Jonny May hoping recent form with Leicester Tigers can earn England recall
The former Gloucester flyer, who was an 11th-hour pre-season signing by the Tigers, has scored five tries from five games
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Your support makes all the difference.Jonny May’s exultant celebration of his match-winning try for Leicester against the Exeter Chiefs on Saturday shows how much the England wing is desperate to win over his new fans at Welford Road - and to convince the national team’s head coach Eddie Jones to recall him in the autumn into the bargain.
But the former Gloucester flyer, who was an 11th-hour pre-season signing by the Tigers, admits the process of joining the likes of Martin Johnson and Neil Back as a Leicester Hall-of-Famer will take time.
May described scoring a fifth try in five matches since his summer transfer as just “doing his job”, while he praised his new Leicester club-mates as “world-class players who want to get better” and “more ambitious” than those he left behind at Kingsholm.
Certainly, May’s finishing prowess is in great nick after his switch from Cherry-and-White to green, red and white, and while the man himself said it was all in a day’s work, the 67th-minute score in Leicester’s 20-13 wet-weather win over the reigning champions came from a bracket higher than the run-of-the-mill.
Leicester were leading by three points when Exeter’s full-back Phil Dollman spilled a high ball forwards, and referee Tom Foley stuck out his arm to indicate a free-kick. Scrum-half Ben Youngs spurned the stoppage however, and crabbed right to left, seeking space near the Exeter 22.
Youngs could have used Dan Cole, Matt Toomua or Brendon O’Connor to carry on the attack but instead the England No.9 spotted the narrowness of Exeter’s defensive cover and he flung out a superb long, flat pass. May did the rest, charging onto the ball and taking a slight sidestep infield as he shrugged off the attempted tackles of Olly Woodburn and Will Chudley, and slid across the rain-dampened turf before a fist-pumping reaction in front of the Mattioli Woods Stand.
“I tell those boys, if you want to put the ball in the space, I’ll run on to it,” said May. “We can go through the hands, and I’ll be deep enough, but if you want to throw it in front, I’ll make sure I’m running on to it. ‘Lenny’ [Youngs’s nickname] has thrown a great pass in the wet and allowed me to run onto it at full pelt. And it’s a tough defence to stop anybody at full pelt, that close.
“I was emotional getting up from that try. It meant a lot to me and the team - a good win, a brilliantly important win.”
May kicked off his Leicester career with two tries on his debut against Bath, and followed up with one each away to Northampton and Harlequins. Next up is a trip to London Irish, where Leicester will be bidding for a fourth straight win after a worrying pair of opening losses.
“It was a big move [to Leicester], I put a lot on the line to be here,” said May. “But I’ve done it for the right reasons – I want to get better, and challenge myself. It’s going to plan at the moment but I’ve got to keep working hard.
“Every week that goes by, I feel like this is more my team. But you can’t lie and say after being with a team [Gloucester] for eight or nine years, that you play one game here and it’s your team. That’s going to take time. It’s wins like this one in the wet with your mates, at home against the champions – that makes you feel more like it’s your team. And it’s important to me, I want to be part of this.”
Jones preferred Ant Watson and Elliot Daly as England’s starting wings during the Six Nations Championship last spring, and both those players went on the subsequent British & Irish Lions tour ahead of May.
Jones has also half-joked about May’s sometimes eccentric nature in the past, saying: “When I get inside his head, I’ll let you know.”
But all May wants to do is impress the wily Aussie. “Eddie keeps in touch with me,” the 27-year-old said. “I’m sure I’ll have a message when I turn my phone on. He pushes me hard; he really is working me hard and he wants me to get better. I hope so he likes what he sees at the moment]. You never know, though, do you.
“I can’t lie and say I don’t think about wanting to play for England – since the Six Nations, losing my spot, and all those guys going on the Lions tour with me staying behind, it hurt. I want to be in that [England] team, I’m focussing on getting better, I know I can get better, and if I do that I’m giving myself the best chance.”
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