Lawrence Dallaglio: How ‘disruptor’ Sir Clive Woodward kicked the All Blacks out of their training base
Sir Clive Woodward with England team at Pennyhill Park and great number Lawrence Dallaglio.
Lawrence Dallaglio has revealed how New Zealand were “kicked” out of Pennyhill Park with England taking over the luxury five star hotel.
It has remained as the Red Rose training base, with the current squad using it as their centre of operations during the 2025 Six Nations Championship.
According to Dallaglio, it was the All Blacks who regularly used the venue when they stayed in England until Woodward became head coach and took action.
‘Kick them out’
“He (Woodward) was a disruptor,” the former England number eight told the Stick to Football podcast. “He came in and the first thing he did was say to the guy at the RFU: ‘Where do New Zealand train when they come to England?’ The chap went, ‘well I don’t really understand why that matters.’ Woodward said: ‘Well it does because they’re the best team in the world’.
“The guy said: ‘They stay in this place called the Pennyhill Park hotel’ and he responded: ‘Not anymore they don’t, kick them out.’
“The first thing he did was kick the All Blacks out of their hotel base and I thought, ‘I can work with this guy, I quite like him’.”
There is no doubt that Woodward was a visionary when in charge of England, introducing ideas which have now become commonplace in the sport.
“He took his coaches over to America and they went in the off-season to work with the Denver Broncos,” Dallaglio said.
“He came back and he said we needed a defence coach, a kicking coach and we needed to break down all these skills. He also came back and said he was underpaid as a coach!”
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England’s greatest triumph came back in 2003 when the Woodward-led team claimed the Rugby World Cup title for the first – and so far only – time in their history.
While they had a squad filled with greats of the game, including Dallaglio himself, the 52-year-old reckoned their success would not have been achieved without Woodward.
Taking that next step
“We would have never have won the World Cup without him, no doubt. England were very good at winning the Five Nations or Six Nations but Clive said: ‘Look, what do we want to achieve here? We want to win the World Cup.’
“If you look at the World Cup trophy, Scotland aren’t on there, Wales aren’t on there, France are not on there, Ireland aren’t and neither were England. It was New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.
“It’s great winning the Five Nations but what we really need to focus on is becoming the best team in the world, and that was in 1997 when he took over. It didn’t happen overnight, we were ranked about fourth or fifth.
“He was one of those rare players who played at the highest level for Leicester, England and the British and Irish Lions, but he didn’t play in good teams. I think he still had something he wanted to achieve in his life.”
