Jonny: My Autobiography (45 page)

It has taken a heavy defeat, but we’ve used that adversity to try to move forward. We have a game plan now, on paper at least. The next question is whether we can play it.

In normal circumstances, Pasky said, we should give my ankle six weeks to recover properly. In these circumstances, we give it nine days before I’m back in training, but I have the most appalling limp. My ankle is strapped so tightly that I can’t move my right foot much anyway, and when I jog it looks horrific. Jogging is really painful, and yet the thinking is that I’m going to play at the weekend against Samoa.

My second training session back happens to be one of the few that are open to the media and the supporters. I don’t want to make it too obvious that I’m really struggling, so it actually helps that Olly and I miss the start of the training session because the team bus sets off without anyone having done a head count. And when we do get there, I try to hide myself in the middle of the pack as we jog around the field.

However, now we have more of an idea of what we are trying to achieve as a rugby team, the vibe around the squad is more positive. A belief is taking hold that what we are doing could be a catalyst. There is still a lot of stress about, however. There is far too much negativity surrounding every mistake. A session cannot be condemned as ‘shit’ because a pass or two doesn’t go to hand or a ball or two hits the floor. If the World Cup is going to be remotely successful, this is a mind-set we need to change and fast.

Far from shit, I am starting to see the kind of shape we need that will bring the best out of some of England’s great players.

Samoa give us a scare. My own jolt comes when Brian Lima, known round the world for his tackling, nearly takes my head off. I am incredibly lucky
to duck in time. The pain I felt when I went flying into Roy Winters a few months back would have been nothing compared to this had Lima connected.

But we pull away to win with a little to spare, we follow the same pattern against Tonga and land ourselves an unenviable quarter-final against Australia in Marseille. That’s where our stuttering campaign is expected finally to grind to a halt.

The atmosphere in Marseille is a weird mix. The Georgians have just checked out of our hotel and the World Cup, which is possibly why, when Lawrence checks in to his room, he finds vomit all over the walls. I’m woken up one night when the ceiling caves in. And we get a spate of injuries in training.

The media, meanwhile, have written us off, completely and utterly. I’m not reading the papers, but the tone of every comment, every question, is the same. To be honest, I’m not surprised. I don’t think anyone is, because we all know only too well that we could soon be going home.

In the hotel, some of the players get their shirts signed, and this tells a story. One of the traditions of a big rugby tour is that, during the final days, the players hand round their shirts for the whole squad to sign, either as a memento, or for a charity auction. But this is happening here even before our quarter-final. We play Australia on Saturday, so we could be home on Sunday. No one wants that, but neither is anyone kidding himself.

My build-up is not helped by the World Cup balls. It isn’t that there is anything wrong with them, more the fact that there are inconsistencies within the batch of balls. In any group of balls, for instance, one might fade left, one might draw right slightly, one might go really heavily left and another three might be nice and straight.

Toby Flood and I have worked this out, and it’s just common sense that you cannot practise if you don’t trust the ball. So during the goalkicking part of every kicking session, we work out which are the straight ones and discard
the others. You want to train with the straight ones only. Occasionally, we end up doing our training with just two balls, which is just about manageable. The real problem is the match balls.

For every match, we get six match balls, numbered one to six, and three reserves. The kickers are allowed to practise with them the day before a game. Our day-before practice has thus become an analysis of the nine match balls. Floody, JC and I work out which ball goes where. We smash the balls at goal and quickly agree if they are lefties or righties, how left or how right, or whether they are straight, and on a small piece of paper, we write all this down to commit to memory.

So during games, every time we get a penalty or a conversion, the first thing I do is check the ball to see which number I’ve got. It’s not as if you haven’t got enough on your plate already without having to memorise the balls and then worry about which ball you might have to kick with and what the hell it’s going to do once it’s left your foot. Some of these balls are scary. Over the tournament, the movement on some has been so bad that you are practically aiming to miss. The draw ball – the one that moves right for a left-footer – is controllable. You know where you are with that one. The worst balls are the ones that fade left. This is called an ‘escape’. An escape is not a good kick, and controlling an escape is not easy. I hate the balls that escape.

So I take my kicking sheet to bed with me on the night before a match and learn it. I also go over all the game notes I have made to myself in my notepad. The notes are under the titles Defence and Attack, and they consist of everything that we have worked on this week. And beneath them, I write something else.

What I write is so important because the night before the game I feel vulnerable, and the next morning, I feel even worse. I will take any scrap of
help I can get to make me feel man enough and good enough to walk out on that field. Thus my messages to myself read like this:

They counsel me to:

If I read these messages any other day, they would feel strange. The night before a game, they mean the world to me.

Despite everything, something amazing happens out there on that Marseille pitch.

We know what the odds are, but we don’t care. Just give it everything, everything you have got. Last-chance saloon, the coaches said, so we come out fighting, and what we come up with is astonishing. We try to do all the right things. We play as much of the game as we can in their half. We fill the whole width of the pitch with players so we have options everywhere. We keep attacking down the blind side where they continue to leave space, and it pays off for us. We get ourselves on the front foot.

Our forwards are awesome. They hit rucks like I have never seen rucks hit before. Ben Kay, Lewis, Andy Sheridan – they are frightening. We dominate the contact area, clearing a way past the ball at every breakdown. We get a clean fast ball and we get it going forward, which is basically what wins games.

We land blow after blow. I can feel our confidence growing. We are hurting them. We build a lead, but Australia do what Australia always do – they compete, they fight back and then Lote Tuqiri scores in the corner, putting them 10–6 ahead.

Yet going behind doesn’t seem to phase us. Our forwards drive us on and on. One more penalty and we are a point behind.

The intensity gets to everyone. The referee signals for another penalty and while we are playing the advantage, I take a shot at a 40 metre drop goal. If this doesn’t go over, I’ve always got the penalty. And just as I’m striking the ball, one of the Aussies yells at me: That’s all you’ve got, Wilko! That’s all you’ve got!

But I’m thinking yeah, but it’s all we need! It’s all we need!

We have the lead again. As the clock ticks, it comes down to trust. If we do our jobs, we will win. And now we believe in each other. Completely. I know I believe in these guys, because I stop looking at the scoreboard clock; 72 minutes are gone, then 79.

Stirling Mortlock, the Australian captain, has a last-minute penalty. We win this match or lose it on this kick. It’s a hell of a kick, 45 metres out from the left, and with these balls, I’d hate to be in his shoes.

We win it. We are still alive.

The atmosphere afterwards is incredible. I confess that there were moments when I thought we’d be going home, and in the changing room, everyone is saying the same, laughing, amazed. We’re not going home. We’re staying. We are here at least until Saturday. I feel immensely proud to be part
of a team of men who have done something no one expected. Cozza has so much tape holding him together, he looks like Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living from the cartoons. Lewis is bruised and battered and looks like he’s been to war. And Simon Shaw is a bit older than us but consistently world-class. I love playing with that guy.

We are still here at the World Cup. It’s so unlikely, it’s hilarious. Cozza and Catty – no two guys deserve it more – shrug their shoulders and exchange broad smiles and a look that says what on earth’s going on?

The three of us experienced it so differently four years ago, and we are among the last out of the changing room. For me, that is because the changing room in moments like this is one of my favourite places in the world. I don’t want to leave. So I take my time. I am so happy for everyone. I am so happy for Catty, again demonstrating what a truly great rugby player he is.

How many times have I come off a rugby field and had people say to me God, you had a great game today? And on how many of those occasions have I thought to myself I didn’t really do anything, all I did was make a few decisions and listen to Catty helping me out? Sometimes as a number ten, you feel you are the driver on a long coach journey; with Catty, you occasionally feel someone else coming up and taking over the wheel. We drove well out there today.

I came out to this World Cup desperate to enjoy it and to embrace it differently from the last one, but I can feel myself slipping back and I cannot stop myself. I feel the anxiety more than ever, and the fear, too. I thought I was out of this mould, but the worrying is back. As the magnitude of this
World Cup has risen, and my expectations with it, I am again worrying about things that are out of my control.