Читать книгу Open Side: The Official Autobiography - Sam Warburton - Страница 6

Friday, 30 June 2017

The Rydges Hotel, Wellington, New Zealand

Two in the morning.

Can’t sleep. The witching hour, when the darkness comes flooding in: thoughts tumbling and cascading over each other like a Snowdonia river in full spate. The darkness comes flooding in, and it’s all I can do to stop it drowning me.

Everything hurts. My body, my mind, my heart. Everything. I’m a wreck.

It’s easier to list the parts of me that aren’t in pain. My eyelashes. That’s pretty much it. I’ve had more than 20 injuries over my career: the concussions, the broken jaw, the plate in my eye socket, the trapped shoulder nerve, the hamstring torn clean off the bone, the knee ligaments.

Before I go out to play these days, I have to neck painkillers while the physios strap me up like an Egyptian mummy. I have to stand there butt naked in front of them, cupping my twig and berries, while they bind my knees, my ankles, my shoulders and my elbows.

It’s not just tonight. It’s the relentless grind: week on week, month on month, year on year. Smash and be smashed. Try to recover. Smash and be smashed again. The equivalent of strapping myself into a car like a crash test dummy and driving it at a wall every weekend.

I get out of bed. Shards of pain as my feet touch the floor. I push myself slowly upright, gritting my teeth as the aches flare and settle.

If my body’s only at around 70 per cent fitness, my mind feels around half that. I’m exhausted, but also wired: antsy, yet craving rest. Yes, these are the small hours when everything seems worse, but even in broad daylight the doubts and questions are never far away.

Sam Warburton shouldn’t be captain.

Sam Warburton shouldn’t be playing.

Sam Warburton’s past it.

What I know is that there are plenty of people out there who think that.

What I fear is that they might be right.

I take one step, gingerly, then another, and another. Walking – hobbling, more like – across the carpet over to the window. I pull back the curtains and look out.

Below me is the Wellington waterfront. It’s quiet and empty now, but earlier this evening it was packed, as it will be later tonight and tomorrow night. Many of these people will be wearing red rugby shirts and will have saved up for years to come all the way across the world just to watch us play.

Because tomorrow evening I’m going to lead out the British and Irish Lions for the second of three Tests against the All Blacks. We lost the first in Auckland last week, which means we have to win this one to stay in the series. I’ve played in some big games in my life – World Cup semi-finals, Grand Slam deciders, Lions Tests against Australia – but nothing that comes close to this.

Nothing that comes remotely close.

The best of the Home Nations, a once-every-four-years touring team, against the double world champions. I came off the bench in Auckland, but now I’m starting and I simply have to deliver.

It should be the highlight of my career. It feels like anything but.

This is a game that’s been the biggest part of my life for almost two decades, a game that has largely defined me. It’s a game I love. Rather, it’s a game I thought I loved. Right now, I hate it.

I want to be one of those fans, on the piss and singing their hearts out, with no problem more pressing than who gets the next round in. Instead, I’m here, torturing myself with questions to which I have no answer. Why? Why am I doing this to myself? Why am I putting myself through all this pain, all this pressure, when I could be doing something – anything – else? Why am I in a job which right now I detest?

Round and round and round. Body, mind and heart. Physical stress, mental stress and emotional stress, all working on and off each other. I feel as though I’m in a submarine going deeper and deeper, springing leaks as the hull creaks and flexes, and soon I’ll come to the point of no return, the moment when the pressure gets too much and crushes me like a tin can.

Two in the morning, and no one to talk to.

For once in my career I’ve chosen to have a room on my own rather than share with a team-mate. It’s the captain’s prerogative, to have a room to himself, but one I’ve rarely used as I don’t like to be set apart from the other boys.

This time, I have. I’ve told everyone it’s because I need the sleep, which is true – my daughter Anna’s not far off a year old, and like all babies she’s up more times in the night than a vampire – but it’s not the whole truth either.

It’s because I need the space too. The six weeks of this tour are what my entire career has been building towards, and I want to win so much, so much, that the desire is almost in itself a physical pain. Another physical pain, more like.

A submarine. A volcano. All this pain bubbling up inside me, and if I don’t deal with it, it’s going to explode and consume me in all its molten fury.

I need to talk to someone. There are several people I could call, but there’s only one person I know will really understand. I dial her number.

‘Sam?’ Her voice is full of concern. It’s lunchtime back home in Cardiff. She knows what time it is where I am, and that I wouldn’t be phoning for no reason.

‘I’ve had enough, Mum.’ My throat is tight with the effort of not bursting into tears. ‘I really have. I’m just going to go.’

‘Go where?’

‘To the airport. Do a bunk. Leave all my kit here, get on the first plane home. I’ll be in the air before they realise I’ve gone.’

I didn’t, of course. Can you imagine the headlines?

LIONS CAPTAIN DOES MIDNIGHT FLIT.

WARBURTON QUITS.

THE RUNAWAY SKIPPER.

I’d never have lived it down, and rightly so.

But at the time I was deadly serious. And no one knew, apart from my mum. She talked me down: told me that I didn’t owe anything to anyone, so all I had to do was get through this week and the next and then the series would be over and I could do what I wanted.

She was right, of course. She knew the way love for and hatred of rugby oscillated within me, because they did for her too. She loved what the game had given me and the pleasure I’d got from it, but she hated seeing me beaten up, or under the knife, or criticised. Even though I was 6 ft 2 and 16 stone, I was still her little boy.

No one knew, apart from my mum. The spectators in the Westpac Stadium the following evening certainly didn’t know when they watched one of the most titanic and dramatic Test matches imaginable. And there’s no reason they should have known. The rugby public see what the players want them to see, and no more.

I played most of my career with 7 on my back. For me 7 has, in rugby terms, always been a sacred number. This book is arranged according to that number. There are seven main chapters, each centred on a different rugby ground in which something important in my life happened: a red card or two, a debut, a barnstorming run, a horrific injury, a goal-line stand, a split-second decision with a referee.

In between those chapters are seven sections centred around different aspects of leadership (Personality, Professionalism, Performance, Perspective, Positivity, Persistence and People), because over the years as captain for Wales and the Lions I’ve learned a bit about all of those too.

Number 7 is the openside flanker, the one who packs down in a scrum furthest from the near touchline and therefore has more of the field to patrol than number 6, the blindside. I’ve played a bit at six too, and in writing this I realised that openside and blindside aren’t just positions on the pitch. They’re also reflections of how much people really know about the life of a professional rugby player.

Most of the time, that knowledge is the blindside, the narrow side. You see us on match day, and maybe in social media videos or promotional appearances too. That’s some of our life, but it’s only a very, very small part. The rest of it, those wide expanses which the number 7 needs to patrol, is kept hidden.

This is the story of those expanses, the parts of the iceberg beneath the surface. It’s a story of highs and lows, of triumph and disaster. It’s a story of what it’s really like to be in the thick of it, on and off the pitch. It’s not every rugby player’s story, but it’s my story, told as clearly and honestly as I can.

This is my open side.