Jonny: My Autobiography (18 page)

In a way, he plays number nine like Mike Catt at twelve. He doesn’t force you to create something out of nothing; he shares the responsibility, allows you to make the right decisions.

I am forever grateful to Catty, for the way he welcomed me in those early England days and made me feel good about myself, and spoke so positively about me in meetings. On England duty, we are now roommates and he has become both friend and kind of a mentor. He loves board games – plays endless rounds of backgammon with Matt Perry – but when I get back from my kicking practice, those hours in our room are often spent just chatting idly about rugby and life.

Through Catty, I learn more about how it’s done. He’s like my learning aid. I rate him so highly, he is such a damn good player, so great to play
alongside, so ready to share the load and help drive a team forwards. I envy him for his relaxed, laid-back demeanour, and I admire his strength, which he needed to come through some harsh media criticism. But what I really like is his rugby philosophy and his attitude to the game. He knows how he wants to play, that’s how he’ll do it and he’s not going to change.

On the night before our first game of the Six Nations, I share with him some of my thoughts, my anxieties, and mention how bad I feel the night before a game. I tell him about my three-hour kicking sessions, and how my struggles with sleep are so bad I sometimes get close to four hours a night. Please, I say, please tell me that dealing with it all gets a bit easier.

To be honest, he tells me, laughing in a comforting, knowing way, it probably gets worse.

And that was from the guy I thought was laid-back and took it all in his stride. He is just very good at making it seem that way.

England seems a little different now. New players have come in – Mike Tindall and Iain Balshaw, my old teammates from Under-18 days, and Ben Cohen, a hard-running wing with the power of a forward and footwork that makes him lethal. It’s no bad thing having players such as these running off your shoulders.

And we have moved. With the World Cup behind us, Clive sees everything as a fresh start and part of that means shifting us out of the Petersham Hotel, where England have been based for so many years. Our new home is a hotel in Surrey, the Pennyhill Park. Comparatively, it is luxury, but the real point is it will soon have its own rugby pitch just three minutes’ walk down the drive. Ideal.

It already has a good room for football-tennis, even if that’s not exactly its purpose. Since I come from Newcastle, farther away than most, I tend to arrive on Sunday night rather than Monday morning, when the other players get in. So I check in, meet Dave Reddin in reception and we clear all the furniture from the big room upstairs. The football-tennis in there lasts hours.

But the surroundings, the personnel and the football-tennis are not the only differences here. Our attitude to decision-making and risk-taking is different, too. We have confidence to take it to the next level.

We just explode on to the Six Nations championship. We play Ireland first, my first senior international with Brian O’Driscoll on the opposition, and we notch up 50 points. But it’s not all fancy stuff. In Paris, where England haven’t won since 1994, we find ourselves in a very different, monumentally physical game.

I am standing outside Lawrence in defence when Pieter de Villiers, their prop, takes the ball off nine and runs straight at him, one on one. The sound of the collision is chilling and I fear immediately for Lawrence’s left shoulder, but both players just shake it off and carry on as though nothing has happened. It’s that kind of game. I put in a few decent tackles of my own, including a belter against Emile Ntamack, their wing. I catch him just right, accelerating into a tackle, beating him to the hit, so he’s not quite prepared.

We all have an explosive energy and aggression. For the last 15 minutes, we defend our slim lead with resilience and tenacity. This is pure survival. We dog it out and it feels great against a team such as France, in their backyard. It feels great for our sense of togetherness, our identity as a team.

And, for me, it feels great when we come off the pitch and Neil Back puts his arm round my shoulder. He talks about my defence and my lack of consideration for my own safety. You’re a man after my own heart, he says. I like that.

We beat Wales at home and then Italy in Rome. The culmination is again a Grand Slam match, this one in Edinburgh, where we find ourselves fighting the weather as well as the Scots. We get off to a decent start but our lineout really struggles. We know that, in this rain, we need to play a territorial game, so we kick long. But Scotland are happy just to smash it back downfield and off the park, and with them then stealing pretty much all our lineout ball, they reduce our options, making our lives hell.

Meanwhile, their driving lineouts are working. They get one well-earned try and with it the lead, and they throw over the security blanket. We need territory, but, because of the weather, our attacks are unthreatening. They don’t need their wingers up in defence, which means our kicking game isn’t working because there always seem to be three Scottish players in the back field covering.

We try to open up a bit, and at least into goalkicking range, but in such horrendous conditions, every tackle has the potential to knock the ball out of our hands. Scotland don’t move the ball at all. They just sit tight in the driving seat, and as the weather deteriorates, that is a great place to be.

Thus, in freezing conditions, another Grand Slam slips by. We shake hands with the Scottish guys and congratulate them. They did deserve to win. But then we leg it to the showers because we are simply so miserably cold. We miss the Calcutta Cup presentation, which is understandably seen as a snub by bad losers, but it isn’t at all. It’s just a case of not knowing protocol, and an intense desire to get warm and forget about a terrible, terrible day.

We are also judged by the media to have played the wrong tactics in the rain, running the ball too much. That is plain rubbish, just a case of lazy, oversimplified criticism from people who have either never played the game or forgotten what is was like when they did.

We actually played reasonably good tactics. What we could have done was tried a few different kicking options. I could have put the ball up higher, or pushed it just behind their defensive line, instead of kicking long all the time. We really went wide only when the more obvious options weren’t working. It wasn’t our first resort, it was more our last.

People are beginning to recognise me in public now. I’m not comfortable about that and take appropriate measures.

When Sparks is not on the touchline with Newcastle Falcons, he plays for a local club, Northern RFC, and when I go to watch him, it’s generally in the dubious disguise of a big coat with a hood pulled over. I park as far away as is reasonable, so I’m not arriving with any other cars, and I tend to stand by the corner flag, where no one else is likely to be since the view is terrible.

In fact, I’m probably more conspicuous because I look so ridiculous. But if people start walking over from one side, I’ll walk round the other way. It’s like being chased. If they get too close, I just walk away. If the cameras come out, I leave. It’s not a great use of energy, and I tend to miss half the game this way, but sometimes I take my avoidance measures even further.

If I go with Chris Machin, Pete Murphy or Ian Peel, I make sure one of them is behind the wheel and when we drive in, I lie down in the footwell in the back seats. These guys are getting very adept at spotting potentially uncomfortable public situations and, like me, they are working on skills that will be useful for years to come.

But I’m not completely governed by self-consciousness. At Newcastle, we have a hard-working, fun-loving, hilarious Kiwi scrum half, Harley Crane, who has been housed on his own and with no car. So he pretty much ends
up lodging with Sparks and me. He introduces us to the sound of rapper Eazy E, and I discover how to make a home-made barbecue that will blow up in your face midway through cooking the peppers. He also introduces me to the hacky sack – a small, round footbag. We go to pick up Sparks from the airport one day and play keepie-uppie with the hacky sack around the busy arrivals hall while we are waiting for him. That is as extreme a display of public behaviour as you will ever see from me.

Spending time with Harley, a free spirit, I come out of myself a little. I see that I
can
relax a bit, and get some evidence that it is not so damaging to what people think of me when I do. This is a lesson I should take on board.

Dean Ryan, one of the toughest guys in rugby, is now in the opposition. I’ve learned a hell of a lot from him, especially about putting your hand up when the time comes to be counted. He served in the army while the sport was still amateur, and from the way he trained and spoke about the game, I always got the impression he valued more than most the privileged opportunity we have to play rugby for a living.

Now he is against us, which is not so good. He moved to Bristol as player-coach, and on the eve of our Bristol fixture, Rob Andrew tells us to get into Dean whenever we can, let him know how old he is, wind him up, tell him he’s past it.

I’m currently trying to curb my lip on the pitch, so I’m not too keen to get involved in this anyway. But to do this with Dean Ryan? You’d need a death wish.

Some of my teammates don’t seem so convinced. Tom May and Michael Stephenson put in a double tackle on him early in the game and then pile
in with the verbal follow-up – you should’ve retired by now, Dean, you’re embarrassing yourself! Give up old man!

Dean looks straight at Stevo with a smile on his face. Old man, hey? Oh dear schoolboy, you have just made my day.

I catch Stevo’s eye. I’ve never seen the look on anyone’s face change so fast.

But I don’t manage to stay so completely out of it myself. Bristol have the ball and I read their move perfectly, Dean peeling round the corner on a ball off nine. I just charge in and hit him with all I’ve got, right back into the ruck. It feels like a pretty good shot, and I cannot resist the follow-up – oh mate, I’ve been waiting all day for that one.

But he gets straight back up with the same smile. Not quite, he says, nice try, but not quite.