Jonny: My Autobiography (22 page)

The week before the France game, Newcastle play London Irish at Kingston Park. We start well and are 25 points up at half-time, but the Irish chase us hard and we finish the match hanging on, frantically defending our lead.

With five minutes to go, I line up one of their centres with my right shoulder, but he cuts back slightly at the last second, which means the impact forces my head to smash against my left shoulder and immediately it’s back, that searing heat burning into my neck, across my back and down my left arm. The pain of a stinger usually eases after thirty seconds, but as I lie on the ground, no matter how I shift myself around, this time it doesn’t.

By the end of the day, I have caught a flight to London and Pennyhill, where I am supposed to be preparing to play France. I’m put to bed wearing a neck collar. In the morning, I can hardly move my head. I have stiffened up completely. When I do try to turn it, it’s agony. Every little twitch is as sore as hell. I can’t kick, I certainly can’t train, and as I watch training with Hilly
and Kyran, who are also nursing injuries, our teammates point at us and drag on imaginary cigars. As if we want to be putting our feet up.

In the Six Nations we are flying. We have already put 80 points on Italy and 40 on Scotland, but it’s a big question now whether five days will be enough to get me ready for France. The best person for an answer is Pasky. He describes it as a whiplash injury, the kind of thing you see in car accidents. He and Richard Wegrzyk, the masseur, want to treat it with constant physio.

On the Wednesday, I have a go at training, but as my head movement is still so restricted, a few balls go to ground and more than a couple of passes miss the mark. But Pasky and Wegrzyk – who is known as ‘Krajicek’, as in tennis player Richard Krajicek, because no one can pronounce his name properly – are winning this battle. In an ideal world, we would have longer, and deep down I know I shouldn’t really play on Saturday, but I do. If it wasn’t France in the Six Nations, I’d probably be resting, but Pasky and Krajicek are very good at what they do. In an amazingly short space of time, they get me just about ready for international rugby. Physically ready, anyway. We score six tries in a 48–19 victory, but I spend the entire match protecting my neck, constantly in fear that I am going to take another hit on it.

England are on the verge of another Grand Slam. The problem is that there is an epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease sweeping the country and so our Ireland match is postponed. We will have to wait until October to see if we can celebrate.

In European competition, our Tetleys Bitter Cup win means we qualify for the Heineken Cup next season, which is very prestigious. This year, we are in the European Shield, which is great but not quite the same.

We have a fixture at Cross Keys, the Welsh team, and because their pitch is unplayable, we get shifted to the local park. There are no changing rooms at the new venue, so the players have to change on the bus. The Cross Keys chairman tells Rob not to worry because he has sent his second XV to clear off the sheep and his third XV to clear off the droppings. No one is too impressed, particularly Marius Hurter, our South African prop, when one of their forwards goes down on one knee and urinates in the middle of a lineout.

But we take the competition seriously and finish up in a semi-final against Harlequins – again – at Headingley. It’s a fortnight since the France game and I am hoping that my neck is OK, but it isn’t. Five minutes into the first half, a heavy, accidental knee to head by their full-back, Ryan O’Neill, starts it off. I should probably come off but the game’s hardly started, and I haven’t even begun my work for the day. I stay on.

I make a few more tackles and each impact seems to set it off again, the pins-and-needles heat firing down my arm. In the second half, Will Greenwood tackles me round the legs and again the electric shock shoots down from my upper spine to my finger tips. My neck is now so ultra-responsive that just the slight judder of hitting the floor sets me into spasm.

By the last minute, I have had more than six stingers and the searing pain has started to spread down both arms, my back and my chest. The medics finally insist I come off and, given that I am starting to worry what the hell is going on, I can now no longer argue.

This time, recovery is not quick. I am sent for nerve conduction studies, where they jab two needles into different parts of the arm and send electrical impulses between them. The results are not too concerning, at least not enough to make any impact on my approach to the game.

It is, though, almost two months before I am ready to play again.

HIGH on my list of goals is the desire to be a Lion. I am halfway there, on a long flight to Perth, where this new mission begins.

I chat to Neil Jenkins. He is leaving behind a young daughter. I am leaving behind all that security and belonging that I have finally found within the England team. But that is the challenge for all of us. We have no common understanding, none of the momentum to pull you through that we have spent years building with England. It is time to start from scratch.

What we do have, though, is a fantastic group. Off the pitch, the chemistry seems to work immediately – no cliques, nothing. Having played against Brian O’Driscoll over a number of years, it is nice to be on the same side for once. It is a pleasure, too, to get to know Ronan O’Gara and Neil Jenkins. Neil seems to be pursued wherever he goes by chants of ‘Neil-o, Neil-o’, even if he has been known to start them himself.

The frustration is being stuck on the sidelines. In Perth, I am also stuck
in a roomshare for the walking wounded. That’s Lawrence and me. He has a knee injury, I have a groin problem, and both of us are racing to get back in time to compete for places in the Test team. For me, at least, there is the comforting presence of Blackie, who is part if the coaching team, as is Dave Alred. It’s no surprise to me that the two people I believe to be the best in the world at what they do have been selected for this tour.

From my watching position, three factors quickly become very clear. The first: we have two training sessions a day, so Graham Henry, our coach, has set out to work the boys hard. The second: to speed up communication and understanding, the coaches present us with an exceedingly structured game plan. We are having to digest tactics that sometimes work several phases ahead. The third: we are plagued with bad fortune. The injury attrition rate is phenomenal. Just as I am reaching fitness, others are already going home early. We lose Dan Luger, Mike Catt, Robin McBryde, Simon Taylor and Phil Greening. And that’s even before the Tests.

Meanwhile, O’Driscoll is proving quite handy on the table-tennis table. We have a group game called Red Ass whereby the loser has to pull down his shorts and give the others a free shot with their bat. Predictably, when Austin loses, he does a runner before punishment can be meted out.

After missing the first two games, I am finally given the chance to be a Lion against a good Queensland Reds side. I want it to go perfectly, of course I do. But when we get to the Ballymore stadium, there is a curtain-raiser game taking place, just like at Bloemfontein last year. So where am I going to kick?

Dave and I find a training pitch behind the stadium, which would have been fine were it not for hundreds of supporters arriving from that direction.
They all like to have their say. Yeah, Jonny, don’t miss it, don’t miss it. That kind of thing. It’s hard to maintain your standards and concentration when you have hundreds of people standing around, watching, especially when you have to ask some of them to move even though they are trying to talk to you. Still they come, streaming between Dave and me, sometimes even catching our kicks.

The game goes well. Playing with people you’re not used to is our challenge, and I’m learning fast about Brian O’Driscoll and Rob Henderson. I enjoy playing with Keith Wood and Rob Howley. And I manage seven goals from eight; somehow the kicking doesn’t suffer.

And of course, it feels great to have worn the Lions shirt. The race for fitness, though, is not one that Lawrence wins and he is soon on a plane home.

We play the New South Wales Waratahs in Sydney and just about survive a physical, sometimes bloody, battle. But it claims Will Greenwood, another injury casualty. We are losing big-name players at a worrying rate, and are simultaneously being criticised in the Aussie press for being a violent team.

We move to Brisbane for the first Test and, as the intensity builds, I find myself looking at Johnno, our captain, and wondering how he does it. He takes on so much and never looks as though he needs any assistance.

Whenever I see Johnno, he stops me and asks Wilko, are you all right? And it’s not just a passing form of hello; he really wants to know the answer. I like that.

In Brisbane, I go to the gym to do some training with Blackie, and Johnno comes along. It’s interesting seeing him introduced to training the Blackie way.

This is rare but good time together. We both appreciate we are different
characters, slightly different generations, and we tend to stick to different groups. But we seem to have a relationship of mutual respect, talking about the game, tactics, preparation. It’s just that he takes care of me way more than I do of him.