Mike Catt is finally hanging up his boots after a truly remarkable career which has seen him at the top of English rugby union for nearly 20 years.  Catt was the last man to touch the ball in the 2003 World Cup |
It is a fine achievement for the badly-dressed young man I first encountered at Bath back in the early 1990s and who went on to become a fine team-mate on and off the pitch. His career had its highs and lows, but despite being booed by England fans in the early stages of his international career and then trampled on by Jonah Lomu at the 1995 World Cup, the lows are comfortably outnumbered by the highs. The highlight of his career was probably the 2003 World Cup final - he was the last man to get hold of the ball on that dramatic night in Sydney when he rifled it to touch as England became world champions. In total, he won 75 England caps and one Lions cap, played in two World Cup finals, featured in four World Cups in all and also won the European Cup with Bath… it has been a glittering career. Catty is the epitome of the attacking rugby player. Every time he gets the ball he wants to do something with it. It would never occur to him to be negative - he always wants to attack. He would be thinking 'if I can't run, who can I put through a gap?' We all took the mickey out of him when he arrived at Bath because he turned up in clothes that weren't, shall we say, particularly fashionable - they might have been in Port Elizabeth back in South Africa but he was about 20 or 30 years behind the times.  | 606: DEBATE |
He took a bit of ribbing for it but he quickly showed he could play and that's all that matters - I think he only played two games for the second team and then he was in the first team. I was injured and he started by taking my position at outside centre. I was sitting up in the stands thinking 'I'd better get back to full fitness quickly, or else I'm going to struggle to get my place back', but I came back, he moved to fly-half and it all worked out nicely. During my career at Bath, I played with some really good players, such as Stuart Barnes, who was a great fly-half and stood flat and attacked the gain-line. Barnes made it difficult for the defence because he took it to them and Catt was exactly the same. Catty used to fire out lovely wide passes. Defences would watch the ball and while they were doing that I would pick a line where there was space and frequently break through the defence. It was a nice partnership and very intuitive. If he made a break I would have read it before it happened so I could be there to receive a pass - we had a great understanding and it worked very well. Wherever he played club rugby, the fans loved him. He was a good guy on and off the field - he was always a good socialiser. | He is a great man who had a great career and I'm sure that he will become as good a coach as he was a player |
For England, he eventually settled at inside centre but he had some ups and downs in the early days, and no one who played with him could work out why, because he didn't do that much wrong. If a mistake did happen it was always made in the best interests of the team - he wasn't an individual, he was very much a team player. I remember in one of his first England internationals he came on for the injured Paul Hull, who was being raved about, at full-back against Canada at Twickenham. Catty came in and scored two tries and had a magnificent game - from there on in Hully didn't get a look in. I think when Catty was a fly-half and kicked for England he wasn't as successful as say Rob Andrew or Jonathan Webb had been, or Jonny Wilkinson was to be subsequently, and that irritated the crowd, which was a bit unfair. He would also sometimes throw those wide passes which got intercepted, but again I think it is slightly unfair that his spell at fly-half for England wasn't seen as his best by the supporters. Catty was very instinctive as a player and instinct always comes before tactics or strategy, because you play off the cuff. He never relied on strategy or tactics but as he got older he understood more of that side of things. When he moved to inside centre he had more time on the ball and he saw things before they happened, which is what all good players do.  Catt is very good at getting his point across to his team-mates |
The quality he has, which he has already proved while he has been player-coach at Irish, is that the players listen to him. He can get across how he wants a side to play and what he wants players to do, and I think he's learned that from the best, such as Brian Ashton and Sir Ian McGeechan. I think he's taken the best of those coaches, allied to what he's picked up from the players he's played alongside, and figured out how he can best package it and deliver it to players. I always think it's harder for an instinctive player to coach because it's difficult to put into words how you played, but he's managed to cross that bridge. You can see that with what he did with London Irish fly-half Ryan Lamb at the beginning of the season, because it transformed Lamb as a player. Catty had many stand-out moments in his career but one of the most famous was when Lomu ran straight over the top of him in the 1995 World Cup semi-final against New Zealand. To be fair to Catty, he would have had more of a chance of stopping him if Will Carling hadn't tap-tackled Lomu, because he was on his way over and his forward momentum was even greater than it would have been - and Lomu at full pelt had plenty of momentum as it was. In some bizarre way poor old Catty actually kept him on his feet. He will say he had him lined up but I think he was looking for a bit of help; funnily enough there wasn't anybody with their hand up, I know mine wasn't.  Catt was trampled by Lomu but played in two World Cup finals |
Lomu was awesome in that match and the only downside, as Mike was always keen to point out, was that Rory and Tony Underwood did that famous TV commercial with Lomu afterwards and he was nowhere to be seen! When you look back at that incident it is incredible that one of the players involved never ended up with a World Cup winner's medal, while the other went on to play in two finals, winning one, and feature in four World Cups in total - it's a great achievement. Catty was a very fit young man and he's managed to maintain that fitness right up to the end of his career. I think he did mini-triathlons as a teenager and that foundation of fitness has never left him, with England and Lions squads he was always up there with Neil Back, if not fitter. He's done incredibly well to stay so fit and last so long but he himself says he loved the game so much he wanted to play as long as he could, and in the end he has played first-class rugby for close to 20 years, which is remarkable. He is a great man who has had a great career and I'm sure that he will become as good a coach as he was a player. Jerry was talking to BBC Sport's James Standley.
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