We actually played reasonably good tactics. What we could have done was tried a few different kicking options. I could have put the ball up higher, or pushed it just behind their defensive line, instead of kicking long all the time. We really went wide only when the more obvious options weren’t working. It wasn’t our first resort, it was more our last.
People are beginning to recognise me in public now. I’m not comfortable about that and take appropriate measures.
When Sparks is not on the touchline with Newcastle Falcons, he plays for a local club, Northern RFC, and when I go to watch him, it’s generally in the dubious disguise of a big coat with a hood pulled over. I park as far away as is reasonable, so I’m not arriving with any other cars, and I tend to stand by the corner flag, where no one else is likely to be since the view is terrible.
In fact, I’m probably more conspicuous because I look so ridiculous. But if people start walking over from one side, I’ll walk round the other way. It’s like being chased. If they get too close, I just walk away. If the cameras come out, I leave. It’s not a great use of energy, and I tend to miss half the game this way, but sometimes I take my avoidance measures even further.
If I go with Chris Machin, Pete Murphy or Ian Peel, I make sure one of them is behind the wheel and when we drive in, I lie down in the footwell in the back seats. These guys are getting very adept at spotting potentially uncomfortable public situations and, like me, they are working on skills that will be useful for years to come.
But I’m not completely governed by self-consciousness. At Newcastle, we have a hard-working, fun-loving, hilarious Kiwi scrum half, Harley Crane, who has been housed on his own and with no car. So he pretty much ends up lodging with Sparks and me. He introduces us to the sound of rapper Eazy E, and I discover how to make a home-made barbecue that will blow up in your face midway through cooking the peppers. He also introduces me to the hacky sack – a small, round footbag. We go to pick up Sparks from the airport one day and play keepie-uppie with the hacky sack around the busy arrivals hall while we are waiting for him. That is as extreme a display of public behaviour as you will ever see from me.
Spending time with Harley, a free spirit, I come out of myself a little. I see that I can relax a bit, and get some evidence that it is not so damaging to what people think of me when I do. This is a lesson I should take on board.
Dean Ryan, one of the toughest guys in rugby, is now in the opposition. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from him, especially about putting your hand up when the time comes to be counted. He served in the army while the sport was still amateur, and from the way he trained and spoke about the game, I always got the impression he valued more than most the privileged opportunity we have to play rugby for a living.
Now he is against us, which is not so good. He moved to Bristol as player-coach, and on the eve of our Bristol fixture, Rob Andrew tells us to get into Dean whenever we can, let him know how old he is, wind him up, tell him he’s past it.
I’m currently trying to curb my lip on the pitch, so I’m not too keen to get involved in this anyway. But to do this with Dean Ryan? You’d need a death wish.
Some of my teammates don’t seem so convinced. Tom May and Michael Stephenson put in a double tackle on him early in the game and then pile in with the verbal follow-up – you should’ve retired by now, Dean, you’re embarrassing yourself! Give up old man!
Dean looks straight at Stevo with a smile on his face. Old man, hey? Oh dear schoolboy, you have just made my day.
I catch Stevo’s eye. I’ve never seen the look on anyone’s face change so fast.
But I don’t manage to stay so completely out of it myself. Bristol have the ball and I read their move perfectly, Dean peeling round the corner on a ball off nine. I just charge in and hit him with all I’ve got, right back into the ruck. It feels like a pretty good shot, and I cannot resist the follow-up – oh mate, I’ve been waiting all day for that one.
But he gets straight back up with the same smile. Not quite, he says, nice try, but not quite.
I don’t really drink, but I can still play drinking games.
We’ve got a pool table at the house and, with Harley and Sparks, we have a new way to play pool. Every time you miss a ball, you have to take a drink. According to the number on the ball, that’s the number of fingers’ worth you have to drink. And we are talking water.
Then we introduce another rule. When you have downed your water, you have to do the equivalent number of sit-ups, too. This is not a clever game.
Occasionally, very occasionally, I go out and drink alcohol, and because these outings are so few and far between, and because I enjoy being out with the boys so much, I don’t want the nights to end. So when the nightclubs shut, Sparks and I tend to find a way to keep the evening going.
Normally, this involves suggesting to Tom May, Pete Murphy or another teammate, why don’t we go back to your house afterwards? And then, regardless of their response, we go round telling everyone in the club that there is a big house-party at the following address.
This time, it’s Mike Stephenson’s lucky night. We go back in a cab with Stevo and when we get to his house, he is slightly surprised to find thirty people outside his front door. He gives us a look that says what the hell is this? But we have a good time and everyone is buzzing – until the police rock up and tell us it’s time to move on.
So we leave Stevo’s, but on the pavement outside, realise that Ian Peel lives just over the road. So the shout goes up – party at Peely’s.
That’s fun, too, even if it does result in Peely getting his final eviction notice.
You can really feel the change around the England team on our summer tour to South Africa.
Everything feels so professional – where we are training, how we are training. Clive wants to lead change in international rugby, rather than waiting and following. We are not copying anyone. The desire now is to set the pace.
Although we are on tour, for the first time, we don’t move around. We are booked into the Westcliff Hotel in Johannesburg and that is where we stay. We fly in and out for games, but base ourselves in the Westcliff. The hotel is ideal, but the point is that this is no longer about touring. It’s about winning.
I feel we are getting our professionalism right. We know we are improving, the hard work from as far back as Couran Cove is paying off, and the consistency in player selection is helping. Players are getting the recognition they deserve. Lawrence is not just one of the best back-rowers, he’s arguably the best. Some of our other players are being talked about in similar tones.
Me? I’m young, still making my way. I’m still a fan of the other number tens around, with Stephen Larkham, Andrew Mehrtens and Carlos Spencer leading the way. The way Larkham dominates the attacking game, knowing when to turn on the pace, when to run on to the ball, picking his options, is awesome.
Mehrtens is an outstanding linkman and tactician. It must be nice playing with athletes such as Lomu, Wilson and Cullen, but they’re only capable of great things when he creates the opportunity and brings the best out of them.
I want to be great at playing rugby. I want to have the most impact in tackling, the most accurate goal-kicking, the best passing, running, workrate, everything. Apart from scrummaging and lineout, irrespective of my size or speed, I want to master every skill better than anybody else. So when I look at videos of games, I don’t really review how I helped the team, my decisions or how I ran the game. I look at my individual moments, my passes, my tackles and my breaks.
Clive has got a different message, and he is going on about it so much that I can’t avoid it. He pushes it in team meetings, and even more in one-on-ones. He talks about momentum, building a score, and drop goals. He wants drop goals.
But it’s not in my nature to give him what he wants. If we are trying to attack, I won’t concede defeat. I have eyes only for the try. I won’t admit it if the opposition defence is holding us and we are achieving nothing, and I convince my
self that the next phase of attack will be the one that works.
Yet Clive wants our score to keep ticking. He wants us to show that we can always make our dominance pay; he wants us to build a lead that is more than one score ahead.
He uses video analysis to show me all this, and explains the psychological battle. If we’ve given them our best shot and they turn the ball over and we come away with nothing, they are winning. But if we come away with points every time we’re down their end, it has the opposite effect.
When you’ve got a good shot, just sit back in the pocket, he tells me as we prepare for South Africa. Think about that drop goal.
I’m uncomfortable the night before games anyway, but the night before the first Test, in Pretoria, I feel genuinely sick. It’s the beef I had for dinner. At midnight I start vomiting and at two o’clock I start hammering on the door of Terry Crystal, the team doctor. When he eventually stirs, he gives me some tablets, but I’m still up vomiting until about half past five.
After two hours’ sleep, I’m still feeling pretty rotten and thinking I’ve got a game coming, I’ve got a game coming. I tell Clive and the coaches. They say if you’re not 100 per cent, don’t play.
But, for me, turning down playing for England is not really an option. On the other hand, I haven’t prepared. Usually, I do some kicking practice with Dave Alred on the morning of the game; not this time. I’ll usually be checking my game notes, fully focusing on what is to come. But now I don’t just feel sick; I feel unprepared. I phone Bilks and asks what he thinks.
Everyone agrees that we should come to a decision as late as possible. Only after walking into the changing room is it plain to me that I’m not up to it, and thus Austin Healey discovers that he is playing fly half against the Springboks instead of me.
Thanks very much for all the warning, Austin says. Now just watch me set this game alight.
And he does a pretty good job. I watch from the stands. The team play well, we match the Springboks, the video ref denies a try surely scored by Tim Stimpson and we lose by five points. Most importantly, though, we feel we now could be, should be, ahead.
Our second chance comes a week later, at Bloemfontein. The atmosphere is hostile, threatening, and I can deal with that. What I find harder is the fact that they stage a practice game before the Test, which, for a kicker who likes to practice before a match, is a nightmare.
Before an international, wherever possible, I have a very specific warm-up routine. It includes 40 punts of varying style and trajectory, 20 off each foot. Then 15 to 20 goalkicks from almost along the try line, each side of the posts; the acute angle helps focus, accuracy and precision. Then four or five more from in front of the posts, just to check that everything is in place. Then I do restarts, six little scoops from virtually under the crossbar. Then a few grubber kicks and chips. This is a process carefully worked out with Dave over the years and it takes around 40 minutes.
On this occasion, though, we can hardly get on to the pitch. Dave and I go into the deadball area, while the game is in full swing, and start kicking backwards and forwards, stopping every time play comes in our direction. The Springbok supporters near me shake the perimeter fence, shouting and screaming my name aggressively, and yelling that I’m rubbish. Half of it is in Afrikaans, so I can’t understand, but it doesn’t sound much like good luck.
The intensity increases when the whole team take the field to a bombardment of oranges, Coke bottles and beer cans. At one point during the game, Johnno gathers the team round, just on our five-metre line, and a 1.5 litre bottle of Coke flies on to the ground and bounces right into the middle of the huddle. In our deadball area, I find myself picking up crushed Coke cans and chucking them to the back of the field. We are trying to win a Test match and doing ground maintenance at the same time.
The crowd’s intensity is reflected in the game, and I find I am playing it in a slightly different frame of mind from usual. Being the best player doesn’t matter so much today; it’s more about winning, keeping the score moving, making the right decisions.
And then it happens. We are attacking, stretching their defence, and their players are struggling to cover the holes. So they’re not looking up at me, or thinking about charging down a kick. In other words, it’s a perfect time for a drop goal. But that’s not in my mind. I take the ball one way to attack, and then, as if a lightbulb’s suddenly flicked on in my head, I stop. I’m right in front of the posts, not far from the 22. This may be the best opportunity I get.
I take the drop goal. It flies through the posts. There, I’ve done it now. I’ve finally kicked a drop goal for England. But I still can’t help feeling that maybe I’ve just wasted an opportunity for us to score a try.
We have a good lead, more than one score, until they score a late try, but despite a panicky last three or four minutes, we manage to keep control. The referee tells us time up. The score is 27–22 and we’ve got a penalty next to the touchline.
The guys are all saying next time the ball goes out, that’s the game. And I’m standing there with the ball in my hands. What a great day it’s been. What an end to the season. I’ve got a 10 yard kick to finish it. I love this moment. Breathe it in and enjoy it.
Afterwards, a kind of pandemonium ensues. The 27 points all came from my boot, so I get the full treatment from the Sky cameras. They don’t just want a post-match interview, they want to follow me round the dressing room. They want to know how do you feel? Is there anything you want to say to your family?
What I want to know is can we now stop talking about drop goals?
That game in Bloemfontein is described as a watershed for England, but for me, the real turning point is yet to come.
Five months later, I am facing my first autumn international series, but only after realising that the RFU have messed up on my flight from Newcastle to Heathrow, thus forcing me to take the only other option, which is a taxi. Funnily enough, my Geordie cab-driver doesn’t do many trips to Surrey, and we get lost, and it doesn’t help much that he doesn’t have a map. We stop and ask at a petrol station. Anyone know where Pennyhill Park is? No. Seven and a bit hours and a £400 cab fare later, I rejoin the England squad.
First up is Australia, and this, for me, is the one. This is the team I want to beat, one I’ve never beaten, the world champions.
It’s a tight game, sealed by a late Dan Luger try in the corner from an Iain Balshaw kick-through. It needs the video referee to confirm the try, and when it’s given, I ask the referee how much longer? He says just the conversion and that’s the end of the game. We are a point ahead, so we’ve won whatever happens. The conversion doesn’t affect the result.
You know what, I say to myself, for once I’m just going to enjoy this conversion because a good, hard day’s work has been done. This one will be just for me.
It’s rare to stand over a conversion like this and feel so relaxed. And the successful kick caps a great feeling; it feels great to beat Australia. It says so much. It says they’re no different from us, just fifteen guys playing with the same ball, and we are capable of beating them. It kind of opens a door to a different future. We start expecting to win. And when you get to expecting, and you’re not hoping any more, that’s when you’ve turned the corner.
An Austin Healey joke starts off the week. Martin Corry – Cozza – has a dog called Minton. Minton is not a good dog. Minton eats two shuttlecocks. BadMinton.
Not the greatest of gags. Far funnier is Kyran Bracken, who hasn’t got the joke – if that’s what you can call it – and asks Cozza about Minton. What breed of dog is he?
That is the last laugh for a while. England are near the end of good year, a near-Grand Slam, a win in South Africa, and now, finally, Australia are on our defeated list, too. Consequently, the RFU is selling lots of new sponsorship packages; everyone is reaping the fruits of our success except the players.
This has been a source of frustration for a while. We have looked at the commercial structures in other p
rofessional sports and we know we fare dreadfully by comparison. We have put our case to the RFU and had it dismissed with disinterest. And it is an awkward contradiction. We all started out wanting to play rugby for our country for the sheer honour of it. We didn’t set out on any sort of path with the aim of getting rich. We still feel the enormous honour of playing for England, but we are still worth more than a small share of the success others are making from our efforts. And we want to ensure fairer treatment for future generations.
The issue is partly the ownership of our image rights, although right now the RFU want to cut our match fees and give us a bigger win-bonus. Initially, they wanted to cut the match fee altogether. The feedback from our negotiators, Johnno, Lawrence and Matt Dawson, is that actually the RFU is not interested in compromise and that we are being treated like kids.
Last week, in the build-up to the Australia game, this was a growing distraction. Clandestine meetings in different rooms and talk of possible different courses of action were eventually postponed. Leave it for now, we said, and let’s talk again next week before the Argentina game.
While Austin is doing his Minton jokes, Johnno, Lawrence and Matt Dawson are on their way to the last round of talks. At nine o’clock that night, I get the call – squad meeting in Johnno’s room.
I have a cold feeling about this. The first news is that the RFU hasn’t budged an inch. The question then is do we go on strike? The answer isn’t helped by the suggestion, lobbed in, that Clive has said if anyone does walk out on England, he may never play for his country again.
Johnno insists we take that into consideration, and that the younger players should not be swayed in their opinion by the older leaders of the team, who have decent careers already behind them.
I look at Steve Borthwick, my old teammate from the England Under-18s, who has just broken into the squad. He hasn’t even made it on to the field. He says: I’ve literally only just had a taste of it, I don’t want this to be the end of it.
Jonny: My Autobiography Page 11