Jonny: My Autobiography (35 page)

When Sparks and I go to see
The Last Samurai
at the Warner Bros in Newcastle, the whispering starts immediately we join the ticket queue. I notice one person lean in towards their friend’s ear and say something. That person spends about ten seconds pretending to look around the cinema before turning round to stare straight into my face. Others are doing it, too, and in the end it just gets ridiculous and we just can’t relax, so we go. We leave the cinema and go home.

It’s Sparks and my other friends I feel most sorry for because it impacts on their lives, too. But Sparks just says OK let’s go. He makes it really easy for me.

One of the worst situations occurs when I walk into a bar. It’s the first bar I’ve been to for months and I have barely made it inside before the DJ
announces my arrival to the entire club. My immediate reaction is a quick 180 degree turn and bolt for the door.

But the all-time most awkward situation for an introverted person like me was waiting to board an EasyJet flight to Newcastle. There is simply no match for this one. I am on the transfer bus to a plane that seems to be parked miles away. I sit in the corner of the bus with my beanie hat pulled low, feigning being totally engrossed in a book that I’m not really reading. I’m staring at the words while concentrating on every little sound around me. That’s when it begins. One guy says that’s that rugby bloke.

Oh shit, I think. I start praying that maybe there’s another rugby player aboard. No such luck. I chance a look to ascertain if I have indeed been rumbled, and what I see is a twelve-strong stag party. It’s barely ten in the morning but these boys have started proceedings early. They start to chant my name at me, loudly, and when we get on the plane, they don’t stop. So everyone gets a look. And now I have my own special version of fear of flying.

And because of all this, I end up spending time elsewhere, away from public settings, in the countryside or just kicking on the Slaley Hall football field. That’s not even kicking to get better. It’s just doing something enjoyable when I know that, all being well, nobody else is going to be there.

For the start of the new season, I have finally been given the all-clear. I’ve got about 70–75 per cent of my power back on my right side and that is, officially, just about enough.

We go to Ireland for our pre-season tour. The first game is at Connacht, and I’m asked to pose for a photo on the halfway line with Eric Elwood and his family before the match, because it is his last season and he has
been a great Connacht player. I respect Eric hugely, but I don’t know why I need to be in his picture. I feel uneasy about it because the guy has been a legend in his career, and he’s played for so much longer than I have and been through more hardships and come through them all. I feel my past invading my present.

I don’t feel too comfortable with my kicking, either, and I start ringing Dave. I’m not sure about this, Dave, I say. Trust yourself, he says, it’ll come.

I feel a huge sense of the unknown about my whole game. It seems I am the big story – Jonny’s Big Comeback – and I feel that pressure, but I’m missing the old sense of familiarity. When I last played rugby, I’d strung together three Test matches on a full Lions tour, more than fifty games for England and God knows how many for Newcastle, and so I’d developed momentum. Instinct and innate confidence told me that experience would carry me through, even on the not-so-good days. Now I haven’t got a clue where I stand.

Rob Andrew keeps telling me it’s going to be six to nine months before I start feeling like I’m back where I was, but I think that’s bullshit. He doesn’t know how hard I’ve been working. And I pride myself on being the exception to this kind of accepted wisdom.

Actually, I have no idea how right he is.

We start off the league season against Worcester and we win pretty well. I feel I’ve lost a bit of the feeling I had for where the defence is and where my teammates are. But everyone is happy to put the responsibility straight back on me and, as ever, I am all too keen to step up and take it.

I am also starting to feel an intense pain in my right bicep, which gets worse and worse with every tackle. We look for ways to protect it. We try strapping, padding, everything, and I try to use a different part of my shoulder to make the hits, but nothing helps.

Then we come up with a new solution – bubble wrap. We wrap it, layer it thick and tape it over the top. Being me, I decide to test it hard immediately. I make one big tackle on the training pitch and I drop to the ground in agony.

I haven’t played rugby for England for nearly eleven months, but now I’m the captain. Andy Robinson was appointed head coach after Clive resigned, and he asked me to do the job. Of course, I feel immense pride, but I also have to face a press conference.

Beforehand, the England press chief, a guy I’ve got to know really well, Richard Prescott, says here are a few things, so you can be prepared, and he puts down a bundle of press cuttings, the kind of newspaper stuff I haven’t read for a couple of years. I start to read and am immediately staring at them in horror. Is this really what people are saying about me?

What is he captain for? That’s the tone of it. If he’s captain, that means he’s got to play, but he’s not even the best number ten. He’s not playing very well, he shouldn’t be playing.

This is a nightmare, like someone’s implanted a virus in your mind that’s going to breed and breed. Richard says that not everyone’s writing this stuff. Really just one guy, Stuart Barnes, is driving this agenda, but I should be prepared.

It’s difficult not to take it personally. The words jump off the page as though they are being said with venom. It’s been written for the public, yes of course it has, but deep down it feels as if the writers would like to know that I’ve read it, too.

It’s so strange. I’m trying to be the best I can be, get back all the match fitness I need and contribute to the teams I play in. I’m definitely not trying to
stop anyone else playing for England, and I’m definitely not out there saying I’m the best, you should pick me, forget about so-and-so. The thought that I’m in the team when I don’t deserve to be, and I’m trading on some former glory, to me that concept is horrendous, absolutely horrendous.

In a tight match against Saracens, I hit a last-second drop goal to draw the game, and the media is rampant with ‘Jonny Does It Again’ stories. They couldn’t be further from the truth. I feel frustrated as hell with my game, and the pain in my arm is becoming unbearable.

I line up a tackle on Hugh Vyvyan, their number eight. He used to play for Newcastle so he knows full well how I love to go in for the big hit. At the last minute, as I launch forward, he sticks his head down low and hits the exact spot on my arm. The sudden flash of pain is worse than anything I’ve ever experienced. I feel physically sick.

I stutter through the rest of the game, fiercely protecting the arm, but there is no longer any hiding the fact that something is clearly wrong.

Rob asks me to come to a meeting and states the obvious. You can’t go on like this. This is so tough. I’ve barely been back. I am England captain and I am having to make my own decision to step away from it all again to get myself right.

So I’m back to the medics and specialists, the numerous tests and the X-rays. We get to the bottom of the problem, which stems from the muscle wastage as a result of the neck injury. The sheer number of hits and bruises on the exact same spot means that blood has been pooling on the bone beneath the muscle, and started depositing bits of calcium. The tiny shards of bone deposits within the blood have joined together and moulded on
to the humerus. The medical term for this is myositis osificans. The result is that, whenever I take impact on the arm, the muscle is being shredded over these pointed bone deposits, causing more bleeding and inflammation. The remedy is largely pharmaceutical plus, sadly, another two months off.

The thought just destroys me. I have two teams that I am part of and yet absent from. At Newcastle, I can’t train, just spectate. I don’t feel part of the club. And England is even worse.

England’s big games of the autumn season are against South Africa and Australia. Before the South Africa game, I sit in the Twickenham physio room, just around from the changing room, listening to the noise of studs on the floor, the players shouting, people vomiting in the bin, the sound of pre-match anxiety and energy. They are sounds I know so well and I naturally feel the buzz and the energy, but I’m sitting here in a suit, with nowhere to release it.

I am England captain, but today Jason Robinson is doing my job for me. Being here like this is just horrendous.

Andy Robinson suggested that I should be down at Pennyhill during the week. It would be good for the troops’ morale, we agreed, and also sensible for me to keep in close proximity to the squad, so that when I’m fit, I can click straight back into it.

The problem is I haven’t been involved in the England set-up for almost a year. I don’t feel massively part of it, so trying to come in and have this rousing effect isn’t easy. If I was on the field with them, it would be totally different, but I feel a bit false, a bit of a pretender, and I suspect that comes across to the others.

Before the game starts, I go out to my seat in the coaches’ area, and it’s nice to sample the atmosphere of the big game build-up. Normally at this point, when I’m playing, I am so completely absorbed in my preparation, I don’t register anything that’s going on. It is interesting to see what actually happens. But the moment I sit down, the cameras turn round to find me. And then there I am, my face up on the big screen.

When the game starts, the cameras keep panning back to me, but only, it seems, when Charlie Hodgson does something. Today, he does a lot. He runs the game brilliantly and I am genuinely happy for him – fantastic bloke, great player. He deserves all the praise. The cameras constantly seek my reaction, but I’m not an extrovert, or demonstrative, so I’m not going to be jumping around, like Clive used to, because Charlie’s just scored … again.

As England’s victory becomes increasingly assured, I find myself sinking deeper and deeper. Eventually, I desperately want to go home so I can try to work out why I’m hurting so much inside.