World Cup winner Phil Vickery heads to Horsham

“If you are talking about the changing room, captaining your country, the atmosphere, the stadiums, walking out onto the pitch, the roar of the crowd, the national anthems, then bloody hell I miss it. I miss it terribly.

“But that’s just the one per cent of it. If you’re talking about the other 99 per cent that was really really hard, then I don’t miss it at all!”

Phil, who will be talking about his life, his career and his interests at Horsham’s Capitol on Saturday, February 5, has successfully made the transition from playing at the very highest level to finding a career post-playing days.

“But it has been challenging and I will talk about that. There is no doubt that it has been tough.”

Reopening his restaurant after a January break was a very happy moment. He will also talk about his passion for food and cooking. He has the fondest memories of his victory on the 2011 series of Celebrity Masterchef: “Things have been good.”

However it is as one of the legends of Rugby Union that he will remain best known.

Capped 73 times for his country, and twice a British & Irish Lion, Phil also captained England at the 2007 World Cup and was part of the historic team that lifted the Webb Ellis trophy in 2003. He remains actively involved in rugby through coaching and commentating.

“I think you form opinions of people, and a huge joy of mine with this is that I can go up there in front of people and people can see who I am and what makes me tick and what interests me. I’m quite a deep old soul in some ways! But I think particularly after Masterchef people do build up a picture of you in their minds and also particularly from the rugby arena, so it’s nice just to get out there and show what you are really like. I think people are quite surprised to find this guy who’s quite quietly spoken and also a bit of a stickler for detail and enjoys food and how I’m just a normal person.”

So does that mean that he became someone else on the rugby field?

“Maybe you do to some extent. To play in the position that I did and to compete in the position that I did, I think you have to be slightly off your rocker but it was still me. But the point is that it was only one part of me, not Phil the person, Phil the brother, Phil the uncle, Phil the whatever. I’m incredibly passionate and competitive but I’m not a person who is win at all costs but I do want to win and I do want to achieve things.”

And inevitably that World Cup win is right up there.

“You think of the memories, the players, the changing room, the occasion, the great matches but the great joy, the beautiful thing is how it affected other people’s lives. People still say November 22 2003 was the greatest day of their lives and that’s a fantastic privilege to have been part of it. And if I walk into a room and there is another member of that 2003 squad, the hairs still stand up on the back of my neck. It is still amazing.

“But what a lot of people forget is that it is not all about success. I stood on the field in Australia five years before in 1998 on the tour from hell, as they called it. We got beaten by Australia 76-0, and it is interesting how people choose not to remember that but I bloody well do!”

He also played in the Rugby World Cup in 1999 losing in the quarter final, a competition which that time was in the UK but nobody really noticed that it was happening. But by 2003 there was a real buzz, with the England team beating the southern hemisphere regularly.

“I think according to the bookies we started as joint favourites. It sounds really boring but we were just that driven, we were that into winning each game. It was not about performance. It was just about winning rugby. We were very experienced. We had been through so much together as a team and everyone worked together as a team. It was just the perfect team.”

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