Jonny: My Autobiography (59 page)

Going into the next one, against Romania, in which I am starting, we do our practice the day before as usual and there are only two balls that are
messing around. Number two is leaking a bit left and number five is drawing so heavily that from in front of the posts 40 metres out, I need to aim a good two metres outside the left upright.

Before the match itself, though, my concentration is completely swung when I take a practice kick and it comes down and hits a woman in the crowd on the head. Way back in the Newcastle days, I once hit a touch kick and knocked out a bloke who was coming out of the food tent with packet of chips and a beer which finished up all down his shirt. On another occasion, I hit a winning kick against Bath and a man was so delighted to see it going through the posts that he neglected to move his head out of the way and he got knocked out too. I got a letter from his daughter after that saying how pleased her father was and could he have my autograph.

Here, I just want to apologise to the woman, but it’s hardly the time and the place. Instead we get into the game, get off to a damn good start; we show the Romanians a proper respect and we are more ruthless. My first penalty is from 40 metres out. I look at the ball, it’s a number four; I hit it well and it goes through the posts.

But after a try in the corner, I get the number five ball so I aim for the left post and before I’ve even looked up, it’s outside the right upright. It’s missed before it’s even travelled 10 yards. We score again in the same corner and it’s ball number two, the one which fades a little; I aim more or less middle, I don’t hit it completely correct and it fades left and misses.

The next one I get, ball number one, is right under the posts, and goes dead straight. But then I have another kick from the left, 15 metres in, and it’s the number five again and I’m thinking this is an absolute joke, it’s just a lottery now because I don’t know how far this ball is going to move. So I aim ever so slightly inside the left post just in case it doesn’t draw at all, smash it as hard as I can and I watch it creeping closer and closer towards
the right hand post. I’m thinking: Please stop, if this one misses, I’m not sure I can handle it.

The ball goes through but it’s getting beyond a joke now. I only have one more kick, with ball number three, which is a dead straight flyer, and that’s the end of it – or so I believe – because I am substituted at half-time to rest my shoulders which are still bothering me. We finish off the game well, Floody kicks well, a couple of great kicks from the corner, but then he hits one from the right hand side and it just goes nowhere near the target. He turns back at me on the bench and shows me a hand with five fingers outstretched. He doesn’t like that ball either.

But that isn’t the end of it. Not at all. It turns out that we are in trouble from the IRB because Dave Alred and Paul “Bobby” Stridgeon, our fitness coach, have attempted to switch the balls I was kicking during that first half.

I am asked for a meeting with Richard Smith QC, who is the England team lawyer. I tell him what I know. I tell him that I was desperately keen to avoid that ball number five, and that, one time, when Bobby had run on with my kicking tee, I had said to him: “Ball number five is drawing massively.” It is not exactly surprising that I wouldn’t want a ball that flies miles away from where it’s supposed to.

Unfortunately, this then ends with a sanction for Dave and Bobby who are given a touchline ban from the next game, against Scotland. That’s a really tough call, but whatever the circumstances we’ve done wrong and we’re paying the price. What seems odd, though, is that we are not allowed to talk publicly about what is happening with the balls.

Dave is therefore bitter and angry, the same as me. But I just don’t think
this is that big a deal. They were all match balls. When people score and they do a celebration and punt the ball into the stand, it’s exceptionally rare that the same ball ends up being the ball you kick the conversion with. Numerous times, after a try, I’ve said to the referee, there’s no ball, and he’s turned to the sideline and a ballboy has chucked a ball on – and it’s a different one.

Though the ball-swapping issue dominates the media for much of the week, it doesn’t really affect me. What affects me far more is the Scotland-Argentina game. I watch it in Floody’s room, and we’re having a bit of a chat and a laugh about other things and taking a few notes until Argentina score at the end of the game to steal the win and suddenly everything’s changed.

We play Scotland next, and though it is still a pool match, the Argentina result means it has now become a knock-out game. If we lose by eight points, we’ll be going home. I go back to my room slightly shell-shocked; I Skype Shelley and I’m hardly able to talk. The whole week is now different.

And yes, I do feel pressure about the goalkicking, but in training I am kicking brilliantly. The sheer effort I am putting into my training now is incredible, my focus on the strike of the ball is as intense as ever, and ironically, I am probably kicking as well as I’ve ever done in my life.

However, before the game, we warm up with ball number five and Floody says to me: This is all over the place, this one. That’s all we need because the game is tough, as we knew it would be. Scotland are passionate, and the ball is wet and squirting around. They get penalties and start moving into our half; then they get kickable penalties, a drop goal and the lead.

We get down the other end; I have a couple of shots. The wind has been going left to right all day, but my first kick blows heavily left. It doesn’t make any sense whatsoever. The second one is from a long way and I am bang online but surprisingly short, but the third is in a similar position to the first and I’m thinking: This is going to go right but the last one went left, so just aim dead centre. But the wind pushes it right. Here we go again.

I get the fourth and we go into half-time 9-3 down. This is tough. Yet I still have no kind of nervous hesitation in taking these kicks. I can’t afford to have any. I’m just kicking too well in training, I’m still 100% confident that I’m doing the right thing.

If I was taking on these kicks just thinking, what the hell, I’ve got to have a go because everyone expects me to – that would be irresponsible. But every kick I take on, I still believe that this one’s going to make the difference, my preparation has been so good I still believe I’m going to smash it over.

In the second half, I have two penalty attempts, both tough shots. I make one from the corner; the other is short and I should probably have kicked it into touch. We do not play particularly well, but we find a way to win and get ourselves through to the quarter-finals. But for me, as a perfectionist, there are big issues here to attend to. As a team, we went very quiet, we gave up all the initiative and let Scotland dictate. I don’t know if it’s the threat of an early exit, but I feel inside and outside me some teammates are looking at me for the solutions to a complex situation which I actually really need their help to find.

What doesn’t help is that, for the second time, I have come away with a less than 50 per cent kicking success rate. I don’t do less than 50 per cent. In big games where I have taken a reasonable number of kicks, I think the last time I did less than 50 per cent was four from eight against New Zealand in my first World Cup 12 years ago.

My feeling is that it’s just horribly unprofessional and an extremely bitter pill to swallow that, at the biggest tournament in the sport, we’re having to deal with this. Being unable to rely on my goalkicking makes performing physically and mentally draining. I’m getting hammered by the media again; nobody seems interested in the rest of my game. The rewards for my efforts are hard to find. The organisers can claim that all the balls are the same, but they’re not. If they were, they wouldn’t be doing this.

I’m sick to my stomach thinking about how hard I’ve practised my kicking over all those years and what little good it has done me at such an important time. It angers me. Deep down I know that I have never stood for poor results. I have never been able to accept average and yet this is what I’m staring at now. The worst thing is I don’t know what I can do to make it better.

Against Scotland, it seemed as though there were a hell of a lot of Scots in that stadium. Or a lot of people wearing blue. I thought the same against Romania: there’s suddenly a lot of Romanian fans around. And while the crowd is sometimes incredibly loud, it’s been a long time since I’ve experienced that kind of noise whilst I’m kicking.

It’s quite easy to go to every World Cup game we are in feeling like we’re the villains, that we’re not particularly well liked. The booing has been pretty full on, though I am told it is worse here for the Aussies. In a rugby sense, it doesn’t affect me in any way, yet it’s interesting and difficult to understand. I don’t know how much of it is due to the bad publicity that has come from the Queenstown episode, but it’s there nonetheless.

I don’t know if we’re not to blame as well, though. I don’t believe that we are giving off the right impression here.

What I do know is that Johnno, Brian Smith, Mike Ford and the other coaches have been great to me out here. And as a playing squad, we’re just not doing them justice.

We are to play France in the quarter-final and it is now not a case of Floody or me in the side, it is both of us. Me at 10 and Floody at 12.

Unlike most of the media, never at any point did I see the number ten issue as a case of me versus Toby. Yet I cannot deny the little part of me that is pleased to be able to have come back from some very hard times and reclaimed my place in the team.

Picking both of us is ideal as far as I’m concerned and I tell Floody that straight away: You’re playing great, it’s going to be awesome to have you on the same pitch, your positivity, your talking, your communication, every part of it is extremely important to me. And I mean it. It is great for me having another decision-maker out there to take the responsibility and the heat off, improve communication and move in and out of first and second receiver. It’s like having Mike Catt out there again.

That is the good bit. On the pitch, the game itself spins quickly away from us. We lose a few set pieces, we give away a few penalties, we drop a few balls and we can’t quite finish things off when it matters. Suddenly it is half-time and we are 16-0 down.