When Norwich last played Manchester City in the Premier League, in February 2022, Jonathan Rowe sought out Raheem Sterling in the tunnel. “I showed him where I was from, and it turned out we had a lot of ‘mutuals’,” Rowe says.
Like Sterling, Rowe grew up in the shadow of Wembley Stadium and he wanted to pay his respects to his neighbourhood’s most famous son. “He’s the person that everyone looks to as someone that made a way in my area,” Rowe says. “He’s set the wave for a lot of us and now I’m trying to make my own legacy.”
It’s not just the neighbourhood that Rowe and Sterling have in common. Like the Chelsea man, Rowe is an explosive winger whose talent has marked him out for success since his teenage years. Confident, articulate and resolute, the 20-year-old is one of the breakout stars of the Championship season, with 12 goals to his name and a five-game scoring streak to start it off.
They came in the first starts of his career, and he scored, too, on his debut for England Under-21s last autumn. Rowe was the subject of transfer inquiries during the January window and there is a feeling he will play in the Premier League next season, whether Norwich, sixth in the table, make it with him or not.
Discovered by a scout while playing for his school at the age of eight, Rowe was a relatively late inductee into the academy system. While his roots are in north-west London, his upbringing has been shaped just as much by the years spent in the very different environs of Norfolk.
“I did a lot of back and forth from London to Norwich on a train from young, like around 12 to 18 when I sorted my driver’s licence out,” Rowe says. “It was tough and it was a bit of a culture change; it was a lot more quiet, a lot more peaceful and I’d say a lot less problematic.
“It helped me as a player and a person, because I got away from what I was used to and I got to experience different kids, different people from an early age. It helped me grow up pretty fast.”
Growing up fast may have helped Rowe to better understand what would be required to earn a career as a player. “I realised the biggest difference between making it or not making it is your mindset,” he says, speaking to the Observer as part of the EFL’s Youth Development Week.
“As a young player coming through, it’s all about having enough resilience to block out everyone else; the wrong advice or too much stick, too much hate. Having that mental resilience and self-belief that you can make it regardless of whatever situation you’re in.”
Rowe has needed that resilience since signing his first professional contract with Norwich in 2021. After being given his debut by Dean Smith at the age of 18 he made 15 substitute appearances in the 2021-22 season, only to suffer a succession of injuries – shin, ankle then hamstring – that led to him missing almost the entirety of the following term.
“That’s the toughest thing I’ve gone through, not even just as a footballer but as a person,” he says. “I realised that it could have either broken me or made me. So I had a choice and I found out that I’m a fighter, that I had to get back to the mindset that when I step on the pitch, I’m the best person on it.”
Certainly, when Rowe succumbed to a hamstring injury in February he had left his imprint on a team that struggled in the first half of the campaign but have galvanised themselves to be in contention for a top-six finish with eight games to go.
“There’s undeniably been some rocky times for the team and a bad atmosphere in the ground, but it feels like a corner has been turned,” Rowe says, with the same lessons he applied to himself also helping the team.
“It’s interesting to see what everyone did get out of that situation. We had to stop listening to things people were saying, to forget about the previous games. As soon as one game’s done, win, lose, or draw, we just park it off by the end of the night.
“This is my first full proper season with the first team. So I’m learning about how the season is not going to be just a steady state, like a plane journey, flying through the sky.”
Rowe is focused on returning before the end of the season to further that promotion push. “I do feel unsatisfied,” he says. “I do feel like I have a lot of unfinished business, so I’m glad that my whole season’s not finished. I feel like I still have more to give and I’m just hoping I can show that, like how I did at the start of the season, coming back from last season’s adversities. I want to use that same bit of frustration, upset, whatever emotions they were, or they are now, and channel it into producing on the pitch.”
Like most professionals, Rowe’s ambitions extend to playing at the highest level he can, but the challenges and setbacks he has experienced have also reminded him of the joy he gets from playing at all. “It sounds bad, but I enjoy humiliating my opponent,” he says. “A lot of confident wingers would tell you the same thing, that feeling of getting past your man and creating something and finishing off with a good piece of skill, a good goal, a good assist.
“It sounds bad, but that’s where I get my joy from.”
