ROUGH AND TUMBLE
Haskell has done more than most over his 13-year career. Though things haven’t all been rosy… HASKELL’S WORKOUT
to get the best performance-boosting benefits from its functions. A female rep films the entire episode on her iphone.
Safely back in his Range Rover, Haskell admits it was a strange situation. “But I see these things as an opportunity to learn,” he says between mouthfuls of chocolate protein porridge from a bowl between his legs and the steering wheel.
“If it can get me back to playing 2-3% better then I would be a fool to ignore it. I’ve made it my business to cherry-pick valuable information from other sports and things like this. If you don’t give them a try you don’t know. The only people who know everything are in the graveyard.”
TRUCK AND MAUL
James Haskell loves dumper trucks. Leaving the incident in the pub behind him, he drives straight to the Leamington Spa site of Thwaites, a dumper truck manufacturer that produces trucks from 1 to 10 tonnes, with every part crafted, bolted and welded together, finished and tested on site before being sent out to distributors. For him, this is Disneyland.
“I’ve just always been into dumper trucks and diggers,” he says, as we pull on steel- capped boots, hi-vis vests and safety helmets for a tour. “Chloe doesn’t get it. For her brother’s stag- do we went to Diggerland, and he wasn’t keen either. But by the end of the day he was hooked.”
As well as the factory tour, Haskell is shown around the offices, stopping at every department for handshakes with the employees before being shuffled on to finance, sales and the rest. With all the flesh pressed, he is walked out to the testing ground. Over the next hour and a half he drives around perched atop a 9-tonne dumper, the hard-nosed veteran of hundreds of top-flight rugby games rendered almost small in comparison.
Load emptied, Haskell jumps up into a digger and expertly refills the truck, raking in sods of soil and dropping them in the hopper; even patting them down with the underside of the claw. It is the most peaceful he has seemed in two days.
“It’s like meditation,” he says after, walking back to the car with a bulging bag of Thwaites-branded apparel. “My days are so full- on that it’s nice to just concentrate on a proper job for a bit – fill it up, drive it round, empty it. If nobody had told me to stop, I’d have been there all night.”
On the drive to drop MH back at Rugby station, he calls to cancel his scheduled trip to London for some physiotherapy on his toe. Finally, it seems, even he needs to take his foot off the accelerator.
“I’m going home to get into the ‘duvet office’ on the sofa with Chloe. Do a bit of work. That’s my favourite way to relax.
“We’re talking about getting a dog, actually,” he says. “I’d like one. But I’m worried our lives are too busy.”