Jonny: My Autobiography (10 page)

But then, after 25 minutes, I fly in for a big tackle and get my head caught on the wrong side. My head compresses dead straight back through my neck. I feel the all-too familiar searing heat of a stinger but this time it goes shooting down both my arms and lasts longer than usual.

After being poleaxed like that, there is no way I can carry on. So I watch from the bench, consoled by the fact that I got a reasonable start, yet massively disappointed about having to come off.

It doesn’t stop me going out with the boys that night in Leeds, and neither does it stop me sleeping on Ian Leek’s floor. Ian is a friend from Lord Wandsworth days, now studying at Leeds University. Sleeping on his floor is probably not the best idea I’ve ever had. The next morning I cannot move my neck at all. I put it down to experience.

More representative honours follow. From North Under-21, I get the call-up to play for England Under-21. We beat a New Zealand team going by the name of Nike New Zealand and starring a young Byron Kelleher, and the bar afterwards swarms with agents. I’ve not seen agents like this before. They introduce themselves. They explain what they do – I’d be interested in looking after you. I’d be interested in helping you further your career. One comes and then another, three in all, the same chat every time.

What are you supposed to make of that? Thank goodness I am with Bilks. We say thanks very much. Really we mean thanks, but no thanks. I don’t like the atmosphere or this business-like approach to the sport I love.

We play France, which goes well. In a tense, close game, I get a kick in the dying minutes, which turns defeat into victory.

A few days later, in Newcastle, I am round at the house Tim Stimpson shares with Martin Shaw, and something astonishing happens. Stimmo flicks casually to Ceefax and the new senior England squad for the Wales game in the Five Nations has been announced. At the bottom of the screen, last mentioned, almost like an afterthought, is my name. I stare at the screen. What’s my name doing there? Is there another J. Wilkinson playing rugby?

THIS is a huge challenge. I am 18, I am joining up with England and I am greeted in the England camp by a bunch of taunts from Austin Healey. Austin asks me if I’m a prize-winner who has won a competition to spend the day with the England team. He asks me if I’ve got my autograph book with me; he asks if I’ve finished my homework. He carries on like this for years to come. One day I appreciate the jokes, but right now, he has no idea that he is quite so close to the bone.

When I arrived at Newcastle, it took three months for me to feel comfortable or that I belonged. That’s how long it took before I felt I had earned the right to talk, if only briefly, to the senior boys. That’s three months of walking into the changing room, sitting wherever I could find space and getting changed in silence before making my way out, first, on to the training field. With the younger guys, and obviously my housemates, it was easier. But Inga, Dean Ryan, Pat Lam, Richard Arnold, Nick Popplewell and the other
older guys inhabited the other end of the changing room. I didn’t talk to anyone from that end until someone there spoke to me. It’s called doing your apprenticeship, earning your place, and I respect that.

The one serious downside to the Ceefax moment was that one of the significant names that had been left off the England squad list was Stimmo’s. That was disappointing for him, because I felt he deserved to be there, but also for me. He is such a good friend, and in the corridors of the Petersham Hotel in Richmond, where I join up with the England squad, it would have been nice to have had his company.

At least I have Garath Archer and Tony Underwood as friendly faces. And Rob Andrew knows what I am facing and prepares me well. Just enjoy it, he says. It’s clear that he has been in communication with the England coaches. He would not have let me go unless he thought I was ready for it, although it quickly becomes clear to me that maybe I am not.

My first roommate in an England squad is Dorian West, ingeniously nicknamed ‘Chief’ because he calls everyone chief. Chief is an easy guy to get on with, absolutely no ego, very relaxed – ideal. We share a small, dark room in the far corner of the bottom floor of the hotel, and this is where I hide.

The guys in the squad are people I know because I have seen them on TV – Jerry Guscott, Martin Johnson, Lawrence Dallaglio, Jason Leonard, Phil de Glanville, Kyran Bracken, Tim Rodber. I am very wary of my place. I wouldn’t dream of opening my mouth to these guys before being given the green light to do so. I find it very difficult to approach them when I meet them in big groups. I introduce myself very formally. My name is Jonny, nice to meet you. I stop just short of calling them sir.

I guess this is a different environment from Newcastle. It’s competitive here, and we all come from different clubs, so people don’t know each other
as well. There is no welcoming moment as there was at Kingston Park, no Ingas and Pat Lams coming over to say hi.

It’s at its worst at mealtimes. You get your food and who do you sit next to? I find myself scanning the dining room quickly and if I can’t spy a friendly face, I double back to my room. I’ll stay hungry and come back later.

There is a form of escape in Dave Alred, who is England’s kicking coach. Training at Twickenham finishes around 5pm and then Dave and I stay and kick for hours. Kicking under floodlights at Twickenham, with the whole place to yourself, is a schoolboy’s dream. Often I don’t get back until eight, which means I’m late for dinner, which is good because there is no one in the dining room.

I enjoy training, too, because there’s loads of contact. In particular, I enjoy a drill called murderball, which is basically fifteen on fifteen, a very small pitch, completely full-on. Physically, I act like I’m almost invincible, and I try to hit whomever I can, the biggest, smallest, just smash them. Quite what the senior guys think of an 18-year-old upstart running around trying to put them into hospital, I have no idea. But this is my release; this is my opportunity to be me.

Kicking with Dave means I get to know Paul Grayson, who is England’s kicker and number ten, and I start to spend a lot of time with him. I feel comfortable with Grays. He is a genuinely decent bloke.

I feel comfortable with Catty, too. I don’t know why but he is just different. Hey Wilko, he says as his greeting. He jumps on my back, puts his arm round my shoulder. Just for a brief second, I feel I’m back at Newcastle among friends.

But when everyone is back together again, the mood changes and I revert to an awkward silence. I find the backs meetings particularly hard. Everyone gets to the meeting room early and chats while waiting for proceedings to start. I just sit there, fold my arms in my lap and find something to stare at. It’s
uneasy, uncomfortable, but I so desperately want to play for England, it doesn’t matter. If that’s how it has to be, so be it.

On the Thursday of the Wales week, I am released, as expected, from the England camp so that I can play for the England Under-21s. We do well, we score some decent tries, running the ball from all over the field, and I feel the obvious contrast. I am part of this team, I feel valued and I walk around with my head held a bit higher. With England, I am, rightly, at the bottom of the chain.

Three weeks later, I’m called back to the England senior team for the Scotland game. Clive Woodward, the head coach, wants a word. He says he is thinking of putting me on the bench.

At least Clive is not intimidating. He seems welcoming, and he seems to have a great deal of confidence in me. I feel as though he actually believes in me, and my call-up is not some crazy one-off, but he has a genuine plan and I’m a part of it.

I also know that he thinks I’m too quiet, not demonstrative enough, and his way of dealing with that is to ask me questions in team meetings, just to get me to say something out loud. So it’s not long before the team meetings down on the bottom floor of the Petersham Hotel are something I begin to dread. The other players seem to wander in, relaxed, yet I sit there totally paranoid, as though I’m waiting nervously for an oral exam, because I know it’s going to come, my question, my moment when I’m going to have to say something.

There is one good team meeting, though, and that’s the one when Clive lifts the paper on the flip chart to show the team sheet, and there it is on the subs’ list: my name. My name on the England team sheet. It’s also a bit embarrassing. A lot of the players congratulate me, but I wonder oh God, do these people think I deserve it? Do they really want me here?

Then I look at Dean Ryan, Newcastle captain and coach, who has been called up to join the squad. How does he manage it? He doesn’t seem remotely nervous or anxious, or at least if he is, he doesn’t let it on. He just seems himself. What an impressive way to be.

We fly up to Scotland and, inside the Murrayfield stadium, I sit on the bench, completely torn in two. I desperately want to get on. I want to be able to say I’ve played for England; I don’t want to be so close but not close enough. At the same time, the game seems to be going in the right direction. Maybe these guys are doing well without me. Maybe I’ll just learn from this and be ready for the next one.

A fortnight later, I’m at the next one, still waiting, back on the bench for the Ireland game at Twickenham. England are winning quite well and time is fast running out. Scott Benton, the reserve scrum half, and I go down to the bottom end of the pitch to warm up and while we are there the game stops because Catty, who has been playing on the wing, is down. Hamstring. The thing is we have no reserve winger. Scott and I look at each other, knowing that this means one of us is going on. Dave Redding, our trainer, tells us the answer. It’s me.

I shake off my tracksuit trousers. Deep breaths, puff out my chest, there’s no hiding now. It’s all very well having this image of the England player-in-waiting, but now you’ve got to prove yourself – which is not so simple on the wing. I have never played wing before. And it is so obvious what’s going to happen – Ireland’s first lineout, a box-kick to the new boy. I jump and catch it, and I’m not smashed as expected because Neil Back runs an awesome block line on their winger’s chase, for which he is then penalised. Thanks for looking out for me, mate.

My five-minute debut is gone in a blur. The pace of the game is so frantic, it’s absurd. But it’s done and I have played for England. On my list of goals, that is one I can now tick off. I wanted to play for England before I turned 19
and I have. I’m told I’m the youngest England player for seventy-one years. My teammates congratulate me, the atmosphere feels fantastic.

After the game, we have to meet some corporate sponsors in the marquees in the car park and I go along with Catty and Neil Back. I hear people talking about me as we walk past. They want to shake my hand. They want to say well done and can we have an autograph, and as we walk from one area to the next, we are greeted with applause.

It would be so easy to get carried away with all this, but there is something else on my mind, and it’s been there since Clive flipped the paper to show the team for Scotland. My singing ordeal. When you make your England debut, you have to sing a first-cap song. I know that as soon as we are back on the bus, it’ll be my time.

At the after-match tea, I head to the bar and down a couple of beers to help me. Pretty much as soon as we get on the bus, cheering comes from the back. We’ve got a new cap on board! They’re like animals sniffing fresh prey.

Normally, I have a good memory for lyrics. I’ve too many stored away for my own good, including half of Bilks’s sixties and seventies record collection and the entire Beatles back catalogue. But right now, at the front of the bus, my mind goes blank. It doesn’t help that, for the first time ever, wives and girlfriends have been invited to the black-tie post-match dinner, and so they are on the bus, too. I can think of literally nothing to sing, absolutely nothing, and along the aisle in front of me I can see the faces of Guscott, Leonard, Johnson and the rest, looking grossly unimpressed.

Eventually, I break into ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’. It doesn’t go down well. They abuse me loudly. I should ignore this and carry on, but I stop. OK, OK, I say, I don’t know any other songs. The silence is teeth-grindingly awkward.