MY LIFE IN RUGBY

Anewspaper reporter once likened me to David Duckham after I scored a hat-trick for Gloucester against Japan at Kingsholm in September 1976 but the truth is I wasn’t good enough to lace his boots; he was pure class. When I side-stepped I used to come off my left foot and he was left-footed too, so I think that’s where the comparison started and where it ended really.

We put 60 points on Japan that day and a couple of weeks later I was involved in another big win against the Japanese, at Twickenham for England U23s. I went on to play for England B and had a nontravelling reserve card for a Five Nations campaign but never got capped. When players who asked me what their chances were of getting in the Gloucester first team I’d tell them that if they were good enough they’d get in, and I think the same applied for me and England. At the end of the day, maybe I just wasn’t good enough.

I wouldn’t change a thing about my playing career, though. I live about a mile and a half away from Kingsholm so to play 510 games for my hometown team was just awesome. I was very lucky with injuries. In all that time – 16 seasons of first team rugby – I only missed 4-5 weeks through injury. I count myself fortunate that I enjoyed a lot more ups than downs.

Gloucester was like a family to me. All the players came from local clubs, in my case Tredworth, and was a proper workingclass club. I dug holes in the road for a job, repairing burst water pipes for Severn Water and sometimes had to work a Saturday morning shift before playing in the afternoon. While I was one of the quieter ones, especially in the early days, there were plenty of big characters in the dressing room and Micky Burton, for one, was always up for a singsong.

I joined Gloucester when in was 18. There were lots of big name players there at the time, including the likes of Micky Burton and Pete Butler. It was a hell of an experience. I remember looking around the changing room and thinking, I can’t believe I’m here. My first game was against Cheltenham on a Wednesday night. I was only a skinny little kid at the time and in them days the shorts and shirts were really big and baggy and impossible for me to fill. They weighed a ton.

It was around about the time we got to the 1978 Cup Final against Leicester that I felt I was a fixture in the team, either at centre or on the wing. I scored in the left-hand corner after taking a pass from Steve Boyle, and apparently, according to Pete Butler, I also pulled off a try-saving corner on the opposite side, too, but I don’t recall much else about the game other than that it was a lot more enjoyable than my two other cup final appearances at Twickenham - a dour draw with Moseley in 1982 and the record defeat to Bath on a baking hot day at the end of the 1989/90 season. We played all our good rugby in the season up to that point and knew we’d be up against it. Winning the league was our priority and we’d had a hell of a season until losing away to Nottingham, which cost us the title. Wasps pipped up by a point so in the end we won nothing.

I played in two County Championship Finals – one a defeat to Lancashire at the Vale of Lune and then, four years later, we easily beat Somerset in what I think was the first final to be played at Twickenham. I also got to play against the All Blacks, twice, for the South West. I was as nervous as hell, I don’t mind admitting, and thankful that it was Alan Morley, a great winger of the day and a top bloke, who had to face the manmountain Bryan Williams!