when I was in so much pain I could hardly see straight, I’ve never regretted a minute of my life as a rugby player.
I’ve met some great people, been to some great countries and lived a life that most people dream of. I’m very grateful to have been given the opportunity to do this. I am honoured to carry the dreams of millions when I run out in that white England shirt or the red Lions shirt. It’s easy to say ‘I feel privileged’ but I do. I feel as if I’m the luckiest guy ever.
I’ve had a hell of a career because so much has changed since I started. Things have happened during my time as a rugby player that have been astonishing to witness -like the game turning from amateur to professional as I was starting out at Gloucester. I’m privileged to have experienced both sides of the sport.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the commitment it takes to make it to the top. There’s a lovely phrase and I use it all the time … ‘If you’re going to fail, die trying.’ That’s my motto. I believe you should fall at the last; don’t cross the line coming second. Go for it. I know it’s easy to say, and it isn’t about rugby or playing for England. To me, it says that, whatever you do in life, give it everything. Fight every problem to the death and throw your weight behind everything that means anything to you. Most of all, have fun doing it.
That philosophy worked for a tubby farmer from Cornwall who got to meet the Queen .
Cornwall … I bloody love it. It’s a great place, isolated from everywhere and full of the friendliest people in the world. It’s more like a village than a county - packed full of daft types who treat each other like one big family. I loved growing up there and hearing about its great history - all the myths and legends from times gone by, the stories about wrecked ships mysteriously disappearing, and tales of strange happenings that no one could explain or seemed to know where they’d come from. There’s something about the scenery down in Cornwall and the beauty of the place that inspires writers, poets and musicians and gets people telling tales. There were always famous people moving into the area when I was young, aiming to find creativity on the wide, golden sands, amongst the big cliffs and in the beautiful countryside. I thought I lived in the most special place on earth.
I’m from North Cornwall, where the Atlantic winds come bursting in off the sea. I love the ruggedness of it all. It can be very bleak at times, very dark and moody, but very beautiful at other times. I love the fact that things don’t change constantly as they do in other parts of the country. Things stay the same and the people stay the same. It’s the place where I grew up, went to school and lived for the first nineteen years of my life - running around on Duckpool beach, diving into the sea and body boarding on the huge waves. Taking my bloody life in my hands as I surfed close to the cliffs, and loving it as the eight-foot swells threw me off my body board. We’d go fishing in the rock pools with Dad and Granddad and mess around on beaches that were so hard to get to from the cliffs that we had to ease one another down on these tatty old ropes we’d found, none of us worrying about how dangerous the whole thing was, or wondering for a second how we were going to get back up again.
When I think back, I can’t believe that we were allowed to spend so much time on the beach on our own, but it was a great place to grow up, close to the sea and close to nature. I tell my kids, Megan and Harrison, the stories of when I was a little boy, and it sounds so idyllic. There was something so lovely and adventurous about the freedom we had - life in the fresh air, enjoying long days and warm nights outside.
I’m proud of being a Cornishman … it’s in my blood. So it’s slightly odd that one of the first things I have to tell you about myself is that I was born in Devon! Before you think that makes me any less Cornish, I’d better explain. I was born in Barnstaple, in Devon, because my family is from Bude which is a great little seaside town in North Cornwall, and the nearest hospital was just over the county line in Devon. But besides that, I am Cornish through and through.
I was born into a family of big, bulky dairy farmers, with Mum and Dad working on Killock, a 350-acre farm just outside Bude. The farm had originally belonged to my grandparents. Both sets of grandparents are farmers, so dairy farming really is in my blood, and there’s no doubt that farming is what I’d have ended up doing if rugby hadn’t come along and cocked everything up!
My grandma and grandpa Vickery originally started off life in a place called Bagbury Farm, not far from us in Bude. Then they bought Killock Farm and split the cows between the two farms, making successes of both of them. I do look back and think: Bloody hell, how did they do that? Farming’s a difficult business to make a success of with just one farm to look after, but managing to create two farms out of one like that takes some doing. They did it so that my dad, Barry, could be given Killock when he married my mum, Elaine, and his sister, my aunty Carol, could farm Bagbury.
So I lived on Killock Farm with Mum, Dad, my grandparents and my brother Mark who was two years old when I was born. I was surrounded by animals, milking machines and tractors from an early age. It’s all I ever knew as a kid. It was a perfect place for an adventurous child to live, and you’ll be unsurprised to hear that I was a bloody adventurous child, always exploring, climbing, clambering over everything and generally getting up to mischief on the farm with Mark. I can see now, looking back at the way we were back then, that we must have been a hell of a handful for poor Mum; I don’t know how she coped with us rampaging around the place, doing more damage than if a couple of rhinos had been let loose on the farm. She probably spent as long clearing up after us as she did clearing up after the animals.
Mum never had an easy time of it with me because I started causing problems straight away - from the moment I came into the world at Barnstaple Hospital on 14 March 1976, weighing a sprightly 7lb 13½oz. I was heavier than my brother Mark who’d come before me, and heavier than Helen who came along later, but not the super heavyweight you might expect if you look at the size of me now. I was rushed into an incubator straight after I was born having turned a rather unattractive blue colour (the next time I turned that colour was after one of John Mitchell’s training sessions, but we’ll come onto those later). The doctors were worried about whether I was getting enough oxygen into my body, so decided to keep an eye on me. It meant Mum had to stay in hospital with me for an extra two days before she could take me home.
I’m sure that when Mum eventually got me back to the farm, and realised just what an active and lively child I was going to become, she might have wished I was still in that incubator! She says I was a real handful from the minute she got me back, and with a large dairy farm full of machinery, animals and wide open spaces to mess about in, I had plenty to play with. I didn’t waste any time causing mischief and there are all sorts of stories about me gently petting the animals and half killing them. I’m sure they’re not true … especially not the tales about me squashing the little ducklings half to death. Not me, surely.
I was such a bundle of non-stop energy, even when I was tiny, that Mum decided the only way to cope and keep me relatively safe was to shove me into a wooden playpen and tie it to the kitchen table while she was doing chores around the house. (I’m sure that would be illegal now!) If she didn’t do that, she said I’d push the pen all around the kitchen until I found something interesting (i.e. breakable) to play with. When she was out on the farm doing jobs, she couldn’t leave me for a minute either, so she put me in the hay rack where I couldn’t cause much trouble and she could get on with things without worrying where the next big crash was going to come from.
As we grew up and learnt to toddle around the farm, the smacks, bangs, smashes and collisions that Mark and I got into grew too. Mum remembers me coming in one day with a huge
