Of course, I’d be honoured, I say. The PM asks how are you feeling? How are the injuries? He really makes an effort to engage me and is pleasant and kind.
But then he stops. I’m terrible with awkward silences, and I’m thinking Christ, I need to return the favour, I have to ask him something back. I’m politically out of touch and fishing for something to say to this world-leading politician, who is trying desperately to plot a way out of global financial disaster. So I hit him with the first thing that comes into my head. Have you been busy lately?
Over the Prime Minister’s shoulder, I can see Tim’s face drop like he’s just seen a ghost.
As a statement of loyalty to Newcastle, I agreed to a pay cut of around a third of my salary this year. The idea is that they backload my contract, pay the extra next year and use the extra money this year to bring in new players. What I find distressing, though, is the number and calibre of players going the other way. Dave Walder left a couple of years ago, Matthew Tait and Toby Flood went last summer, and Jamie Noon, Phil Dowson and Tom May are considering their options for next season. Matt Burke went back to Australia a year and a half ago to fast-track rehab of a knee injury, and a few months later, just when he thought he’d be coming back, he was phoned up and told there was no contract for him any more.
I miss the friends who have gone, who shared common cause with me. And I’ve been away injured so much that I feel I’m losing connection with the players who are left.
Salwa has been informed from on high that she is spending too much time with me and needs to concentrate more on the other players. This doesn’t actually make sense, because I go round to see her at her house a lot after work, purely so as not to impinge on her time with everyone else.
So the signs at the club are not good, but I have put so much of my life into the place that I choose to ignore them. However, when I hear that there may be an issue with the club’s ability to pay my salary next year, I start to reappraise. I wonder if maybe they don’t want me here next year anyway.
From my position on the sidelines, it pains me to watch the things that have made Newcastle such an amazing club to be part of for so long be dismantled bit by bit. Every time one of the coaching staff is sacked, Thomo comes into the team room and starts the meeting. Just a quick word, he’ll say, this is what’s happened. I’ve let so-and-so go because I need results. We can’t accept not getting results.
This time round it’s Fletch and Peter Walton who get the bullet, which is just plain wrong. We aren’t a team who are going to get regular results, and I think that Thomo, unfortunately, is missing that fact. Every time he makes one of these decisions, it serves to make us worse. Without the budget and the right signings, Thomo doesn’t seem to realise just how well these guys are doing. All he has to do is look at what happens to the guys who have recently left – invariably, they enter a new, more stable environment and begin to shine.
So now, after twelve years at this club, I concede that I must open my mind to opportunities elsewhere. I’ve never entertained the thought of moving clubs before. I’ve never asked what could I get from another club that I’m not getting here? That’s because I’ve never allowed myself to look past another question – what more could I give to this club that I’m not giving already? Rather than thinking that this club’s not good enough for me, I’ve never gone beyond: How can I make this club better? I know that some people believe I’m fighting for a losing cause here. Lawrence Dallaglio has said openly that he thinks my career could have been very different if I’d moved clubs, but I actually enjoy the challenge.
But times change, and my conclusion now, after immense discussions, is to find another challenge elsewhere.
Back at Newcastle, I finally get back on the training ground with the team, but again, it is so fleeting. I get through one and a half sessions before I’m back in to see Martin Brewer. I’ve got this pain, I tell him. I can’t even bend my leg. I’m actually finding it hard to walk.
He tells me straightaway that playing rugby this week is out of the question. When I start to test the knee with the physios, they tell me to bend it to a certain level but I can’t. I can’t deal with the pain, either. As soon as I bend it to about 15/20 degrees, the burning, grinding pain is horrendous and my leg collapses. It just drops. It’s as if a message has been sent straight back to switch off the muscles, which, I learn, is exactly what is happening.
It has now been more than five months since the Gloucester game and the message hits me loud and clear. There is no guarantee I am coming back to rugby as a player. None at all. I might never play again. Right now, I cannot even contemplate playing. But the doubts are way more extreme. It’s not just a case of maybe I won’t play again. It’s am I going to run again? Can I even jog? What am I going to be able to do, physically, in later life?
The England physios, Pasky and Barney Kenny, come up to Newcastle, and they read the last rites on the season, and the Lions. That’s hard enough to hear, but they want to strip my rehab right back. The kneecap isn’t sitting properly in its groove, they say, so it’s grinding, which is causing the unbearable pain on the raw, unprotected part of the back of the patella.
So I have a new course of action – retraining my quad muscles to fire in the right order. That means sitting on a chair at home, connected up with electrical pads to a machine that records the impulses on my inside and outside quad muscles. I have to contract the inside quad before the outside one. I sit on the chair, watching the success and failure of my muscle retraining on screen. And I have to do this for three whole weeks.
This is crucial. If I can’t get this to work, I’m finished.
Shelley and I discuss where I am; or rather, I offload to Shelley about where I am. I feel things are slipping away from me. I’m missing an entire season. Everything I’m desperate to hang on to is retreating – it just seems it’s not meant to be. I’m not even a rugby player any more. I don’t know what I am – a face, a name maybe, but for many people, just a reminder of a crazy moment that occurred almost six years previously on the other side of the world. And that’s the same moment I have been trying to leave behind ever since.
There is very little Shelley can say. She just listens and helps me accept reality. And she is great. She reminds me of the impermanence of all this. The fact that the world is ever changing is a major part of my spiritual training.
But I still wake up every morning to the realisation that I am another day further away, and face another day of not being involved. It feels unnatural, but I know I have to find a way to accept it, and try to see it in a positive light. I want to rediscover my inner strength and develop my spirituality.
Before 2006, I’d tackle every set-back by working hard, hammering the work ethic. It would be so simple for me to flick the switch to Tunnel Vision mode and slip back into those old habits. But if I am to succeed in a world that is always evolving, I know I have to keep adapting, too. And that has to be the new game plan.
It is good to know that, despite my knee injury, which is finally showing signs of coming good, there are decent people who are interested in working with me.
I get a call from Mike Catt, now a player-coach at London Irish.
What can I do for you, mate?
I know you might be out of contract, he says, and so you might be interested in looking elsewhere. I just wanted to put the case forward for my club.
I get a similar call from Richard Hill at Saracens. And that’s really nice of both of them, two guys I would love to work with again, but the problem is that after all the years with Newcastle, I can’t see myself playing against them. I don’t want to come back here as a player for another team. I realise that I’m lucky to be in a position to be able to take that decision, but this is an instinct that, deep down, stops me from entertaining the idea of other English clubs. I think it’s going to have to be abroad.
From the other furthest extreme, I get a great offer from Pat Lam, now coach at Auckland Blues. That r
eally would be a great challenge, and I love watching Super 12 rugby. From the days of Carlos Spencer, Michael Jones and Jonah Lomu, I have kind of been an Auckland fan. But this one I can’t really entertain, either. I still want to play for England.
And then I get a big surprise – an offer of a short-term summer contract with Wigan rugby league team. I would massively enjoy that. I’m a huge fan of Wigan, the club that produced my great old friend Jason Robinson as well as other legends including Andy Farrell and Kris Radlinski. This opportunity would be incredible.
But I have to let the chance go. Another time, maybe it could work, but right now I’m just coming back from a bad knee injury. I can’t jeopardise my future by playing another sport that I’m not so familiar with.
Another factor is what type of club I want to join. At Newcastle, I’ve loved the underdog card. It would be great to have some silverware, that’s always the goal, but I don’t want to move to a club just because there’s an obvious possibility of winning trophies and medals. I prefer the idea of fighting hard and building something new rather than slotting into something that is already the finished article.
It’s the bonds forged at Newcastle that I value, created through digging deep, and to a degree, facing the pressure of relegation. That was real strength-building stuff, and those are great memories. It’s the sheer fulfilment in that kind of journey that suits me. So when Tim, Bilks and I look towards France, that’s the thought that governs me. There are conversations with Stade Français and Perpignan, who then don’t consider me a viable option due to my injuries. After a few visits, it comes down to a choice of two, Bayonne and Toulon.
What I like about Toulon is the potential to build. They may be a team of superstars, but they’ve only recently been promoted to the Top 14 and are flirting with relegation. I’d love the challenge of trying to help a team like that work. I’d like to play a part in bringing the best out of all those great players – and learn a bit myself while I’m at it.
TOULON, on first impressions, is awesome. The Stade Mayol is a couple of hundred yards from seafront bars and restaurants, mid-April is ridiculously hot and people on holiday wander up and down the front. I love the atmosphere.
Toulon are playing Perpignan and, ninety minutes before kick-off, I’m sitting at a table literally on the beach, in this beautiful setting, eating a stunning lunch with Shelley, Tim, Laurent, my French agent, and Mourad Boudjellal, the President of the Toulon. Laurent tells us that Mourad would really like me to see the game, but I’m not keen. I’m still contracted to Newcastle. I’m here to meet people at the club, not to be seen publicly looking as though I’m cheering on a team other than my own.
Laurent says that it may be good to go and sample the amazing atmosphere, get an idea of what it’s really like. Now I love playing in great stadia and in front of big, appreciative crowds but it’s not important to my final decision. My values are much more key to me; remaining loyal to Newcastle is the priority here.
Out of respect, we end up cutting a deal. We will go for five minutes, nothing more. Apparently we can park in an underground car park, get a lift up to the stadium and watch five minutes from a box. That way no one will know that I’ve been there.
Fifteen minutes before kick-off, we pull up outside the stadium in a couple of black Volkswagen 4 x 4s. Fans are milling around. The place is heaving. We don’t park in an underground car park at all. In fact, we get dropped off among the hundreds of supporters, who immediately get out their phones and cameras and start filming me.
I don’t like this at all. I feel compromised and totally out of control. We are ushered through a side entrance. I was trying to keep everyone close but now I can hardly see Shelley and Tim because of the crush of people. I’m starting to lose the plot a little when the familiar whiff of Deep Heat assails my nostrils and I know instinctively where we are. Sure enough, we are led into the dressing rooms.
At this stage before kick-off, the players are about to come back in from their pre-match warm-up. They are in an end-of-season relegation struggle, and they are going to wonder what on earth I am doing in here. I will be a disruption to their preparation, and there will be a guy playing number ten who’s got to go and play this game knowing that there’s another number ten literally on the scene.
You couldn’t challenge my value system more intensely than this if you tried. I can’t be in here, but there’s no way I can I go back out into the crowd.
I ask can’t you find another room for us? I don’t care if it’s a cupboard, just as long as it’s big enough for Shelley and me. Tim can fend for himself. So they shut us in the doctor’s room. But this is no good – this is where players come to get last-minute strappings.
So we run along the corridor, trying not to be seen and trying to find somewhere to hide. We are put in the coaches’ changing room where I pace around, thinking about the arrangements we made over lunch and trying not to explode. I sit down and force myself to read a team-sheet over and over, as a distraction. I hear the clatter of studs as the teams come back in, and then the coaches come into their room. Despite pre-game anxieties and nerves, we all exchange introductions politely. Hello, how are you doing? They are great with me but this is still a disaster.
I have no intention of watching anything now. I tell Tim as soon as the players have gone out on to the pitch, we’ll leg it the other way and get the hell out of here.
When the coast is clear, we make a hasty exit, but just as we are in the tunnel, I hear the clatter of more studs. One last player is coming from the physio room – player-coach Tana Umaga, who has come out of retirement to help the team. The last thing I want to do is say hi when he’s on his way out to play a really big game like this one.
So I quickly turn my back and say to Shelley stand there and pretend we’re talking. It’s an absolute shocker. Tana jogs past, presumably wondering who we are and what on earth a random girl and a guy in a beanie hat are doing in the players’ area on match day. Laurent asks us if we still want to watch five minutes, but I tell him no.
Three months later, I clock in at the Toulon training ground for Day One with my new club.
I come with a familiar sense of apprehension. It reminds me of joining up with the Lions, or even the early days with England. I feel the same massive pressure to perform. I want to prove myself. I want to nail every training session. I want every pass and every kick to be right on the money. At least I feel fit and strong. I have spent an entire month on holiday in Majorca, but I trained every single day with the aim of killing myself purely in order to be prepared for this.
The early morning gym session, I discover, is split between the 7am group and the 8am group. I slip in in-between and start to get on with some stretches and warm-ups. The 7am-ers come over one by one.
Ça va? This is their greeting with a handshake.
I have just about got through all these and got back to work when the 8am-ers start arriving. Ça va? Handshake. Same thing. And this is the same every day. I want to get down to work but the first lesson on Day One is I can’t until I have given everyone the morning greeting. But I like it.
Today is fitness testing and it is massively important to me to do well. I’m flying on the chin-ups and dips, thank you Blackie, but the rowing test, never a strong point with my short little levers, kills me. Sonny Bill Williams, rowing next to me, is absolutely awesome, but I go for broke and am left lying in pain on the concrete outside, knowing that the running test is yet to come.
This is the one that slightly concerns me. Five minutes running on a hard track will be a good test for my knee. The backs run together and I go all out from the start, Blackie style, and I keep on going until, at the end, there is some distance between me and everyone else. Professionally, I think I’ve done myself and Blackie proud.
Every day, I notice the differences here. Our first official training session of the pre-season is open to the public and 5,000 people turn up – that’s almost as many as an average Newcastle h
ome gate.
One of the traditions of Toulon’s pre-season is to spend two days in the Alps. Sleeping under the stars around a campfire is a good way to get to know your teammates, even if it does mean staying up all night listening to Kris Chesney, the ex-Saracens lock, snoring. However, it isn’t particularly good preparation for next day’s long walk, another tradition, especially as the temperature is 27 degrees. I decide to set the pace again, flick the old Tunnel Vision switch, put my head down and set off at the front. A few of the younger players stay with me, but drop off one by one. It is like running with Liam Botham.
When we finally arrive at our destination, a small outbuilding in the middle of the mountains, the guys collapse, but we are pointed towards a stupidly steep uphill slope. That’s where we are going next. Groans all round. I flick the switch again and hammer on harder than before, just to make a point.
Among my new teammates, I’m so grateful for the warmth of my welcome. I think it’s fairly obvious that I’m here to give my all for the cause, but there is no sense of you’re the new boy, you’ve got to fit in.
My first encounter with Tana Umaga was in the 1999 World Cup game where I hit him with a bit of a cheap-shot late tackle. I remember him also from the 2005 Lions, when he got me with one back. But there is no mention of that here, just a quickly formed mutual respect. His competitive personality and meticulous approach to preparation aren’t far off my own, but it’s fascinating to see him when he steps away from being a coach and joins in the drills. His decision-making, his spatial awareness – sometimes it seems the best back in the club isn’t even playing.
I also have history with Joe Van Niekerk, the big South African back-row forward, in some old battles with the Springboks, but he seems a massively good professional and a really genuine bloke. My old Newcastle teammate, Tom May, is new here, too, which helps, and I quickly build an affinity for the two enormously talented Argentinians, Felipe Contepomi and Juan Martin Fernandez Lobbe. Felipe’s decision-making and speed of hand are as good as I’ve seen, but he keeps asking how I am. It seems he really cares. It’s like finding an Argentinian Mike Catt.
Jonny: My Autobiography Page 29