16 May 29, 2022The Sunday Times
Rugby Union
Vickery messages Steve
Thompson, but his former
team-mate doesn’t answer
his calls — ‘I get emotional,
that’s not what he needs’
I’d moved away from the family farm
and, honestly, it was horrible to be in a
city. That bloke was there for me:
open arms, ‘Come in, here you go, I
can help.’ Yeah, we used to smoke our
rollies together, and he’d get you to do
his work for him, but he was there for
you. I would have done anything for
that bloke.”
For Vickery, this is what it comes
down to: a medal stored in a box is
nothing next to the memories of
encounters with good people. The
day before we met, Shaun Edwards
had sent him a text: “How are you, big
man?” Vickery joined Wasps at a time
when many thought he was shot.
“Welcome, we’ll get you back to being
the best No 3 in the world,” was all
Edwards said to him.
Vickery loved Edwards’s thinking
on defence. “Shaun would say, ‘We’re
not perfect and if the opposition go
round us on the outside or chip it overW
e’re in the kitchen of his
home near Gloucester.
He stands while we
talk. His back prefers it
that way. Phil Vickery is
46 now; the last time
we’d spoken like this it
was in a quiet cornerof the Sheraton Towers Hotel in
Melbourne, during the 2003 World
Cup. He remembers the headline in
The Sunday Times: The dude from
Bude. “Greatest [headline] I’ve ever
had, it still gets brought up,” he
says, laughing.
What I recall is the way he talked
about his Cornish childhood in
Kilkhampton, near Bude. Grandfa-
ther Vickery walking through a field
with a bag of feed on his shoulder,
incapable of seeing a dock leaf that he
did not want to pull, or greeting his
grandchildren after they’d returned
with nothing to show for a day’s fish-
ing: “If it was meant to be called
‘catching’, they’d have called it that.
It’s called ‘fishing’ for a reason.”
There is another memory from that
2003 meeting. We’d been talking for
more than an hour when Andy Robin-
son, England’s assistant coach, came
by. He said something about being
surprised Vickery had so much time
for a journalist two days before the
Samoa game. Vickery raised his eye-
brows and had a look: “Robbo, get
lost.” Chastened, Robinson departed.
Vickery recently moved house.
Went through wardrobes, cupboards,
shelves, boxes and, when it was all
done, he realised that he no longer
had his winners’ medal from 2003.
Some time ago he took it to a call
centre because the folks there wanted
to see it. That’s his last memory of it.
Lost, stolen or mislaid? He doesn’t
have a clue.
It’s not something that will keep
him awake at night. The game for him
was about people. Walking down
Westgate Street on his way to Dave
Sims’s memorial service at Gloucester
Cathedral 11 days ago, he was
reminded of that. “This guy’s sitting at
an outside table of some café. ‘Arch,’ I
said, ‘I can’t f***ing believe you’ve
come here.’
“Garath Archer got chucked out of
the England squad because he ended
up not telling Clive [Woodward] to
piss off, but something very similar to
that. That was the kind of bloke he
was. Wired differently, the opposite
to me, but we connected so well. I love
the guy. He’s from Durham, still lives
in the North East and he’s come all
this way to be at Dave’s service.
“After we gave each other a big hug,
what did Arch talk about? His first
tour with England, and how Dave
Sims took him under his wing. Dave
was his first roomie and though they
were in competition for the same
place, Dave took care of him. Arch
told me he wouldn’t have got through
that tour without Simsy.”
Vickery had the same experience.
“Dave was my first captain at Glouces-
ter and, at 52, he died of a f***ing
heart attack. Fifty-two years old. That
guy, I couldn’t give a shit about how
good a rugby player he was. He wasn’t
a John Eales or Martin Johnson but
that guy we used to call our ‘dad’.
When I came to Gloucester, I hated it,
DAVID
WA LS H
Chief Sports Writer
Vickery reminiscing in
retirement and, below
right, with his England
front-row partners
Thompson, centre,
and Trevor WoodmanA lack of care in his sport
is far more concerning to
Phil Vickery than the loss of
his World Cup winners’ medal
‘After I retired,
the rugby values
people talk
about – they
went missing’
on us and run on to it, we’ll say well
done, but they won’t f***ing run
through us.’ ”
Twelve years have passed since a
beaten-up neck said enough was
enough. He’d had a decent innings.
World Cup, Six Nations Champion-
ship, Heineken Champions Cup, Pre-
miership — he won them all. Seventy-
three caps for England, five for the
British & Irish Lions and not one cheap
shot from him. He often describes
himself as stupid, but he never was.
Raging Bull, the clothing company
he co-founded during his playing
career, is thriving, and since his retire-
ment he has joined Creed Foodservice
and Forty-Four Foods, while two
years ago he and the chef Tom Rains
opened a restaurant in Cheltenham.
Along the way the former tight-head
prop won the TV show MasterChef.
“I went on that show not to get
knocked out first. Little bit of honour,
that was all. Once I got into it, then it’s
about giving it your best effort: ‘F***’s
sake, Phil, you’re here. Give it your
best shot, you fat arse! What are you
talking about, just happy to be here,
on a journey. F*** your journey, stick
your journey up your backside.’ You
don’t get many chances in life.”
I ask how he feels about what his
former England front-row partner
Steve Thompson and others are going
through with early-onset dementia.
He says that he messages Thompson
to let him know he’s thinking about
him, though the former hooker won’t
answer his calls. “I understand that.
Tommo knows I get emotional and
that’s not what he needs.
“I undoubtedly have been affected
by rugby. I’ve had ups and downs,
whether that be mental health, well-
being, those kind of things. I question
the way we trained, particularly in the
years when the amateur game was
going professional. We didn’t know
what we were doing. Sometimes
ignorance isn’t OK.”
He’s had three neck operations,
three to his lower back and a left-side
facial reconstruction. “That time my
eye muscle got trapped in my sub-or-
bital floor and I could not move my
eye. I was throwing up. I went home
that night, didn’t even go to hospital.
At home I couldn’t stand somebody
being in the room, it made me vomit
again. Eventually I’d have the surgery,
have a disc put in under my eye.”
If asked, even now, to run through a
brick wall to play again for England,
he would do it. A thousand times
he’d do it. He knows it isn’t right, but
that’s what it meant to him. The
sadness came not during his career
but afterwards.
“You thought people and the game
were going to care, the rugby values
that people talk about. Actually they
went missing. All the people who’ve
helped me since I’ve finished, the
majority weren’t the people I thought
would help me. If you’re involved in
rugby, I’m no use to you any more. I’m
not bitter about that, but it took me a
while to understand.
“When you talk about mental
health, I don’t think they’ve even
scratched the surface. I know they
haven’t. My game has done a
disservice to the people that played it.
Lip service, they’ve paid.
“Rugby is in for a really tricky time.
If they’re not careful, if they don’t
start doing more and being a little
more authentic, the game will slowly
begin to die. I truly believe that.”
He leaves this conversation with a
postscript: “I’m not perfect, far from
it, but I am authentic.”ANDREW FOX FOR THE SUNDAY TIMESDavid Walsh’s
2003 interview
with Vickery