MY LIFE IN RUGBY
THE FORMER NEWCASTLE UTILITY BACK
Imissed two easy kicks and tore my MCL 15 minutes into my one and only game for Yorkshire Carnegie so it wasn’t the best way to finish my career, but that briefest of appearances against London Irish back in March won’t take away from nine enjoyable seasons as a professional.
When you’re playing you’re so focused on the next training session or next match that you don’t tend to reflect too much on what you’ve achieved. But now I’m retired I am immensely proud of playing over 100 games – including 50 Premiership starts - for my childhood club, Newcastle, one that is deeply embedded within my heart.
Rugby took me to places I would never have ordinarily visited, some good, some bad – such as Sotchi, Bucharest, Argentina and even deep, dark Wales where we played Cross Keys on a park pitch in the B&I Cup after their main pitch was waterlogged! That was a funny trip all round. Ollie Stedman didn’t hear his alarm call and missed the bus home. We were an hour and a half into our journey back to Leeds by the time he woke up and rang me wondering where everyone was.
Unfortunately, for whatever reasons, we lost more than we won at Newcastle and that’s disappointing, but we still had some great wins and I’d rather put them to the front of my mind than focus on the negatives. We got to the LV= Cup final but were thumped by Gloucester. For me, winning promotion from the Championship was probably one of the best feelings I had in a Falcons shirt.
That Championship season was a tough one, because the expectation was so high. Not many players left following relegation and we brought in Noah Cato, Adam Powell and Andy Saull – all players with extensive Premiership experience. We set our standards by what would be acceptable in the Premiership so, although we were winning quite well most weekends, we’d be critical of ourselves on Mondays.
Having been coached by quite similar characters in Alex Sanderson, with England U18s, and John Fletcher, at Newcastle, who were both great coaches, there was an interesting clash of personalities when Dean Richards came on board. We butted heads at first because I am quite outgoing and like my fashion, whereas he is a much more ‘old-school’ rugby man. Gradually we came to understand one another and he taught me a lot.
One of the main things I learnt was how mentally strong you needed to be to play the game at the top. Beforehand I maybe didn’t work as hard as I could have done on every area of my game and just focused on the things that I enjoyed doing. He is one tough man, and likes tough players.
It was during the Championship season that I started to properly feel like part of the first team, albeit at full-back and on the wing rather than at 10, which was surreal after first been involved with training as a star struck 15-year-old from Barnard Castle.
I continued to get decent game time once we stepped up and scoring the try that helped us end a run of 20 straight top-flight defeats with victory over Exeter was a standout moment.
By this stage, I’d relaxed more too. As a young player, I was rugby mad. I’d watch everything there was to watch on TV and even knew what make of boots players in Super Rugby wore! I used to dwell on mistakes I made in games for far too long because rugby was the be-all and end-all, but as I got older I found other things to be interested in.
Retiring at 26 obviously wasn’t in the script but I’m enjoying having my weekends back and looking forward to starting a Business & Management degree at Durham University in October.