Jonny: My Autobiography (20 page)

First up is Australia, and this, for me, is the one. This is the team I want to beat, one I’ve never beaten, the world champions.

It’s a tight game, sealed by a late Dan Luger try in the corner from an Iain Balshaw kick-through. It needs the video referee to confirm the try, and when it’s given, I ask the referee how much longer? He says just the conversion and that’s the end of the game. We are a point ahead, so we’ve won whatever happens. The conversion doesn’t affect the result.

You know what, I say to myself, for once I’m just going to enjoy this conversion because a good, hard day’s work has been done. This one will be just for me.

It’s rare to stand over a conversion like this and feel so relaxed. And the successful kick caps a great feeling; it feels great to beat Australia. It says so much. It says they’re no different from us, just fifteen guys playing with the
same ball, and we are capable of beating them. It kind of opens a door to a different future. We start expecting to win. And when you get to expecting, and you’re not hoping any more, that’s when you’ve turned the corner.

An Austin Healey joke starts off the week. Martin Corry – Cozza – has a dog called Minton. Minton is not a good dog. Minton eats two shuttlecocks. BadMinton.

Not the greatest of gags. Far funnier is Kyran Bracken, who hasn’t got the joke – if that’s what you can call it – and asks Cozza about Minton. What breed of dog is he?

That is the last laugh for a while. England are near the end of good year, a near-Grand Slam, a win in South Africa, and now, finally, Australia are on our defeated list, too. Consequently, the RFU is selling lots of new sponsorship packages; everyone is reaping the fruits of our success except the players.

This has been a source of frustration for a while. We have looked at the commercial structures in other professional sports and we know we fare dreadfully by comparison. We have put our case to the RFU and had it dismissed with disinterest. And it is an awkward contradiction. We all started out wanting to play rugby for our country for the sheer honour of it. We didn’t set out on any sort of path with the aim of getting rich. We still feel the enormous honour of playing for England, but we are still worth more than a small share of the success others are making from our efforts. And we want to ensure fairer treatment for future generations.

The issue is partly the ownership of our image rights, although right now the RFU want to cut our match fees and give us a bigger win-bonus.
Initially, they wanted to cut the match fee altogether. The feedback from our negotiators, Johnno, Lawrence and Matt Dawson, is that actually the RFU is not interested in compromise and that we are being treated like kids.

Last week, in the build-up to the Australia game, this was a growing distraction. Clandestine meetings in different rooms and talk of possible different courses of action were eventually postponed. Leave it for now, we said, and let’s talk again next week before the Argentina game.

While Austin is doing his Minton jokes, Johnno, Lawrence and Matt Dawson are on their way to the last round of talks. At nine o’clock that night, I get the call – squad meeting in Johnno’s room.

I have a cold feeling about this. The first news is that the RFU hasn’t budged an inch. The question then is do we go on strike? The answer isn’t helped by the suggestion, lobbed in, that Clive has said if anyone does walk out on England, he may never play for his country again.

Johnno insists we take that into consideration, and that the younger players should not be swayed in their opinion by the older leaders of the team, who have decent careers already behind them.

I look at Steve Borthwick, my old teammate from the England Under-18s, who has just broken into the squad. He hasn’t even made it on to the field. He says: I’ve literally only just had a taste of it, I don’t want this to be the end of it.

That is my point. I’m still only 21. Everything I have done has been about this. But I also feel so strongly what I have been taught about rugby, the values I’ve acquired ever since childhood – the team has to stick together for what we believe in.

I look around the room, at Johnno and the others for whom I have so much respect – Catty, Lawrence, Neil Back. Johnno would not be wasting his time or meddling in issues that didn’t concern the team getting better.
The guys are not about money, ego, power or anything like that. This is literally about bettering the situation – for us and, more importantly, for future generations. Whatever these guys are doing, I’m doing, too. I believe in them enough.

The discussion lasts for two intense hours and then it comes to the vote. Pieces of paper are gathered in an ashtray. Do we strike? Yes or no. Mine says yes. Matt Dawson does the counting. He announces the result. We are on strike.

We inform Clive and he is livid. He questions some of the senior players individually in front of the rest of us; he really puts them under the spotlight. But they respond with honesty. This is not about Clive. There is no shortage of respect for Clive and his coaches.

Next morning, Clive tells us all to clear out of the hotel. Conveniently, Farnham is not far away, so I go home and Ben Cohen comes with me. We may be on strike, but we don’t stop work. We are soon back at my old haunt, Farnham RFC, training hard and wondering what the hell is going to happen next.

What does happen is that Ben receives a call from Clive telling him that if he sticks with this, he may never play for England again. Ben is probably not the first to hear this because my phone rings soon afterwards and I see it is Clive. I don’t feel I can deal with the conversation and I let him go through on to answerphone.

That night we are all at a charity dinner in London. It becomes part-dinner, part-negotiating room, and the negotiating continues the next morning. Ben and I are in the car
en route
to meet the others when we get the call from Matt – go back to Pennyhill, we have reached an agreement.

So we do go back. We all do. And we go on to beat Argentina, and then South Africa. And, for our troubles, we get the grand sum of £250 more per game.

In our grey suits and blue shirts we celebrate with a squad night out and somehow I end up with Lawrence.

We are in a nightclub in the centre of London – not exactly home territory for me. Lawrence orders at the bar and I go for a wander round the club, feeling very much that I don’t belong. My face is hardly known, thank goodness, but for Lawrence it is exactly the opposite. The place is really crowded. I get in people’s way, and get bumped around. One lap takes me about twenty minutes. I knock into one guy and he immediately gets angry and aggressive. I really don’t like this scene. I tell Lawrence maybe we should head off, and he agrees. So we leave the club and set off to where we think the others might be.

Lawrence walks with big, fast, determined strides. I’m almost jogging to keep up, lagging slightly behind. London seems to rise to him, so I hold back to watch. As we walk down the street, taxi drivers beep their horns, shouting hey Lawrence, nice win today. And he waves back to them all. Other people on the street stop and stare, or stop for a quick chat, and Lawrence indulges them all.

It’s amazing to see this commanding figure so at ease with his celebrity, so able to front up to it. This is a guy who just rolls with it and I don’t understand how he does it. Hardly anyone recognises me, yet I am barely able to roll at all.

JUST when you think you might be learning the game, when you think you know what the best looks like, how to get there and how the game works, along comes someone who breaks all the rules. Rugby league superstar, and a total hero of mine, code-crosser Jason Robinson is the new face in the England camp. Here is a guy who forces me to reassess what I thought was possible in the game.

Phil Larder, the defence coach, has a defensive drill where one player in a padded tackle suit has the ball two metres from the line, and another player, on the line, has to stop him scoring by tackling and knocking him back, or holding him up over the line. Particularly enjoyable is seeing Jason in defence against Austin in the tackle suit. Austin is very strong, and holding him up is extremely tough, even for the big forwards.

Austin starts with a side step and then lunges, but he almost holds back a bit, as if he is aware of the difficulty of the drill for the defender. Jason
tackles him, tussling, grappling and actually holds him up. Austin shifts his bodyweight frantically, realising that he is now in a serious battle. He tries to reach over Jason, tries to spin, tries everything. It’s a great wrestle. Jason is so intense, managing to shift his weight around each time to match Austin’s moves, and still holding Austin up.

Suddenly, Austin spins himself out and has room enough to lunge over Jason to put the ball down one-handed. It’s a bit disappointing but nevertheless astounding that Jason held out for so long. However, just as Austin goes to slam the ball down on the turf, Jason in one movement whips his own legs around 180 degrees and Austin can do nothing as his final lunge grounds the ball on top of both of Jason’s legs. It’s not a try. Jason holds him there, his face disguising any concern, a picture of pure composure. Amazing.

He is by no means finished. We are doing an offload drill in the five-metre channel. One player has to run, step and then, while taking the tackle, pop up the pass to his support runner. On this occasion, I am the next tackler in line and Jason is in front of me. As I move forward, he has no room to move, so I feel I should go easy on him, which is a bad idea. I also don’t want to hit him too hard so he can make sure he gets the pass right. But in making the tackle, I wrap my arms around nothing but myself. I clutch the air. In the space of a five-metre corridor, he has stepped me completely. Cue considerable chuckling all round. If I wasn’t just the latest of very many to have missed him, I might have been more embarrassed.

Jason’s footwork is no secret, but to see it close up like this is a big learning moment for me. It’s like losing 76–0 and learning what professional international rugby is all about, or playing with Pat and Inga and learning about the possibilities in this game. His ability to beat players both ways and make 90 degree direction changes without losing speed totally obliterates what I believed were the limits for footwork and speed.

I watch him, I let him inspire me, I imitate him. And then I go back to Blackie and tell him this is where I need to go next. If I am going to be the best, this is what I am going to have to be doing.

No problem, Blackie says.

In the gym, Blackie invents new drills and exercises for me, which we attack day after day. He has me in front of a heavy swinging punchbag, dodging around it, using my footwork to bounce, step and react. We work on it so much that it becomes instinctive movement, completely second nature. We want to change my game because we’ve seen what the greatest looks like and we want a bit of that, too.