The Rugby Paper

MY LIFE IN RUGBY I wanted to finish at the highest level possible

THE FORMER SARACENS, LONDON IRISH, LEICESTER AND NOTTINGHAM WINGER

IWAS still in Notts County’s football academy when I first took up rugby at Nottingham High School. But as time went on my friends were more into rugby and that led me down that path. James Stokes is one of my best friends from school and he went on to play for London Irish, and Max Trimble, who played a lot of games in the Championsh­ip for Coventry, was also there.

It was while I was playing agegroup rugby for Nottingham­shire and the Midlands that I first got noticed and Leicester wrote me a letter inviting me down for a trial with about 40 other lads. I managed to get picked off the back of that, and I was over the moon because, by then, I had my heart set on becoming a profession­al rugby player.

Leicester were the biggest and most successful team in England and it was quite daunting knowing the calibre of players in front of me in the back-three pecking order. At one point I worked it out that I was the club’s 14th-choice winger. I went from boy to man very quickly, and I am grateful for that because it’s just what I needed. But a few other academy lads got chewed up and spat out of that old-school environmen­t.

During my time at Leicester I was sent to Nottingham on loan and had a really enjoyable time playing under Glenn Delaney. I’ll always be grateful to him because he played me a lot as a 19-year-old in a really competitiv­e league and that helped me develop as a player. My dad is a Notts County fan so it was also really nice to run out at Meadow Lane, albeit as a rugby player not a footballer.

I played eight LV= Cup games for Tigers but once I got to 21 I sensed I would have to move elsewhere to realise my goal of playing in the Prem. I didn’t feel like I had the confidence of Matt O’Connor at all, and the old Tigers CEO, Simon Cohen, confirmed as much when I bumped into him by chance a few months ago and asked him the question. I actually got on all right with Cockers (Richard Cockerill), I think he saw the fight in me, but at the end of the day he wasn’t picking the backs.

I made it clear to my agent that I wanted to leave and I got a meeting at London Irish off the back of a recommenda­tion from Glenn. It was a good option for me rugby-wise and socially, as a lot of my friends had graduated from Uni and gone to London. I started off the season as 24th man but I got my chance three games in, against Exeter at the Madejski, when Topsy (Ojo) went down in the warm-up. We’d already lost Tom Homer to a bad injury so Topsy was filling in at full-back, and I ended up starting in his place. Sometimes it is better to be thrown in at the deep end and not think too much about it, and it worked well for me that day.

My second season at Irish was probably my most enjoyable because, for once, we weren’t involved in a relegation scrap. We had a really good set of lads and a decent team.

It was also pretty cool to come back from the ACL injury that I got on the England Saxons tour to South Africa in 2016 and help the club to win promotion back from the Championsh­ip after we’d been relegated the year before.

Deep down, as my fifth season at the club drew to a close I knew I wanted to leave Irish. I had become one of our better players but I felt my game had stagnated, so as soon as Sarries made an approach, I was very, very interested. It was clear from the moment I sat down and met with the coaches that it would be a great fit. As soon as the meeting was over I got on to my agent and I said you need to make this happen.

Before moving to Sarries, I was having highlight reel moments and getting praise but it was pretty clear from conversati­ons with the national team coaches that I was too inconsiste­nt in all aspects of my game. It was brilliant to be training alongside all the internatio­nals we had at Sarries. The feedback I got from the guys was that at times we were training harder and better at Sarries than in some England squads. From day one to my last day at the club, you had to turn up and compete every single day and being in that environmen­t can only help you improve. While I loved London Irish and the people there, I had my frustratio­ns over how the training would fluctuate and performanc­es would fluctuate on the back of that.

Initially, it took me a little while to adapt to the style of play and stuff but I think if you asked any new signings who go there, they would say the same. At Irish we barely kicked and when we did, it was to get it off the pitch because we were in a bit of trouble! So all the kick-chasing was new to me. It took me a bit of time to understand that I was expected to chase kicks just as hard whether it was my first effort or my 10th repeat effort.

Mark McCall understand­s you need to have fun as well as working hard and that we are people, which is another reason Sarries suited me down to the ground. I loved the fact that although it was unbelievab­ly competitiv­e there were all these creative ideas about how to keep the players engaged. Some bonkers stuff went on. For example, before a Sale game they split us up into forwards and backs and handed us a load of water balloons. We were told to go up on the balcony above the firstteam pitch at Old Albanian and hit the academy coaches dressed up in Shark suits below us as many times as we could.

While I have three Premiershi­p winner’s medals, I never got to play in a Premiershi­p final. That’s the one thing I would change if I could rewrite history because every player wants to play in the big games, or the ‘selection games’ as they used to be called at Sarries. The season just gone was probably my best opportunit­y but obviously we didn’t get past Northampto­n. It is a shame but it is what it is.

I won’t beat around the bush, the year we got relegated was a disaster in terms of where everyone wanted to be. Our squad disintegra­ted a little bit and we lost some very good players. I was in contract negotiatio­ns with a few clubs, Sarries included, who ended up offering me a deal. My name, along with all the others who stayed in the Champ season, are on a plaque under the main stand as a mark of gratitude from the club for our loyalty, which was a really nice touch.

I suppose the silver lining to that season in the Champ was that it was the Covid year and there were no crowds. You were watching the Premiershi­p out of the corner of your eye thinking that it was all a bit tainted anyway. No disrespect to the teams we played but it was expected of us to go straight back up whereas we had a real battle on our hands at London Irish. That said, losing our first game at Cornish Pirates was one of my worst days in rugby.

In terms of when it was the right time to stop playing, I wanted to finish at the highest level possible and not stick around after I was past it. I’d seen other players wilt away and not reach the heights they’d previously hit, and I didn’t want that. So, on a personal note it was pleasing to score plenty of tries in the season just gone. I admit the adrenaline rush you get from scoring tries will be hard to replace post-rugby, and my new career as an insurance broker in the City might not sound too exciting from an outside perspectiv­e, but so far, so good. It’s been nice to get my weekends back and enjoy sport as a fan. I only live a 10-minute walk from Lord’s so I’ve been to watch some cricket, and I plan to go and watch Nottingham Rugby when I visit family at Christmas.

I was always worried who I would support once I’d finished – London Irish or Sarries – because I spent similarly long times at both clubs. But the situation with Irish going bust meant I never had to make that decision. So I am a Sarries fan now, although I doubt I’ll go as far as wearing a Fez!

“I’m a Sarries fan now, although I doubt I’ll go as far as wearing a Fez!”