For a man renowned for his dedication to the sport of rugby, that even he admits bordered on OCD at times, it was little surprise when Jonny Wilkinson announced last summer that he would be helping the Toulon coaching staff this season, just a few short months after retiring from playing the game himself.
Wilkinson’s self-flagellation in the pursuit of excellence has been well documented. His mind, so finely-tuned to everything about rugby, was always going to struggle to settle when he finally had to leave behind the game that had dominated his life since he first picked up an oval ball at Farnham Rugby Club in Surrey.
When chatting to him earlier this month, it was refreshing to hear, then, that one of the most dedicated servants to the game has been enjoying his time away from it. Despite spending one week a month at Toulon helping out at training, it is the down time that Wilkinson has been enjoying the most.
“I’ve just been taking some time out which has been nice, just to have some space to myself,” he says. “I’ve been taking my time to find my journey after rugby.”
Life after rugby is a difficult concept for many players. When all you have ever known since being a teenager is the structure and camaraderie of a life in professional rugby, the transition to a more regular working routine can prove tough.
Wilkinson says that it has taken him some time to consider that his future might actually be outside of rugby, but happily now admits that it is something he is very much open to.
“Maybe I was heading along my path with my back turned for a while, because I was still looking at Toulon, I was still looking at the rugby, and wondering what was and what could be. Now I feel I’ve rotated and am facing forward and enjoying my own path.”
The longer we talk, however, the more obvious it becomes that the fire that made him one of the fiercest competitors ever to play the game still burns brightly within. Our conversation turns towards the England vs France fixture at Twickenham in the final game of the Six Nations. “Le Crunch” served as a reference point in Wilkinson’s career and as such he is not short of an opinion on the game.
“That game [England vs France] has always been unique for me. I was brought into the squad in 1998, and the team had just lost to France. So I walked into the team hotel, and saw all these guys, these stars that I had been watching on TV, wandering around on the back of a tough loss. It was eye-opening.
“That French game has always been a kind of reference point along the road. Having met them twice in semi-finals of World Cups, having won and lost away, it’s always been a big one for me.”
The France team of today is a shadow of the one Wilkinson was used to facing. Where once great entertainers ran free – Wilkinson says not knowing what you were going to see once you’d kicked off was the most difficult part of playing the French – the national side has become stilted, the great French flair of old in serious danger of withering and dying completely.
Wilkinson, who is well placed to comment on such matters after spending five years playing on the Cote d’Azur, the nation’s rugby hotbed, says that France are struggling to keep up with the demands of modern day rugby. As players get bigger, space comes at more of a premium and you need a more structured game in order to create space for players to actually express themselves.
“One of the issues is that they’ve never had a structure – without structure, you’ve got nothing to come back to. You only get these moments of flair when you have structure, because you have something that players are familiar with, which allows them to break out of it when they see an opportunity.
“If you don’t have structure then you don’t have flair; what you have is chaos.”
England, meanwhile, have developed their structure under Stuart Lancaster’s stewardship, steadily adding to the groundwork put in place in the initial two years of his reign. Wilkinson is full of praise for the head coach, pointing out that the role is something of a poisoned chalice.
“You never get the ideal platform to do the England job. What you really need is the time to say ‘here’s a couple of years, go out there and work on it, and what we need from you is a core team; something to build on’.
“But you don’t get that time, because you also need to win. They want it in two years, but they also kind of want it all now. So it makes it very difficult, but if you look at what he’s done in terms of putting in a long term plan, and also being able to bring those shorter term results, then it’s quite formidable.”
For most fans, the true barometer of Lancaster’s reign will be the Rugby World Cup later this year. Few players in history have left so obvious a legacy at the tournament as Wilkinson. His extra time drop goal to win the final in 2003, off his weaker foot, will live forever in rugby folklore and is one of the sport’s iconic moments.
The former Newcastle and Toulon fly-half thinks England stand an excellent chance of repeating the heroics of his 2003 side, but admits they sit in a hugely clustered group of nations, all of whom are more than capable of being crowned World Champions.
“At this stage, there’s a line in the sand. There are two categories: A and B. Category A is that you’re struggling, and you get there and it’s a bit hit and hope, and category B is that you’re looking quite polished, building nicely, and you’ve definitely got a shot [at the trophy].
“What you see at the moment is that Ireland, Wales and England would all sit nicely in that category B. I don’t think anyone, apart from perhaps New Zealand who might be in a category C which is just “favourites”, falls into any other category.”
For the first time since 1995, the sport faces the prospect of a World Cup without Jonny Wilkinson – an astonishing stat that proves the longevity of one of rugby’s most incredible characters. Whatever path Wilkinson’s post-rugby journey takes him down, there’s little doubt that somewhere along the way, it will intertwine once again with the game that he has already given so much to.
By Jamie Hosie
Follow Jamie on Twitter: @jhosie43
Jonny Wilkinson is an Ambassador for GUINNESS, Official Beer of England Rugby. To view GUINNESS’ ‘Made of More’ campaign, celebrating the character and integrity of some of rugby’s greatest heroes, visit www.youtube.com/GUINNESSEurope