MY LIFE IN RUGBY

THE FORMER ENGLAND, HARLEQUINS AND NORTHAMPTON HOOKER

This week we celebrated the 30th anniversary of Harlequins’ 28-22 victory over Bristol in the final of the 1988 John Player Cup.

It coincided with a fundraising event for Paul Curtis, who played in the front row with me that day. Tragically Paul was paralysed in 2016 after a mountain biking accident and over £300k has been raised so far. Most of the Cup-winning squad attended which shows how close Paul’s plight is to our hearts and the togetherness we enjoyed as a team.

A good time was had by all – it was always that way at Quins – from Micky Skinner ‘goosing’ me just as I lifted the John Player Cup to our constant battle to tip the contents of a bucket over one another’s head. I once doused him in Gatorade during an England fitness session!

That final was a fantastic game of rugby. Bristol had a big pack and had the edge up front, but we cut them to shreds in the backs and Will Carling scored a brilliant try.

We could beat the best teams and lose to the worst when I arrived at Quins from Borough Road in the early 80s. But, first under David Cook, the captain before me, we managed to become a more potent force.

The game wasn’t properly amateur back then. As captain I was being ‘looked after’ by Quins and hadn’t worked in teaching for three years, but as I turned 29 with our first child on the way I wanted something a bit more stable. Northampton had been after me and when they offered a job, car and other add-ons – just after I’d won my first England cap against Argentina in November 1990 – the time felt right.

Saints had built a good squad and I enjoyed my time there too, although I was plagued by tendonitis towards the end and had to call it quits in 1994. The second time I tore my Achilles was during the father’s race at my daughter’s primary school. I was leading at the time but was carted off in an ambulance!

I only got two more caps although, nowadays, I’d have probably got over 30 because of tactical subs. Brian Moore was ahead of me in the pecking order and all that time spent on the sidelines was as frustrating as it could get.

Mooro was a very good player and a stubborn little bugger but we got on well, and still do. He had a good publicity machine and aura around him, ‘The Pit Bull Warrior’, and he benefitted from the massive amount of stability and loyalty that Geoff Cooke brought to selection after years of chopping and changing.

To appear in the same England team as Peter Winterbottom was quite something as we’d played together from about the age of 13 – at Rossall School on the Fylde Coast. I was a flanker back then and kept him out of the No.7 jersey! It was only when I went to Borough Road that I converted to hooker after Bev Risman, the former Lions fly-half and my personal tutor, said I was too small to play in the back row.

Small is definitely not how you’d describe the two locks in what turned out to be my third and final cap, against Canada at Wembley in 1992.

I don’t remember much about the game other than there was a massive camber on the pitch. We’d not been allowed to train beforehand so it came as a bit of a shock to be chucking the ball in to 6’8 Wade Dooley and 6’10 Martin Bayfield while I stood at least six inches below them. It was very disconcerting and I didn’t throw at my best that day.

After over two decades as rugby master at Oundle School, where my son Sam and nephews, Ben and Tom Curry came through, I am happily retired to the golf course. –a s told to Jon Newcombe