Omelette,” he says. “Is an omelette all right? I’ve ordered omelettes.” We’re
sitting in the café attached to the rugby stadium at Brive and though it is
an afternoon in midwinter, the sky is blue, the sun warm and Steve Thompson
is talking about hunting and how he would like to explore the possibilities
on the outskirts of the city. Find a French farmer who would let him out on
his land and he would be away. Train that morning, a second session early in
the afternoon and then off into the countryside; his gun on his shoulder,
his eyes peeled for movement, his ears pricked for sound.
“What I really love is stalking, wild boar or deer, it doesn’t matter. I love
it for the stalk, not the kill. I have never felt so at home doing anything
in my life. I’ve stalked in the countryside around Northampton, over in
Thetford Forest, and I know there are places outside Brive. I shot my first
deer in Scotland, at a place called Winston Churchill Estate, on the
afternoon England were smashed by Ireland at Croke Park. A red deer, it was.
We gutted the beast where I killed it, made it easier to lug the carcass
back to the car. We got the last 10 minutes of the match on the radio.”
It would be neat to say that, then, it was the hunter who was gutted but when
you are injured and not involved, defeats don’t hurt. Not enough to dull the
thrill of your first red deer.
The omelettes arrive, folded over and oozing at the core. He tells how when he
first came to Brive, he would hand the omelette back and ask that it be
cooked a little more. Second or third time, he noticed his companions
wincing. “Actually Steve, that’s how the omelette is meant to be.” Bloody
hell! He soon realised he should trust the French, at least when it comes to
omelettes. He leaves his phone on the table. “Do you mind?” he says.
“There’s one call that might happen and if it does, I want to take it.” He
picks up on the curiosity. “Brian,” he says. “I’m hoping Brian [Ashton]
might call.”
Steve Thompson has never been the archetypal England rugby player. He came
from a working-class background in Northampton, his dad disappeared when he
was three, returned when he was 10 and the subsequent relationship was
fraught. His mum and her partner asked him to leave the family home when he
was 17, a request he couldn’t understand. From that moment, he decided his
sister was his only family.
His talent at rugby kept him going and winning the World Cup in 2003 was the
end of the first great journey of his life. But for those who travel a long
way in a short time, the difficulty is the sense that there is nowhere left
to go. Perhaps if the whole postWorld Cup challenge had been handled
differently. He recalls getting back from Australia feeling he had to repay
his club for the time he had been away. “People would say, ‘I saw you on the
bus in London, you must have been on the piss for three months’. We weren’t,
we were back playing for our clubs and even when we were attending awards
banquets, they felt like part of the job because you had a club match two
days later.”
Success was corrosive and the burn-out soon set in during the six months after
the World Cup. Something akin to insanity persuaded him to make the 2004
summer tour to Australia and New Zealand. “I couldn’t not go, because that
would give someone else a chance in my position. No way was I doing that. I
think I have the record for playing the most matches for England in a year.
You played, no matter what. Pop a rib, get the injection and don’t complain.”
His form suffered. He remembers losing against Ireland at Twickenham in 2004.
His throwing to the lineout had been abysmal and when he walked in to face
the press afterwards, he could feel their lust for his blood. “The
lineouts?” they asked. “Down to me,” he said. “It was a very bad day at the
office and I’ve never felt worse walking off a rugby field. I feel I’ve let
the country down.” There were no further questions.
Because he was talented, England coaches picked him when he didn’t deserve to
be picked. Reputation counted for more than form and when his body ached for
a rest, he had to go to New Zealand with the 2005 Lions.
Northampton got themselves into relegation battles and perhaps the nadir was
England’s game in Paris two years ago.
“A few of us, Tindall, Daws, myself, came down with a bug. I was all right
until an hour before kick-off, then it hit me – terrible vomiting and
diarrhoea. For almost all of the game, I was dry-retching. I felt
unbelievably bad, just all over the place.”
Then, in January 2007, following a tackle by Serge Betsen in a European Cup
match against Biarritz, it ended. “Betsen sort of judo-threw me, no fault of
his, but I hit the ground with my head and my arm went numb. My leg felt
funny as well. I thought it was a stinger that would go away but my leg
started to feel even funnier. I took a lineout throw and when my arm went
up, I didn’t recognise it as mine. Weird, just very weird. I was whoosy and
thought, ‘Is this how people in the Sixties and Seventies felt on magic
mushrooms?’
“The specialist in Bristol said to give it a little time, let it settle down.
The disc was pinching the spinal cord but over the following two weeks,
things got worse. My arm went completely numb, then my fingers. My leg went
numb, but the waterworks were the worst. I never felt the urge to pee, then
it would be almost too late. In the driveway, I couldn’t wait to get from
the car to the house. Don’t know what the neighbours thought. So the surgeon
looked again and said it was one of those injuries where you couldn’t
understand why the disc hadn’t actually severed the spinal cord. It had
squashed it but not severed it.”
Under the surgeon’s knife, and expertise, Thompson had the squashed disc
removed and an artificial ball and joint put in its place. The remarkable
thing was that the very next day, he had more movement in his neck than he’d
had for six years. His doctors told him that no front-row forward had ever
returned to the game following his operation. At 28, Thompson accepted he’d
played his last game.
Some weeks before his injury, he had agreed to join Brive in the summer of
2007. Retired, he presumed the deal was dead but the club’s millionaire
owner, Daniel Derichebourg, said he could come to the club and work on the
coaching side.
Friends thought premature retirement would devastate him. “It didn’t. They
were sure I’d fall apart but there was no chance of that. I’d had a great
run, this was a chance to move on. Another chapter, another challenge.”
A month or so into his new life with Brive, everything changed. It began with
a vague disgust at how overweight he had become, so he began to do his own
work-outs. That brought reminders of what he had liked about playing and,
undeniably, his neck felt freer than it had been for years. Someone told him
about a rugby league player who resumed his career after having the same
operation: a winger, not a hooker, but still. He asked people at Brive if he
could be examined by a spinal specialist. A surgeon in Lyons looked at the
x-rays and told him his English surgeon had done an outstanding job. “As far
as I’m concerned,” the surgeon said, “there is no reason you can’t play
rugby.” A second French surgeon offered the same opinion and English
surgeons later agreed with the verdict.
Thompson was free to play again.
Still, it was a big decision because five months before, the cheque from the
insurance company had landed in his account.
“Was it a lot?”
“Quite a lot,” he says.
“How much?”
“A lot.”
“A quarter of a million?”
“More.”
“Three hundred thousand?”
“More.”
“Four hundred thousand?”
“More.”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“Oui,” he says, forgetting his English.
“And it was tax-free.”
This may put him in a category of one: at 29 years old, he is prepared to pay
£500,000 to resume his career. In their enthusiasm to get him in their front
row, Brive rushed his return. He played his first games in November but his
body wasn’t ready. “Everything except my neck ached,” he says.
Brive saw how much the games took from him and assigned a trainer to help him
back to complete fitness. They are now two-thirds through a three-month
programme. He will return to action before the end of March. “I am now down
to 117kg [18st 6lb], the lightest I have ever been as a rugby player and I
don’t think I’ve been in better physical condition.”
He has watched the RBS Six Nations from afar. “I don’t think it was any help
to England that France had a bad last half an hour against Ireland. That was
a wake-up call for the team. They have a quick pack, very athletic and very
good at the lineout, and an outstanding back three. Rougerie, Clerc and
Heymans remind me of Jason Robinson in that they will run it back from
anywhere. Clive [Woodward] used to say to us, ‘When the opposition kick to
Jason, everyone is to get back because he will definitely run it’.
“But the French scrum is having trouble. No disrespect to Ireland and
Scotland, but you don’t expect their scrums to cause you big problems. I’d
like to see Sheridan and Vickery in the England front row. I know William
Servat and scrummaging is not his strong point. I hear the same is true of
Szarzewski. If I had to put my life on it, I’d back England’s pack to win
the battle up front and create the platform from which the team can win.”
He will follow the action on TV. He has just four weeks before he picks up the
thread of a career he thought he had lost.
After an hour, the relative peace is broken by his mobile phone. “It’s Brian,”
he says, “I’ve got to take it.” He walks away from the table but it is a
small café and impossible not to hear. “Hi Brian, you all right?”
They chat about how he came back too early and had to start again, but it’s
going to work out for the best. He tells Ashton he’s feeling better than
ever, and all he wants is the opportunity. The coach mentions the summer
tour to New Zealand. Thompson says he will be ready.
The call ends and he is smiling. “I will only be 33 by the next World Cup,” he
says. He has picked up on Ashton’s enthusiasm for having him back and it
lifts him. You pay your money and you take your chance.
