Jonny: My Autobiography

by Wilkinson, Jonny

  I wonder if I should initiate a chat with Johnno and Brian, but I don’t. Maybe that’s not the smartest response, but I feel quite stubborn now. By this time, I’m interested to see when they are going to make the move.

  Yet on the surface, maybe it’s not such a crazy situation at all. I’ve been dropped to the bench. It happens, all the time in fact. What’s to get het up about? It makes for a very convincing argument – just get over yourself and get on with it like everyone else. Perhaps that’s the way I should be dealing with it. If only I was that strong right now.

  On our day off, I go for a long walk on the beach. I try to work it out in my head and see everything in a better light; I want to get back to being myself. But, on this tour, I know that’s asking a lot. This tour is hurting me and I’m letting it drag me further and further down. It seems the only way I’ll find the right perspective is by seeing it through and then getting far away from it all.

  Never has the world seemed so false as it does after the second Test. I am on for the last half hour. When I come on, we are two points down, and after about a minute and without so much as a touch of the ball, I am called upon to kick a penalty from 40 metres out. That gives us the lead, which we manage to defend to the end.

  Afterwards, the journalists say isn’t it ironic, this situation? You come back to this ground where you won the World Cup, and again you hit the kick to win the game for England against Australia – you couldn’t have scripted it better.

  What a load of shit!

  But I’m just too exhausted to respond with any passion. I’ve simply had enough of all this. It’s been a long tiring year and, right now, I just want to get away to a big holiday with Shelley; and I want to get back to Toulon, where rugby feels the way it should and where I feel wanted and valued.

  The day before that second Test, Johnno had suggested that we have a chat. I told him I was keen but that I’d rather we wait until after the game.

  So later, in the early hours after the Test, we grab a couple of chairs in the team meeting room.

  I tell him I’m surprised at what has happened. The last thing I heard was that I was your first choice ten, and now I’ve spent five and a half weeks on tour and I haven’t heard a peep from anyone apart from being told to pick up a bib in every training session and wear it as a reserve.

  Johnno explains it from a different point of view. He says the coaching team didn’t feel that you were someone who needed an arm around your shoulders. We just wanted to let you get on with your normal stuff.

  There’s that problem again. Outwardly, I might look like I’m coping and just soldiering on, but right now I need as big an arm around me as possible. I tried to make it clear during the Six Nations that I was struggling.

  I tell Johnno all the stuff in the media has just got stupid. Whatever happens, it’s my fault. And I just don’t feel a part of the set-up now, I don’t feel myself, I’m certainly not enjoying it.

  Johnno tells me I want you to fight for your place back.

  But the thing is, I tell him, I’m not 20 years old any more. You know what I’m capable of, you know what I’ll give. The mark of me is that I will give it every single time without fail, and I will be there to stand up and be counted at the end when it gets tough, always, every time, and that’s never going to change. So I’m not going to fight for my place back. I’m just going to keep trying to get better and better the way I always have done.

  The question for me, I tell him, is not how hard I work for my place back. It’s more do I continue playing or do I retire from England rugby?

  When I was a kid, this isn’t what I pictured playing for England would be like. It wasn’t how I ever imagined myself behaving or letting things get to me. Away from the field, everything has spiralled out of control, and for me, now, it’s not even about playing rugby. It has become about something else entirely and I don’t understand it any more. I don’t like it. I’m no longer able to be myself and I’m not happy.

  I tell him the way I’m feeling, I may not come back at all.

  Four months have passed since that conversation with Johnno and I finally have an answer. In Australia, I told him I may not come back at all and I felt the same when he came to see me in Toulon. I was very close to closing the book on my international career.

  But after some serious soul searching and some decent week-in week-out rugby, I have finally come to my conclusion: I am in it for one last chapter. I am just happier with myself when I’m striving, even when it’s against the odds, in fact especially when it’s against the odds. What I’m saying is I’ve got to stand up and be counted again.

  However, no sooner have I told Johnno that I am in, than I am out of action again.

  Before meeting up with England for the autumn internationals, Toulon play Stade Français in Paris. It is a massive game in front of a massive capacity crowd and though my long drop goal at the end bounces off the bar and goes over, we are still narrowly beaten. The real worry for me, though, is that I feel totally incapable of tackling.

  They have Mathieu Bastareaud, a hugely powerful centre, running at us and for once I am focussed on just cutting him down, I am not being stupid and trying to smash him into next week. However, there are times when I literally feel like I may as well not be here. When I try to put big shots on other people, they run straight through me. At the end of the game I am in so much pain. I am very worried that the pain in my shoulder will mean seriously considering the way I play the game. I feel useless out there, like a turnstile in defence.

  So, as soon as I arrive in the England camp, I go to Pasky and the England physios. I tell them I can’t lift my arms above 90 degrees, especially my left one, and I can’t tackle or take contact on it. They send me off to Manchester to see Len Funk, the guy who operated on both my shoulders and, after some scans, Len is very open and honest. He says that this is what you’d expect to see in a rugby player who has played a lot of rugby and who’s had two shoulder operations. Both shoulders are arthritic, he says, there are little bits floating around and a lot of stuff not quite right.

  What it means, he says, is I’m not going to return to being a 22/23-year-old player and that, to a degree, if quality of life is important to me after rugby then the rest of my career is going to be one of pretty strict management.

  What it also means is that, after deciding to monitor it week by week, we decide that proper rest for a good month is what is required. And so, having tortured myself over the decision of whether I wanted to carry on playing for England, I can’t play this autumn anyway.

  On the one hand it is good to hear there was nothing really serious with my shoulders, on the other hand it is disheartening to feel that this is going to be me for the rest of my playing days. Bear in mind my training ethics, that diving whole-heartedly into contact sessions has been the only approach I have known – I now have to reassess completely. Now I am going to be that Matt Burke figure, the one sitting on the sidelines saying: Look this is a contact session, I can’t do it. The sort of guy who, earlier in my career, I probably would have judged without any empathy for copping out, putting on the smoking jacket and letting the young guys do it.

  But at least, when it comes to the games themselves, I will still be able to take off the slippers and smoking jacket. The reason I am at this stage, physically, is in part because of all those times when Clive and Rob and the coaches and the physios told me to take it a bit easy on the tackling and I chose to ignore them. But really it was just wanting to make the biggest hits, to be the best, the best at everything – which means being the best defender in the game.

  I still get it now, I still get guys saying to me: Oh leave it to the back row or whatever. But what I love is the fact that I’m at this stage of my career and I’m still being me.

  Back in Toulon, the good news is that we have been joined by Carl Hayman which is not only awesome for the team, but it means the band – of sorts – is back together.

  It’s a bit of a di
fferent scenario now. We don’t quite have the same studio set up unfortunately so we have sessions in Carl’s garage or in the small upstairs spare bedroom in Shelley’s and my place. There are also some properly talented musicians around. Fotu Auelua, our immensely gifted number 8, plays a mean guitar. Our physio and all-round good guy, Mattieu Stoss, is a great jazz drummer.

  On vocals, Carl’s wife Natalie is quite handy, though unfortunately when she isn’t around, it is actually left to me once in a while to try. One strict rule is that there is to be absolutely no looking me in the eye when I’m on the mic. I can’t bear the eye contact.

  ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ by Pearl Jam is a band favourite. My goal is that, soon enough, I might have enough confidence to belt it out without having to look at the floor whilst I do so.

  Meanwhile, my shoulders start slowly to improve. I finally get back to playing in December. The pain returns for my first game, against Montpellier, but then it just lifts the following week in a really good Heineken Cup game against London Irish.

  We then qualify for the Heineken Cup quarter-finals with a win in a hell of an atmosphere against Munster. I am ever reminded of the sheer intensity and magnitude of rugby out here.

  And I am also feeling fit for a return to England.

  If I say I’m going to be there, then it is a given that I’m going to be there 100 per cent. That has to be the way.

  There is no point in pretending I don’t have slight trepidations, but I arrive back in the England camp for the Six Nations pretty much where I need to be mentally and physically.

  Johnno is just Johnno, checking how I am and genuinely wanting to know the answer. But, to settle in here, I know that the onus is on me. It helps that, from the success at Toulon, I’ve got my confidence back. I am not like I was last summer; not like a shell of my former self.

  At the same time, Floody has been playing well for Leicester and I don’t expect any change in the selection policy. So I put a lot of pressure on myself in training but it’s good pressure, it’s saying this is just a great opportunity, go and show what I’m all about.

  I can’t help my natural self, though. I still wake up in the mornings in that slight state of panic, getting het up about how people see me and what my role is. Yet this is a good challenge, it’s my time to learn from Mike Catt again. When he wasn’t selected, he just kept faith in himself and his ability, he didn’t allow himself to be blown about by the wind. He didn’t allow himself to feel awesome because he was selected one week, and then unimportant the next when he was not – not the way I have let myself feel.

  This is my time to deal with that. It’s just what happens in life. But it’s still going to be difficult for me.

  And so, as the Six Nations start and I resume my position on the England bench, I start every morning scoring about a five or a six out of ten on the panic scale. But then we get past Wales and then Italy and I get to a point where I am waking up unaffected and almost immune to where my name is on the team sheet, and used to the fact that my press interviews seem to involve talking solely about how good Floody is and how well he is doing in the England number 10 jersey.

  The trouble is, I discover, the nerves and the anxiety of being on the bench are worse than when you play. I can’t believe in the past I have had the audacity to look at the guys on the bench and think to myself, ah, I wouldn’t mind being one of them at the moment, they’re not going through all this enormous pain.

  But when you start, you go out there and just get stuck in. On the bench, your body is in this state of constant preparation and guessing, and second guessing. It doesn’t have to be like this; there are other guys who deal with it so much better than me. Steve Thompson just sits there, talking like he’s on his sofa at home watching it. When he is suddenly told to get stripped and go on, he just does it. And I look at him and keep thinking, can I see any nerves in this guy?

  For me it is a challenging situation. I know why they want me there. I’m either coming on to try to rescue a game if we’re behind, or finish the game if we’re in front. You’ve got to do all the right things and you have only a very limited time to get them done. There is no time to build into it, find the pace, maybe make a few mistakes and learn from them. If you get it right, you kind of keep your head above water, people will say well done, and that’s that. Whereas if it takes you a while to get into the game and you miss a couple of goal kicks, then you just get that immediate, ah well that’s why you’re on the bench, that’s why you shouldn’t be playing.

  So I just have to make the most of every chance I have and I speak to Blackie about this before every game. Key words: contribute, contribute, contribute to the team, contribute in any way. Make sure every second you’re contributing.

  Against Wales, I come on and put us two scores up and just about out of reach. Against Italy, I manage to make a decent tackle in the corner to stop a try. Against France, I come on in the 51st minute and the first thing I have to do is take a shot at the posts from 47 metres out. This one goes over and gives me back the world record for points scoring. And against Scotland, I come on when the game is tight and getting a bit tense; we score a try and the corner conversion puts us further ahead.

  But my biggest asset will always be my obsessive side, the fact that I cannot stop looking for more work to do out there. And in these games, I might be able to hit goal kicks, and I might be part of creating the odd opportunity, but I know that I am contributing because sometimes in 10 minutes of rugby, I am making six or seven tackles, plugging holes and taking on the responsibility to direct the team as much as I can.

  Yet still I can’t pretend that it isn’t a struggle being on the bench, though my difficulty is hugely eased by the response I get from the Twickenham crowd. When I am running round warming up in the in-goal area, people shout and say really nice things, and the whole time I’m feeling, this is amazing. And, later, when I do go on to the field – to hear their cheers, that is an amazing experience too.

  My preparation for Toulon’s Heineken Cup quarter-final pretty much sums up the end of our season. We are playing Perpignan in Barcelona, in the Olympic stadium, and on the morning of the game, as is always my way, I go to do some kicking practice. I go with Tom Whitford, the team manager, and we are able to practise in the stadium which is great.

  Bear in mind all the places I’ve kicked in the morning before games, the playgrounds, the car parks, the farmers’ fields, the God knows what. Here I am on what is easily one of the most beautiful pitches I’ve ever stood upon in one of the most stunning stadia I have been in, and yet it’s the only place, while I am kicking, that I’ve ever trodden in shit.

  I guess it’s a fox. And I guess the offending material gets sandwiched between my boot and the ball because I notice immediately afterwards that there’s a pretty horrendous smell. And then I look to see Tom take the ball fully into his chest, look at his shirt, smell his hands, and then quickly palm the ball off to one of the ball boys.

  In the game itself, we get ourselves in a great position and then throw it away in the second half. Similarly in the league, we’re handily placed and then lose it all in our final and most crucial game of the season, away against Montpellier.

  It is a massively disappointing end to the season and a sad way to say goodbye to some amazingly good friends and truly world-class players, Fotu, George Smith, Felipe Contepomi, Paul Sackey. All of them are going.

  For me, I am going too. To my last World Cup.

  I roll into Pennyhill Park for what will be my last pre-season before my last World Cup. And I feel pretty good. I might have just had the opportunity to take a long break, to relax, I might have spent much of it in Majorca, but I have been working perhaps harder than ever before. This is an incredible opportunity, maybe my last, and it goes without saying that I want to make the most of it.

  At Pennyhill, the England squad trains hard, Monday to Thursday, for six weeks. We have Friday to Sunday off and then start again. Except I don’t take the Fr
iday to Sunday off at all. For each Saturday, Calvin Morriss gives us each a session to do on our own while we are away, not huge sessions, just something to keep us ticking over. But I put myself on a different schedule. Up in Newcastle, I get together with Blackie and Sparks and train Thursday night, twice on Friday, twice on Saturday and a final session on the Sunday.

  For me, though, it is clear that this camp will be a test mentally as well as physically. The pressure and responsibility is cranked up on the number nines and tens. Especially the tens.

  We have sessions in the morning, one back line versus another back line, with the number tens making all the calls, in charge of running the plays. And in the afternoon, it starts all over again but this time it’s the team session, one team versus another.

  And then every morning, the tens have a meeting with Brian Smith in a small cottage by the team room just to look at the clips from the previous day’s training and talk about it. What are you thinking here? Why did you do that? How could you improve this?

  It is intense and very competitive, you feel there is something riding on everything, me v Floody v Charlie Hodgson. Charlie is a very, very good player and easily one of the best passers of the ball around. The three of us work together and against each other, we feel we are accountable for everything. There is no let up, it is very tough but the rugby relevance of it feels priceless.

  But where I am really struggling is with the wrestling. The squad is doing a lot of wrestling as a technique to improve the way we manoeuvre our body weight and use power more effectively. But this is a bit of a tricky one for me because I am supposed to be managing my body, playing the professional.

  However, the last thing I want in pre-season is to be on the sideline. On the one hand, I don’t want to injure myself, not at this stage; on the other, I still don’t have the mental toughness not to be a team man and not join in. And it doesn’t help that the wrestling’s becoming a big thing. Some of the guys love it, especially the coaches who watch all the sessions. We have bouts and every bout is recorded and your scores go up on the board in the team room with Manu Tuilagi and Matt Banahan generally topping the charts. And then they start showing these recordings on the TV in the dining-room during lunch.