Jonny: My Autobiography (30 page)

Before every game, I have a very specific warm-up routine. I’ll do my kicking with Dave, go back into the changing room, then come out and warm-up with the team. Ten minutes before kick-off, as the boys are returning to the changing room, just to finish off with a confidence booster, I’ll kick one more goal from straight in front of the posts, 30 metres out.

Before the Samoa game, I line up my last kick and leak it out to the left. Immediately, I demand the ball back. This one smashes against the left upright. That’s two misses from two and I can hear murmurs from in the stands. Again, I demand the ball back and this one creeps inside the post. My head now is spinning. I’m going into this game and I’m not kicking straight.

There is no more time. I have to get into the changing room. I’m trying to think about the whole game, but my kicking is so key to my confidence. Everyone’s talking to me about the game and what are we going to do at the first kick-off? But my eyes have glazed over. I’m just thinking what’s the first kick going to be like?

From the moment we kick off, Samoa run it everywhere. Side to side, fast, relentless, I don’t know where they get it from. They score an awesome try. We struggle to find our rhythm.

We win a penalty, an easy kick to keep our score moving. It’s humid, hot. The stadium roof has been shut and we’ve been chasing hard for almost a full 40 minutes. I’m pouring with sweat. My strike on the ball feels good. I look up and have to clear a bead of sweat from my eye to see it smash off the post. It’s my first miss of the tournament and it feels awful.

At half-time we are 16–13 down. We are still behind with 15 minutes to go. We have to sort this out quickly.

From a lineout, I see that their winger is up flat and their full-back is tucked in. I get the message out to Iain Balshaw. Tell Balsh to expect a DA.

Named after Dave Alred, who invented it, a DA is a cross-kick move. As our lineout forms, Balsh tries to stay unnoticed as he drifts wider. We win the lineout, I take the ball up a bit to draw the defence and then kick it flat right over their winger’s head with my right foot. I watch, breath baited, as Balsh drops a gear and uses that trademark acceleration of which I am so envious. He takes it and we are at last ahead.

In the changing room afterwards, I know for certain that I do now have a weekend off. I feel finished right here; that was enough.

The crowds are starting to swell and the media scrutiny seems relentless. When England move now, particularly through airports, Phil Keith-Roach, our scrum coach, has been assigned to me, almost like a minder. When we are in the hotel, though, my instinct is to allow myself to get boxed into my own room.

I think Dave Reddin has sensed this because he suggests a day out. We are now on the Gold Coast. The squad is preparing for the Uruguay game, which I am definitely not playing in. So Dave suggests driving up the coast. We’ll find a beach and just have a mess around up there.

Normally, I’d find it easy to say no. If it was let’s go to a bar or out for a meal, that would be a no. I can find some kicking or another rugby reason not to go. But I have played enough football-tennis with Dave to trust him, and he has played enough with me to know where I’m likely to be susceptible. A beach and a ball. Easy decision.

We go with two of the guys with whom I feel most at ease, Hilly and Krajicek, in an open Jeep, and I sit in the back for the whole journey. Miles away, we find a beautiful beach, and we do little but run up and down it smashing footballs around. Throughout the whole of the World Cup, this is probably as close as I come to relaxing.

The boys do a good job against Uruguay. Afterwards, the non-playing members of the squad head back to the hotel. The radio on the bus is loud and tuned into the Wales–New Zealand game, the loser of which will be our quarter-final opponents.

Usually, I can’t stand watching or listening to live rugby if the match has a knock-on affect for us. But the radio is so loud, there is no escape, and what’s going on is unbelievable. We are fully expecting to play Wales in the next round, but with an hour gone, they are in the lead. We’ve already started to do a bit of homework on the Welsh, although we have beaten them twice this year already. We haven’t considered the All Blacks.

So it is more than a small relief when New Zealand sneak through with some late tries. The next day, though, when we start watching the video analysis in the team room, the rugby that we see from the Welsh is so good that it is actually greeted with applause. I am so impressed that, after the meeting, I ask to see some of it again.

All of a sudden, the World Cup temperature has risen. We are starting to hit some media criticism for our form. But we’ve taken such a bashing over the last five years of our journey here, mainly for our Grand Slam losses, that we’re just too strong and thick-skinned as a group for it to matter any more. We’re very tight, very resilient. With the confidence from everything we’ve been through, we feel it’s coming – the momentum of earlier in the year will click back in again.

Clive wants to see me. He arranges a meeting in the evening in the team room. He says some great things. He says how much he needs me to be directing the game, but his point reiterates the message from the Six Nations and throughout this World Cup – keep out of the rucks. We can’t have you with your head in a ruck because then there’s no one to drive the game.

But I sometimes find that difficult. If I pass the ball and our ball-carrier gets tackled, if I am our closest man, I find it difficult to stand away and not clear out the tackler. It’s in my nature to help a teammate. But Clive’s serious about this. OK, I say, I’ll try to avoid the rucks.

My kicking diary shows some good work for the week but it also
shows that the pressure is starting to tell. Ideally, I would be tapering down with shorter sessions as we approach the games. However, four days before the game, I spend two hours out there kicking after team training. Three days before the game and it’s down to one hour 45, but then two days before the game, on our day off, I get tight and allow myself to panic over every little miss hit, and I’m up to two and a half hours to find the reassurance I need.

We go into the game expecting to click, but what we get is the opposite. We actually get what’s probably been on the cards for a while.

The first 40 minutes against Wales are horrible. Absolutely horrible. The biggest crisis of our World Cup.

Everything we do is contrary to everything we’ve worked on for so long. Ever since 1999, we’ve worked on width and using the whole of the pitch so there are options left and right, inside and outside, options to kick, guys running lines, everything was taken care of. But here, at times, you could throw a blanket over the entire team. We are that tight, everyone is around the ball, which means we’re predictable in attack and therefore easy to defend. And it’s worse when we turn the ball over.

We get stuck in our own half, and people are saying to me we need to get down their end. And that’s great, but where do you want me to kick it? They’ve got four players waiting for the kick and we’re so tight, who’s going to chase it?

We end up with our kicking being punished. We kick it long, straight to Shane Williams, who doesn’t need a second invitation to run it back. Having Ben Kay completely on his own in acres of space, trying to cover against
Williams, doesn’t quite work for us, and our frantic scramble defence only delays the inevitable and it’s Stephen Jones who goes over.

It’s frustrating, exasperating and so desperate that it comes down to survival. Sod the number on your back, just hang in there and stop them from scoring. The carefully laid plans, the urging of Clive, are no longer the priority. Suddenly, I’m not thinking like a number ten. I’m thinking like someone who has got to chip in and get their hands dirty.

Wales score again, we are 10–3 down and I can feel dreams fading away. Standing under the posts, watching the conversion, rifling through my mind is the thought what if we can’t rescue this? How are we going to be viewed back home? Are people going to say you’ve had a good year and were just unlucky? Or are we going to get ripped to pieces? And would I ever let myself get over the disappointment?

Half-times with the England team have become a military process, with almost every minute accounted for. You go in, get a drink, change your shirt and shorts. There is specific time allocated to talk to individual coaches and then, at the end, from a board in the room, Clive presents in bullet points a summary of whatever he and his staff feel is required.

But here, 10–3 down, it’s difficult not to look around as if to ask what the hell is going on? Why is this happening?

But you have to resist that. Relax, just relax. Resist panic mode.

Clive has his say. More width, don’t get sucked into rucks, we don’t need so many people clearing out the ball. And he brings Mike Catt in at twelve.

Bringing in Catty is a massively good call. This game is going to be won by decision-making and there is now another guy out there thinking like a number ten, who also has a great kicking game.

So we come out and slowly start to chip away at the lead. When Jason sets up a try for Will Greenwood, we slowly start to quell their spirit. Catty
is outstanding, absolutely brilliant. We haul our way back and only when we pull away do I finally feel confidence coming back.

In the dying moments, we are at last where we want to be – more than a score ahead. As the buzzer sounds to signal that time is up, I receive the ball from a ruck on the left, about 35 metres out, and I decide to go for it. I hit my favourite drop goal of the tournament and that, for me, serves as a way of putting a lid on a truly horrible experience.

The inquest, though, is just about to begin. We all know we are going to take a hammering in the media. I attend the press conference with Clive afterwards and he gets the question: Aren’t you concerned that Jonny is playing like an extra flanker?

Clive’s response is strong. He talks about my work rate, and says that without it we might have lost the game. Just hearing that makes a massive difference to me.

In Sydney two days later, in the Manly Pacific Hotel, we have a crucial meeting. It’s not quite a crisis meeting but not far off.