Jonny: My Autobiography (42 page)

It’s funny that, in rugby, people try to target players in the opposition without knowing what reaction that’s going to provoke. You hope that if you smash someone, he’ll take the hit, feel the pain, decide he doesn’t like it and withdraw into his shell. With me, an attempted hit has always been like stoking the fire, and if you actually get me, well, that means trouble. I enjoy feeling that there’s no other option but to fire back. So I take a hit like this one and think right, now I’m ready. I don’t mind it at all.

Thereafter, I really fling myself around. I enjoy the game, we win comfortably and I get man-of-the-match, which is nice, although I’m sure they are just
being charitable. Afterwards, I am reacquainted with that bashed-about feeling. It’s a satisfying feeling that lets you know you’ve put your body on the line. It feels good, although it certainly hurts.

I have a shower and get changed, feeling a bit dodgy. My stomach still hurts. The next day, we are preparing for a Guy Fawkes party at home, nothing big, just a few of the guys coming round, and I’m feeling worse and worse, hobbling round the house and garden, looking for wood and anything else I can throw on our bonfire.

The day after that, I can only just drive my car. I literally creep into the club and shuffle down to the physio room to tell Martin Brewer about the hit I took in the game and that I’m still struggling. Within no time, I’m off for a scan, and another doctor, with furrowed brow, is clearly trying to work out how to break the bad news. This time it’s the kidney. The kidney! I’ve never heard of a kidney injury.

It’s bad, I’m told. The kidney has ruptured and if it had ruptured a couple of millimetres more, it would have started to leak all those toxins into my body. It would have started to poison me and I would have had major problems, emergency surgery time.

The reason I haven’t heard of this kind of thing in rugby is because this is an injury you get in car accidents, not rugby matches. If you crash your car and your lower abdomen thumps against the bottom of the steering wheel, your kidney can rebound so hard into the ribcage that it can get punctured by your floating rib. At least, so I am informed – which says even more about the quality of the tackle on me.

So I have effectively been in a car crash. This is so ridiculous. What’s wrong with my body? At the club, I’m back to being the centre of attention for all the wrong reasons. This time my contribution lasted just 85 minutes. It’s horrendous.

Martin tells me to do nothing for three weeks. Nothing at all. Just a little bit of walking. Other than that, absolutely nothing.

For my new spiritual self, I need to look beyond the injury and make the most of the opportunity that life has afforded me. This is an invitation to clear out, get away from the club, get away from it all. So Shelley and I take off as soon as we can for Thailand. Courtesy of a friend, we go to a stunning villa right on Kata Beach. It’s beautiful, luxurious, really hot, and we have a housemaid. I follow Martin’s instructions to the letter. For about ten days.

After ten days, I’m hot, feeling OK and itching to get going. I can’t sit around doing nothing. I get moody and irritable. So I try some exercise in the pool. Shelley asks me what on earth I think I’m doing, and I tell her I’m just testing it out. She says I’m not supposed to, but I carry on testing it out. Shelley tells me to stop, but I don’t.

Deep-water running is good exercise. You are effectively cycling in the water, and it tires your body without putting too much strain on it. That’s what I tell myself. I set myself sessions of thirty lengths, once or twice a day. I know this isn’t the deal. I know I’m not supposed to overtrain. But rehab, training – this is my drug and I need it.

When we get back home, I see Martin and tell him I lasted two and a half weeks before starting to exercise. He gives me a right bollocking. I don’t know what he’d have said if I’d told him the truth.

Sometimes, I think I’m starting to get the hang of this business of being a public figure, but at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, waiting to go on with Nick Faldo, I feel completely the opposite. I used to be terrified
of audience participation. When I was a kid and we’d go to the pantomime, I used to squirm in terror at the thought that I might be picked to go up on stage. This is no different.

I have done quite a few of these events now. The first time I really got exposed to a new branch of celebrity was at the 2004 National Television Awards when I found myself in an environment so foreign, it would have been like one of these soap stars walking into a rugby dressing room. Strangely, I suddenly wished I’d paid more attention to the gossip magazines because then I’d have known who these people were. I had to present an award, which put me totally out of my comfort zone, and straight afterwards I went backstage to be greeted by the cast of
Coronation Street
, but I didn’t know a single one of their names.

The same year, I was presented with a prize at the GQ Men of the Year Awards, and despite receiving it from Boris Becker, who is one of my big idols, I felt massively uncomfortable. One of the awards was presented by Katie Price and Peter Andre, and I thought I must be lost, I am definitely lost. As soon as dinner was finished, I had no hesitation in deciding that it was time to go.

Some TV shoots and posing in public places have made me cringe with awkwardness. Hackett, with whom I loved working, got me pretending to kick a ball over some famous London landmarks – wearing wellington boots. That barely compared with another Hackett photo-shoot, which involved me sitting on one of the lions outside Buckingham Palace. That was another shocker.

Now, at the BBC Sports Personality of the Year night, Nick Faldo and I are about to present Team of the Year to St Helens rugby league club, and I’m feeling more uncomfortable than ever. We are backstage, waiting to go on, and as we wait we listen to David Walliams and Matt Lucas, who are
on stage presenting another award, and they are being hilarious. They are absolutely killing it out there.

When they come off, we spend a minute with them and they make me crack up, but I think their humour has a strange effect on Faldo, because he turns to me and says maybe we should do something funny, too.

Be funny on stage! What is Faldo thinking? Spontaneous stand-up comedy in front of this huge crowd plus a TV audience of millions? What the hell does he want me to do? My heartbeat is racing, I can feel my body overheating and I’ve got such a panic attack going on that I’m actually thinking about saying I can’t go through with it and doing a runner.

But I do go through with it and my panic isn’t justified. Faldo doesn’t try to be too funny. In fact, he’s clearly pretty experienced at this and handles it all rather well, managing to exclude me almost completely, thank God.

One thing I do enjoy is meeting Kieron Cunningham, a fantastic player who is built like a huge cube of brick, and some of the other St Helens boys. And I do know for sure that the stage is not a place where I belong.

THERE was a time – and we are talking six, seven, eight years ago – when I would know the dates, times and details of every England squad selection. I would know at roughly what time of a certain day I might get to hear if I was in the squad or not. But those days are long gone. Now I don’t know when the England coaches are meeting to talk about selection. It is not even on my radar.

So I’m quite surprised, a couple of days into the new year, when I get a call from Brian Ashton, the new England coach. I haven’t played any rugby for over two months, I have only played two and a half games all season and Brian has a question for me – do I feel capable of coming back and playing for England?

The problem is whether I feel right about it or not, whether I feel remotely unsure about meeting the expected standards after over three years away from international rugby and hardly any club rugby in-between – I am never
going to say no. I would do anything to represent my country. It’s been over three years and I want that wait to end. Yes, Brian, the answer is definitely yes.

At last, I’m at the end of a long journey. That’s the bigger picture, but I can give it only the merest glance and then move on. The moment my name appears on the squad list for the Six Nations opener against Scotland, my immediate reaction is to go straight to the checklist in my mind. What do I need to think about? What do I need to work on?

I guess I should sit back and enjoy the moment, enjoy the significance of this journey’s end. Many people said I would never play for England again. Yet even now, I guess I don’t do enjoyment. That’s just the way I am.

So it is with a slight sense of trepidation that I join up with the England squad again. Everything is different now, of course it is. We don’t train at Pennyhill, we train in Bath, we stay in a different hotel in Chiswick before the game and the coaching staff are different. Even the kit and the team suits are different.

And, funnily enough, in three years my teammates have changed, too. Magnus Lund I have hardly ever met. The scrum half will be Harry Ellis, and I only really know him as the guy who nearly took off my leg in that club game against Leicester. And Andy Farrell, what an awesome player, but I only know him from watching rugby league on the TV.

Some reassuring old faces are there, too. It’s great to see Martin Corry – Cozza – the old warrior, and Jason Robinson, whom I’ve admired so very much, has come back out of retirement. But no Dave Alred. At least, not officially.

The new England kicking coach is Jon Callard – JC – who is a really good guy. But I’ve been working with Dave for over a decade. JC understands that completely, and doesn’t try to make it his job to change anything I do. He just says I’m here to help you through the kicking sessions, to get the balls back to you, whatever you want. And that is spot on.

But what I really need is Dave.

I ask the management if I can work with Dave and the response is we’ll get back to you on that. When they do, the answer is yes, but with certain conditions. You do it on your own pitch and in your own time.

So I feel like a bit of a villain. Dave and I find various pitches around Bath and Bristol to practise on, but we don’t have floodlights, and so sometimes we have to be quick before the light fades. It’s not ideal.

When we kick at Twickenham, Dave is allowed on the pitch but we have to stay down one end. JC and the other kickers are at the other. We could all be helping each other here, but it’s like we’ve never met.

Something else concerns me. We have a new coach and new players coming in, as well as some old players coming back into the team. It’s exciting, a new start, and so expectations are high. People both inside and outside the camp want results fast. They want this new recipe to work immediately. But this is international rugby and that is a big ask.

I have my own issues. Who am I within this team and what is my role? When I last played for England, I was 24 and the youngest in the team. Now I’m 27 and I have 53 caps, so I am indisputably a senior player, and yet I’m also the new boy again. The other guys don’t know me very well. The stats show that I have considerable international experience, but for three years my experience at all levels of rugby has been pretty much non-existent. So I have to feel my way through this, and in the Twickenham changing room beforehand, it feels difficult. How vocal should I be? What are the other players expecting of me?

But England–Scotland is a ludicrous game – ludicrous because it goes so well. The game takes a shape I recognise; the right runners run the right lines off me. Within five minutes, I feel I recognise the pace of the game. This actually feels as though I haven’t been away for one second.

And then, bang! Simon Taylor’s elbow lands square in my jaw. It’s accidental, but pretty effective. England are winning, my comeback game is going swimmingly, and I have a hole in the inside of my top lip, which I can fill with my entire tongue. I’m playing international rugby, trying to focus on the game, but thinking that’s a big hole in my face. Maybe I should get it stitched.

I do eventually go off, seven minutes before the final whistle. But first, my comeback is crowned by a dubious try. Harry makes a brilliant break from behind a ruck and feeds me inside. I’ve got about five metres to make, the Scottish defenders show me the right touchline and I dive over, grounding the ball. But even when I touch it down, I’m not sure if it is a try or not. The moment I watch the replay on the big screen, I realise it isn’t. The video shows quite clearly that my right foot was in touch before the ball was down. Nevertheless, the try is given. It’s a bit of a joke and I try to disguise my surprise. But that wasn’t a try.