Jonny: My Autobiography (50 page)

The next morning, I get a call from Graeme Wilkes, who has the results of the scan. He asks if I’m sitting down. Yes, I reply, surprisingly enough I am.

Unfortunately, it’s not good, he tells me. You’ve dislocated your kneecap, which isn’t that uncommon, but your kneecap has sheered away from everything on the inside. It didn’t dislocate and come back – it completely tore away.

The reason it felt as though my leg was back-to-front was because the kneecap went round the side of my leg. But in the second impact in that ruck, the kneecap had been pushed to the front again.

Graeme isn’t finished. When the kneecap returned to its usual position, a large piece of cartilage, the size of a 50 pence piece, was sheared away from the back of it. This is the worst piece of news by far. The early prognosis is an operation and then four to six months out.

A few days later, I’m in with Rob Gregory, the specialist at the Washington Hospital in Newcastle, who operated on Andy Buist. He explains that it’s not straightforward. We can stitch your knee back, he says, but the cartilage is the problem. We can nail the cartilage back in to the kneecap, but whether it takes, whether it rebuilds a blood supply so that it regrows and attaches itself – there is no guarantee.

Basically, if the cartilage doesn’t take, my career is over.

I’ve heard that before, with my neck injury, and my reaction is the same: It’ll work out, the cartilage will take. I barely even stop to consider that the three and a half games I have just played may be my last. I am still enthused by how well they went. I’m convinced I’m moving forward, that my whole new approach has made a difference. I may be injured but I know I am a better player now than I have ever been.

Normal service is resumed, but not for long.

A day or so after the operation, I’m round at Blackie’s, working out in his gym. My knee is held firmly in a brace, so I’m doing upper-body work, and a bit on my right leg, to keep me feeling positive.

This is all very well for six weeks, but then this long window of rehab seems to offer a good opportunity to sort out a problem with my left shoulder. It requires an operation and, with my shoulder in a sling, I can’t work my upper body, either – and that is not good for me. Being completely unable to work out, to channel my energy into improving myself in some way as a rugby player – I hate that.

The achingly slow progress that my knee is making doesn’t help much. I work regularly with Salwa, a caring, talented and diligent physio at Newcastle,
trying to get the bend back into my knee. There is a certain point beyond which it will not go and it is up to Salwa how far we try to force it, but the pain of doing so is so intense it makes me want to vomit. Every day, I turn pale-faced as I sit on the edge of the physio bed, dangling my legs over the side, while Salwa tries to work the knee-bend a little bit more. It’s the most painful rehab I’ve ever undergone and I make a deal with myself. If I ever have to go through this again, I’ll pull the plug and retire there and then.

The daily pain reminds me how big this injury is, as if I needed to be reminded. Usually, with an injury, there is a beginning, when you get yourself sorted and start planning the rehab, the middle, when you just soldier on, and the end, when you’re concentrating on the specifics of coming back to play. But after three months, I’m still stuck in the middle part and no end is in sight. No light shines at the end of the tunnel. I’m so far from playing, I can’t even jog.

The club, of course, is full of people doing the things I can’t do, and I start to feel awkward. I don’t go to the meetings, and I find watching the games a depressing reminder of what I’m missing and what has been so natural to me for so long.

So it is a great relief when I am sent, at the suggestion of the England medics, to Vermont to spend three weeks with a knee genius, Bill Knowles, who has already helped mend the knees of Richard Hill and Charlie Hodgson.

You find Bill in Killington, a ski resort at the top of the Green Mountains, ninety minutes from the nearest airport, but, as far as I’m concerned, a million miles from anywhere. Here I find isolation and the chance to immerse myself completely and utterly in my knee.

By day, while Shelley hits the slopes, I work out in Bill’s gym, and by night, we can relax. Here, I can push my trolley round the local supermarket and not a soul knows who the hell I am. After a week, Shelley leaves so I can attack completely solo. When I go to watch
Gran Torino
at the Killington cinema, I can
relax, knowing that there is no danger of having to leave before the film starts.

I love working with Bill. I love his methods and his positivity. By the end of our time together, I’m playing football-tennis and doing indoor gymnastics around an obstacle course. He makes me feel like an athlete again. He makes me feel that the Six Nations and the 2009 Lions are back within reach.

There’s no point in pretending that I’m hugely politically tuned in, but nevertheless, one particular incident at the BBC’s Television Centre is not my greatest moment.

I’ve just come down in the lift with Tim, after a radio interview, and we are exiting through the foyer when Gordon Brown comes past the other way with a small entourage.

Obviously, I don’t stop and say hello. I mean, he’s the Prime Minister, isn’t he? And God knows what kind of pressure he is under. But one of his aides comes after us and asks have you got a couple of minutes for a chat?

Of course, I’d be honoured, I say. The PM asks how are you feeling? How are the injuries? He really makes an effort to engage me and is pleasant and kind.

But then he stops. I’m terrible with awkward silences, and I’m thinking Christ, I need to return the favour, I have to ask him something back. I’m politically out of touch and fishing for something to say to this world-leading politician, who is trying desperately to plot a way out of global financial disaster. So I hit him with the first thing that comes into my head. Have you been busy lately?

Over the Prime Minister’s shoulder, I can see Tim’s face drop like he’s just seen a ghost.

As a statement of loyalty to Newcastle, I agreed to a pay cut of around a third of my salary this year. The idea is that they backload my contract, pay the extra next year and use the extra money this year to bring in new players. What I find distressing, though, is the number and calibre of players going the other way. Dave Walder left a couple of years ago, Matthew Tait and Toby Flood went last summer, and Jamie Noon, Phil Dowson and Tom May are considering their options for next season. Matt Burke went back to Australia a year and a half ago to fast-track rehab of a knee injury, and a few months later, just when he thought he’d be coming back, he was phoned up and told there was no contract for him any more.

I miss the friends who have gone, who shared common cause with me. And I’ve been away injured so much that I feel I’m losing connection with the players who are left.

Salwa has been informed from on high that she is spending too much time with me and needs to concentrate more on the other players. This doesn’t actually make sense, because I go round to see her at her house a lot after work, purely so as not to impinge on her time with everyone else.

So the signs at the club are not good, but I have put so much of my life into the place that I choose to ignore them. However, when I hear that there may be an issue with the club’s ability to pay my salary next year, I start to reappraise. I wonder if maybe they don’t want me here next year anyway.

From my position on the sidelines, it pains me to watch the things that have made Newcastle such an amazing club to be part of for so long be dismantled bit by bit. Every time one of the coaching staff is sacked, Thomo comes into the team room and starts the meeting. Just a quick word, he’ll
say, this is what’s happened. I’ve let so-and-so go because I need results. We can’t accept not getting results.

This time round it’s Fletch and Peter Walton who get the bullet, which is just plain wrong. We aren’t a team who are going to get regular results, and I think that Thomo, unfortunately, is missing that fact. Every time he makes one of these decisions, it serves to make us worse. Without the budget and the right signings, Thomo doesn’t seem to realise just how well these guys are doing. All he has to do is look at what happens to the guys who have recently left – invariably, they enter a new, more stable environment and begin to shine.

So now, after twelve years at this club, I concede that I must open my mind to opportunities elsewhere. I’ve never entertained the thought of moving clubs before. I’ve never asked what could I get from another club that I’m not getting here? That’s because I’ve never allowed myself to look past another question – what more could I give to this club that I’m not giving already? Rather than thinking that this club’s not good enough for me, I’ve never gone beyond: How can I make this club better? I know that some people believe I’m fighting for a losing cause here. Lawrence Dallaglio has said openly that he thinks my career could have been very different if I’d moved clubs, but I actually enjoy the challenge.

But times change, and my conclusion now, after immense discussions, is to find another challenge elsewhere.

Back at Newcastle, I finally get back on the training ground with the team, but again, it is so fleeting. I get through one and a half sessions before I’m back in to see Martin Brewer. I’ve got this pain, I tell him. I can’t even bend my leg. I’m actually finding it hard to walk.

He tells me straightaway that playing rugby this week is out of the question. When I start to test the knee with the physios, they tell me to bend it to a certain level but I can’t. I can’t deal with the pain, either. As soon as I bend it to about 15/20 degrees, the burning, grinding pain is horrendous and my leg collapses. It just drops. It’s as if a message has been sent straight back to switch off the muscles, which, I learn, is exactly what is happening.

It has now been more than five months since the Gloucester game and the message hits me loud and clear. There is no guarantee I am coming back to rugby as a player. None at all. I might never play again. Right now, I cannot even contemplate playing. But the doubts are way more extreme. It’s not just a case of maybe I won’t play again. It’s am I going to run again? Can I even jog? What am I going to be able to do, physically, in later life?