Jonny: My Autobiography (54 page)

On the point of tears, I phone Tana in Toulon. I just want his opinion. Against Ireland, he says, you looked like you were out on your own out there.

Brian Smith asks me to meet him for a chat in the bar at Pennyhill, and I go along to see him half expecting to be dropped. We need to give Floody a bit of a run-out off the bench this week, he says. He hasn’t come off the bench yet at all, and he needs some experience. I agree with that completely, but I still feel the confidence in me is seeping away.

So during training, I crank up the pressure higher than ever. I’m so desperate to conquer this game plan and understand where I fit in. I treat every training session like a mini game. They become so important, just briefly they kind of become my life.

And as ever, I go about convincing myself that I am going to be great on the weekend. But actually, for the first time, reality is utterly different. I’m a genuinely broken man. The emotional stress and pressure has dragged me to rock bottom. I feel the media are set against me and the squad are losing confidence in me. I no longer have confidence in what I am supposed to be doing, either. I’m a shell of myself; I am completely lost.

I ask Brian for another chat. I tell him I don’t feel it’s working for me, and I’m struggling badly, mentally. I want to be in an environment where I can go out there and smash it, but I’m going out filled with uncertainty. I tell him I’m struggling to deal with this, I’m struggling to sleep and struggling to lift my head up in front of the other guys.

Brian is really understanding and says that he can see how painful I am finding it.

But the guy who then goes out to play against Scotland wearing the number ten shirt – that’s hardly me. I do everything I possibly can, in as positive and enthusiastic a mood as I can summon – that will never change, that is still the non-negotiable part of the deal – but my focus is wrong. I do not play with the certainty of a team leader, the way I enjoyed so much in the autumn.

Internationally, my world is falling apart and so every time I touch the ball, I analyse my performance. It’s like every second of this Scotland game is on replay. Everything good: that’s OK. Everything bad: I’ve failed. What’s the point? I failed. I’m stuck inside my head. I’m not stuck in the game.

Shortly after half-time, I am put out of my misery. In a tackle I get knocked clean out and that’s it. I’m forced to come off. Normally, I’d fight coming off, but not this time. It’s not like there’s a sense of relief – just oh well, that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped it would. And so I sit in the changing room, listening to the noises of the game outside. Jonny Bloomfield, one of our technical coaches, gives me updates on the score. An unsatisfactory draw. Unsatisfactory all round.

The following Monday, on the Pennyhill training pitch, Brian says he wants another word. I knew this was coming.

Look, he says, we are going to go with Floody this week against France. He needs a run out.

OK, that’s great, mate. I don’t mind that all, and actually I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad idea.

But I also ask Brian where do you see me in the plan?

We still see you as the number-one fly half, but it’s been a difficult Six Nations and Floody needs a run out.

It might just be me but his answer seems a bit mumbled. It’s not said outright, and from the umm-ing and aah-ing and the search for the right words, I’m not totally convinced that his answer isn’t just an attempt to make me feel better and hide the fact that their confidence has shifted.

But when I tell Brian that the change is not a bad idea, I really mean it. You’re
going to get a kick-start reaction from taking me out of the team, I tell him. In fact, strangely, I couldn’t be more sure of it.

It happened in 2008. Things weren’t going well and the team looked to me to try to sort it out, but the minute they took me out of the game, people stopped standing back and started wanting to get involved and do it themselves. Again, I’ve come into an England situation that’s not exactly going well and I’ve tried to contribute towards finding the solution. And at times the team has been leaving me to do what they think is ‘my thing’.

You’ll get a good response from this, I tell Brian. The younger guys will come into their own.

Not that it exactly helps my cause. Immediately, I say well done to Floody. If there’s anything I can do to help you in any way, I tell him, let me know. But I’m as low as I can go. I feel ashamed around the squad. I’m just a contradiction. I’m billed as the leader and a big player, and yet I have become the media’s nominated scapegoat and now I’ve been dropped. A leader should have a kind of aura, he should be the go-to guy, so the worst thing is to feel undermined in this way by being seen to be responsible for everything that’s not working. Everything feels awkward. Around the hotel, I don’t really know how to conduct myself.

So I ask is there any way I can take a breather from this week’s Wednesday press grilling? I know there are a few French TV stations who want to do an interview on the Friday to ask about me being back in France, so can I just do that and avoid the rest of it? It’s agreed and I’m truly thankful.

Friday comes and, contrary to the plan, I walk straight into my own personal press conference. All the media are there in force, and having pushed the issue, they now have the questions to follow. What are my feelings on a difficult Six Nations?What are the qualities of Toby Flood? How does it feel to be dropped?

So they get their story. And, twenty-four hours before a match, I get my confidence freshly assailed.

Thanks to the fix-ups from the Ireland and especially the Scotland game, we take on France with an improved and expanded game plan, and the boys play with freedom and a let’s-go-and-try-this attitude, for which I’d been longing for most of my career.

I watch from the bench of the Stade de France and the team look great. I come on at the end and hit arguably the best penalty goal of my career, with no warm-up, from the touchline 60 metres away. We don’t win but we deserve to and what I see confirms my fears. This team looks as though it’s better off without me. In every team I’ve played in, I’ve always felt I could make it work, but now I’m looking at a team that is working better without me in it.

Back at Toulon, I have to try to pick up the pieces. I go to the Stade Mayol to do some kicking practice and find a huge banner, in the form of a bed sheet, hanging over one of the exits, high up in one of the stands. In big letters, written in English, it says ‘Welcome home Jonny’.

I love that banner. I can barely express how good those words make me feel. I hit the first few kicks with tears welling in my eyes.

Outside the ground, after kicking, a few fans approach me. They tell me they are proud of me. They say when you came on against France and you hit the big penalty, we thought oh no, now you’re going to do your drop
goal and you’re going to beat us like you’ve done before. We knew you were going to do it.

It strikes me that no one here seems to be in the same frame of mind as people back in England. My fellow players are the same. I return to team training and it’s as if the situation with England had never happened. They welcome me back warmly. They seem genuinely pleased, almost relieved, to see me. They make me feel as if I belong again.

With that kind of response, I feel I can exhale and lose some of that weight of negativity. It just feels so right here.

By the end of the season, Sonny Bill is really flying. He is an awesome sight. I’ve never seen a guy tackle as fiercely as he does, but also, I’ve never seen a guy keep the ball alive with such ease, even when he’s targeted by three or more of the opposition. His offloads out of contact are incredible.

I return to a side that has won five games in succession, and we carry on and win the next six. There are games where Sonny Bill does things that are so good it’s almost comical. He reminds me of the great days alongside Inga, when you want to remain professional on the field, but you also want to laugh at what he’s doing. Spurred on by the energy in the squad, we all start joining in, even the great Tana Umaga comes back from retirement again.

Week after week, after the game, our special team victory song, ‘I Gotta Feeling’, resounds around in the dressing room. It becomes synonymous with happy moments. Joe Van Niekerk, our captain, tells us beforehand how great it is going to feel when we hear the Black Eyed Peas blasting out again, when we come in with another win.

The team may have flirted with relegation last year, but this time we finish joint top of the League, and the season culminates with two huge matches. In the end-of-season knockout competition for the teams that finish top of the League, we play Clermont in the play-off semi-finals. The venue is supposed to be neutral but somehow we are in St Etienne, which is barely an hour from Clermont and eight hours from Toulon. Yet the atmosphere is unlike anything I’ve experienced. The heaving crowd splits in half, red and black on one side, yellow and blue on the other. The noise is constant.

We have to fight back from 10 points down with time running out. But Sonny Bill scores a try, which I convert, and then, with under three minutes to run, I am standing over a 45 metre penalty to draw level.

At this stage Juan Lobbe, our magnificent number eight, slightly carried away, decides to have a word to explain to me what our tactics are going to be after the restart.

Juan, I say to him, can you please fuck off! I need to concentrate on this penalty.

Oh yes, sorry, he replies. Good luck.

I get the kick and so it’s on to extra time, but we quickly go behind and give ourselves another 13 points to chase. We move the ball all over the field with crazy offloads coming from everywhere and quickly get seven back. The game ends with our flying Fijian wing, Gabi Lovobalvu, stretching out to score and being tackled into touch. So close. It’s is a hell of a way to go out, and even if you hate defeat as much as I do, it’s impossible not to feel proud.

Having lost that by six points, eight days later, we then lose the Amlin Cup final to Cardiff by seven. We start well and hold a good lead, but it’s a game too far for me and for everyone. I pull a muscle in my back, which I don’t help by then attempting a penalty from the touchline, so I miss the
last half hour. But for us all, after all we’ve been through, it’s a sad end to finish the season without a trophy.