Vale Jonny

In another life, I co-owned the sports agency that represented Jonny Wilkinson. (I played absolutely no part in  making him the player he became, sadly.)

In a real sliding doors moment, it’s highly likely that, without that drop goal in 2003, Monday Books would never have happened. You may have mixed feelings as to whether that very minor side-effect was a good or a bad thing, but I bet you remember the moment.

In the days after the final, we were inundated with requests for Jonny stuff. Just as a for instance, OK magazine offered him a million pounds to do an ‘at home’ with Jonny at his spacious Northern pad. He turned it down – a decision which cost me a share of £200,000. Ah well! Money never motivated him.

Was he the best fly-half ever, as the papers have often suggested?  He was one of them, though from players I’ve seen, albeit mostly on screen, I’d go for Barry John, Mark Ella, Hugo Porta or maybe Daniel Carter. Larkham was a better runner, but Jonny had great distribution and his place-kicking and defence redefined the No10 position

I also worked with Martin Johnson, another great who recently left rugby. The current parlous state of the English game wasn’t Johnno’s fault, and it won’t be solved quickly by sacking Rob Andrew or bringing in Nick Mallett. The problem is, we have compared all post-2003 England sides to the RWC winners, and that side contained six true greats: Johnson, Back, Hill, Dallaglio, Wilkinson and Robinson. The front row, Ben Kay, Matt Dawson, Will Greenwood, Josh Lewsey, the younger Mike Tindall and Ben Cohen weren’t too shabby, either.

Here are three seminal, unforgettable moments from the Wilko era: a young Jonny on Ntamack, Dan Luger’s 2000 try (or non-try?) at Twickenham which gave us all the belief that England could beat the southern hemisphere, and Lewsey on Rogers (a tackle which ended Rogers’ surfing career):

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