Jonny: My Autobiography (24 page)

DAVE and I are at Middlesbrough football club’s indoor facility. Our topic, again, is what does being the best really mean and how do I achieve it?

Dave says you need to get the same results with your goalkicking but from farther out. Other kickers have a greater range. I’m convinced that you can kick from farther away, too.

I like the sound of this. It’s positive, concentrating on improvement, a great project for the post-Lions summer. Middlesbrough’s indoor facility is perfect – no wind, dependable secure footing, a sterile environment, ideal for learning.

We have the whole place to ourselves. Two, sometimes three evenings a week, we drive the hour down to Middlesbrough, we kick between eight and half nine and then we drive the hour back for a late dinner, bed and then up for Newcastle training the next morning.

Dave introduces a new concept: centring. He says to me picture your
inner energy like a fire burning in your core area. Channel that fire as you’re breathing in and out, and channel the power so you actually feel it going down your leg, like a build-up of explosive energy into your foot as you strike the ball.

It’s part visualisation, part a kind of control of energy and part focus of concentration. I follow his words and take a kick. I get an extra six metres. I am astonished. This is the power of the mind and here, for the first time, is the clear evidence. Immediately I realise that this is where I will get my next big gains.

We also work on stripping down and rebuilding my technique. We want to bring in my main quadricep muscle instead of the inside quad muscle, which is not as strong. In other words we want to use less of my instep and a little more of the top of my foot.

When you connect this way, Dave says, you get more power, more precision and it will ping off your foot, fizzing like a golf ball off a low iron.

This is not easy. Numerous times I kick the hell out of the floor before the ball. But then, suddenly, I get it right and the penny drops.

He’s not finished there. I have always approached the ball in a slow walk. This gives me a reliable routine but means all my power has to come from my last long step into the kick, which can be difficult to control, especially when I’m tired. We work on flowing into each goalkick, accelerating into the strike, which allows me to use the momentum of my body to achieve the necessary power. In classic Dave Alred style, I get results – greater distance, more accuracy and more comfort, all with less effort.

Who else is doing this? How good will this be if we can perfect it? This is suddenly all I can think about.

When I’m centring, Dave says to adopt a strong position. He doesn’t tell me what to do, but I find that the more I focus, the more my hands naturally
move to each other. With my hands together like this, I find I can shut out the pressure and crowd noise. This position assures me, very slightly it relaxes me.

To get comfortable with new distances, we spend hours kicking 45 metres, 50 metres, and aiming to land the ball on the crossbar of the goal. We kick footballs to encourage the rolling of the foot – anything to help relearn and perfect my new technique. It’s a massive step forward and it’s purely thanks to Dave’s genius.

The big thing at Newcastle for the new season is the Heineken Cup. We are in a group with Leinster, Newport and Toulouse, so we’re not exactly easing our way into it.

I find it hard enough preparing for a game without a TV camera watching your every move. It’s worse when you’re kicking before the game and going through your warm-up routine, and two guys are moving around you with a camera two or three metres away. For these Heineken Cup games, the TV production side seems to go up a level.

It’s the same with all televised games. You get off the bus, get your bag and walk to the changing room accompanied by a camera two feet from your face. The face they choose is invariably mine.

Sparks knows how uncomfortable this makes me feel. Before the game I like my space to concentrate, but the cameras make that so hard. So this is the routine. He gets off the coach first and does a quick scan for cameras. When he sees one making a beeline for me, he walks close in front of me all the way to the changing room, effectively blocking the camera.

I like that minor victory. It works because it gives me the space, but also because I just don’t like the way the cameras operate. This is a team, we live
in a team environment, so the whole team should have screen time, but they want to focus on one person.

But I would rather the victory was on the pitch. I feel like I kick well against Newport and again against Leinster at their place, but in a well-contested game, they also beat us. Europe, it seems, is for now a bit far ahead of us.

When I started with England, my first fitness tests were straightforward three-kilometre runs round a track. How fast can you do it? Mike Catt was phenomenal. On my debut, aged 18, I got an early stitch and then chugged around, just about managing to stay ahead of the front-row boys. Catty and Neil Back were probably the fittest in the squad. I clearly wasn’t.

These tests were tough for the forwards. All that weight pounding down on the hard surface was hell for their knees and backs. At some stage, someone twigged and asked what on earth has running 3km, at the same steady pace, got to do with playing rugby?

So now we have a Team Fitness Test, and it has got into my head.

Starting from a lying position, you get to your feet, run five metres to a cone, backpedal to the start, get down to your chest, up, run five metres out, backpedal again, down to your chest again, then a series of 10 metre zigzag runs before rounding it off with a 30 metre sprint back to the start. That is one repetition. Then you have a 25 second rest and do another rep, then a 30 second rest followed by three sets of two reps with about 45 seconds to sort yourself out in-between, depending on how fast you complete your reps. One final single rep and you have completed the nightmare experience. One rep takes about 20 seconds. One of the coaches monitors you with clipboard and stopwatch. Your combined time for all the shuttles is your score.

It kind of simulates game play, the stop-start, making a tackle, and features recovery – running hard out until a break in play, quick rest, recovery and then ready to go again.

This ability to measure us, to compare us with each other, makes me competitive. When I get back up to Newcastle, I say to Blackie I have to be the best at this test. I want to train for this test. You tell me where I need to be, when to turn up, and what to bring with me. We both know that I’d do better to train for the actual game, but I don’t care.

Blackie’s response, as ever, is spot on. He sets up similar exercises and he has me doing them wearing a vest weighed down by 10 or 20 kilos’ worth of lead. He even manages to make it fun. But I have a new goal here and so I train ridiculously hard for it.

Back down at Pennyhill, the test starts to make me nervous. I find I can’t sleep the night before test day. After all this effort, what if I don’t win?

But I do win. Just behind me, as always, is Neil Back, but I am consistently at the front. That way I don’t feel I have let myself down.

For England, the autumn starts badly. We go to Dublin for our postponed Grand Slam game and we lose fair and square, 20–14. We are short on preparation time and we are slower than Ireland to get the Lions experience out of our systems. In simple terms, we are beaten by a better team on the day. Another Grand Slam is gone.

For me, though, the greater challenge is what comes next in the autumn season – Australia. The media muse over the question: who is the best in the world? In press conferences and interviews, this is how they put it: A lot of
people are saying now that you’re the best number ten in the world, you and Stephen Larkham. What do you think?

I answer honestly. In many facets of the game, I wish I was as good as he is.

Deep down, though, that question strikes a chord. It’s a reminder of the goal I wrote down – I want to be the best ten in the world. But I have another goal. Never to be anything less than humble and modest. I make sure I pay due respect to all other players and I’d never dream of talking about myself as the best. But actually, this subject comes like music to my ears. It’s like a drug and I can’t quite resist it. I want to be the best. It really does matter to me that people think I might be.

By the time the Australia game comes round, this is just one of the thoughts that has worked its way deep into my head. Sitting in the changing room, preparing for the match, the pressure I feel is almost unbearable. If you offered me an opt-out now, the chance to run away, I’d seriously consider it.

I make myself a promise. If I get through this game all right, I’m going to ask for two weeks off after it.

We beat Australia 21–15, I kick all 21 points, five penalties and two drop goals, and I feel good. Not good as in elated, but good as in pleased to have come through the challenge and survived the pressure. And I don’t ask for two weeks’ holiday.

A fortnight later, we have the Springboks and I am exactly the same, feeling the anxiety and strain rising as the game approaches.

On Friday night, I try to relax by watching TV, but I don’t really watch. I spend the entire programme asking myself how much time is left? And am I enjoying this? Am I relaxing? I count the minutes down until it’s time to go to bed.

When I go to bed, I read through the notes I’ve made during the week and then I listen to the CD that Dave has made for me. It’s a mental rehearsal
CD with Dave narrating over the noise of a real game. He talks me through tackles and passes, kicks and decisions, using the language I need to hear to visualise my performance. They’ve moved the ball, your man has the ball, you focus on his thighs and you go forward and hit, driving your shoulder into his legs, wrapping your arms tightly, you make the tackle, it’s a strong tackle … And so on. I listen but I’m still not relaxing.

In the morning, I have my usual breakfast of muesli and an egg-white omelette filled with ham and peppers, and afterwards it’s kicking practice with Dave. Then, after a brief team meeting, I have an hour or so in my room to get changed, sit there and mull over it all.