Jonny: My Autobiography

by Wilkinson, Jonny

  It doesn’t end there. We are constantly on at each other in open play, in rucks and even during breaks in play. After the game, we go through their tunnel and everyone says well played, as you always do. But I seem to be the exception. Their players just carry on abusing me, calling me an idiot and far worse. It is quite an achievement to have made an impact like that in eighty minutes. I deserve it, but it shocks me.

  A few weeks later, we have London Scottish again, back at Kingston Park, and I still haven’t learned. We are in the process of scoring a try and, away from the action, one of their second-rowers is in a wrestling, slanging tussle with Rob Andrew. Arrogant, confused, but trying to be clever, I charge in to break it up.

  Listen, I say to their big number four, and point to the uprights. You go over there now, my friend, and stand under those posts while I kick this ball over.

  Then I see that we’ve scored in the left corner, and so I line up the conversion thinking I’ve just made this kick even harder now. I’ve really set myself up for a big fall. If I don’t get this, I’m opening myself up to a whole load of abuse.

  I don’t strike it brilliantly but the sight of the ball going through the posts triggers intense relief. Yet I am making life needlessly tough for myself. I don’t need it. If only I could control it.

  The good news is that I have passed my driving test at the first attempt, which will help me get around, and means my entire wage does not go to the local taxi firm. The bad news is that I am not the best behind the wheel.

  Now I need a car, particularly since I have become a proud house owner, so no lifts to training, and what I save on taxis has to go on my mortgage.

  The area in which I live does not have a brilliant reputation. I guess I should have twigged when some enthusiastic kids knocked on my door asking to borrow some golf ‘bats’. Slightly bemused, I lent them a couple of my clubs, although this is a built-up area, and there aren’t exactly many golf courses around. I can’t really be sure what the clubs were used for. Suffice it to say, I never saw them again.

  And just up the road, there was an armed siege on a house. The neighbours were told to stay away from their connecting wall because there was a chance that bullets might be flying through from the other side.

  But I feel good round here, a sense that is massively enhanced when Sparks moves in with me after getting a job as a conditioning coach with the club. There are good people around, too. Jim and Sue, a truly lovely couple over the road, become like surrogate parents to me. But the real reason I have no worries is because of Blackie. With his reputation and all his local connections, he basically puts the word out that no one is to touch my house, no one is to go near it, because his mate is living inside. That is a seal of approval that gives you confidence.

  As for my suspect driving, it began when I was a learner in Farnham and managed to take out a concrete gatepost in our driveway. Up here, I have randomly crashed into the car of my teammate Ian Peel in my own driveway when it was parked next to me. That cost me some £350.

  My first car is a red Peugeot 206, and I have managed to drive it up on to the grass island in the middle of a roundabout. I’m not entirely sure how, but I stopped at a shop off the roundabout to get a drink, and then somehow managed to rejoin the roundabout by going the wrong way up the exit sliproad. Other cars were heading straight for me and I could see terror in the eyes of the drivers. So I swerved and finished up parked in the middle of the central island.

  The sight of my red Peugeot on the island was ridiculous – obviously – and as other drivers slowed down to see what the hell was going on, I decided to pretend there was something wrong with the car and started banging the steering wheel, to show that I was really angry and totally blameless. I then just ducked down and hid in the footwell for three or four minutes, occasionally peering up to see if there were any cars around, and when I finally saw that there weren’t, I slipped quietly back on to the road with a perfect execution of the trusty mirror, signal, manoeuvre technique.

  But now I’m wondering what to say to my teammate Jim Naylor, or whether to say anything at all. After a recent game at Kingston Park, driving away from the snowy car park, a notebook fell from my door compartment. It landed under my feet and I didn’t want it to go under the brake pedal. So I reached down to grab it, simultaneously veered a little and managed to ride my 206 up against another car.

  In the dark, I checked the other car up and down properly, and I couldn’t see any damage at all. I didn’t think mine was damaged either, although the cold light of the next day showed that I was clearly wrong.

  A week later, I’m back at the club, relaxing in the physio room. Someone comes in and asks have you had a bit of a prang in your car? The front wing is pretty dented.

  Er, yeah, I reply. It was after that game with the snow last week in the car park. I think someone drove into me and then just drove off. I can’t believe someone would do that.

  It just so happens that Jim is right next to me.

  I don’t believe it, he says. That’s exactly what happened to my blue Escort, on the same night.

  I don’t tell Jim. But I do sprint outside and vigorously scratch off the blue paint from my Peugeot’s front end.

  The season hasn’t been going long before Rob wants a word. It’s my defence, he says. You need to back off a bit, leave it more to your teammates, mainly the back-rowers.

  OK I reply. I’m not sure I’ll find that easy, but I realise it’s a good idea.

  It’s not just Rob who delivers this message. I’ve heard it before, anyway. It comes from the other coaches, too, and to be honest, I can see it kind of makes sense. If I’m able to back off a bit, I’ll be slightly fresher for other parts of my game. Almost everyone is of the same opinion. I speak to Blackie. He understands me. He knows that I am all or nothing and that tackling fuels the rest of my game.

  It’s not as if I wake up in the morning and think I’m going to go out and really try to smash people today. Not at all. I want to change the course of the game for my team. If I am able to damage the other team’s game plan, dent their confidence by getting in a good hit and make them think twice about coming back next time, I won’t hold back.

  But it’s not just that. It’s also something I feel on the field of play. That ultra competitive switch in me gets flicked when a ball-carrier looks at me as if to say I’m going to run straight over you. I feel kind of belittled by that. I find myself thinking there’s simply no way I can cope with just tackling you to the ground now, that would almost be your victory, that almost means you win. No, I’m going to have to show you you’ve made a mistake.

  It’s just pure competitive instinct and desire to show what I’m capable of. It’s why I train the way I do; it’s what I live for.

  But trying to explain that to coaches when they’re talking from a purely tactical mindset doesn’t work. I can’t explain my natural desire. I can’t explain why I have only one way and no alternative.

  So what I say to Rob becomes a stock answer given each time we have this same conversation in all the years to come. OK, yeah, it’s a good idea I know. I’ll do my best.

  At home in Lemington, in the West of Newcastle, just before Christmas, I’m preparing dinner when there is a knock on the door, a pleasant gentleman in his sixties.

  How can I help?

  You’ve been notified for a drugs test, he tells me.

  This is like being subpoenaed; once you have been notified, that’s it. Refuse and it counts as a negative sample. This is my first home visit.

  The problem is I have only just been to the toilet. So I invite him in. I have almost finished making dinner and apologise that I didn’t make enough for him.

  We sit on the sofa together in my small lounge and watch The Simpsons in silence while I eat. Poor guy. It’s a little awkward, but I can’t deliver what he wants yet. The drug-tester seems easygoing, and patient. He is not allowed to let me out of his sight, which means that when I go to the kitchen to make
us a drink, he comes too.

  After two and a bit hours, I can finally deliver what he has come for. I go to the toilet and he joins me in my tiny bathroom. That’s part of his job. He has to watch; I am not allowed to shut the door. It feels more awkward than it did before.

  But he is just the first. This is the life.

  In the new year, I am recalled to the England squad for the Five Nations.

  It’s great to be called back, and this time I really feel I’ve earned it. But it means going back to the Petersham Hotel and that intimidating atmosphere, where I am so uninvolved in the day-to-day chat that I really don’t know what the squad think about me. Am I taking the place of someone else they feel should be there? A friend of theirs? Someone else who fits in more?

  Playing for England is, of course, a dream come true. It’s meeting up with the squad that I start to dread, like the back-to-school-blues. You spend Sunday at home relaxed and then Monday morning rolls around and you feel uncomfortable and are constantly in a state of panic.

  I don’t know how much of this is just me and my insecurity, but Clive isn’t having it. He can see I’m still not demonstrative, not saying enough in the meetings, not giving my opinion. I’m picked to play inside centre, and he makes it clear to me that if I’m ever going to play at ten, I need to be able to boss people such as Martin Johnson and Tim Rodber, tell them where I want them to go and what I want them to do and what they’re doing wrong, regardless of their status or position.

  In meetings, Clive starts pushing me towards the front even more than before. More questions come to me. He asks me to talk through some of our moves. I understand what he is doing and why, but at this point I don’t have it in me. In no way do I have the ability to give what he wants from me. I still feel there are guys in the room who don’t necessarily want me here.

  However, being first choice and starting for the team does give me an increased sense of belonging. I feel less like the guy who just won the competition. The night before our first game, against Scotland, I find a note that’s been slid under the door. It’s from Lawrence Dallaglio, our captain. He tells me about his early experiences of playing with England and what it meant to him, and that he is now proud to see me here doing the same thing.

  Thanks, Lawrence. What a difference that suddenly makes.

  We beat Scotland 24–21, a decent start to the Five Nations, even if we let them back in at the end, and I feel that I have done OK despite a couple of fairly simple defensive errors. I still have a lot to learn, obviously, but I think I show I am capable of getting around at that level.

  Next up is Ireland, my best day so far in a white shirt. For the first time in international rugby, I feel as though I’ve found my feet. I get the opportunity to show some skills, to engage in the decision-making, to push everything forward. I make a late break and come within inches of scoring. I feel I have actually imposed myself here. It feels great. It’s awesome playing alongside Paul Grayson. I learn a lot from him. And I am starting to enjoy playing with some of my other teammates.

  The old nervous anxiety is still throbbing away, though. That doesn’t change. There are times when it feels like hell, when I can’t sleep the night before the game, when I am thinking about it all the time, the game and nothing else. But I have to cope, I have to get through it. I still feel I’m at the bottom of the mountain, looking up and wondering what I can achieve.

  In the week before the France game, I split my ear so badly in training it rips slightly from the side of my head. This is a recurrence of an old injury and it means that I have to play with tape around my head. I hate that. I feel so self-conscious out there. But the game goes well, I kick seven penalties and we win 21–10. We are a good team and now we are going into a Grand Slam decider against Wales.

  And I am slowly finding people I relate to in the squad, younger guys such as Dan Luger, David Rees and Matt Perry. For the Wales game, Barrie-Jon Mather is in the team at centre. What an awesome bloke. And Steve Hanley is on the wing. He’s a great bloke, too. There’s a bit of a younger feel to the squad and I like it. At mealtimes I can normally find somewhere to sit. Occasionally, I can even manage a smile.

  We play the Wales game at Wembley and it’s one of the greatest surfaces I’ve ever played on. Absolutely beautiful.

  We play good, attacking rugby, but we cannot get much of a lead because we keep on coughing up the odd penalty and Neil Jenkins, the Welsh number ten, kicks everything from everywhere. What we will remember, though, is that towards the end, we have a penalty to stretch the lead, but Lawrence elects to kick for the corner and go for the try. We all agree with his decision.

  It would have been a perfect call if it had come off, but it doesn’t. We then concede a tough penalty from a massive Tim Rodber hit on Colin Charvis. This is deemed to be a shoulder charge and from the ensuing lineout, Scott Gibbs breaks our line, scores under the posts and leaves Jenkins with a simple conversion to finish us off. Wales take it by a single point.

  That’s that. Grand Slam lost. If there is any consolation to be had, it’s the sight of Blackie so happy with his team. But the pain is incredible. This is not a feeling I ever want to repeat.

  I might be an England player, but I still feel very much a junior among the big names at Newcastle. Nick Popplewell, a nice, funny, hard guy, who is coming to the end of a long, impressive career, and struggling badly with a heel injury, is exactly the sort of player I respect hugely and would like to think well of me.

  We are in the back bar at Kingston Park and the coaches are showing video clips from a game against Bedford. In one move, Rob had taken a pass coming from one side of the ruck to the other, and I spot that their defenders are all looking at him. I then run a line off Rob catching one of the defenders ball-watching and end up clean into space, step around the full-back and score.

  I am slightly embarrassed that this is being shown in front of everyone, but Popplewell saves my embarrassment with liberal use of the F-word.

  Fucking brilliant, he says, repeatedly. Screw tactics, screw all that. That is just fucking brilliant.

  And that makes me feel immensely proud.

  In the changing rooms at Kingston Park, the lights have been set up for me to do a photo-shoot for GQ Active magazine. I haven’t really done this kind of thing before. I thought it was going to be a simple interview and a photo, but they are saying they want me to take my shirt off for the picture.

  Opposite the changing rooms are the club offices. I feel embarrassed enough without all this going on in front of the office staff. But I don’t want to take my shirt off anyway.

  It’s for the cover shot, they say. They always do it this way.

  Yeah, but it’s just not me, I reply. It’s not what I do. Not what I want to do.

  They tell me that it’s what they always do and that the last cover shot was of Lennox Lewis. If the world heavyweight boxing champion can do it… The picture’s not going to have any impact if it’s just you standing there in a T-shirt. You’ll be fine.

  But I don’t feel fine about it at all. I feel embarrassed. I don’t want to take my shirt off. It’s not who I am or the image I want to portray. On the flip side, I hate the idea that I’m letting these people down. But I’m a private person. Surely they can understand that.

  I get on the phone to Tim Buttimore. What do I do? I don’t want to let them down, but I don’t want to do the picture, either. Tim speaks to the photographer. The photographer then tries to convince me not to worry. It’ll be fine, he says. It’ll look great. I later find out that Tim actually said no to the photographer. But that’s all too late.

  We end up with a compromise – shirt off, yes, but doing a press-up. The picture is taken from the front, so all you can see is my arms and a slight angled view of my chest.

  I feel bullied into doing this. I don’t like the way this world works. I feel I’ve betrayed my values and been played for a fool. If I can possibly help it, this will not happen again.

  Our d
omestic season ends back at Twickenham at the Tetley Bitter Cup final, which Newcastle lose to Wasps. The defeat is hard enough to take in itself, but when I meet up again with England for our summer tour to Australia, Clive wants to talk about it. I ran the ball too much, he says. I need to kick it more.

  This is on Clive’s mind because, he says, he is considering taking me to Australia not as a number twelve but as first choice number ten, which entails another level of pressure. I was just enjoying finding my feet at twelve, and now I am a ten. And Clive wants even more from me in meetings. He now wants me to start presenting meetings to the whole of the team.

  We fly out to Brisbane where we have a long training camp on Couran Cove. Couran Cove is a resort island, ideal as an athlete’s training facility and popular among sports teams. For me, though, being trapped here becomes sheer hell.

  All of a sudden, I’m right back to where I started with England. I don’t fit in, I find it impossible to relax, I hide in my room and I’m back to my old ways at mealtimes, dipping in and out of the dining room when I can’t see anywhere to sit, or sitting there at breakfast with nothing to talk about. I don’t feel wanted or that I have anyone to hang around with. Thank God for Tim Stimpson and Barrie-Jon Mather, who I almost cling to for company. We play endlessly on the table-tennis table or the baseball machine that pitches balls at you.

  But around most of the guys, I still don’t feel welcome. I do feel under constant pressure, constant scrutiny. I dread going to the meetings, where I am the number ten and I am supposed to take control.

  I hit a low point at training. We are doing a simple three-on-two drill to warm-up and Brian Ashton, the backs coach, says to the defenders: Don’t try to do too much. For the purpose of the drill, just go up and get drawn by the pass.