Jonny: My Autobiography (36 page)

I’m not really convinced I deserve the captaincy anyway, but it’s so hard to sit there and take a game like this. I’d like to be an absolute saint and say I am 100 per cent, unconditionally happy for the guys. But I can’t help thinking what does it mean for me? If the team is playing so well without me, where do I stand as England captain? To be honest, I feel a little embarrassed.

The following week, because the South Africa game confused the hell out of me, I try a change of tack. Around the players, far from helping, I feel a bit of a hindrance. So I keep more of a distance from the team. I don’t go in the changing room beforehand. I go to the gym instead. I can’t do a work-out because of my injury, so I talk to Calvin Morriss, one of the fitness coaches, and shoot a few basketballs around with my one good arm.

Walking up to my seat, the fans are so warm and friendly, but when they barrage you with comments such as don’t worry, Jonny, we still love you, or you’ll get your place back soon, it doesn’t exactly help.

After the game, which we lose, narrowly, I do go into the changing room, just briefly. I want to commiserate with the guys and let them know how much I respect them and all their efforts. We had come so close to a great autumn. But it doesn’t feel quite my place to be here among these players who have given everything and are now shattered and beaten up inside. I’m not remotely convinced I deserve to be here. It’s simple. What I need to do is change that fact. I need to play some more rugby.

If you are stuck in hospital and cannot move, and the nurses need to prevent bedsores, you are sometimes given silicon padding. This bedsore technology saves my career. Silicon padding works wonders for my arm. Unlike bubble wrap, which seemed to intensify any impact, the silicon soaks it up.

With rest, intensive medicine, numerous blood and urine tests and the new silicon padding, I am back on the bench for Newcastle in December. I get an hour of a game against Leeds, which we win, and my full comeback is against Sale and Charlie Hodgson, which causes a predictable stir. We snatch victory right at the end when I score a last-minute try under the posts. So all is going well. What a great feeling to get through a game without any pain.

Perpignan is next, in the Heineken Cup, and disaster strikes. We are a little behind, and I try to make an outside break round one of their forwards, who just manages to grab the back of my collar. As he does so, the studs of my right boot are stuck firmly in the turf, and as I’m pulled
back over my right knee, I hear a big pop come from the inside of it.

Clearly, something’s happened, yet the pain is only a throb, nothing major. I don’t know much about knees. Knees are my strong point. When the physio suggests I get up and try a little jog, the knee wavers left and right as if the upper and lower leg are merely balancing on top of each other. There is no stability whatsoever.

I watch the rest of the game from the bench, feeling desperately low. Why me? Why me again? And how many weeks or months of rugby am I going to miss this time?

By the end of the game, the pain is worse, and Martin Brewer, the physio, is a bit more urgent about it. So Andy Buist, another knee-injury victim, is kicked off the physio bed and told to sit on the side so I can take his place.

From there, we are kindly taken to a local hospital, which is closed for the night but the Perpignan doctor gets opened especially for me. The scan shows a tear in my right medial ligament, grade 2/3 – no surgery required but a good eight to twelve weeks out. In that moment, another Six Nations campaign is completely wiped out.

Two days later, we discover that Andy Buist is far worse. He has anterior cruciate ligament damage – surgery definitely required and six to nine months out. Buisty is younger than I am, but he doesn’t have his foot in the door or special treatment, like I do, and he certainly has a far harder road back.

Not only am I struggling with another injury, but I am horrified that I kicked him off the physio bed like that. My self-importance needs reassessing. I can look in the mirror and see it. Everything right now is about me, and even if it is mostly based around fear, I don’t like what I see.

On the phone to Andy Robinson, I explain the situation, and he agrees and, as ever, he seems to understand. For the Six Nations, I won’t come down and hang around the team any more. I just can’t be that close to it.

What I don’t say is that me being around the England team wasn’t helping Charlie Hodgson, either. He was feeling added pressure and responsibility, which was completely unfair and made it harder for him to relax into the role. I would probably have felt exactly the same. As soon as I got wind of that, I knew I had to stop going down.

I make one exception, though, when England spend a day training with the Leeds Rhinos. I love rugby league and these guys have just won the Superleague Grand Final. The opportunity to meet players like Kevin Sinfield and Keith Senior is not to be missed.

What really strikes me is the quality of the coaching. A whole morning’s session is spent working on how to catch and pass – not lineouts or scrums, which may take place twice or twelve times in a game, but this very basic skill. We catch and pass throughout every single game we ever play, and simply take it for granted.

For passing, they accentuate the use of the high leading elbow, which gives you a barrier against defenders who are aiming to smash you, and a sharp limb, which is harder to smash against.

For catching, they accentuate the position of the hands round the ball, so you are immediately ready to deliver the next pass. They get us throwing rubber rings to each other to work on how to move our hands to get them in the optimal position.

This is all coaching from the school of Dave Alred and Blackie. It’s not a case of you need to work on your basic skills. It’s more this is how you
do it. It’s not you need to improve your performance in this area. It’s this is how to improve it.

I just wish I was able to make use of all this by actually playing.

By mid-March, the Six Nations campaign is nearly over, and on the horizon is the British Lions tour of New Zealand, led by Clive Woodward. I want to be on that plane.

First, I need rugby, regular week-in, week-out rugby. Rob Andrew tells me that he doesn’t think I need any time on the bench as I did last time. He says I’m going to put you straight back in.

This is music to my ears. I didn’t much like being on the bench. I start against Quins down at The Stoop, and it feels pretty good, great to be back. I love the energy and buzz of it, until just after the half hour, when it happens again.

Quins make a break and feed inside to their prop. Coming across, I fly in and smash him on to his back and immediately try to contest for the ball. Simultaneously, someone tries to clear me out of the ruck, but slightly from the side, and I feel the same right knee and the same popping sensation. My head is sticking out from the ruck, our bench are only 10 metres away and I just yell at them. I think I’ve done it again.

I have now played seven games at the start of the season, one and half after my arm injury and less than a half after the knee. I am soon back on the bench, reeling with sheer disbelief. This is plainly ridiculous. There is no suggestion whatsoever that I have come back too quickly. If anything, I’m two weeks behind schedule. It is pure bad luck.

So I have to start at the beginning again. Scan, six weeks out, a slow
start, rehab. I find quite quickly I can get running again in straight lines, which gives me a slight lift. And the sympathy around me actually buoys me up this time. I find I can function off this how-unlucky-am-I identity.

Then I get a call from Clive. He wants to take me to New Zealand but he won’t name me in the squad. If I can get fit, though, I’m going.

But the person who really keeps me inspired is Blackie. With Blackie, I work from a different identity altogether, the one where I work so hard I can tell myself that I’m working harder than anyone else. That’s the identity I love.

When we can’t work my leg, we put everything into the upper body. I shuttle from the gym at Blackie’s house to his son’s commercial gym near the coast, where they have some great machines – upper-body grinders, the Grappling Rope Machine and the fearsome Dyno, a hydraulic contraption where the harder you push, the more it resists.

Whenever it seems I might be getting a bit lost, Blackie instinctively finds a way to re-engage me and bring the very best of me back to the fore.

I have been injured so much that, for Newcastle, Sparks has actually started to take my place on the field. When anybody else steps in, I can’t contain that selfish nagging fear. I can’t help but wonder what does this mean for me? Will I get my place back? But I purely and genuinely want Sparks to do well. I feel this so strongly I become like a parent, and find it almost impossible to watch him. Playing on the same team as Sparks has been the best experience of my career. I find it devastating that his real breakthrough has coincided with my eternal life in rehab.

When I’m finally fit again, I’m on the bench for a game against Northampton Saints and Sparks is playing at ten. I get on for an hour,
and we are involved constantly together. We lose the match by a point but I love the game.

We finish the season away at Gloucester, one of the most atmospheric and vibrant grounds in the country, where the fans pride themselves on the coolness of their welcome to the visiting teams. But when I go out on the field this time, I get a warm round of applause.

Please no, please don’t applaud me. Please don’t treat me like an old friend, please don’t give me any charity. I feel intensely awkward. I’d rather be abused than cheered. All my playing life, I have wanted to win respect, but I never wanted it this way. I want to earn it.

Fortunately, I play well. I’m right in the thick of the game throughout. We lose but I play the full 80 minutes. I have now strung together two and a half games of rugby and it might just be enough to make me a British Lion again.