Jonny: My Autobiography (11 page)

Sing anything, they shout from the back. But I can’t think of anything. This is horrible. Just sing ‘Wonderwall’ comes the cry. So I do. Badly.

At the dinner, I am introduced to another mandatory game for the new cap. This is the one where the other twenty-one players in the squad all buy two supposedly identical drinks, one for themselves and one for the new cap. It’s the red wine and whisky coming my way that I find most troubling. No surprises that before we’ve even sat down for dinner, first up is Austin Healey.

The women come to my rescue this time. Don’t be so mean, they say. What are you doing to him? Leave him alone.

Thanks to them, I just about survive. I am presented with my cap, a genuine cap. I actually manage to walk up to the stage unaided to receive it. Then I wear it, as tradition dictates, throughout dinner. Next stop is the Café de Paris nightclub in the centre of town. I have never been out in London before so when I offer to get a small round of drinks, I discover I haven’t got nearly enough money. Thank God for Dean Ryan, who helps me out. I end up using his money to buy him a drink.

Thank God for Dean again, for getting me home. And I haven’t even lost my cap. The next morning, I am awoken by knocking at the door. It’s Mum and I’m still fully dressed, lying face down on the bed. I have never felt simultaneously so bad and so good, and proud and very fulfilled.

IF you are a young impressionable kid and you want to be the best player in the world, there are probably no two better people to learn from than Inga Tuigamala and Pat Lam.

At Newcastle, I have Rob Andrew as a guiding light, showing me the composure and mentality required to play number ten, to control and manufacture victories. And I have Pat and Inga as my inspiration. It’s not just that they are the best two players in the Premiership – that’s my view, anyway – it is their spirit and their approach.

They love playing rugby, and every day in training, you see them pushing the boundaries, with big smiles on their faces. It is as if they are opening a door and allowing me a peak through – this is what’s out there, if you really want it.

In one training session, we practise a move that starts with Pat coming off the back of the scrum. My job is to hold the tackle bag to stop him when he comes through to set the ball up for the next phase. We run the move
twice, and when we run it a third time, Pat runs towards me as planned. I go to hit him with the bag and he just completely steps me; he makes me look stupid. My lesson for the day – be ready for everything, never switch off, not for a second, not even in training.

For a big guy, Pat has a lethal step. I love that. And he has a phenomenal ability for timing a run on to the ball.

Inga’s supreme skill is beating three, sometimes four, five, six defenders, and then still, always, off-loading. And although we’ll spend all week practising moves for the weekend, in the middle of the game itself, he’ll start calling something completely different that he has just dreamt up. The English response is to consider the possible risk, but his enthusiasm takes him away from that. He just says why not? I think because it’ll be me who shoulders the blame.

Every week, Pat and Inga show me that anything is possible. Every week, they inspire me to be the best.

In the weeks away from the England camp, being back in Newcastle feels like being back at home. I feel more at home in the team now, too, regularly playing at number twelve. And sometimes, I can even hold a five-minute conversation with a senior player. Playing twelve is a privileged place to be – outside Rob, the great controller, and inside Inga. You can give the ball to Inga in any situation. If Rob feels he really needs experience for a game, he brings Alan Tait off the wing and into the centre instead of me, but towards the latter part of the season, when we are making a charge at the league title, I mostly keep my place.

In April, with six games to go, we have lost just one league game all season. We play successive games in London, against Saracens, who beat us with a last-second drop goal, and against Wasps, who beat us by a single point. Our title hopes are in danger.

The Wasps game is tight and awkward. Towards the end, I’m not quite sure how to help. I don’t want to get in Rob’s way and it’s against my instinct to hide. The tension is killing. By the changing rooms afterwards, I meet Bilks and I can hold it in no longer. He is greeted with the same panic and tears he has seen so many times before. Have I let people down? I want to know. I feel so frustrated. I ask Bilks am I doing my job right? What else could I have done? I don’t feel completely clear about what I should be doing, about my role. What more can I do? Maybe the pressure is wearing me down a bit.

And I look at Rob. With a last-minute, long-range penalty, he had an opportunity to win the game, and he hit the post. How can he be so calm and philosophical? Why do I seem to feel it so much more?

We finish with three big games – Leicester and Bath at home and Harlequins away. If we win them all, we win the League.

I love having Blackie in the changing room before games. He gives the team talk, such is the standing in which he is held by the team. We are half shit-scared of him, and 100 per cent respectful, so there is no better person to deliver messages about commitment and honesty, and what makes a difference.

He asks us to focus on what we’ve trained on during the week, but he also talks about aggression in contact, and the fire in our performance, in our desire. He talks about inspiring each other, and our roles as players and leaders. When he speaks, it’s an aggressive, inspirational sound track pumping through the changing room, and we listen.

On a sunny Bank Holiday Monday, the Leicester side we face is full of the big names I have been hiding from in the England camp, plus Joel Stransky, South Africa’s World Cup-winning fly half. We play well. We run a perfect double-switch, Rob linking with me and then me with Pat. Pat runs his line so fast and close to my back that I feel his speed like a ghost going through the back of my shirt. He explodes through the hole
at full pace, has just one defender to beat and out-gases him to the line. Great try from a great player.

We beat Leicester 27–10. Against Bath, I help us to build a lead and then watch from the bench as we successfully defend it, 20–15. Finally, on a hot mid-May Sunday in London, we complete the job at Harlequins, 44–20. I have been here one season and we are Premiership champions.

Naturally, this kick-starts a week of partying – serious, proper, night after night celebrating – which isn’t too smart, because at the end of the week, we are at Twickenham for the Sanyo Cup. The new league champions play a seriously classy Rest of the World team starring Chester Williams, Philippe Bernat-Salles and David Knox.

We start by playing like people who have been drunk for half the week. Inga’s first involvement in the game – beating three players, then a blind back-handed offload – makes it obvious that he is teetotal. Very quickly, we find ourselves 31–7 down, but we recover to 31–19 just before the break. And we want to win this. We pull ourselves back into it and the last half hour becomes the Pat and Inga show. We win 47–41.

But the point is this. I am on the receiving end of a lot of success at a ludicrously early stage in my career. And physically, I feel kind of invincible. This path is one I am finding a little too easy to tread. Harsh reality, however, is but a game away.

Off the pitch, life is moving fast, too. It’s clear I need an agent and Bilks and I are put in touch with Tim Buttimore, an ex-Leicester player who looks after Martin Johnson, Neil Back and Clive Woodward. That seemed a pretty decent recommendation.

I like Tim. He’s not like a lot of other agents – no fast talking, no promising this, promising that, just very supportive, genuine, honest. I feel comfortable that this is someone I can get on with.

The relationship starts well when Tim tells me he can bring in a boot sponsor. Adidas? I’d almost sell my soul to be with adidas. Ever since Dave Alred gave me that first pair of Predators, I’ve worn nothing else.

So I get a little bit of money, all the kit I could possibly need, and boots. My excitement when that first pair of boots arrives from adidas is like a child’s at Christmas.

The day after the Sanyo Cup, I join the England squad for the Tour from Hell. At this stage, we are just a young group, excited to be going on a long England tour of the Tri-Nations countries. We don’t know yet that this is the Tour from Hell. That name is applied five weeks later and sticks for ever more.

What is clear at the start is that we do not have anything approaching a full-strength England team. Many of the senior players have been advised to use the summer to rest, but at least we have Neil Back and Stimmo. Stimmo is one of the best physical specimens I’ve ever seen on a rugby pitch. But on the morning we meet up, Backy has a quick chat with Clive and suddenly goes from the squad list to the injury list. When you see a guy of that quality walking back to his car with his bag, that is a big blow.

We train on the Twickenham pitch, a particularly hard, physical session with John Mitchell, the forwards coach, screaming at the shirtless forwards, telling them individually how fat they are. Off the pitch, Clive stresses the point by asking Josh Lewsey to take his shirt off.

What? Josh was not exactly expecting this.

Take your shirt off, Clive tells him.

Josh does what he is told and Clive points at him and tells us that, if we are serious about playing for England, this is what we all need to look like.

Somewhere hidden in this act, genetics aside, Clive may have the semblance of a point. I am getting more used to his interesting ideas. To improve communication, he once had the Under-21s back line training with pillow cases over their heads. Also in the Under-21s, he has tried playing Paul Sampson, a phenomenally fast winger, at number ten because he wanted to see what it was like to have the quickest number ten in the world.

His other idea for this tour is to start me at number ten. The result is that pretty much the minute we get to Brisbane, I am being sat on a park bench having my photo taken and being interviewed by Australian journalists. Naturally, I try to play it straight and I go on about the enormous respect we have for the country we are visiting. Nevertheless, ‘The Boy Wonder’ is what they call me in the papers the next day; they big me up as England’s young hope and I feel massively uncomfortable with it. Look, I say, I’m 19, just walked off the plane, never played number ten for England before, only played five minutes of international rugby at all and that was on the wing, and when I was here this time a year ago, it was on a schoolboys’ tour. But the Boy Wonder tag sticks. This was what the Australian media were going to write whatever I said.