MY LIFE IN RUGBY

MARK SORENSON THE BAY OF PLENTY, CHIEFS, NEWCASTLE, NORTHAMPTON AND BRISTOL LOCK

Iwas different to the norm in New Zealand because I played soccer until the last year of school. Liverpool were my team and I was a pretty good centre midfield.

But football started to ruin my knees so I began to play rugby. Within a year I’d made the Bay of Plenty Schools XV, which I still hold up there in my career as one of my most satisfying moments because I came from a small coastal town called Katikati. I would drive myself to all parts of the Bay to trial against players from well-known rugby breeding grounds such as Rotorua and Tauranga Boys’ Colleges.

After moving to Waikato University, I went on to captain the U19 northern regional side which had players like Keven Mealamu.

Having decided to travel the world, it was while playing in Edinburgh, for Boroughmuir, that it dawned on me rugby could be my vocation. Todd Blackadder had transformed Edinburgh’s fortunes and I remember watching some of the games at Myreside and thinking I wouldn’t look out of place. Moving back to New Zealand seemed like the best way to accelerate that ambition and, armed with a science degree, I headed home.

Vern Cotter and Joe Schmidt approached me about playing for the Bay, are for two-and-a-half years I was juggling NPC rugby with a 35-hour-aweek job as a quality control chemist, but I went full-time once the NZRFU offered me a 12-month contract.

The itch to return to the UK one day had never left me and in November 2006, shortly after Sarah and I got married in Fiji, we headed to Newcastle where the rain was coming in sideways!

I loved my time at Newcastle, it was great to be able to still go surfing, one of my favourite pastimes, while also playing rugby, although I’m not sure how keen the fitness coaches were about that! As a rugby player in football-mad Newcastle you fly under the radar a bit, and some players like Carl Hayman, with his high profile, liked that. For me, I enjoyed being in the buzz of a rugby town and that was certainly the case in Northampton. Those were my most successful years rugby-wise in the UK, reaching the 2011 Heineken Cup final against Leinster and losing in the Premiership semis. Saints was a well-oiled machine – despite regularly sampling Brian Mujati’s latest homebrew. Happy times!

Once I decided to leave Northampton I had offers to go to Japan and Lyon but chose Bristol because we had a real affiliation with the city: my grandmother was born there, and we’d often visited Sarah’s grandmother who lived there. Playing in the Championship wasn’t part of my plan but once I heard their ambition and the role they saw me playing in that, it seemed like the perfect fit.

Losing the play-off final against Worcester was worse than losing the Heineken Cup final, because it meant so much more than just lifting a trophy. I’d been taken off with about eight minutes to go but, before I knew it, Dwayne Peel and Jack Lam were sat beside me having been sin-binned. Worcester scored the points they needed and that was that. Being captain and missing the loss to London Welsh the previous year because of injury, was also tough to take.

Until then, I’d never needed surgery, but I had four ops in my time there – to repair a torn bicep, two knee clear-outs and one on my neck. Operating theatres don’t hold any fear for me now though – I’m in them all the time, as an account manager for global medical company CONMED UK.

Thankfully we were eventually promoted, and the pitch invasion at the end of the match against Doncaster is something I’ll always remember.