'd be a terrible CEO. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah, but a good number two. 

Will Greenwood
The acknowledgement would be a terrible head coach. Yeah, interesting. But if you then bring that down to sort of rugby terms, I'd be a terrible head coach. I'd be a terrible I wouldn't be a great head coach. I couldn't. Clive and visions in five years and strategies. Who we playing this week. I'll. I will find you. The tactics to win this week would be. 

Kingsley Wheaton
Yeah. Brilliant. Will Greenwood. Thanks. We've been going quite some time. It's been brilliant. Thank you so much for joining us. Reflecting on teamwork, togetherness, resilience, ambition. I don't know, a thousand different themes that will resonate with with all of the audience of the smokeless word. Thank you. 

Will Greenwood
I hope it's tough to follow Zach, right. Be careful who you follow. 

Kingsley Wheaton
You did a pretty good job. You did a pretty good job. Thanks, Will. 

Will Greenwood
Pleasure.

These transcripts are AI-generated and may contain errors or inaccuracies and should not be relied upon.