The Rugby Paper

I just love playing and had an amazing career

PLAYING in the Championsh­ip isn’t sustainabl­e with the level of funding clubs currently get so while it was a hard decision to quit profession­al rugby a couple of years ago at the age of 28, I had to think about my future, otherwise I’d have been holding off the inevitable and I didn’t want to be entering a new job market well into my 30s. Sadly, the money just isn’t there below the Premiershi­p. I was probably playing as well as I’d ever been but even then, it was difficult to get a contract for £30k. It’s a constant struggle to get by.

Not that I had any complaints about Doncaster. I got on with all of the coaches there and the owners were really good to me. Bodes (Steve Boden) and I still catch up every now and again, which I really appreciate. He understood where I was coming from and I understood where he was coming from when it came down to contract negotiatio­ns. He was upfront and honest about the amount of money he had to spend, and it makes it so much easier to have a relationsh­ip with a director of rugby/coach when it is like that. Some aren’t quite so straight-talking.

I’m now a building surveyor for a company called Moore MacDonald. They’re the main sponsor of Ballynahin­ch, the All-Ireland club that I play for. They took me on as a graduate and I am grateful that something came up because I was a wee bit stuck for a while after I’d left Donny. Like a lot of other former pros, I found the transition difficult. One minute, you are surrounded by a bunch of lads roughly your own age and the next you’re not, and it can be quite isolating.

After Donny, I went to France for a couple of weeks, on trial at Albi. It’s a lovely part of the world but it wasn’t really for me. The language barrier didn’t help and the whole set up was a wee bit amateur. Thankfully, it has all worked out for the best and just this week I was named in the Ireland Club XV’s training squad for the game against Portugal A in Lisbon next month. As with most rugby players to have the chance to represent your country in whatever form it takes is a huge honour, and I was fortunate to be able to do that at U18 level. Back then, I played blindside flanker! I developed into an inside centre towards the end of my schooldays and stuck with it.

Ulster didn’t give me an academy contract at first so I took myself off to Australia for six months and played in Canberra. As an Ulsterman, you live in a bit of a bubble so it was important for my own personal growth to try something new. Thankfully, when I came back I managed to work my way into the system.

With Les Kiss, my first DoR, I just felt that he didn’t say it how it was, not like Bodes. I’d be asking him what I was doing wrong not to get picked and he’d reply, ‘you’re close, you’re close’. This went on for two years and it was very frustratin­g because I felt like I deserved a chance to see if I was good enough at that level. That’s the one thing that still sits with me. Watching now, I know I could have played in the URC, or whatever the league was called back then. But sometimes your face just doesn’t fit and you just have to get on with it. That said, I did have some pretty strong competitio­n for a place with the likes of Stuart McCloskey, Stuart Olding, Darren Cave and Luke Marshall in the squad.

The British & Irish Cup had its critics but, for players on the fringes like me, it was an opportunit­y to show what you could do to a wider audience. I played well in a game against Jersey and Harvey (Biljon) took me on. I had a good relationsh­ip with him and enjoyed working with (backs coach) Ed Robinson as well. He’s really switched on and loves rugby so much and we shared a passion for looking at the game in different ways. Ed helped me to become a ball player as well as a direct runner and that side of my game was fine-tuned by Joe Ford at Donny. One good thing with the Championsh­ip is that because the squads are so small, you get more quality one-on-one coaching time, whereas when I was at Ulster, it was harder to get that precision coaching.

I broke my arm the November before Covid hit and Harvey gave me the heads up that there probably wouldn’t be a spot for me as they’d signed Jack Roberts. That period was probably as tough as when I was told I wasn’t being kept on at Ulster. Thankfully, Emlyn Lynch, our physio, let me spend a lot of time at home (in Northern Ireland) because I was in a full arm cast and had exposed wires from the surgery so there wasn’t a lot I could do for six to eight weeks. It made a big difference to be surrounded by family and friends.

I didn’t get any URC or Premiershi­p offers so it was a no-brainer to go with Donny when I heard about their project. The facilities there are some of the best in the league and also, being a keen watcher of sports, living and playing on the mainland really appealed to me, too, as it makes everything so much more accessible. To push Ealing so close for the title when our budget was dwarfed by theirs was a brilliant achievemen­t. I don’t mind admitting it was hard for all the boys to hear that if we had won the league, we wouldn’t have been allowed up anyway. Something has to change there.

The rugby we played in that last season at Donny really suited me. Alex Dolly and Sam Olver made for a very good half-back partnershi­p and Sam Graham was brilliant at the back of the scrum. Joe Margetts and I played together a lot and had a really good centre partnershi­p.

In terms of standout moments, beating the ‘Premiershi­p’ clubs was always big. The win over London Irish at Jersey was class, we scored try of the season on Sky Sports, and we also beat Bristol away the year or so before that. Playing Russia in Russa was another unforgetta­ble experience, too. They were coached by Lyn Jones, the dad of our scrumhalf Luc Jones, and they were looking for someone to play ahead of the 2019 World Cup after another team had pulled out at the last minute.

For a while, when I was 19/20, my dad was going, ‘what are you going to do with your life? You haven’t got a contract and you are just chasing this dream’. I wasn’t academic at all at school, rugby was the only thing I was any good at, so I was always hopeful I could make it. Thankfully, it all came together and I’m glad I stuck at it because I got paid to do what I loved for seven or eight years. I probably didn’t get to the heights I wanted to but it was still an amazing career.

Now, I’m enjoying playing for Ballynahin­ch. The shackles are off when you’re playing at this level and it reminds you why you played rugby in the first place – because you love it. Sometimes you can lose sight of that when it becomes your job. It is a good community club, that’s punching above its weight which seems to be the case wherever I have gone. I quite like being the underdog. We’re pushing for top four and play-offs and the final is at the Aviva, so hopefully we can go all the way. It could be a memorable sporting year all round because I’m off to Malaga next month to represent Ireland at cricket with my club, CIYMS, in the European Cricket League.

“Taking on Russia in Russia was another unforgetta­ble experience for me”