All Blacks helped me revive career
AFEW months ago I went back to Launceston RFC to do an afterdinner speech and I took the opportunity to thank the club for what they had done for my career. I played for the Cornish All Blacks while they were in what is now the Championship and scored 17 tries, earning myself the nickname ‘The Goat’ – after Man City’s prolific striker, Shaun Goater.
We played a really good brand of rugby under Jon Hill and Chris Brown and it helped to reignite my career after what had been injuryplagued spell at Newport Gwent Dragons.
My first taste of senior rugby was at Cornish Pirates and Mount’s Bay. Initially I was on YTS forms and £50 a game. My big break came when James Hawken injured his shoulder in pre-season and I was thrown into the deep end. I ended up playing virtually every game and finished up as topscorer in National One. Back then, I was simply known as the Heamoor flyer!
I had a couple of seasons under Kevin Moseley and then a couple under Jim McKay. For whatever reason, I struggled to nail down a regular place under Jim and along with Joe Bearman I decided to try my luck over the bridge in Wales with the Dragons. It felt like a big move at the time because it presented me with a new challenge away from my comfort zone. Unfortunately, I suffered a fractured fibula playing for Ebbw Vale against Pontypridd. It’s hard to believe, I know, but I drove myself to hospital in Cardiff ! It was my left leg too and the car I was driving had a really heavy clutch.
I scored a hat-trick in my first game back, but my body wasn’t taking to the metal plate that they’d inserted into my leg and I had to have corrective surgery. Had I left it a couple more weeks the septicaemia would have set in and I could have lost my leg. That year was a bit of a write-off and the Dragons, understandably from their point of view, decided not to keep me on.
Launceston put me back in the shop window, but it wasn’t cut and dried that I’d sign for Exeter. Stuart Lancaster spoke to me about going to Leeds and I met Jim Mallinder at Northampton and Philippe Saint-Andre at Sale. I was spoilt for choice but, clearly, I don’t have any regrets about my final decision. You could tell Exeter was a club going places. I was only 24 at the time and at the back of my mind I knew there was the prospect of being there for some time.
As one of the ‘The Originals’, I feel I grew as a player as the Chiefs grew as a club, and I’ve got Ali Hepher to thank for that. He came in and changed me as a player. I was a ‘get the ball and run’ kind of guy and he developed me into an all-round player, enabling me to read situations better and become a good defender, especially in the outside channels. The biggest thing was that he gave me freedom as a player.
With the step up in level to the Premiership, it wasn’t going to be as easy to cross the whitewash. For me, in that first year it was about tracking big Sireli Naqelevuki and finishing off his breaks. Mark Foster and Nic Sestaret were the first-choice wingers and it was only when I scored my first try on a wet night at Newcastle that things really took off and I was pretty much an ever-present for the next four seasons after that.
In the 2011/12 season, my second at the club, I played every single minute and then almost repeated the feat a few years later, starting every game and only missing 25 minutes. I was durable if nothing else! It was great. I was playing in the big games like Clermont Auvergne and Leinster in the Heineken Cup and those are memories that I’ll cherish forever.
The LV= Cup win against Northampton at Sandy Park was huge for the club and we kicked on from there. Winning becomes a habit and that gave us the belief to go on and lift the Premiership trophy against Wasps in 2017. Sadly, I didn’t play any direct part in the final because of a toe injury. The ligament under your big toe is really important for stability and I completely ruptured mine at Allianz Park. It was all pretty innocuous. I went to hit a breakdown and Kelly Brown fell on the back of my foot. With grass turf there would have been a bit of give but that wasn’t the case on the rubber crumb and something had to go, and it was my ligament. They call it ‘turf toe’ in America.
That kept me out for four months and as frustrating as it was, I made sure I still had plenty of involvement by passing on my experience in meetings and being a sounding board for players and coaches. I got back playing in the LV= Cup in February but with the guys doing so well the coaches didn’t want to change things and that season ended with the Chiefs as champions of England. It was great to be a part of that journey.
Now, I still get my Saturday afternoon buzz as player-coach at Newton Abbott and outside of that I have my own coaching company, MSJ Coaching. An opportunity to work with the Royal Marines has come about which I’m really excited about.