Jonny: My Autobiography (14 page)

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 domestic 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.

I go up at second defender. Guscott is going to be running against me. As he passes the ball, I realise I’ve run up a bit too quickly, so in order to avoid colliding with him, I move to his side, which is also the side where he’s passed. This may look as though I’m trying half-heartedly for an intercept, but I’m not. It may also make Guscott look as though he’s not doing his job, although that’s not the case, either.

I’m going back to the queue when Guscott silences the whole group. What the fucking hell do you think you’re doing? He says it to me, loud and clear. You should fucking listen, maybe you’ll learn something.

Ever since I joined up with England, Jerry Guscott has had an aura of the untouchable about him, and as the young lad coming in, I’m certainly not the one to challenge it. Nor, on this occasion, is anyone else. Everyone hears what he has said, players and coaches alike. In the awkward quietness, I feel myself shrinking. I feel a foot tall. And then everyone just gets on with the drill again as if nothing has happened. No one stands by me, no one says: Whoa there, that’s a bit much. Or: Don’t worry about it, Jonny, just forget it, that sort of thing. No one says anything.