I have been told that, potentially, I am a good player. I have been playing in age groups above myself. So now I am sitting in the Mitsubishi Jeep, waiting for Bilks to come back from the clubhouse, where the selectors are announcing who’s made it into the squad.
I don’t like trials. You’ve got no lineout calls, no backs moves, you don’t even know the name of the guy you’re playing with. It’s a lottery whether you are behind a good pack or not, and your teammates are a bunch of guys who just want to show themselves up in a good light. In reality, for the purpose of identifying quality players, they are a pretty terrible idea.
But I am still not prepared for it when Bilks gets in the car, grabs the steering wheel and says sorry, you didn’t make it, they didn’t read your name out. That hurts. It hurts like hell.
But I get a second chance. Farnham is on the Surrey–Hampshire border, so I can trial for Hampshire, too. Bilks takes Andy Holloway and me. This time we both get in, me at number ten and Andy at scrum half, and we forget our complaints about trials. You don’t have the whiney stories when you’re on the right end of the roll call.
Andy and I seem to progress well together. The following year, we go from Hampshire Under-16s into the London South East Divisional team. Then we both get picked for the Under-16 England side and travel to games against Wales and Portugal, but they pick a guy called James Lofthouse at number ten. Andy and I sit on the bench throughout both games and leave with two perfectly clean sets of kit.
The selectors tell me I’m not demonstrative enough, too shy, too quiet. James Lofthouse seems like a nice enough guy, and it is pretty obvious that he’s stronger in the areas where they think I could improve. I can’t say the selectors are wrong with their advice to me, but in my head, I am still convinced that I am capable of playing rugby at that level.
During a Hampshire Under-16s game against Sussex, I make a tackle I’ll never forget. I line up the ball-carrier, but he steps slightly and my head gets caught on the wrong side, between my shoulder and the man. It hurts. Down my arm shoots a strange pins-and-needles sensation, heavy, burning, white hot. I don’t think I can possibly play on, but then the feeling passes and I’m OK. I carry on.
This is a stinger. My first. It comes, I am informed, from a compression of the nerves between the vertebrae as they branch out from the spinal column. The problem is that once you have had one, you have opened the door to more. And the more the door swings open, the easier they come. So I start seeing a physio at Aldershot Town football club and he does good things with my neck. The point is I want to keep playing and this guy is helping me get out on the pitch.
What I need is a run of three or four games without a stinger, because that helps me reset, shut the door – but get another unfortunate hit and the door is open again. Bang, bang, bang, I get another load in a row. One morning after a game, I wake up and I can’t move my head in any direction. This is scary. There’s no way I’m going to school today. Instead, I’m straight to the doctors for a neck brace. The nerve in my neck is trapped that badly.
Still, I hardly miss any games. But I have established a pattern; I might get one stinger followed by about three or four others, and then a break for three or four months without any.
It has developed into a bit of a chronic problem. This becomes pretty clear when the cricket season comes round. I am coming in to bowl and there it is again, that hot, burning sensation down my arm.
One of the unspoken rules in rugby is not to blame the kicker. When I miss six out of seven, though, our coach ignores the rule – as if I don’t feel the hurt enough already. But I am also being propelled towards one of the most significant moments in my entire career.
The game is London South East Under-18s against Midlands, I am a year younger than the rest of my team and I have one of my worst kicking days ever. I don’t miss the uprights by much, but I don’t really quite know where any kick is going to go. And, as it turns out, any one of the six missed kicks would have been the difference between victory and defeat.
Naturally, I feel horrible. I know it is my responsibility and, later, when I go into the team meeting, I am pretty sure that everyone else is thinking the same – that I’ve let them all down, and it’s my fault.
As it happens, this is how the coach sees it, too. He says we played well in parts, we’d have won with better kicking, and assures the team that we won’t ever have a day like that with a kicker again. I don’t know where to look and settle for staring at the floor.
But I also have a solution – be obsessive about making sure this doesn’t happen again. In other words, go out and kick some more balls. So the next morning, I’m out there kicking, trying to drive the memories of yesterday from my mind. It’s not that I enjoy the business of kicking well; it’s that I detest the imperfection of kicking badly. I can’t get out there quickly enough to erase yesterday’s memories and ensure they are not repeated.
And I can stay out there for two or three hours if required. This is my response. Flick the Tunnel Vision switch and carry on with barely another thought in my mind.
A few weeks later, Bilks and I are driving to Bristol to meet a guy called Dave Alred. This has been arranged by Steve Bates, a chemistry teacher at school who is also the rugby master. Steve plays for Wasps with Rob Andrew and Rob works with Dave. He has arrived at Lord Wandsworth College, the school I now attend, at a good time. I’m at the stage when career advisers try to work out what you might do one day for a living. All I can say is I want to play rugby. They say that’s not really a career. Steve has given me hope that it might be.
Sending me up to see Dave Alred might help, he suggests, but I feel slightly ambivalent about it. Alred is a kicking coach, but I reckon I’m about a seven or eight out of ten kicker who has the occasional bad day, and I’m not quite sure what he can tell me about kicking a ball that I don’t already know.
I’ve been to a kicking clinic before, last year with the England Under-16s. All that happened that day was that we were asked who wanted to be kickers, a bunch of us, including props and number tens alike, put up our hands, and then we all did lots of kicking together. The height of the technical advice handed down was after one of my teammates asked should he be looking at the posts or the ball when kicking for goal.
As our car pulls into the Bristol University sports ground, what I don’t realise is that the guy I am about to meet is not only a kicking coach, he is by far the best in the world.
He is immaculately turned out in adidas gear – just three stripes from the top of his shoulders down to the underside of his feet. He seems to be about forty years old, but I later discover he is a wee bit more than that. We say hello and chat for a bit but he is quite keen to get down to business and I like that.
I assume we are going to kick some balls around, but he takes me straight to a flip pad and starts drawing. The diagrams are a demonstration of kicking through the ball, not across it, about the line of the kick, your body position and the feedback you feel through your feet.
I didn’t expect all this scientific stuff. This is new. Coaches tend to tell you what they want you to do, and here was a guy telling me how to do it.
But the bomb is yet to drop. He doesn’t stop at telling me how; he then goes and does it himself. Fifty metres farther down the touchline, there are two cones, five metres apart. He says I want you to be able to pick your spot between those cones. He then hits a perfect spiral kick. As soon as it leaves his foot, it’s going straight between the cones, doesn’t even deviate from its line.
This is the wow moment – the one that lets someone know for sure that he has your attention. And now Dave has all of mine. My mouth drops open. Did that really happen?
When I try, of course I fail, hitting neither a spiral nor the cones. Dave goes again. Same perfect outcome, followed by a trademark smartarse comment – so the money’s mine, then.
So astonishing is Dave’s ability that I am slightly distracted. The noise when he kicks his ball is differe
nt from when I kick mine. The flightpath is different. The success of his kicks is inevitable. The difference is so gaping he must, I conclude, be kicking a different ball from the one I’m kicking. But I am wrong.
I thought I was a seven out of ten kicker. Suddenly, the scale has gone up to 100. I am stuck on seven and here is a guy in the high nineties.
At the end, Dave gives me a video of our kicking session and goes over the lesson in précis form. Imagine the path you are sending the ball down, visualise the feel of the ball, the contact, the successful outcome. This is the crucial message: you can control the ball and where it is going, and this is how.
This is eureka!
I have a hell of a lot of work to do, but my eyes have been opened. At the end of a long tunnel, there is a light and I am determined to reach it.
When we left Dave, I had an extraordinarily positive feeling. What sweetened the deal even more was that I also had a new pair of adidas Predator boots. As if he needed to do any more to impress me, back at his house afterwards, we saw, stacked up in his toilet, boxes upon boxes of Predators. Oh my God! I like those boots. And Dave just nonchalantly asked me what shoe size I am and handed me a pair. I like Dave, too.
But now it’s down to work. Sparks and I have always kicked together. At the bottom of our road is a park where we take the dogs for walks and you are likely either to turn your ankle or step in something one of the dogs has left behind. We call this ‘Ankle Turn City’ and we can kill an easy ninety minutes here, standing forty to fifty yards apart, kicking an Australian Rules football back and forth, with the dogs looking at us, wondering when they can go home.
That is just part of life. Now I’ve met Dave, though, my approach has changed. I’ve seen something I want, something I need to master.
On most days, now, with time running out until the start of the school term, I get up early and around seven o’clock head off to Farnham rugby club. I get myself some breakfast, then I make some more toast, smear it in Marmite and wrap it in foil and put that in my bag together with a drink and an apple to take with me. I go on my mountain bike with a rucksack of four rugby balls on my back.
That is the routine. Normally, I’ll do an hour and a half’s kicking, but I’ll stay there until I’m satisfied. I want to be the best, so this is what I have to do, and now Dave has shown me that it’s possible, that’s the deal, no excuses. Getting my kicking right gives me satisfaction, but now it has become a necessity. I can’t move on with my day, or with my mind at peace, until it is right.
My problem is that I haven’t completely and correctly understood what Dave has taught me. Down at Farnham rugby club, though, I don’t know this. I kick my four balls and then I go to the other end of the pitch and kick them back. These sessions are almost entirely punting, back and forth, back and forth, and I can’t bear it because my kicks aren’t flying remotely the way Dave’s were.
One day my attempt to emulate Dave is so poor that I am in bits. Exasperated. This is so important. I kick four balls, get angry with myself, run after them, pick them up and kick them back. Then I get angrier and angrier and angrier. This is not how I want it to go. And I don’t know why it is going this way. I become more and more frantic and my kicking reflects this. I start shouting out loud, turning the air blue with my frustration.
But my obsessive switch has been flicked and I’m not going to stop. I can overcome problems like these, I know I can. Other people might decide to stop, do something else to take their minds off it, but I can’t take my mind off it. I can work hard on this. It’s not insurmountable. I can change it.
A black Suzuki soft-top turns into the club car park. It’s Mum. She looks a bit ticked off. She says to come home, she’s been worried sick. Where the hell have I been all day? Do I know what time it is?
No.
It’s 11.50, she tells me. I didn’t realise it, but I have been kicking for almost five hours non-stop.
Mum says to come home for lunch. I tell her I can’t; I need a few more kicks. But that doesn’t go down too well. So we go home for lunch. The kicking is on my mind, weighing me down.
You don’t need to go back again, Mum says. That’s enough for one day.
I tell her I have to. I have to go back. Then I start getting self-destructive. I tell her I’m finished, you should see the way I’m kicking, it’s rubbish, I can’t go on like this, I’m not going to succeed.
Mum tries the sensible approach. You’ve got plenty of time, she says. You’ve got next week. Tomorrow you can go and do some in the morning. And I’m saying I have to go now, I have to go now.
So we settle on a compromise. I leave it until early evening, around seven, pack up my four balls and cycle back to the rugby club. I kick for another hour and a half. And it’s a little bit better. Just enough for me to sleep that night.
What frustrates me is that I know it’s my fault. I’m putting in all these hours of practice and effort – and I don’t mind that at all – but it’s not working. Must be my fault.
In the evenings, I watch the video Dave made. He filmed me kicking and then he filmed himself kicking. I watch this over and over. I don’t get what it is I’m doing wrong.
It just makes sense to me to work harder. I drop into my obsessive zone. I know that with hard work I can prevail. This gives me strength. This is my advantage. But this time, it’s just not working.
I kick with Sparks. I kick with Bilks. I kick with them for hours, screaming, genuinely crying. They don’t know what to say to me because almost anything they do say touches a nerve. Their patience is huge. I can’t get it! I shout at myself. It’s not right!
Sparks’s role almost becomes time-keeper. Listen, mate, he says, Mum says we should go home for dinner.
I’ll just do a little bit more, I interrupt him. Look, you go. I’ll be along soon.
I start phoning Dave and he listens but I can’t crack it. So eventually, with Sparks and Bilks, I go back up to Bristol to see him. I kick one ball and he sees the problem.
Hold on a sec, he says, you need to be doing this.
Oh, you mean not like this?
No, no. Like this.
Oh my God. I want to tell him what I have just been through, but I’m more interested in soaking up his information and getting it right.
What I have totally misconstrued is the part of the foot I should be kicking with. I’ve been using the inner part, and following through straight, like Dave. What I should have been using to strike the ball is the top of my foot as a flat surface. Suddenly, it all starts to make sense.
Thus Dave does it again. He doesn’t tell me what to do, he tells me how to do it. And then he shows me by doing it himself. And then he gives me the key points, the essential set of focuses to remember so I can go away and get it right.
Sparks and I stand down one end of the field while Dave kicks to us and we find ourselves laughing with admiration at the ridiculous height and perfection with which he strikes almost every ball. As I watch him, I feel this enormous respect and confidence in him. It’s already clear to me that this is a truly special guy, and if I’m really serious about wanting to succeed, I need to learn from him everything I possibly can.
Back at school, the volume doesn’t go down. Not at all.
Every day, we have forty minutes for lunch and then Activity Hour. You are permitted to use just one Activity Hour a week for sport. But I have a mate, Duncan White, an inside centre with a deceptively slow turn of pace, and we go out kicking every single Activity Hour of every single day. In fact, we keep lunch to the minimum and make it an activity hour and a half.
You are also not supposed to be out kicking rugby balls during your free periods – you are supposed to be inside studying. But my studying tends to take place out on the rugby field behind the trees by Sutton House. You have to be careful not to be seen, so you have to control your kicks so they keep beneath the height of the trees. On Thursday afternoons, when I have a free period, Bilks takes time off work, comes down to Su
tton House and shares the studying with me, always keeping balls down low, beneath the top of the trees.
It has become a major privilege to see Dave, and I’m beginning to get my head round who he is. As well as coaching many rugby kickers and being a fan of the Naked Gun films, Monty Python and Tommy Cooper, he has coached in Aussie Rules, and he used to be a kicker in the NFL for the Minnesota Vikings. Besides that, he was a top-flight player in rugby union and league. Quite handy credentials, those – all of them.
The third time up to Bristol, Bilks comes with me again, so that he can understand and help me more, and when we arrive, Dave is kicking with a player I recognise, Mike Catt. Catt has just taken over kicking duties for England, and I am astounded by how approachable he is.
Dave works mainly with Mike, and I am down the other end. But when we get together, we chat and Mike and I both marvel at how amazing Dave is at kicking the ball. I kind of marvel at Catty, too. He has a great way of making you feel at ease, and by the time we leave, it is as if he and I are mates.
I also have another new pair of Predators tucked under my arm, and Bilks has tucked away some of the Dave coaching manual. Now, when we kick behind the trees at Sutton House, a perfect reverse spiral is known as an ‘Alred’. Occasionally, Bilks isn’t afraid to put in a pretty decent Alred, too.
After a year spent playing for the England Under-18A team, 1997 is my opportunity to force my way into the Under-18 first team. I badly want to be in this team, not least because I know there are some impressive guys around – Mike Tindall, whom I have just faced in an epic Daily Mail Cup semi-final schoolboy match; Iain Balshaw, a really pacy full-back; two imposing locks, Steve Borthwick and Andy Sheridan; some impressive front-row contenders, including Lee Mears and David Flatman; a back who can play anywhere, Simon Amor; Alex Sanderson, who loves contact sessions; and two guys who will one day be my clubmates, centre Tom May and scrum half James Grindal.
Jonny: My Autobiography Page 4