Jonny: My Autobiography

by Wilkinson, Jonny

  During the week, Clive works on me. Be ruthless, he says. Another message has been pushed my way recently – stop hitting those rucks, stop playing like a flanker – but my mindset is his priority for Ireland. He reminds me of the Wales game in Cardiff. They gave me a rock solid ball to kick off with and that was the reason I couldn’t get any height off the restart. Why didn’t you just toss the ball off the field and demand another one? Fair point. I didn’t even think to challenge it. Don’t be nice.

  In training, he tells me if you’re not happy with the communication or the organisation in the team, just smash the ball directly off the field and tell people to get it right and start again. He wants a bratish edge from me.

  He pushes the whole team. Accept nothing less than you deserve. When we arrive in Dublin, we have a clear attitude – we’ve had enough of losing and not coming through these situations. It can’t go on. This one’s going to be different.

  On the field before the game, I’m fiddling with my tracksuit when Clive is in my ear again. The message is the same. Be ruthless, he says.

  In those last few minutes, I’m always nervous. As we’re standing in line, waiting for the national anthems, everything is being dragged out and this is making it worse. Johnno has some issue with the officials. I don’t really know what’s going on and I want us just to get on with it, but Neil Back has a mischievous look on his face and Johnno shouts down the line no one effing move. Under no circumstances are we now going to move a muscle.

  It is only later that I discover we were apparently standing in Ireland’s preferred spot. That shows the mentality that Clive has driven into us. The drive for skills and performance has now been adopted into the personality we carry around the game. Don’t accept anything less than we deserve.

  We make a good start, turn the ball over from their scrum and Lawrence scores under their posts. That’s a big psychological moment for us. The performance reflects our collective personality, because we don’t stop. After the try, we score three points more and then three more again. We’re making a statement – we’re not here to take any nonsense, we’re notching up a few points and we’re not stopping.

  Soon the pressure is turned round. They attack us and keep on coming, and we let nothing through. We have a commitment to our defence coach, Phil Larder, not to allow the opposition to score any tries, and we hold strong.

  Phil has come up with this great new call, ‘Hit the Beach’, a respectful reference to the Normandy landings, a massive call to arms. It means that for the next 30 seconds, two minutes, minute, 10 seconds, however long it takes, everyone has to armour up and die for the cause, because we know the next short period will be crucial. On this occasion, we just hold out and don’t have to hit the beach.

  I make a number of tackles, one after another, in quick succession around the pitch. This is rugby at its simplest for me. People make the mistake of thinking passing and tackling are the basics of the game. The truth is that it all begins with the desire to give absolutely everything you have for however long it takes. I’ve long known that my greatest quality is nothing to do with tackling or kicking, passing or running. It’s my refusal ever to give up. Never stop working for the cause.

  By the time I have to go off with a blood wound, we have a healthy lead. In the changing room under the stand, Simon Kemp, the doctor, puts some stitches in my mouth and I try not to cool down, or lose focus. When I come out, we are another seven points ahead.

  But we keep resisting them. The shout goes round the pitch – no fucking tries! No fucking tries! We are going to win the Grand Slam, but we’re not relaxing. We want to keep making the statement.

  And we don’t stop making it. Not until the final whistle and the 42–6 scoreline make it for us.

  I am due to appear in an adidas ad with David Beckham and word is that they are going to want me to hit a few football free-kicks. And being a perfectionist and not wanting to let myself down, I make sure I get my preparation in early.

  So the day before, I turn up to training at Kingston Park with the usual kit plus a bag of footballs. To my great fortune, Newcastle United’s reserves have been playing a match, so the goals are set up on the main pitch, and after training I go out to practise. Jamie Noon and Dave Walder join me for a kick-around, but they don’t last long. I don’t want to look anything but natural in the ad, so I practise free-kicks for an hour and a half.

  The next day, very early, I arrive for the shoot near Manchester. Two Hollywood-style trailers, one for each of us, have our names on the door. I’ve not had anything like that before. I suspect that David’s trailer is superior to mine, although that might be because my name is spelled wrongly. Nearly everyone everywhere still seems to spell Jonny with an ‘h’.

  They mike us up and, with a bag of balls over our shoulders, David and I head over to the pitches. He seems a relaxed, decent, interesting bloke, and I am fascinated to ask him how do you perform so consistently? How do you manage your career? We exchange views and stories. I really like him.

  When we get to the pitches, the guys directing the shoot say right, let’s do some kicking.

  What about the dialogue? I say. What are our lines?

  We’ve already got all that, is the reply. Nice one; very painless.

  I am glad of yesterday’s practice because I acquit myself OK. My first shot goes just over the bar. The second hits the underside of the bar and bounces back out. As long as they caught that one on camera, I know there’s something of me that looks all right.

  But whereas I’m just smashing balls at the goal, David places them left, right and centre. They ask him for one particular shot from a different camera angle and he finishes off by lacing it over the wall and into the top left corner. That’s a wow moment. It’s like watching Dave Alred.

  He doesn’t have much trouble with rugby goalkicks, either. I talk him through the routine and then put a ball down for him in front of the posts about 15 metres out, thinking it’ll be OK for the cameras from here. But he smashes it straight through the middle and about 25 metres beyond. We move back bit by bit and he continues to do the same thing. The guy has incredibly well-educated feet.

  I like doing this. If I wasn’t here, I’d be kicking anyway, but here I’m getting a glimmer of the Hollywood experience and, as much as I am supposed to be one of the stars of the day, there’s a part of me that still feels like a little kid hanging around with someone I’ve always wanted to get to know.

  Quite soon, though, David has to go. There’s a Manchester United function he has to attend and a David Beckham lookalike takes over for the rest of the day.

  Funnily enough, there is no Jonny Wilkinson lookalike here, although I am aware one exists because once, when I gave my consent for a character in a kids’ novel to be called Jonny Wilkinson, it turned out that the book publishers got the lookalike to attend the launch party. Apparently, he turned up wearing full England kit and merrily signed autographs.

  I know this because I started getting letters from angry parents who felt their kids had been duped. I’m not sure why this was my fault, but I sent these kids genuine autographs in return.

  But I hate to leave a negative impression. I got a fairly strong letter from two girls in Leicester recently. We asked for your autograph when we saw you before the game and you ignored us, they said. How could you do that?

  I wrote back: You have to understand that before the game is very different from after the game. It is a very tense time, I have to prepare, I have to get mentally into the right zone, so I can’t stand around and sign autographs.

  I sent them some autographs and they wrote back to say thank you. We appreciate the situation, they said, and we understand.

  I want to do the right thing. Once a game is finished, I’ll stay and I won’t stop signing until the last person has gone.

  We arrive in New Zealand with the World Cup looming ever closer and, as proof of our credentials, an eleven-match unbeaten record that stretches back for more than
a year.

  In Wellington, two things in particular come to my attention. One is the stern advice of our medics. After a long flight like that, I always want to go out and take some exercise, and because they know exactly what I’m like, they insist I go easy and don’t kick for too long, because jet-lagged muscles are prone to pulls and tears.

  The other is the rugby media here, which is so different – not that I read it, I’m past that, but you can’t avoid it. It’s everywhere. And they want to talk about how good their team is, how great their players are, and how much they want them to win. I get the feeling that they are rugby supporters first and journalists second. It seems they’d rather write a story about winning than losing. Compared to the English attitude, it’s pretty refreshing!

  And they hype up their own players and spend the entire time ripping into us. They’re calling us ‘Dad’s Army’, which is hilarious and focuses attention on Dorian West, who is our oldest squad member and a definite Captain Mainwaring candidate.

  In an unusual break with tradition, I treat myself to a day off during Test week. My days off on tour usually involve kicking for most of the morning, getting back to the hotel and then shutting myself away because I’m just so stressed and hyped up I feel I need a break and a bit of time to myself.

  Here though, I join the others on a trip to the Lord of the Rings set. For some reason, I’m introduced as the team captain, a misapprehension I’m unable to shift while we watch a battle scene being filmed or when I’m introduced to Viggo Mortensen and some of the other cast. We have a great day. I barely think about the Saturday Test match. Stress and hype leave me briefly alone. It’s certainly a pleasant break, although I’m still not sure this day-out thing is going to catch on.

  The day before the game, the anxieties are back in force. I go to the Wellington stadium, known as the Cake Tin, for my kicking practice. I throw a bit of grass in the air, it disappears behind my back and then materialises again in front of my face. In other words, the wind in here is impossible to read.

  Back at the Cake Tin a day later, our winning streak is under threat. We have our noses ahead. We also have Lawrence and Neil Back in the sin-bin at the same time, and we are defending a five-yard scrum, six against eight.

  The call goes up – Hit the Beach. Johnno shouts it, everyone shouts it. Hit the Beach! Hit the Beach! Whatever we do, we’re going to get through these next few minutes without giving anything away.

  What follows is awesome. Our scrum doesn’t take a step backwards, but it has to be reset. The same happens again. Still not a step back. This happens four times and four times we hold out. A monumental effort.

  I kick four of my goals and a drop goal, but it is in those moments in that scrum that we win the game.

  It is a huge achievement. The last time an England team beat New Zealand on their home turf was over thirty years ago. But the changing room afterwards does not reflect this. The celebrations are a little muted. There’s no conscious decision to play it cool. It’s just that, despite everything we have just been through, most of the team are actually quite disappointed with our performance. The result’s not enough now. We’ve just won in New Zealand but we feel we could’ve done better.

  The New Zealand media see it differently. They just rip straight back into us. They don’t seem to want to go deep into the defeat. They’re more interested in pointing out how big and lumpy and old we are, and what on earth have we been doing in training to look like this.

  As we leave their country, we are being labelled ‘white orcs on steroids’. I love that.

  We sign off for the season against Australia and, as a statement before the World Cup, this game is possibly the best we have ever played.

  There is something in our history together, and the momentum of our victories, that works as a kind of glue. We are held together and, on the pitch, the togetherness keeps us safe.

  All the repetition in training and our collective experience on the pitch means that instinct takes care of us. We know our jobs and our roles and when it doesn’t quite go as expected, we just alter and shift a little. We hang in the game because we have a structure for our game-breakers to come in when the time is right.

  It feels as though we are permanently moving forward and waiting. The team performance becomes a springboard from which any player can launch at any time. In defence, the support is like a white wall round each player; in attack, it is the decoy runners, the unselfish options. It means that week in, week out, we’re seeing the best of each other. Whose turn will it be today to bring out the brilliance?

  Last week it was the forwards. Today it is Will Greenwood and Ben Cohen. But you feel right now, it could be anyone.

  AS preparation for the World Cup, we meet at Pennyhill for three weeks’ pure, hard physical training. The hotel have effectively built us our own gym in a marquee by the training field, and a heavy routine gets under way – 6.30am starts, training, two-hour afternoon sleeps, then more training. I roomshare with Noonie and we create our own DIY recovery facilities in the room, pouring endless bags of ice into our bath – anything to help us for the next session.

  We do plenty of speed/endurance training, which is perfect for me – sprint as far as you can around the field for a minute, sit down and rest for two-and-a-half minutes, and then go again. We have to do five of these. Some people pace themselves, but I’m used to the Blackie way and I see no alternative to going full out. So I charge ahead of everyone at a ridiculous speed and then die as the final seconds of the minute elapse.

  I like leading the way. It’s kind of my obligation. Josh Lewsey isn’t far behind and Noonie is good, too. Noonie is definitely quicker than I am, although I may have the upper hand in endurance.

  The forwards take little pleasure from all this, and they get their revenge on the rowing machine. You have to row 500 metres and then run round the field. I couldn’t be less suited to rowing and, despite my greatest efforts, I am almost always the last off the machine. When I begin to run, I feel like someone has stolen my legs. I detest the rowing. I hate not being able to compete.

  I have a problem with a nerve that runs through my quad, creating a hot-needle feeling down my leg. It’s a slight injury risk so, on the last day of one week, when they are doing another tough speed/endurance drill, I sit out and watch training from the physio bed by the posts, feeling really bad because I’m not going through what everyone else is going through.

  The next day is gorgeous and sunny. I have a meeting to go to with Tim and he arrives to pick me up.

  Sorry, I say, there’s something I need to do first, and I’m going to need your help.

  We go down to the pitch and I put out the cones. I want to do the exact same training session I missed the day before. I have to do it. So Tim has to play the coach, running up and down the pitch, sweating in his suit, holding the stopwatch. I make him do this.

  We are in the middle of this when the sprinklers come on and Tim gets soaked. He is not too impressed. I guess this kind of thing doesn’t appear in the agents-players handbook. He says what are we doing?

  On days off back at Newcastle, I’m getting further help from Blackie. The results of the Team Fitness Test are the ones that really matter and we know the score: completing the lung-busting course in under 197 seconds is considered world-class, under 205 seconds is excellent, under 210 seconds is good and over 215 is average. One hot morning, I set my personal best. I do a 194 seconds. That’s the best I will ever do and a squad record for years to come.

  Three times during the camp, Clive gives out a bottle of wine as a kind of prize to a player whom he judges to have made a difference or performed seriously well. On the last day of the camp, he says he is giving the last one to someone who has been constantly pushing themselves harder and harder, and one or two heads turn in my direction.

  The wine has a face value of about £900 and, to be honest, it is wasted on me. The accolade, though, is not. I have a few Man of the Match bottles back home, but
this is one I really treasure. To me, working hard every second of every day is what is important in team sport. So this award has real value. I owe it to Blackie and I owe it to my obsessive drive.

  But not everyone is a winner round here. As the squad gets cut, I say goodbye to Jamie Noon and Dave Walder. I was so hoping to have these two great players and great friends from Newcastle in Australia with me. They deserve it, but I know that they would have been good for me too.

  The real trophy, though, remains a long way away. It feels as though we have been building up towards this World Cup for months, but on 1 October, we finally leave Pennyhill for Australia, and I have a fax fresh from Blackie safely tucked away.

  The fax contains the famous speech from General Patton, which reads like this:

  I have personally benefited from the passion of this oratory at numerous times throughout my life. I hope it has the same effect for you:

  Today you must do more than is required of you.

  Never think that you have done enough or that your job is finished.

  There’s always something that can be done, something that can help to ensure victory.

  You can’t let others be responsible for getting you started.

  You must be a self-starter.

  You must possess that spark of individual initiative that sets the leader apart from the led.

  Self-motivation is the key to being one step ahead of everyone else and standing head and shoulders above the crowd.

  Once you get going don’t stop.

  Always be on the lookout for the chance to do something better.

  Never stop trying.

  Fill yourself with the warrior spirit – and send that warrior into action.

  That is certainly something to occupy my mind as we head to Perth. I actually love long-distance flights. I look forward to them. There is no video analysis to be done. I can’t practise my kicking or my passing. There is nothing I can do towards helping win a rugby game. Just put on the TV and, for what will be the last opportunity for a long time, properly relax.