LIFE BEGINS AT 40 FOR JONNY
As he turns 40, Wilkinson opens up on mental health and THAT World Cup win
JONNY WILKINSON reaches the ripe old age of 40 next month and he is still kicking goals — only this time in the snow.
England’s most iconic rugby player has been flown to the ski resort of La Plagne, 2,000m up in the Alps for a commercial engagement.
Two teams of French snow-rugby players are assembled to play, meet Wilkinson and see the Webb Ellis Cup he lifted in Sydney 16 years ago.
With the World Cup five months away Wilkinson is in demand. He always has been. As a Land Rover ambassador he is promoting a campaign — but he also wants to join in the match, so he brought his boots.
Joyously flicking passes out the back of each hand, conversing with his team- mates in both French and English, and posing for every picture, Wilkinson beams throughout.
When setting up the shot they all want, of an icy drop-goal, he is meticulous as ever. Wilkinson practises planting his standing foot. A couple of left leg swings before the muscle memory — literally — kicks in. Drop, swoop, instep to the bottom of the ball, over the posts.
As he puts it, this is Wilkinson ‘bathing’ in his art.
‘I probably would never choose to kick off ice!’ he smiles. ‘But it’s nice to take your passion wherever you want. I can kick a ball and stand there for 10 minutes and just bathe in it,’ Wilkinson says with all the introspection he has become known for.
‘It’s that beautiful a thing to do. My pathway to expressing my being.
‘It used to be “I’ve got to get it over,” now I couldn’t give a toss. I kick a ball as that connection between me and life is in that action.’
Back in 2003, as the hero of England’s greatest triumph, he struggled to move on. At 40 and with the benefit of experience, life is ‘ beautiful’ now — but back then, wrestling with his mental health despite all the glories, it was anything but.
Answering a question about Owen Farrell’s workload of leading, play-making and goal-kicking, Wilkinson reveals the angst of his own time with England.
‘If you see yourself as someone who has to get everything right — which I did for a long time — and have to make sure everyone is happy around you, you see a challenge,’ he says. ‘There’s a ridiculous amount of pressure.
‘It’s the space you get into where you think you know everything.
‘I walked off after the 2003 World Cup thinking I knew how it works and suddenly found myself hating rugby, thinking, “Everyone is against me, there’s so much pressure”. Owen is willing to work on himself, which means he can go out there and be his best.
‘Most people would say, “Jeez, he’s got to manage the captaincy”. When do you ever manage captaincy? When you ask a sevenyearold what they want to be they’ll say captain of England.
‘They don’t say, “I wouldn’t mind being captain so I can just get through it”.
‘Owen wants to be the goalkicker because he loves it, not because he needs the pressure. It’s the same with me kicking balls here. I love kicking balls.’
But he never loved what came with it — it exacerbated his mental state. Wilkinson is a private man. He is married now and has recently welcomed a child into the world, but keeps those details to himself.
He is happy too, but his eternal wish was that he could have paused his life at the moment Mike Catt kicked the ball into the stands to end the World Cup final at the Telstra Stadium in 2003.
‘You’re on the brink of something, incredible things await but you’re not there yet,’ he explains. ‘It’s the most beautiful sense. It’s a bit like being in a shop with pocketfuls of money. You make your choice, you buy exactly what you want, but it’s not as good as before when you haven’t committed.
‘I feel like that now. When I was playing I feared the hell out of the unknown. My life is full of the unknown now, and it’s exciting.’
He is five years into retirement and feels released from the shackles of being Jonny Wilkinson.
‘I love my life but it’s got nothing to do with the content,’ he says. ‘It’s the opposite. When I was part of the World Cup-winning team I had never felt so empty as I did afterwards.
‘ When we won a couple of championships, at Toulon, I left and there was no sunset waiting for me to stroll into. I found that getting rid of this idea that I was an important person, I could have a brand new world.
‘ I look at rugby and think, “Would I go back?” Not a chance.
‘People say, “It must have been great, 24, playing for England, you had everything”, then I go into a school and I have to explain to the kids who I am!
‘But they say, “Everyone wanted to give you free stuff... those were the days!” No they weren’t.
‘I was spending my life trying to control everything. It’s why I got injured and didn’t play for England for four years — my body never had a chance to breathe.’
Now Wilkinson thinks it is time for rugby, and sport, to engage further on mental health issues.
‘There’s a danger that it becomes a message of coping — that implies we can help you cope for the rest of your life,’ he says.
‘When you hear that you think — “I don’t want to manage for 40 or 50 years”. I thought I had done everything it was possible to do at 24. I thought I was the man. I realised I couldn’t have been further from the truth.
‘I started trying to control everyone else. You ask anyone around me at that time, I was horrible. But life is amazing now.’
The boy wonder has grown up and now, at 40, Wilkinson at last seems content.
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