Chasing a Rugby Dream, Book Two, page 15
Jimmy understood and nodded.
‘So,’ continued Will, ‘one of the training exercises the Marines did was to try to replicate what the US Rangers pulled off at Pointe du Hoc. Somebody found a cliff down on the coast at Cornwall that was almost identical to Pointe du Hoc and one day, as a nervous seventeen-year-old, I found myself on a boat, bobbing up and down on a choppy sea, before being ordered to climb the cliff by a rope ladder.’
Will paused.
‘And that’s where the fear hit me. I was one of the last off the boat and there were five different ladders to climb. I’d never been very good with heights, but I’d managed to somehow deal with it if I had to, but this was different. The cliff above was just straight up, no angle at all. That meant, when you were at the bottom of the ladder, you couldn’t see the top at all. In fact, when you looked up, it was so steep, it just felt as if you were falling straight backwards down into the sea. I was terrified. I managed to climb about four rungs of the ladder when I felt it give, as if it was coming loose at the top. I froze. I was certain that the ladder was going to come away from the top of the cliff and I was going to fall back into the sea, bash my head on the rocks and drown.’
Will stopped talking. Lost in his memories.
‘So what happened, Gramp?’ asked Jimmy at last. ‘Did you climb it?’
‘No son, I didn’t. And this is my turn to be ashamed. I froze completely, neither able to go up nor down. Our sergeant had to climb back down from the top of the cliff to get me moving. He started screaming and shouting at me to move, but I just couldn’t. I went into this odd zone of not caring, just not really listening to what he was saying.’
Will paused again.
‘Apparently, I was stuck on that ladder for about ten minutes. In war, I’d have been killed, as simple as that and, much worse, others would have died too. Somehow, they finally got me down from the ladder and into a boat. I was the only marine not to make it up the cliff face.’
‘So what happened, Gramp? Did you have a row?’
Will laughed, ‘Ha, you could say that. When we got back to base, the officers slaughtered me! I was told in no uncertain terms that I had to climb that ladder or I’d fail basic training and be booted out of the Marines. But the worse bit wasn’t the rollicking I had from the officers, it was the silence that greeted me when I went back to my barracks from my mates. Everyone ignored me. I was ashamed.’
‘That’s like what Matt’s been doing to me,’ said Jimmy. ‘Ignoring me.’
Will nodded, then continued.
‘But the trouble was, even though I was ashamed, it didn’t help the situation. I still knew that the following morning at 7.30, we had to do the whole thing again. I had no option. That night, I hardly had a wink of sleep, worrying about the next morning and just realising that I wasn’t going to be able to overcome my fear and probably be booted out of the Marines.’
‘But you weren’t booted out, Gramp, I know that,’ said Jimmy, ‘so what happened?’
‘Well, basically, I had some help, Jimmy. That morning, in the Mess room queuing for breakfast, this quiet lad called Tom came up to me. I hadn’t really had much to do with him at that point, but he just started to talk to me about the climb. I tried to ignore him at first, but then he told me how this was his second time in basic training and how he’d been thrown out the first time because he’d been unable to climb the ladder. Over breakfast he just explained how he’d got over his fear by breaking down every part of the ladder climb into separate pieces, until his brain treated the climb as lots of small things, rather than one huge task. And then a great thing happened.’
‘You climbed the ladder!’ said Jimmy triumphantly.
‘No. The weather changed,’ laughed Will.
Jimmy looked confused.
‘In the time it took for us to complete breakfast, a storm came in, a bad one. I was terrified. It was bad enough to be scared about climbing the cliff in good weather, let alone in pouring rain and driving wind. Luckily for me, the officers must have agreed and they called the exercise off, postponing it for a day. They then told us that we had a day of physical training in the gym instead. I’d never been so relieved to have to train myself to a standstill as I was at that moment.’
Will laughed again, as did Jimmy; he loved his grandfather’s stories of the military, he just came so alive when he spoke of them.
‘Anyway, we had two forty-five-minute breaks, plus lunch, during the training day, and in that time when everyone else went back to barracks to rest, Tom took me to the corner of the gym where the rope ladders were and explained, step by step, how to climb one. I was still very scared at first, but as Tom explained the physics of it all – how to stop the ladder swirling around by climbing it sideways, how to shift your weight to gain the best angle to climb and how to use arms and legs together for stability – I became better. Then, the better I became, the less fearful I was of it. That day, in the end, I must have climbed that ladder forty times with Tom, and just understanding how to do it, removed all of the fear for me.’
‘So did you finally climb the ladder up the cliff, Gramp?’
‘No,’ laughed Will, ‘the bad weather continued for the rest of the week and time basically ran out, so we never went back. However, every day, I went into the gym with Tom before breakfast and climbed that ladder five times. I got so good, that I nearly ran up it in the end. My fear of heights and my fear of that ladder had gone. And there was one simple reason why.’
Jimmy looked, waiting for the answer.
‘Somebody showed me how to do it. And once you learn how to do something, no matter how much you dread it or are worried about it, the fear will leave you. You gain confidence from knowing exactly how to do something. And that’s what you’re going to have to do, Jimmy. You’re going to have to find someone to show you exactly how to tackle.’
THE LOWEST POINT
The month of February wasn’t very kind to Jimmy. Despite understanding everything his grandfather had told him, the tackling issue just got worse for him. There were three school games in the month and the pattern was repeated in each.
Jimmy would start the game well . . . no, that wouldn’t be correct. Jimmy would start the game brilliantly, before, inevitably, he would be called upon to make a tackle. Then everything would go wrong. Horribly wrong. It got to the stage that Jimmy’s brilliance on the field in an attacking sense was being cancelled out by his defensive limitations. It wasn’t pretty to watch.
Mrs John had now become aware that tackling was a huge issue for Jimmy, and while she was sympathetic, there was not much she could do. During training she had so much to concentrate on with all the other players, that apart from the odd bit of encouragement, she was unable to give him any one-on-one coaching, especially in the tackling department.
She was as bemused as anyone because, even in training sessions, Jimmy was head and shoulders above anyone else when he had ball in hand, it was just defensively he struggled so much. She’d never really seen anything like it before.
Soon, Mrs John started to move Jimmy around in his position. She tried to work out where best to place him to reduce the amount of tackling he’d face while still using him as an attacking force. She first moved Jimmy away from fly-half to inside centre, swapping him with Manu, then, in the following game, she moved him again, this time to outside centre. In the third game, towards the end of the month, she even moved him onto the wing in the second half of the match, so bad had his tackling – or more appropriately, non-tackling – become.
The only person that really understood was Kitty. She became Jimmy’s closest confidant, the only one Jimmy would really open up to.
‘I just don’t know what to do, Kitty,’ he said the morning after the game he’d been moved out to the wing. ‘The whole thing just seems to be getting worse.’
Kitty listened as Jimmy explained what his grandfather had said about finding someone to teach him how to tackle properly and how he hoped that would help him.
‘The trouble is, Kit, I’m just too embarrassed to ask anyone. I don’t want to go and see Peter Clement because I’ve not seen much of him since last season and would just hate to have to admit to him this fear I’ve developed. I’ve tried to watch Manu, who’s our best tackler, to try to work out how to tackle properly by seeing what he does, but he doesn’t seem to have a technique, he just smashes anyone who goes near him. I’ll never be able to do that.’
Kitty nodded. She knew Manu was something special as a tackler, but even she winced when she saw some of the tackles he made. There didn’t seem to be any plan with his tackling, apart from absolutely munching the opponent.
‘What about Mrs John? Why don’t you go and explain to her? I’m sure she’ll help,’ said Kitty. ‘She’s been brilliant with me, sorting out my positional play and game awareness.’
Jimmy paused for a moment before replying.
‘I’ve thought about it, but I still feel a bit shy around her. I really like her, but I still feel like I don’t know her well enough to ask her for help. Also, the way she’s moved me away from fly-half in the recent games, I’m worried that if I admit everything to her, she’ll drop me from the team for good, and it’s the quarter finals of the Cluster Cup next week.’
Kitty interrupted.
‘She’ll never do that, Jimmy, she’s too nice to do something that drastic.’
‘I wouldn’t blame her if she did, to be honest,’ said Jimmy looking down at the floor.
‘Don’t talk like that,’ snapped Kitty. ‘I know it’s tough, but we’ll find a solution to this. Why don’t you let me talk to Mrs John and tell her all about it? I really think she’ll help you if she knows what the problem is.’
Jimmy thought for a second, and said, ‘Well maybe that is the best thing. Would you do that for me? I know it might be a bit awkward for you.’
‘Of course I’ll do it,’ she said. ‘And it won’t be awkward at all, I know Mrs John will think of something.’
She did. She dropped Jimmy for the next game.
FINDING THE ANSWER
In fairness to Mrs John, she had already made the decision to drop Jimmy before Kitty had a chance to speak to her.
She had been away on a two-day training course on the Monday and Tuesday, and when she got back in to school on the Wednesday, she announced the team for Thursday afternoon’s game before doing anything else.
Everyone swung around and looked at Jimmy for his reaction when it was announced that he was one of the replacements, but Mrs John had broken the news to him personally before registration that morning, so the public announcement wasn’t a shock for him.
Surprisingly, he wasn’t as upset as he thought he would be. In fact, a small part of him was almost relieved – maybe it was best for him to have a break.
Mrs John had explained that the team they had been drawn against in the quarter-final of the Cluster Cup, Woodview Primary, were a particularly tough team and she felt that Jimmy would benefit from not being exposed by them. Jimmy knew all about Woodview, and tough was the perfect word to describe their team. They loved their rugby there and took no prisoners when they played. Maybe it was a good one for Jimmy to miss.
Mrs John made everyone understand that she was giving everybody from the squad an opportunity to have a game and confirmed that Jimmy would remain her captain when he played, but still, his omission was the talk of the playground at break time. At the end of the day, Mrs John asked Jimmy to stay behind and when everyone had left the class, she spoke.
‘I’m really sorry about the timing of the announcement today,’ she said, sitting down on the edge of her desk. ‘Kitty saw me at lunchtime and explained everything. You must have thought me incredibly heartless this morning when I told you my decision, but I hadn’t spoken to Kitty at that point.’
‘It’s okay,’ replied Jimmy slightly awkwardly. ‘I understand.’
‘Well, I’m not sure that you do, Jimmy,’ replied Mrs John with a smile. ‘You see, there is another reason why I wanted to leave you out of the team this week, and luckily, Kitty’s explanation earlier was the perfect timing.’
Jimmy looked at her, confused.
‘You know my husband, Kevin, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he exclaimed. ‘He helped me with my place kicking when I was injured, he’s great!’
Mrs John smiled. ‘Yes, he’s not bad, but I’m not going to tell him what you said, he’ll get big headed!’
Jimmy laughed.
‘Well, did you know that Kevin is one of the strength and conditioning coaches at the Reds in the National League?’
‘No, but I knew he had something to do with them, I just wasn’t sure what exactly.’
‘Well, he was originally involved with them as a player, years ago, long before I met him, but he had a really nasty injury in one of his very first senior games for them and he never really recovered. He struggled to come to terms with tackling when he came back, and his career just fizzled out before it really began.’
Jimmy nodded, he felt like saying, ‘I know how he feels,’ but he remained silent.
‘Anyway,’ continued Mrs John, ‘the Reds felt a bit to blame about how his career ended so early, with the injury happening while he was playing for them, so they looked after him. Once it was clear that the injury wouldn’t fully recover, which meant he’d never regain his confidence to tackle, they offered him a job on the back-room staff. Part of the job meant that they would sponsor him to go to university – and he chose to study strength and conditioning, where he learned all about the way the body works in sport and, in particular, rugby, and how best to prepare people for it. I was actually at the same university doing my teacher training, which is how we met.’
Jimmy nodded, wondering where this was heading.
‘Now,’ she continued, ‘I’ve been telling Kev all about you and we’ve come up with a bit of a plan. He thinks that players who have issues around tackling, the fear often lies in the fact that they don’t really know what to do in terms of technique.’
‘Yes!’ replied Jimmy quickly. ‘That’s exactly it! It’s what my grandfather told me weeks ago, but I didn’t know who to tell.’
‘That’s what Kitty explained to me at lunchtime. And Kev wants to help. He wants to try and teach you how to tackle properly. How does that sound to you?’
Jimmy almost jumped with excitement. ‘It sounds great! Really great! When can we start?’
‘How about tonight?’ came a voice from behind Jimmy. It was Kevin. ‘There’s no time like the present!’
THE GARDEN OF EDEN
Jimmy looked around the huge garden that stretched from the rear of Mrs John’s house. It was massive. It was almost the size of half a rugby field with long, high hedges either side of the perfect grass. At the end nearest the house, there was a small patio and barbecue area, but from there down to the far end, which was easily fifty metres, was lush, green grass, all surrounded by mature trees. At the bottom was a small fence that led out onto some farm fields which gave the impression of the garden being even bigger.
When Kevin came out, Jimmy turned to him and said, ‘This is the biggest garden I’ve ever seen!’
Kevin laughed.
‘Yes, it’s not bad is it? It’s one of the reasons we came back here to live. I used to play in this house when I was a kid. It belonged to the grandparents of a mate of mine when we were both at Central Primary, the same as you. His name was Steve and his grandparents had a bit of money and spoilt him rotten. They actually marked this out as a small rugby pitch, complete with posts.’
‘Wow!’ exclaimed Jimmy. ‘Real posts? Are you serious? That’s so cool!’
‘Yes, cool it most certainly was. Come here, I’ll show you.’
Kevin walked off the patio and onto the grass, just about two yards on from a flower border.
‘Here, look at this,’ said Kevin, kneeling down and pressing his hand into the grass.
Jimmy looked and saw what appeared to be a lump of rotten wood. He knew instantly what it was from the shape.
‘Is that a post?’
‘Yep,’ smiled Kevin. ‘There’s another one just over there, and two more, way down the bottom of the garden.’ He got up and pointed to the end, near the fence.
‘Steve and I played here all the time. I loved it. I learned to kick conversions here, before we outgrew it and moved down to The Rec. I have such happy memories of this garden. When we found out that the house was for sale last summer, we set in place all the details for the move back here from the big city. It helped that Laura . . . sorry, Mrs John! . . . had a job to go to at Central and I always wanted to live here, so everything fitted perfectly.’
Kevin smiled to himself as he looked around his wonderful garden.
‘When we viewed it, the first thing I did was come out to see if the posts were still here. I knew they’d have probably been taken down, but was chuffed to see that the base of them was still here. As soon as Laura . . . sorry, Mrs John!’ said Kevin laughing again. ‘As soon as we have our first child, I’ll be getting new posts put in. I want my son or daughter to have as much fun learning about rugby here as I did.’
‘It will be brilliant,’ marvelled Jimmy, taking in as much of the surroundings as he could.
‘But, until then,’ said Kevin, ‘this is where you’ll be learning your rugby. Or more specifically, learning how to tackle!’
‘And it was all going so well,’ said Jimmy with a half-smile.
Kevin laughed, ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘But before we do anything, you need to tell me your story and then I’ll tell you mine. I think you’ll find we have quite a bit in common.’
TACKLING THE PAST
