Jonny: My Autobiography (13 page)

When the next England squad is announced for the autumn series, my name is not on it. Actually, it gives me a certain freedom about the task in hand. I’m so fired up, working so hard. Blackie, sadly, has moved jobs to work with Wales, but we remain in very close contact. I so need to continue working with him.

Out on the pitch, I am so determined and so passionate that I start getting carried away and mouthy with the opposition. It’s not a conscious decision and I hate myself for it afterwards, but I can’t seem to help it. My pre-game anxieties and nerves are as bad as ever, and when I’m caught up in the game, they manifest themselves in impulsive comments and aggressive taunts.

I love putting in the big hits, but I start following up with some back-chat on the ground: How do you like that? Or one of my most cringeworthy: Take that, served first-class delivery for you! It’s weak, disrespectful and not very clever, but I can’t seem to control it.

We play London Scottish away and I am angry, frustrated. The game isn’t going well, the Scottish boys seem a little cocky and I start having an ongoing exchange with their back-rower, Simon Fenn. We run our double-switch move and I block the player defending me so he can’t get to the next tackle. I am right in Fenn’s ear, letting him know all about it, shouting: It’s a missed tackle, your missed tackle, that’s your man and it’s your fault.

It doesn’t end there. We are constantly on at each other in open play, in rucks and even during breaks in play. After the game, we go through their tunnel and everyone says well played, as you always do. But I seem to be the exception. Their players just carry on abusing me, calling me an idiot and far worse. It is quite an achievement to have made an impact like that in eighty minutes. I deserve it, but it shocks me.

A few weeks later, we have London Scottish again, back at Kingston Park, and I still haven’t learned. We are in the process of scoring a try and, away from the action, one of their second-rowers is in a wrestling, slanging tussle with Rob Andrew. Arrogant, confused, but trying to be clever, I charge in to break it up.

Listen, I say to their big number four, and point to the uprights. You go over there now, my friend, and stand under those posts while I kick this ball over.

Then I see that we’ve scored in the left corner, and so I line up the conversion thinking I’ve just made this kick even harder now. I’ve really set myself up for a big fall. If I don’t get this, I’m opening myself up to a whole load of abuse.

I don’t strike it brilliantly but the sight of the ball going through the posts triggers intense relief. Yet I am making life needlessly tough for myself. I don’t need it. If only I could control it.

The good news is that I have passed my driving test at the first attempt, which will help me get around, and means my entire wage does not go to the local taxi firm. The bad news is that I am not the best behind the wheel.

Now I need a car, particularly since I have become a proud house owner, so no lifts to training, and what I save on taxis has to go on my mortgage.

The area in which I live does not have a brilliant reputation. I guess I should have twigged when some enthusiastic kids knocked on my door asking to borrow some golf ‘bats’. Slightly bemused, I lent them a couple of my clubs, although this is a built-up area, and there aren’t exactly many golf courses around. I can’t really be sure what the clubs were used for. Suffice it to say, I never saw them again.

And just up the road, there was an armed siege on a house. The neighbours were told to stay away from their connecting wall because there was a chance that bullets might be flying through from the other side.

But I feel good round here, a sense that is massively enhanced when Sparks moves in with me after getting a job as a conditioning coach with the club. There are good people around, too. Jim and Sue, a truly lovely couple over the road, become like surrogate parents to me. But the real reason I have no worries is because of Blackie. With his reputation and all his local connections, he basically puts the word out that no one is to touch my house, no one is to go near it, because his mate is living inside. That is a seal of approval that gives you confidence.

As for my suspect driving, it began when I was a learner in Farnham and managed to take out a concrete gatepost in our driveway. Up here, I have randomly crashed into the car of my teammate Ian Peel in my own driveway when it was parked next to me. That cost me some £350.

My first car is a red Peugeot 206, and I have managed to drive it up on to the grass island in the middle of a roundabout. I’m not entirely sure how, but I stopped at a shop off the roundabout to get a drink, and then somehow managed to rejoin the roundabout by going the wrong way up the exit sliproad. Other cars were heading straight for me and I could see terror in the eyes of the drivers. So I swerved and finished up parked in the middle of the central island.

The sight of my red Peugeot on the island was ridiculous – obviously – and as other drivers slowed down to see what the hell was going on, I decided to pretend there was something wrong with the car and started banging the steering wheel, to show that I was really angry and totally blameless. I then just ducked down and hid in the footwell for three or four minutes, occasionally peering up to see if there were any cars around, and when I
finally saw that there weren’t, I slipped quietly back on to the road with a perfect execution of the trusty mirror, signal, manoeuvre technique.

But now I’m wondering what to say to my teammate Jim Naylor, or whether to say anything at all. After a recent game at Kingston Park, driving away from the snowy car park, a notebook fell from my door compartment. It landed under my feet and I didn’t want it to go under the brake pedal. So I reached down to grab it, simultaneously veered a little and managed to ride my 206 up against another car.

In the dark, I checked the other car up and down properly, and I couldn’t see any damage at all. I didn’t think mine was damaged either, although the cold light of the next day showed that I was clearly wrong.

A week later, I’m back at the club, relaxing in the physio room. Someone comes in and asks have you had a bit of a prang in your car? The front wing is pretty dented.

Er, yeah, I reply. It was after that game with the snow last week in the car park. I think someone drove into me and then just drove off. I can’t believe someone would do that.

It just so happens that Jim is right next to me.

I don’t believe it, he says. That’s exactly what happened to my blue Escort, on the same night.

I don’t tell Jim. But I do sprint outside and vigorously scratch off the blue paint from my Peugeot’s front end.

The season hasn’t been going long before Rob wants a word. It’s my defence, he says. You need to back off a bit, leave it more to your teammates, mainly the back-rowers.

OK I reply. I’m not sure I’ll find that easy, but I realise it’s a good idea.

It’s not just Rob who delivers this message. I’ve heard it before, anyway. It comes from the other coaches, too, and to be honest, I can see it kind of makes sense. If I’m able to back off a bit, I’ll be slightly fresher for other parts of my game. Almost everyone is of the same opinion. I speak to Blackie. He understands me. He knows that I am all or nothing and that tackling fuels the rest of my game.

It’s not as if I wake up in the morning and think I’m going to go out and really try to smash people today. Not at all. I want to change the course of the game for my team. If I am able to damage the other team’s game plan, dent their confidence by getting in a good hit and make them think twice about coming back next time, I won’t hold back.

But it’s not just that. It’s also something I feel on the field of play. That ultra competitive switch in me gets flicked when a ball-carrier looks at me as if to say I’m going to run straight over you. I feel kind of belittled by that. I find myself thinking there’s simply no way I can cope with just tackling you to the ground now, that would almost be your victory, that almost means you win. No, I’m going to have to show you you’ve made a mistake.

It’s just pure competitive instinct and desire to show what I’m capable of. It’s why I train the way I do; it’s what I live for.

But trying to explain that to coaches when they’re talking from a purely tactical mindset doesn’t work. I can’t explain my natural desire. I can’t explain why I have only one way and no alternative.

So what I say to Rob becomes a stock answer given each time we have this same conversation in all the years to come. OK, yeah, it’s a good idea I know. I’ll do my best.

At home in Lemington, in the West of Newcastle, just before Christmas, I’m preparing dinner when there is a knock on the door, a pleasant gentleman in his sixties.

How can I help?

You’ve been notified for a drugs test, he tells me.

This is like being subpoenaed; once you have been notified, that’s it. Refuse and it counts as a negative sample. This is my first home visit.

The problem is I have only just been to the toilet. So I invite him in. I have almost finished making dinner and apologise that I didn’t make enough for him.

We sit on the sofa together in my small lounge and watch
The Simpsons
in silence while I eat. Poor guy. It’s a little awkward, but I can’t deliver what he wants yet. The drug-tester seems easygoing, and patient. He is not allowed to let me out of his sight, which means that when I go to the kitchen to make us a drink, he comes too.

After two and a bit hours, I can finally deliver what he has come for. I go to the toilet and he joins me in my tiny bathroom. That’s part of his job. He has to watch; I am not allowed to shut the door. It feels more awkward than it did before.

But he is just the first. This is the life.

In the new year, I am recalled to the England squad for the Five Nations.

It’s great to be called back, and this time I really feel I’ve earned it. But it means going back to the Petersham Hotel and that intimidating atmosphere, where I am so uninvolved in the day-to-day chat that I
really don’t know what the squad think about me. Am I taking the place of someone else they feel should be there? A friend of theirs? Someone else who fits in more?