New Matt is due a decent welcome

Interview: Keith Duggan on England scrumhalf Matt Dawson who, on theoccasion of his 50th cap, is more serene than the brash character of old.

With consummate timing and a showman's sense of occasion, Matt Dawson has chosen an encounter that has already been described as the biggest game in the history of home nation's rugby to join England's elite half-century club. The Birkenhead tearaway at 50; whoever would have thought? "Oh, can you not believe that, hmmh?" he teases when one of the many who have gathered around to hear the latest gospel according to Matt broaches the fact of this auspicious milestone.

It is hard to fathom, but time has ushered Matt Dawson towards the stuffy parishes of respectability, a place where in manner and pronouncement he suggested for much of his career had nothing to do with him. Wisdom has made him more serene and perhaps more conservative. Not that you would think it to look at him. Earlier this week Dawson strolled around England's sumptuous and hushed hotel looking like one of John Osbourne's angry young men. The scruffy hair, the attitude and the spectacular scar that snakes theatrically down the front of his nose (a memento from the Calcutta Cup) in wonderful disagreement with the fine ornamentation, the frowning vases and the velvet suites awaiting the posteriors of the midday tea-and-crumpets set. Even without the brooding stitching, England's scrumhalf would turn heads when he walked into the room. It is just his way.

Here is a guess: if you asked any Irish person to list the Englishman - of any period - they would most hate to score the winning try at Lansdowne tomorrow, Dawson's name would feature most regularly, along with Austin Healey, Will Carling and Brian Moore. He has that indefinable tendency to make opposing countries grind their teeth and foam at the mouth. People will say there is just something about him.

"A cheeky chappie," laughs Ireland prop Paul Wallace, who toured with Dawson on the 1997 Lions tour. "I didn't really have any impression of him before that time. I played against him at Northampton and for Ireland but never really knew him. Yeah, he was a chirpy character, confident and good fun to be around. Like myself, he would have been one of the younger guys on that tour, behind the old guard like Jerry Guscott and Iueun Evans. And I suppose he didn't talk quite as much then as he did later on in his career."

The Lions tours have epitomised the perceived best and worst of Matt Dawson. In 1997, he was ostensibly third string cover at scrumhalf. This was when watching Rob Howley play the position was the equivalent of seeing Hendrix play guitar.

When the Welshman inevitably got injured, the moral fabric of the squad almost got sucked into the vacuum. Out of nowhere, Dawson was thrown in, utterly unfazed as ever an understudy has been. His contribution to the first Test against South Africa has expanded into the realms of legend in the half-decade since. At a crucial stage of the game, he threw a one-handed feint with the ball that suckered the whole of Springbok rugby nation.

"I was just coming up from the scrum so as usual I missed the best of it," says Wallace. "But yeah, he threw a dummy that really was outrageous and that was it, he was gone."

The moment has been frozen in many fine photographs, Gary Teichmann and Andre Joubert desperately grabbing at air as Dawson dashes from a half crouch towards one of those passages of play that come to define entire eras . His grey eyes are bright with a kind of grave certainty as he runs clear. He could not have looked calmer had been out for a morning jog on the highveldt.

The same eyes he fixes on his many questioners now in the run-in to the last dance of a Six Nations series that has acquired the shroud of manifest destiny. Holding court around a heavy, round wooden table, Dawson is a statesman of Woodwardian England.

"I think I am a pretty determined person," he is saying. "Contrary to popular opinion, I am a cynic of myself. I will always admit my mistakes and I will learn from them. If I've ever done something wrong and people have told me, I have changed. It is when I haven't been told that I have faltered."

Words that, intentionally or not, rebound directly to the snowstorm of publicity his Daily Telegraph column generated during the 2001 Lions tour when he berated the team management at a delicate stage on the tour. Whatever his reasons, they shattered around him. Dawson apologised and the moment passed but as criticism from within a sporting regime, it was unprecedented in modern sport (if completely outdone by an Irish version a summer later).

"I was kind of surprised by it, even allowing for his character," remembers Wallace. "I suppose he had a few things on his mind and he just felt he had to say them aloud. And not too much was made of it but had it been earlier on in the tour, the repercussions could have been more severe and I think hindsight has shown him that he really shouldn't have done it."

Dawson, along with the career-controversialist Austin Healey, broke dearly-held, traditional conventions. Although he balanced his scribbled flourishes with some equally audacious signature notes around the scrum, the last Lions tour could have been a turning point for Dawson. Captain against Ireland for England's last Grand Slam attempt in Dublin in 2001, he cut a bedraggled figure limping off at the midway point as the white knights slumped. Chastened, some might have said.

Injury and indifferent form saw him drift out of the England coaches mind's eye, a dangerous happening given the preponderance of talent in that country and Woodward's sometimes capricious nature.

Adrift and in danger, he has fought his way back to the epicentre. Guidance has been the key, he says, warming to the theme. "I feel that I have been fortunate that certainly, lately anyhow, people have kept on top of me and told me what I need to do to progress as a rugby player and I think with the determination that I have, that has enabled me to bounce back."

And his word for describing how it makes him feel is surprising. "I think I have become a bit more humble. I do feel very similar now to the way I was when I was captain. That was very humbling, it made me feel a lot of respect for my players, for the players I played with. Maybe I went through stages when I lost that feeling and that's when I've tended to dip."

As he talks, Dawson looks people straight in the eye. Sometimes he is playful with questions, sometimes blunt and short. But he is honest and engaging. You listen and think that maybe the outside world has Matt Dawson all wrong. Separated from the pompous strains of Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, from the pristine white uniform, from the habit that his Northampton coach Wayne Smith described as "flapping his arms and talking to referees," Matt Dawson seems a likeable sort. A down-to-earth son of ordinary England with a vinegary sense of humour.

"He definitely would have been one of the English guys that socialised most with the Scots and Irish on tour," remembers Wallace.

"And we liked being around him because he was good fun."

Equally, when Dawson speaks of the Irish lads he met on the last Lions outing, it is with evident warmth and admiration.

"I don't think the guys would . . vocalise it but you could see what they were about. In that environment of international players, they just oozed quality and had something you would look up to. And I think within the Irish environment, their influence must be very powerful. Like Drico (Brian O'Driscoll), he doesn't have to come out and talk a good game, he is just someone everyone can look up to. It's something other players see - and aspire to.

"It's a bit like Jonny (Wilkinson) and us. Even though he is only a young boy, a lot of senior players look at him and see something that makes them realise, 'oh, I am not quite there, not quite at that standard.' And they want to do better."

The truth is that sometimes, Matt Dawson feels like an old fogey. To think they called him cocky and rebellious, a young know-it-all. Bloody hell, that was just good old-fashioned front. He looks at the new wave of international rugby generation in quiet awe because they appear not to need any bluff.

"I am amazed by what little help they need," he says quietly. "And I'm not talking about Drico of Johnny here. But guys like Geordan Murphy. He looks like he has been playing international rugby for years and years. And within the England set-up, Steve Thompson for example. I mention him only because he is at my club Northampton. No nerves whatsoever. And that's not arrogance or anything, it's just a matter of doing their homework and knowing what it's about."

He sighs and you half expect them to shake his head and mutter, "kids these days." Fifty caps in and Matt Dawson is as sharp as he has ever been. Paul Wallace reckons that Joost van der Westhuizen alone has been more adept at exploiting the magic windows of space that appear for an instant around the scrums and rucks. Dawson has a quick mind and delights in the something-from-nothing flashbulbs of chance that turn games.

"Sixty, 70 rucks a game," warns Wallace, " and you have to watch him. He sees the space before he even arrives for the ball. Leave him just once, and he is gone." But he is right here. These days, Matt Dawson doesn't talk so much. It is almost in a tone of regret that he predicts that he won't be engaging Peter Stringer in any high-risk banter tomorrow. Instead, he just offers and insightful analysis of his opponent's game.

"If Peter is thinking anything like me, we will both have more to do than worry about talking to each other," he sighs.

He still rails against things. He notes, with some justification, that England have never been good at talking themselves up. Never just come clean and said: we are the best.

And yet the rest of us looking on think we can see a vapour trail of conceit in their wake. Perhaps the same coloured view applies when it comes to Matt Dawson. Tomorrow, on rugby's oldest ground, Dawson will sing God Save the Queen for the 50th time. The partisan in us will see the irrepressible, infuriating joker ready to dance sprightly on our dreams. Those who know him will see an irrepressible 30-year-old, still the sharpest blade in a cut-throat business.

If tradition applies, he will take the field first in honour of his achievement, the cheeky piper leading the army. Lansdowne Road could well be damp and overcast tomorrow but it will still be hotter than the equator. Imagine what the sight of England's impish number nine running out in splendid isolation would do the place. Dawson smiles.

"Look, I've a million and three things to thing about. The 50 caps, it's not important, not right now."

But he is pressed. Surely such a moment could not pass without a statement. What about the silver boots? What about those? What about wearing those running out? "Look . . ." He smiles and throws his eyes to heaven indulgently and opens his mouth and shakes his head again. But there is no quick-fire response. Matt Dawson is happily and completely lost for words.