Mike

We’re sitting in The American Bar at The Stafford London hotel, one of his favourite retreats when he’s in the capital, and looking very relaxed. When I ask if he can remember the last time he got angry, he looks vaguely puzzled and then a bit embarrassed. “Well, around rugby, I’m pretty laid back. Nothing really bothers me. I don’t hold grudges, life’s too short. But the last time…” There’s a long pause. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever had a proper barney with anyone that’s lasted.” (In fact, there’s one exception that crops up later in our conversation. But even then, he’s so good-tempered about having been bad-tempered that it’s hard to believe he really meant it). He’s played rugby all his life, ever since his first memories of toddling around his parents’ garden in the West Yorkshire town of Otley when he was not much more than two, throwing a ball around with his older brother. His father was captain of the local rugby club. Then he followed the classic England player’s route of school games, and then county and eventually international schoolboy sides, until he left Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School in Wakefield at the age of 19. That was in 1996, just as rugby union was turning professional, and he went off to join Bath, then one of the most successful teams in the country. Four years later, he was playing for England against Ireland at Twickenham, and by the time of the 2003 World Cup, he had cemented his place in the side alongside Will Greenwood. “It was a partnership. You learn each other’s strengths and weaknesses, get a sense of what the other person’s going to do. Will’s a very clever player with a sharp rugby brain, so he’d size up a situation and know when he could make a difference. “When he did, I was normally buried at the bottom of a ruck, having done my job.” There’s a kernel of truth in that image of Greenwood as the magician and Tindall as the honest journeyman thundering into a pack of players, but it’s a typically modest assessment. He had his own very lively sense of what was going on across the pitch and where the weak spots in the opposition defence might be opening up. And, as George Gregan will tell you, he was a crashing and destructive tackler. He still remembers that hit on Gregan in the World Cup Final — although memories of the day are rather spoiled by the fact that he came off two minutes before the end of normal time with a hamstring injury. He had to watch the twenty minutes of extra time, which culminated in the Wilkinson dropped goal, from the substitutes’ bench. “I’d felt a twinge in my hamstring two minutes from the end. We were winning then by three points, and it wasn’t worth the chance of it giving out on me and missing a crucial tackle. It was the right choice — but then when they drew level and it went to extra time, I was desperate to be back on,” he recalls. “It was a great team, filled with the confidence that comes from winning. I’d played more than thirty games for England by then, and only lost four times. People called it arrogance, but it wasn’t — it was an inner belief in yourself and the other guys. You knew the guy next to you was going to do his job, and you could get on and do yours.” It was a few days before that Final that he first met Zara Phillips, Princess Anne’s daughter and the 20th in line to the throne — the woman who was to become Mrs Mike Tindall, and make him a most unlikely member of the Royal Family. “It was after I’d been dropped for the semi-final against France. Two other players had taken me out for a drink to cheer me up, and we bumped into her in a bar in Sydney. They’d met her before in a horseracing pub in England.” He adds, maybe rather ungallantly, that he wasn’t thinking about her when he won his place back for the Final a few days later — it was nearly a year later before they became an item. Their marriage in July 2011 transformed his life, although he determinedly plays that down. Certainly it hasn’t changed him, as his former international mates testify. “Well, I would hope it wouldn’t,” he scoffs, sounding rather shocked at the idea. “There are a lot more black-tie events, and I certainly never thought I’d have been going to meet the Queen, or experiencing things like the Diamond Jubilee and so on.” It’s clear that Zara’s prowess as an equestrian — she competed in the London Olympics in 2012, winning a silver medal — is much more important to him than her place in the line of succession. “It was a very good thing that we were both sports people, because from the start we understood the commitment that there has to be — we couldn’t go to loads of parties and so on, because we were grafting every day.” There is another side to sport than the hard graft, of course — though he laughs off the story that he just failed to beat the Australian cricketer David Boon’s record of drinking 52 cans of beer during the flight back from the 2003 World Cup. He quite enjoys the story, but insists, “We had a lot of beer, but nowhere near 52 cans!” Boon’s record is safe.