With the World Cup drawing near, rugby is moving ever closer to the very top of the global sporting agenda. There have been some great tournaments over the years, and some truly memorable moments – and not just in 1995 and 2007. The combination of the brutal physicality, the pace, the intensity and the demand for precision under pressure that characterise international rugby at the top level make it one of the greatest sporting spectacles. And the pre-game pageantry and that four-year cycle only add a broader historical backdrop to the drama that, as we have seen already, can turn mortal men into living legends.
Looking ahead to England in the autumn, we’re going to highlight an Englishman who, over the course of a 17-year career, showed exactly the sort of qualities that any aspiring player – at any level and in any country – should aim for as they strive to be the best that they can be. We can’t all make the World Cup stage, but we all owe it to ourselves to make the most of what we have to offer. The man we’re spotlighting today is England’s 2003 World Cup winning talisman, Jonny Wilkinson – fly half, goal kicker, record-breaker, game-changer and role model.
One of the greats
Wilkinson’s career certainly warrants recognition. He is one of the all-time greats. He retired last year with a professional CV that ranks with any in the history of the game. Three hundred and twenty three first class club matches – for Newcastle and Toulon – 91 international caps for England, and six more for the British and Irish Lions, and along the way a metronomic accumulation of points that has had the record keepers sharpening their pencils time and time again. His 3,933 points for his clubs, 1,179 for his country and 67 more for the Lions put him on the game’s ultimate A list. Only Dan Carter has scored more on the international stage – and Carter kicks for the All Blacks.
We all dream of playing at that level, imagining what it must be like to hear the roar of the crowd, to stand shoulder to shoulder with your teammates as the anthems boom around you and to know that every move you make will be seen by millions of men and women around the planet who would give their teeth to be in your boots. It must make the business of just running the right line, hitting a tackle or timing a pass just about impossible. For all the athletic abilities that those guys take onto the park with them, they have to have nerves of steel as well. Wilkinson had nerves like no-one else.
Being able to keep your head and execute your skills with maximum precision under the most intense psychological, as well as physical, pressure really is the essence of sport. And rugby’s unique combination of demands make the game closer to that essential ideal than just about any other team game on the planet. Amidst the maelstrom, Wilkinson was arguably their greatest exponent.
And that team aspect is something that is easily overlooked – not least because it is not always something you can see, but is every bit as vital as what you might do with the ball or how you might deal with contact.
Re-inventing the fly half role
Wilkinson is widely credited with redefining the role of the modern fly half. His commitment to the defensive side of the game was absolute. Before Wilkinson, fly halves were lightweights, ball playing artists who left the grunt and the heavy lifting to the bigger men around them as they concentrated only on getting the men outside them going forwards. Wilkinson played a different game. Without the ball he put as much energy and commitment into driving his opposite number backwards as he did with ball in hand. It was an approach that he was sometimes criticised for, and for which he paid a fearsome price. Wilkinson’s litany of serious injuries – many of them down to the intensity with which he played the game – would have crushed a less driven individual.
But it was Wilkinson’s drive and a courageous commitment to the cause that galvanised team-mates and captured the hearts of supporters. Few players have been as universally popular as Sir Jonny, as his French admirers christened him.
And it is that drive, that professional dedication to being able to compete to the maximum of his ability, which is the inspirational lesson that Wilkinson leaves as his legacy. That and a list of records and trophies like no other.
As England go into the 2015 World Cup, they are still struggling to replace him. The model he set for English fly halves was so punishing that few bodies are able to cope with the workload. Wilkinson turned the English model of a fly half into a something far more physical than it had ever been before. It is a template that few have been able to fit.
Betfair price England at 9/2 at the time of writing to lift the Webb-Ellis Trophy, behind New Zealand whom they have at 5/4. But there is no doubt that if the considerable English pack and their undeniably talented three quarter line had someone as dependable as Wilkinson at the pivot and someone with his metronomic ability to punish indiscretions the market would surely be tighter. Given the Kiwi’s weird relationship with the competition South Africa’s 5/1 looks a seriously good bet (ahead of Ireland at 7/1, Australia at 10/1 and Wales at 14/1).
Practise, practise, practise
It’s easy to take all those points and all those injury comebacks for granted. It’s deceptively simple to just think, oh that’s Jonny Wilkinson, that’s just how he rolled and not to look any deeper. But looking deeper is where we can all learn a thing or two. If you want someone to show you not only how to play the game, but how to be true to your own potential and how to bring the best you can to your team that you can, then Wilkinson’s approach is an object lesson in how to maximise what God has given you and to be the best that you can be.
Wilkinson was an obsessive practiser. He would spend hours on the practice ground, repeating kick after kick after kick, rehearsing the movement needed to send the ball on its way time after time with unerring accuracy. If ever there was an illustration of the merits of 10,000 hours of repetition, then Wilkinson is that man. It was even said that he over-practised. That is a notion Wilkinson’s CV would beg to differ with.
The product of good practice
Wilkinson’s goal kicking was astonishing. For a while his left boot carried England on its own. In two World Cup finals he kicked 23 of England’s aggregate of 26 points. In his final Heineken Cup-winning season for Toulon he had 17 attempts at goal during the knockout stages of the competition. He converted them all.
And those stats do not distinguish his ability with a drop kick. The effort that clinched the 2003 World Cup final, from 40 yards, off his ‘weak’ right foot and with just 20 seconds on the clock is still the most famous drop goal in rugby history. It was a moment of rugby perfection from one of the games ultimate perfectionists.
Of course, Toulon’s victory last year was capped with another trademark, nerveless strike that had the French raving about Sir Jonny: Quel jouer!
As easy as it is to stand and admire such feats of sporting prowess, it is the countless hours that have been devoted to the preparation for those moments that is really what Wilkinson was all about. Repetition, repetition, repletion was the way to groove and action so that irrespective of the circumstance, whether it was 11.00 on a Tuesday morning on an empty practice pitch or 20 seconds from the final whistle of a World Cup final in a stadium packed with 80,000 screaming fans, the execution is the same.
There is no doubt that Wilkinson was born with an innate ability with a football. No-one would deny that. But it was his single minded – some would say obsessive – attention to the detail of his chosen craft that made him the player he went on to become. Great performance is the product of good practice.
Honest hard graft
So for all the skills that Wilkinson was blessed with as an athlete and a ball player we must recognise that the first, most fundamental talent he possesses is the power to work hard, to set a goal and to work tirelessly towards its fulfilment. It is a matter of breaking down the process of converting a goal – or even winning a game – into its elements. It is then a matter of ensuring that every single element of that combination of elements is in the right place at the right time. Whether that is a matter of the right angle of a standing leg, the right alignment of the shoulders of the right visualisation, everything has to be worked at. At the top end of elite sport nothing comes for free.
In that respect Wilkinson was perhaps the living embodiment of the England team with whom he lifted the World Cup in 2003. They were methodical, they had a clear-cut, largely one-dimensional game plan – most of it designed to capitalise on Wilkinson’s punishing penalty kicking. But they were drilled to within a millimetre of their lives. If you look at the footage of the final moves of that 2003 World Cup drop goal, you can see the product of countless hours repeating and rehearsing the core skills that enabled them to set up the drop goal attempt.
As a team, that approach made them hard to like. Even with the effervescence provided by the ludicrously gifted Jason Robinson, they were more about method than artistry, more rounded pragmatists than some of the more adventurous teams – The Springboks included – that went into the tournament. But every team needs at least some element of the dependable, repetitive certainty that Wilkinson provided. It is no surprise that the teams he has been involved with at club level have achieved high honours. Wilkinson’s work ethic and his singular ability to deliver under pressure have made the difference whichever jersey he has pulled on.
The darker side
There is a darker side to this depiction that we are bound to recognise. Wilkinson’s story has not always been a happy one. In 2012, after a prolonged string of injuries that had kept him on the side lines for almost a year, Wilkinson admitted that his obsessive nature and the serial setbacks he had suffered with all those injuries combined to seriously affect his mental well-being. Typically, he was entirely honest and straightforward in the way he – very publicly – went about getting himself back to his best.
And the same methodical mind-set and the same unflinching honesty that was always such a hallmark of his contribution on the park have won him many more admirers beyond those who have simply marvelled at his ability. In Toulon he was described as l’homme parfait – the perfect man.
The lesson
Rugby is a game of skills that can appear alarmingly simple. It is a contest of what some would see as mundane abilities disguised as a battle of physical attributes. And whilst that sounds like some sort of indictment of the game, as though there is something lacking at its core that is the essence of rugby. Simple skills tested under the most intense physical and psychological pressure, with the victor emerging as the team – and the individuals within that team – who are best able to put aside those distractions and execute their skills faster, more accurately and more repetitively than their opposition.
It takes courage – the sort of physical courage to delay the pass in the certainty of taking a hit, as well as the moral courage to keep going through the routines, even if the execution is lacking. It takes a bloody-mindedness, and a dedication to the unspectacular, the routine and sometimes the downright dull to be able to build the muscle memory and the apparent telepathy that teamwork relies on. And it takes a huge reservoir of patience and perseverance to do all that on the way back from serious injury. Above all, it takes long hours and hard work.
No-one in the history of the game has put in more hours and more hard work than Wilkinson – and that is why his CV reads like it does. Like those last-minute drop goals, the astonishing quality of his achievements is not a matter of chance.
Jonny Wilkinson will be a spectator at this World Cup. The tournament will be all the poorer for it.