Jonny: My Autobiography (51 page)

The England physios, Pasky and Barney Kenny, come up to Newcastle, and they read the last rites on the season, and the Lions. That’s hard enough to hear, but they want to strip my rehab right back. The kneecap isn’t sitting properly in its groove, they say, so it’s grinding, which is causing the unbearable pain on the raw, unprotected part of the back of the patella.

So I have a new course of action – retraining my quad muscles to fire in the right order. That means sitting on a chair at home, connected up with electrical pads to a machine that records the impulses on my inside and outside quad muscles. I have to contract the inside quad before the outside one. I sit on the chair, watching the success and failure of my muscle retraining on screen. And I have to do this for three whole weeks.

This is crucial. If I can’t get this to work, I’m finished.

Shelley and I discuss where I am; or rather, I offload to Shelley about where I am. I feel things are slipping away from me. I’m missing an entire season. Everything I’m desperate to hang on to is retreating – it just seems it’s not meant to be. I’m not even a rugby player any more. I don’t know
what I am – a face, a name maybe, but for many people, just a reminder of a crazy moment that occurred almost six years previously on the other side of the world. And that’s the same moment I have been trying to leave behind ever since.

There is very little Shelley can say. She just listens and helps me accept reality. And she is great. She reminds me of the impermanence of all this. The fact that the world is ever changing is a major part of my spiritual training.

But I still wake up every morning to the realisation that I am another day further away, and face another day of not being involved. It feels unnatural, but I know I have to find a way to accept it, and try to see it in a positive light. I want to rediscover my inner strength and develop my spirituality.

Before 2006, I’d tackle every set-back by working hard, hammering the work ethic. It would be so simple for me to flick the switch to Tunnel Vision mode and slip back into those old habits. But if I am to succeed in a world that is always evolving, I know I have to keep adapting, too. And that has to be the new game plan.

It is good to know that, despite my knee injury, which is finally showing signs of coming good, there are decent people who are interested in working with me.

I get a call from Mike Catt, now a player-coach at London Irish.

What can I do for you, mate?

I know you might be out of contract, he says, and so you might be interested in looking elsewhere. I just wanted to put the case forward for my club.

I get a similar call from Richard Hill at Saracens. And that’s really nice
of both of them, two guys I would love to work with again, but the problem is that after all the years with Newcastle, I can’t see myself playing against them. I don’t want to come back here as a player for another team. I realise that I’m lucky to be in a position to be able to take that decision, but this is an instinct that, deep down, stops me from entertaining the idea of other English clubs. I think it’s going to have to be abroad.

From the other furthest extreme, I get a great offer from Pat Lam, now coach at Auckland Blues. That really would be a great challenge, and I love watching Super 12 rugby. From the days of Carlos Spencer, Michael Jones and Jonah Lomu, I have kind of been an Auckland fan. But this one I can’t really entertain, either. I still want to play for England.

And then I get a big surprise – an offer of a short-term summer contract with Wigan rugby league team. I would massively enjoy that. I’m a huge fan of Wigan, the club that produced my great old friend Jason Robinson as well as other legends including Andy Farrell and Kris Radlinski. This opportunity would be incredible.

But I have to let the chance go. Another time, maybe it could work, but right now I’m just coming back from a bad knee injury. I can’t jeopardise my future by playing another sport that I’m not so familiar with.

Another factor is what type of club I want to join. At Newcastle, I’ve loved the underdog card. It would be great to have some silverware, that’s always the goal, but I don’t want to move to a club just because there’s an obvious possibility of winning trophies and medals. I prefer the idea of fighting hard and building something new rather than slotting into something that is already the finished article.

It’s the bonds forged at Newcastle that I value, created through digging deep, and to a degree, facing the pressure of relegation. That was real strength-building stuff, and those are great memories. It’s the sheer fulfilment in that
kind of journey that suits me. So when Tim, Bilks and I look towards France, that’s the thought that governs me. There are conversations with Stade Français and Perpignan, who then don’t consider me a viable option due to my injuries. After a few visits, it comes down to a choice of two, Bayonne and Toulon.

What I like about Toulon is the potential to build. They may be a team of superstars, but they’ve only recently been promoted to the Top 14 and are flirting with relegation. I’d love the challenge of trying to help a team like that work. I’d like to play a part in bringing the best out of all those great players – and learn a bit myself while I’m at it.

TOULON, on first impressions, is awesome. The Stade Mayol is a couple of hundred yards from seafront bars and restaurants, mid-April is ridiculously hot and people on holiday wander up and down the front. I love the atmosphere.

Toulon are playing Perpignan and, ninety minutes before kick-off, I’m sitting at a table literally on the beach, in this beautiful setting, eating a stunning lunch with Shelley, Tim, Laurent, my French agent, and Mourad Boudjellal, the President of the Toulon. Laurent tells us that Mourad would really like me to see the game, but I’m not keen. I’m still contracted to Newcastle. I’m here to meet people at the club, not to be seen publicly looking as though I’m cheering on a team other than my own.

Laurent says that it may be good to go and sample the amazing atmosphere, get an idea of what it’s really like. Now I love playing in great stadia and in front of big, appreciative crowds but it’s not important to
my final decision. My values are much more key to me; remaining loyal to Newcastle is the priority here.

Out of respect, we end up cutting a deal. We will go for five minutes, nothing more. Apparently we can park in an underground car park, get a lift up to the stadium and watch five minutes from a box. That way no one will know that I’ve been there.

Fifteen minutes before kick-off, we pull up outside the stadium in a couple of black Volkswagen 4 x 4s. Fans are milling around. The place is heaving. We don’t park in an underground car park at all. In fact, we get dropped off among the hundreds of supporters, who immediately get out their phones and cameras and start filming me.

I don’t like this at all. I feel compromised and totally out of control. We are ushered through a side entrance. I was trying to keep everyone close but now I can hardly see Shelley and Tim because of the crush of people. I’m starting to lose the plot a little when the familiar whiff of Deep Heat assails my nostrils and I know instinctively where we are. Sure enough, we are led into the dressing rooms.

At this stage before kick-off, the players are about to come back in from their pre-match warm-up. They are in an end-of-season relegation struggle, and they are going to wonder what on earth I am doing in here. I will be a disruption to their preparation, and there will be a guy playing number ten who’s got to go and play this game knowing that there’s another number ten literally on the scene.

You couldn’t challenge my value system more intensely than this if you tried. I can’t be in here, but there’s no way I can I go back out into the crowd.

I ask can’t you find another room for us? I don’t care if it’s a cupboard, just as long as it’s big enough for Shelley and me. Tim can fend for himself.
So they shut us in the doctor’s room. But this is no good – this is where players come to get last-minute strappings.

So we run along the corridor, trying not to be seen and trying to find somewhere to hide. We are put in the coaches’ changing room where I pace around, thinking about the arrangements we made over lunch and trying not to explode. I sit down and force myself to read a team-sheet over and over, as a distraction. I hear the clatter of studs as the teams come back in, and then the coaches come into their room. Despite pre-game anxieties and nerves, we all exchange introductions politely. Hello, how are you doing? They are great with me but this is still a disaster.

I have no intention of watching anything now. I tell Tim as soon as the players have gone out on to the pitch, we’ll leg it the other way and get the hell out of here.

When the coast is clear, we make a hasty exit, but just as we are in the tunnel, I hear the clatter of more studs. One last player is coming from the physio room – player-coach Tana Umaga, who has come out of retirement to help the team. The last thing I want to do is say hi when he’s on his way out to play a really big game like this one.

So I quickly turn my back and say to Shelley stand there and pretend we’re talking. It’s an absolute shocker. Tana jogs past, presumably wondering who we are and what on earth a random girl and a guy in a beanie hat are doing in the players’ area on match day. Laurent asks us if we still want to watch five minutes, but I tell him no.

Three months later, I clock in at the Toulon training ground for Day One with my new club.

I come with a familiar sense of apprehension. It reminds me of joining up with the Lions, or even the early days with England. I feel the same massive pressure to perform. I want to prove myself. I want to nail every training session. I want every pass and every kick to be right on the money. At least I feel fit and strong. I have spent an entire month on holiday in Majorca, but I trained every single day with the aim of killing myself purely in order to be prepared for this.

The early morning gym session, I discover, is split between the 7am group and the 8am group. I slip in in-between and start to get on with some stretches and warm-ups. The 7am-ers come over one by one.

Ça va? This is their greeting with a handshake.

I have just about got through all these and got back to work when the 8am-ers start arriving. Ça va? Handshake. Same thing. And this is the same every day. I want to get down to work but the first lesson on Day One is I can’t until I have given everyone the morning greeting. But I like it.

Today is fitness testing and it is massively important to me to do well. I’m flying on the chin-ups and dips, thank you Blackie, but the rowing test, never a strong point with my short little levers, kills me. Sonny Bill Williams, rowing next to me, is absolutely awesome, but I go for broke and am left lying in pain on the concrete outside, knowing that the running test is yet to come.

This is the one that slightly concerns me. Five minutes running on a hard track will be a good test for my knee. The backs run together and I go all out from the start, Blackie style, and I keep on going until, at the end, there is some distance between me and everyone else. Professionally, I think I’ve done myself and Blackie proud.