Daniel Triplow meets the rising star of British hockey and discovers a modest young man not feeling the weight of increasing expectations.
“I borrowed a stick and it was peeing down with rain. I got a ball in the stomach and fell awkwardly shortly after, shattered my ankle and spent four months on the sidelines”. As inauspicious starts to hockey go, Ashley Jackson’s is up there with the best of them. Yet little more than six years later, he sits in his parent’s home in West Malling, Kent, recalling his uninspiring introduction to the game with a disbelieving smile.
Now, just 21, the young starlet has played 15 times for his country and was the youngest member of the 16-man GB Olympic hockey side that finished fifth in Beijing – a tournament that brought Jackson praise from all quarters.
But sit the young man down and ask him about the last year, and he talks about his enthusiasm for the game, the respect he holds for his opponents and his thrill at sharing a dressing room with his heroes.
“It’s nice the way things are going, but it just motivates me to train harder and do better. It sounds like a cliché, but I want to keep doing the basics well. I don’t mind the spotlight. It doesn’t really affect me”.
However if the young superstar has glimpsed the full extent of his new-found fame in the sport, then he’s doing a jolly good job of hiding it.
“Obviously the popularity has gone up,” he says. “Friends and family have texted me saying, ‘You’re in the papers or you’re on the telly’. The other day someone even asked me for an autograph.”
“I worry sometimes though, that I won’t live up to people’s expectations. Always at the back of my mind is the thought that things can go down as quickly as they went up.”
This level-headedness counts for a lot, of course. In this age of manicured celebrity, Jackson is refreshingly at home being what he is.
The pleasure he gets from playing hockey for his country is captivating. His leap for joy at scoring his first Olympic goal on his debut against Pakistan was there for all to see.
For the meantime though, Ashley isn’t too bothered about looking back on his career, only forward, revealing that he did have the foresight to save the shirt from his goal scoring debut, but admitted: “It is just screwed up in the bottom of a draw somewhere.”
“The Olympics was much more than just six games of hockey though. The village, the people, the food – it was all just amazing. And the fact there was a free McDonalds where you could walk up and order like 30 cheeseburgers”, he joked, “was probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen”.
However following Beijing, it seems that Jackson has much to prove. He has been labelled the brightest young talent that English hockey has ever seen, and since the games, the level-headed youngster’s profile has gone through the roof.
Appearing alongside fellow Olympians in a photo shoot for Esquire magazine recently, Jackson was dubbed the David Beckham of hockey. The young man however, was quick to dismiss the comparisons.
“It was flattering but I would prefer my profile to be raised by being the best player and not through my image.
“To be honest I didn’t even want to do the shoot – it meant I had to miss training – and when I got there I had to dress up in all this Paul Smith stuff and these Dr. Marten boots. They were so big and uncomfortable that I could hardly walk for two days afterwards.”
Jackson credits his Dad for driving him on to success in sport, but it was his grandfather and uncle who provided the early influence as they were avid ice hockey players – a sport which Ashley played at international level until he was forced to give it up at an early age.
“My family couldn’t keep up with my desire to play ice hockey so I was forced to call it a day. I was disappointed but to be fair it’s turned out ok”.
Amazingly Ashley only took up field hockey when he was enrolled to Sutton Valence School at the age of 14, a move which sparked a meteoric rise.
After reaching the club’s first team a year later, he moved on to play for East Grinstead, where he spent four successful years in the National Premier League Division, eventually making his England debut in November 2006 against the Netherlands.
And following Beijing, Jackson jetted off to Holland last August to begin playing professionally for HGC, where he is currently the league’s top goalscorer with 28 goals.
Conservatively though, Jackson remains unphased. He tells me that he has topped the English Premier Division scoring chart twice before. But it seems his current success is down to the easy-going kid’s new-found freedom abroad.
“Playing in Holland is all that I thought it would be – perfect”. I am doing what I love and scoring goals. I haven’t had much trouble coming down from the Olympics. In fact it is great to be allowed to express yourself and have fun.”
With Jackson’s hometown a short distance from the 2012 construction, the London Olympics are already well in sight. And with the added experience of Beijing under his belt, the young man has high hopes of winning a medal.
“Now we’re in the position saying ‘we’re fifth, we’ve climbed up the world rankings and people are saying do you fancy a medal?’ So if we can continue to improve like we have over the last four years then I obviously hope so.”
Jackson concludes by telling me he lives by the motto, ‘My biggest fear is being average’. At present however, it appears he has little to worry about.
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