The 85th cap he earned last week in Perth was a long time coming for Danny Care.
His 84th had been in a try-scoring performance in a 35-15 win over Japan at Twickenham in 2018, and few watching could have imagined the livewire No.9, so often a key player for Eddie Jones, would then fail to get picked for almost four years.
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Ahead of Japan, first-choice Ben Youngs had been given a week’s fitness training to get match sharp, with Richard Wigglesworth coming in, leaving Danny to start.
“I scored a try in the first couple of minutes, then tweaked my hammy, but I was like, ‘there’s no way I’m going off’,” he said in an interview with the Rugby Journal last year. “I’d not started for ages, so I was playing on.
“Hindsight is a wonderful, wonderful thing. I do often sit at home and wonder if I’d have gone off then, would I have played a lot more times for England? I don’t know.
“I played on, didn’t have the greatest game, made a couple of mistakes,” he continued. “But it is a tough ask against teams like Japan, when you’re expected to beat them by 50, which never happens, it’s their World Cup final. We made a load of changes, we ended up winning by 20 points.
“Wiggy had come on for the last 20. I remember we got a couple of days off and they sent us home. I went home and got a voicemail after I put one of my kids to bed, saying, ‘we don’t need you this week, didn’t think you were sharp enough’.”
He then fell from favour, a fall that cost him a Rugby World Cup, and it’s taken until this year for him to be considered ‘sharp enough’ to get back in.
Those who have watched him orchestrate the thrill-seeking Harlequins to the English club championship last season undoubtedly believe his recall is long overdue.
But the absence of Eddie’s long-term, first-choice scrum-half Ben Youngs, and Care’s consistent form, finally forced the England coach’s hand.
As Jones explained before the series started. “After a game recently I texted him to say ‘well played’ as I thought he played really well.
“He came back and said he’d love to catch up. We had a coffee and he was very adamant on how keen he was to play for England. Then you get a bit more interested. We have been watching him carefully and felt he deserved another opportunity.”
Care had never given up on adding to his caps, not completely, as he said months before his recall. “I still send him the odd text saying, ‘I’ve still got it, if you need me …’”
In 35-year-old Care, England have a true footballer, who can change a game with a moment. And it’s a role he almost, in the English sense of the word, took up full-time, having started out initially on the round ball path to professionalism
“Yeah, me and [England striker] Jamie Vardy played in the same team for three years,” said Care.
“I signed for Sheffield Wednesday when I was about 12, and we played on either wing, or up top – I was top goal-scorer though.
“I always remember starting against Liverpool [the side he supports] and I scored in the first minute, it was one of my greatest-ever football moments.
“But I’ll always remember this new academy manager coming in and taking one look at our team and saying we were ‘too small, not going to make it’. He said that openly to us.
“At the end of the year, I was about 15, and we played Man U at home and lost 2-0 and I didn’t get on at all. I remember saying to my dad, ‘I just want to play football’.”
He had Rugby trials with Leeds and brought the same approach to the game. “I’d come from football and I remember going to this session and it was very much, ‘this is what we need you to do’ but I was a footballer and just thought, ‘give me the ball and I’ll do whatever’.”
The Leeds academy coach, the future England coach – now with Leinster – Stuart Lancaster wasn’t impressed. “I got a letter from Stuart, and I think my dad still has it, but it says you’re not at the level to even train with this lot.
“I remember looking at it and thinking, ‘this lot? Are you serious? There’s some lads here that can hardly run.’”
Winning England honours at age-grade level, he eventually won over Lancaster.
“I think maybe I wasn’t that bothered, which probably showed,” he says of his first trial. “I wasn’t arrogant, but I knew I could do it, I just wasn’t doing it the way a Rugby player should do it, I was probably a bit loose. They didn’t like that, they wanted me to be more technical, and I needed to toe the line a bit more.
“To be fair, Stuart got hold of me a little bit and hopefully saw a bit of potential,” said Danny. “Every report though, it was always about my attitude. ‘I don’t think you’ve got the drive’, he used to say. ‘I don’t think you’re as good as Dave Doherty – he’s going to be world-class’.”
He broke through to the first team, while in his teens. “I got called in to play 10 in a European Shield game away to Valladolid,” he said. “I’d played fly-half at school, I definitely wasn’t ready for first-team fly-half, but I backed myself.”
With Leeds having beaten the Spanish side 121-0 in the first leg the week before, they were able to take a risk on a 17-year-old Care.
“Within 20 minutes, I’d scored a really cool try, kicked a couple of goals and broken my leg,” he says. “I’d had two guys hit me from either side, and my foot got turned all the way back.
“They did a huge after-dinner function in town, a load of wine, load of food, and I’d been to hospital and been brought back to the event. I was in so much pain, my leg in a cast, and everyone was dancing around.”
Despite the presence of stars such as Marshall, Leeds were relegated and as one of England’s brightest scrum-half prospects, Care had plenty of suitors, including another future England coach, at Saracens.
“I went to Northampton, then Saracens where I met Eddie Jones and Alan Gaffney. They took me for lunch and I was pretty sold. Especially when they told me how much the money was [$200,000 – he’d been on $25k at Leeds], I was like, ‘wow, okay’, I remember me and my agent walking out and saying ‘yeah, this is the one’.
“Then I went to see Quins, but I basically said to Eddie, ‘I’m pretty sure I know where I want to go’.
“But then I met Dean [Richards] and Andy Friend, we didn’t go out for lunch, but we talked about me and my family, what they liked about how I played, what this team needed, and that they thought I’d make England in the next few years . . .”
Richards and Friend did enough to convince him, and he moved to Quins in 2006, the club he’s played for ever since, winning two English titles in the process.
But, as we know, Jones would re-enter his Rugby life and despite Care having rejected him, he held no grudge and made him and Youngs his two number nines, alternating, and picking according to the situation.
“Normally if you sit on the bench for three weeks, that’s it, but he wasn’t afraid to make a big call.”
Against France in the Grand Slam winning Six Nations campaign of 2016, he made that big call, picking Care. “He said, ‘there’s going to be some gaps for you and I want you to explore their lazy defenders.’
“Lo and behold, 12 minutes in, there was a little lazy defender, out on my periphery and I go through, handing off, and run 15 metres untouched in the Stade de France with a big dive to score the opening try.
“Eddie gave me that great moment. I’d like to think I’d have seen it, but that’s why he’s such a good coach, he just puts something in your head that might happen and then you kind of go for it. And that was my greatest moment in an England shirt without doubt.”
At the time of the interview, Care thought that moment would forever be his greatest with England, but now he has a chance to create new ones.
Perform here in Australia, and what seemed impossible, an appearance at the Rugby World Cup in France, could be on the cards.
He may have suffered defeat last week, but if anyone is ready to step up to the big occasion it’s Care, and, ironically, England now need him more than ever.
