PHIL VICKERY STANDS IN THE LOBBY of a service station on the M4. Dressed in a London Wasps T-shirt, black shorts and trainers, the England World Cup-winning prop cuts an imposing presence. Passers-by look twice and then the penny drops. Yes, it is indeed “Vicks”. You can almost sense them asking: “What’s he doing here?”
Simple. His pre-season schedule is hectic as he commutes temporarily between Gloucester, home of his former club, and London, where his new life begins this season. His feet have barely touched the ground this summer as he contends with finding a house, the upheaval of moving his family, letting his farmhouse and his recovery from a third back operation, as well as settling in at Wasps, whom he joined after more than a decade in the West Country.
On meeting Vickery, it takes a minute to digest the fact that he is not in the cherry and white but the all black of Wasps, who assessed the risk and decided that there was a lot more mileage left on the “Raging Bull’s” clock. After all, there is no club in the land who manage player welfare better than Wasps, a club renowned for getting the best out of rugby’s waifs and strays.
With the pleasantries out of the way, Vickery starts to expand on his reasons for leaving the comfort zone of his old stomping ground, the fresh challenge provided by Wasps, his take on life after another unpredictable season blighted by injury, his target of a return to playing in October and his personal hopes for the future after his summer wedding to Kate, by whom he has a daughter.
“It was sad for me to leave after 11 years at Gloucester,” Vickery, 30, said. “The good thing is I can still pick up the phone and speak to Dean (Ryan). He’s a great guy, a great coach. I have a lot of respect for him. I really do wish them well. They have been a big part of me. Kate told me that someone had quoted me as saying on the back page of the local paper that I don’t give a s*** for them. That is rubbish. But you have to look forward. Things move on. What I said was that people won’t give a s*** about me.”
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The reasons for the parting of the ways he will not elaborate upon, but suffice to say that Gloucester’s expectations and what they had to offer in terms of a new contract did not meet Vickery’s estimation of his considerable value. While some clubs balked, Wasps did not.
“When I talked to Geech (Ian McGeechan, the Wasps director of rugby), he knew I couldn’t hide anything,” Vickery said. “Everyone knows my medical history. He gave me an opportunity to do this and I intend to make the most of it. Everything is going a lot better than I thought.
“Mechanically and functionally it is going really well. The disc is fine, just for some reason I keep getting those bits of disc that flake off and jam in that nerve route. That causes muscle wastage. It is not a prolapsed disc, it is all reasonably symmetrical. There is no reason why I can’t get back. Obviously you don’t want to be rolling out every week getting battered, but being used properly and looked after, there’s no reason why I can’t keep going.”
Although the enmity betwen Gloucester and Wasps is well documented, Vickery did not hesitate in making the move. “I wouldn’t want to pull on a Bath jersey, a Bristol jersey or a Worcester jersey,” he says. “Not because I don’t think they are good clubs — they are — but that to me would not have felt right.”
A country-loving farmer’s son, Vickery, who has a flourishing sports leisure wear business named, appropriately, Raging Bull, with a female Moody Cow range also on offer, accepts that city living will take some adjusting to. “It will be strange,” he says. “To be perfectly honest, as long as I have got my wife and daughter with me, I could be in the middle of anywhere.”
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Having won the World Cup, Vickery wants to help to defend England’s crown in France next year. “I have every ambition to get back and play for my country,” he said. “If I am not good enough and not selected then fine, I’ll hold my hands up. When I get back to playing I want to give myself every opportunity to show what I can do. If that leads to a phone call from Andy Robinson (the England head coach), great.” Injuries permitting, it should not be long in coming.