MY LIFE IN RUGBY
Former Ireland centre Kevin Maggs reflects on a stellar career
DESPITE my best efforts in alerting the Ireland selectors to my eligibility, it was a chance conversation between the then Bristol team manager Ralph Knibbs and Ireland head coach Brian Ashton that really set me on the path to what was an immensely enjoyable eight-year international career.
Before that, I’d sent a shoebox full of videos of my best clips with an accompanying letter to the IRFU but had heard nothing back. But luckily for me Brian had come down to the Mem to watch David Corkery, Paul Burke and Barry McConnell and while Ralph was sat next to him during the match, he said, “you do know that Kevin Maggs is qualified for Ireland, too?”
Luckily, we beat Sale and I scored and had a good game playing opposite Chris Yates. That match was on the Saturday, I was on standby on the Tuesday, called into the squad on the Thursday and by the weekend I was with the team in New Zealand. It was mad how it all happened so quickly. It was a boot camp-style trip, with really intense training every day but quite a few of us – people like Malcolm O’Kelly and Justin Bishop – came through it and out the other side and went on to be capped.
To play 70 times for Ireland, alongside greats of the game like Brian O’Driscoll, was unbelievable. I was actually on the wing when he got his famous hat-trick in Paris in 2000. We’d seen him before when he came in to training and was invited into camps and you knew straight away there was something special about him. The career he went on to have speaks for itself.
Playing for Ireland was the best time in my life but not without its dramas. Before the Bloemfontein Test on the 1998 tour to South Africa – my first as a senior international – I had my jersey presented to me in my hotel room by Donal Lenihan, who was a brilliant team manager and obviously an Irish legend in his own right. Proud as punch, I neatly folded it and my shorts and carefully placed them on the bed ready for that evening’s match. On the way to the ground we encountered all sorts of hostility from the Springbok fans who were yelling at us that we were going to get killed while hitting the team bus with sticks.
Once we got to the sanctuary of the changing room, I picked my spot to get changed and opened my kitbag only to find out to my horror my jersey wasn’t in there. Mick Galway, never the most discreet person, saw my ashen-faced look and on realising what I’d done, shouted “oh, for f*cks sake!”. I wanted the ground to swallow me up but Paddy O’Reilly, the kitman and the legend that he is, saved the day because just before we left for the ground the midweek kit had come back freshly laundered and he put it in the storage area under the bus. I ended up wearing 13, not 12 as listed in the programme, and the commentators kept getting Mark McCall and me mixed up! The match was probably the most physical I’d ever played in, there were cheap shots flying in left, right and centre.
Feeling buoyant after the tour, I returned to Bristol only to find out I’d not been paid. I’d signed a new two-year contract with the club just before I left, having turned down approaches from Harlequins and Gloucester, and wondered what was going on. On the Monday morning, the chief executive told me the club had gone bust and the receivers were being called in. For someone who loved playing for his home city club and captained the Bristol Colts and the U21s, this was terrible news.
Bath got in touch and as soon as I saw Andy Robinson, I knew that was where I needed to be to develop my game. Obviously, I got a lot of banter about moving to the old enemy, I’d done the same to Mark Regan when he’d made the move, but I needed to do what was best for my career. It was a great six years – well, five – as I didn’t see eye to eye with John Connolly and Michael Foley.
While I loved the contact side of the game, I like to think I had other strings to my bow and we played really enjoyable rugby at Bath, keeping the ball alive and moving it to space and scoring loads of tries. In my opinion, Connolly and Foley ruined the place by moving on all the senior players, who they perhaps saw as a threat, and the club is still trying to recover now. Once I was left out of the 2004 Premiership final, after scoring two tries the game before, I knew it was time to move on. I was offered a national contract with Ireland to go and play for Ulster. That worked out really well and we won the Magners League in ‘05/06.
While it was great playing at Bath alongside internationals like Iain Balshaw and Mike Tindall, one of my most memorable victories in an Ireland jersey was against them in the 2001 Six Nations. A lot of my Bath teammates were in the England side that had swept all before them until their game against us had been postponed until the October due to foot and mouth. They had been talking about the win bonus they would get if they won the Grand Slam so that was great motivation beforehand and I told all the lads about it. It was a fantastic feeling to stop them from doing the Grand Slam.
The move to Belfast helped to keep me in the minds of the Irish selectors. I’ll never forget the game against Scotland at Murrayfield in 2005. I came in for the injured Gordon D’Arcy and we put 40 points on them and celebrated in the appropriate manner. My wife was due to give birth and I got a phone call while I was blind drunk to say she was going into labour and the baby was breached. I was in no fit state to do anything so Guy Easterby packed my bags and dressed me and put me in a taxi to Glasgow airport. When I got there, I was an emotional wreck but some kind stranger bought me a coffee and suggested I might want to go to the bathroom. Being a wind-up merchant, Guy had put all my clothes on back to front! Luckily, I got to hospital just in time for the birth and I think the nurses spent more time worrying about me than my wife because I looked so bad.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get the fairytale finish to my playing days that I’d hoped for. I had returned to Bristol but an injury disrupted the first half of the 2007/08 season and then my world fell apart as my daughter Jessica was diagnosed with leukaemia. After a three-year battle with it, she passed away. It was the 10th anniversary on December 22 and it still feels like yesterday. Obviously, all my attention was on being with her so rugby took a back seat and Bristol paid me out of my contract.
Later on, I went to Rotherham as a player-coach where I made a lifelong friendship with Craig West, the head coach. The following season, we ended up in the bottom-four relegation play-offs but won our first three games to stay up. That wasn’t enough for the owners and they put Craig in an untenable position and he resigned. I was offered his job but turned it down out of principle.
My last experience of the Championship was with Moseley, another club with limited resources. Clubs like Yorkshire Carnegie would have a £50k tighthead on the bench, way more than our marquee player would be on. The club cut its budget and unfortunately relegation followed.
Since then, I’ve helped out at Bury St Edmunds and I’m employed by the IRFU as a talent identification coach in Bristol and the West. We had five boys play for Ireland U18s in November 2019, and we’ve been pretty successful across all age groups.
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“My daughter Jessica died ten years ago and it still feels like yesterday”