Jonny: My Autobiography (8 page)

After a year spent playing for the England Under-18A team, 1997 is my opportunity to force my way into the Under-18 first team. I badly want
to be in this team, not least because I know there are some impressive guys around – Mike Tindall, whom I have just faced in an epic Daily Mail Cup semi-final schoolboy match; Iain Balshaw, a really pacy full-back; two imposing locks, Steve Borthwick and Andy Sheridan; some impressive front-row contenders, including Lee Mears and David Flatman; a back who can play anywhere, Simon Amor; Alex Sanderson, who loves contact sessions; and two guys who will one day be my clubmates, centre Tom May and scrum half James Grindal.

What I am not too enthusiastic about, though, is that the Under-18s are still holding trials, which I think are a nightmare; and they hold them over long weekends up at Castlecroft, the national youth rugby centre, near Wolverhampton, which I am not particularly fond of, either.

I’m desperate to do well and also desperate not to oversleep. I share a room with two other guys and, on the morning of the trial, I continually wake up in a panic about being late. When it’s light outside, I open our room door and block it so it doesn’t lock shut, and then I walk around the hotel, convinced all three of us are late. I do this maybe three or four times, at six o’clock, quarter to seven, half seven, anxious to know the time. We don’t have to be up until half eight or nine, but I am constantly nervous, determined to get everything in my preparation right and make a good impression. It would help, I guess, if I had a watch.

I don’t get off to a great start in the trials but that’s partly because our team are not winning much ball. We are playing into the wind and up the slope. I look forward to the second half, but my heart sinks at half-time when my opposite number, James Lofthouse, who has played pretty well up to this point, goes off with an injury and doesn’t have to play the tougher 40 minutes, up the hill and into the wind. So I am not remotely surprised when I hear that James has got the number-ten shirt. Geoff Wappett, our coach,
cuts an imposing figure, stern, tall and permanently puffing on a pipe; and he is a very good coach, very assured, and responsible for some fairly brutal contact sessions in which I attempt to take on Alex Sanderson. Wappett is the rugby coach at Sedbergh School, where James is a pupil, so he knows James’s game better than he knows mine.

When you don’t hear your name being read out, it’s an horrendous feeling, but a week later we are back at Castlecroft for an England warm-up match against Midlands and the word around the camp from the coaching staff is that the team selection is not set in stone. This is everyone’s opportunity to play for their place. So I am revved up like mad. This is my time, I’m thinking. I’ll show you what I’ve got. It’s time to set the record straight and show you that you’ve made a big mistake.

Before the game, we are in the changing room and Geoff says he has a small announcement to make. They have decided to appoint an Under-18s captain for the season – and it is going to be James Lofthouse.

And that just feels like the final kick in the proverbials. It means that not only have they discounted me from the first team but they have pretty much discounted me from playing any games. I feel stitched up in every way possible.

A few weeks later we are at Twickenham for the first game of the Under-18s version of the Five Nations, and I have my chance. James is injured. We are playing France and I am starting.

This is the biggest game of my life, and the rest of the guys feel the same. You can tell from the way we are all getting pumped up. Then, in the changing room before we go on, our full-back screams out that this, for us,
should be the second Battle of Agincourt, and the mood is killed. Some guys are no doubt trying to work out what Agincourt actually was, while others are thinking that the comparison is a touch over the top. But we are still pumped. In the team huddle in the big space between the changing room and the showers, we are bouncing around, so fired up that we keep bumping into the shower buttons, turning on the water, getting sprayed, shuffling along to a dry spot and then knocking into the shower buttons again.

So we take the field slightly damp, I sing my first ever national anthem on the Twickenham turf and a new team takes its first steps towards success.

We beat France and I kick all four of my goals, including an important conversion from the touchline. The following week, at Lansdowne Road, we survive a streaker-on-the-pitch experience, and well beat the Irish, even though their team has a strong back line including Brian O’Driscoll, a player of whom we have all heard.

Scotland are next. We play them up at Preston Grasshoppers. I get a try and kick seven goals. With that 55–18 win behind us, we head to Wales in search of a Grand Slam.

The atmosphere around Narberth, where we play, is noticeably hostile, gritty. The teams on the pitch are pretty hostile, too. Previous results suggest that we should win, but with us going for the Grand Slam and them intent on stopping us, the game is very tense.

In the absence of our captain, Tony Roques, I am captain for the day. I am also given an early taste of the kind of aggression with which this entire game is played. In fact, I will look back on this game as involving probably the worst shoeing I’ve taken in my entire career.

Only five minutes into the match, on the far side of the field, I’m on the wrong side of the ruck. I try to get out of the way but can’t because I’m being rucked to pieces. It feels as though the opposition are just running up
and down my back. Later, we take photographic evidence of the scars, but for now, I get to my feet and feel an intense burning sensation. The heavy cotton of our shirts seems to stick to the wound and exaggerate the pain. And I’m thinking great, that has just got me super fired up.

The game is close and edgy. In Gareth Cooper they have an electric scrum half, and we struggle to keep any kind of lead. We get to the dying seconds of the game 17–15 down.

What we need is a drop goal, but drop goals have not really formed a huge part of my decision-making on the field up to this point. I like to attack. I have only ever kicked two drop goals in my life, one six years ago in Senlis. The other was a few weeks ago, right at the end of my last game for Lord Wandsworth, in the Hampshire Cup final, when our hooker Dave Barker ran over to me and said if I win this scrum against the head, you’ll have to take a drop goal. That was his deal – bizarre – but I stuck to it.

Here it’s clear what we need. We know what we are up to. We drive the ball up the middle a few times and it comes back to me too far out to be a decent bet, about 40 metres. I hit it with my left, the contact is good but it might not have the distance. Only when the referee hears the Welsh full-back swearing is he convinced that the ball did indeed creep over.

We have a Grand Slam. And a last-minute drop goal feels good.

The Grand Slammers soon depart on a major trip – a five-week tour of Australia. This is the biggest thing, rugby-wise, that has happened to me, and it is also a major experience in terms of leaving home. We are staying in billets and a part of me is still thinking oh God, I don’t want to be billeting on my own. So at the first opportunity, I sneak a word with the coaches.
Look, I say, with all the kicking practice I need to do, it’d make sense if I’m billeted with Simon Amor. Very wisely, they agree.

Simon is one of the other kickers and happens to be a mate. We stay in some amazing places and the high spirits on the tour, as it slowly works its way down the country, are boosted by the fact that we pick up win after win
en route
to Sydney, where we will finish with a schoolboys’ Test.

The journey is further improved when Sparks hitches a lift. Sparks is here playing rugby for some local grade teams, but he soon starts following the tour, as does Duncan White, my mate from Lord Wandsworth, who is over to take up a teaching post.

Generally what happens is that we arrive at a new billet, introduce ourselves to our hosts and quite quickly the conversation turns to the fact that my brother is also here with a friend, trying to follow the tour and looking for a place to stay. Invariably, and very kindly, they extend the invitation to Sparks and Duncan.

At one stage, the tour manager tells me that he doesn’t want Sparks staying with me any more. But we carry on nevertheless, and Sparks becomes so much part of the tour that he hitches rides on the tour bus. One time, we have him hidden under a pile of bags and coats in the middle of the bus, and I’m wondering what the hell the manager is going to think if he turns round and finds him.

We end up just having a huge holiday. In Queensland, we stay with Kris Burton’s parents – I next see him fourteen years later, playing for Italy against England at Twickenham. Farther south, we take part in the most hilarious and physical game of beach ‘touch’ rugby with Alex Sanderson, who doesn’t really do non-contact. An Aussie guy, gamely trying to join in, ends up taking a monster shoulder charge from Sparks and having to be rescued from the waves before he drowns.

The tour, of course, peaks with the Test, in front of 9,000 people at the North Sydney Oval. I play centre – outside James Lofthouse and inside Mike Tindall – against a side captained by Phil Waugh. Their full-back, Ryan Cross, scores two tries, but we are very strong, one of the most successful schoolboy teams England have ever had, and we win 38–20.

Great tour. Huge fun – before my life turns very serious indeed.

FOR my first training session at Newcastle Falcons, I watch from the main bar at the Kingston Park ground, an 18-year-old new arrival sitting at a table with his dad. Outside on the pitch, meanwhile, one of the most élite groups of rugby players in the professional game has gathered.

The list of international players is phenomenal. From England: Tim Stimpson, Tony Underwood, Rob Andrew, Dean Ryan, Garath Archer, John Bentley. From Scotland: Gary Armstrong, Alan Tait, Doddie Weir, Peter Walton, George Graham. From Ireland: Nick Popplewell and Ross Nesdale. And from Samoa, two giants of the game: former All Blacks Inga Tuigamala and Pat Lam.

I had, for a while, been expecting to take up an offer of a place at Durham University, but when Newcastle asked me if I would try going full-time for a year, I needed no second invitation. I got back from Australia, trained hard for a couple of weeks with Sparks and made my way up north, feeling strong,
confident, raring to go. And now I sit here, waiting for the ice-breaker with my new international teammates.

The first person I shake hands with is Inga. I don’t know if there could be a better way to start. He greets me with an infectious, ear-to-ear smile and sits down opposite us. Hi, how are you doing? What’s your name? Where are you from? Great to have you here. What an awesome guy.

Next up is Pat Lam. Same thing. And Tony Underwood and Tim Stimpson are not far behind. What a difference that makes. What a start. The selection policy here has clearly placed great emphasis not only on the quality of player but on the quality of person. Among the players, the so-called superstars are, in fact, the most approachable.

And for me, I am now being paid to be a professional rugby player. I am getting around £12,000 per year, which is fantastic for an 18-year-old, although pretty soon I start spending almost all of my wages on taxis.