MY LIFE IN RUGBY
Former Rotherham, Sale and Leicester hooker Neil Briggs
When you think about the carefully managed programme we put together for the young lads in my role as transition manager at Sale Sharks, it is worlds apart from when I was first starting out as a raw 18-year-old. You certainly didn’t hear words like mindfulness and wellbeing at Rotherham but the club looked after you in their own way, like you were part of the family. It is such a lovely club with lovely people, so you were pretty well protected.
I was a Colt at Rotherham when I got my first team debut, against Sedgley Park in the first game of the 2003/04 National 1 season. The club had gone bust over the summer and it was only after a bailout from fans – including a donation from my old man – and investment from the current owners, Craggy (Nick Cragg) and Jenks (Martin Jenkinson), that the club lived to fight another day.
Putting a squad together was a challenge and I was thrown straight in at the deep end because they didn’t have any hookers. I went from being the ball boy and watching John Dudley take the last drag on his fag before running out to actually playing for the first team myself.
We pulled people in from all places, although we still managed to field players of the quality of Jacob Rauluni at nine. Rod Latham, the tighthead prop, was managing a housing development but he came back to play for us. He was massive, about 130kgs, and was given permission to miss the warm-ups and the lads would give him endless Red Bulls to get him through games. We got off to a brilliant start and were second or third in the League; my first seven games were wins.
Around Christmas time, Jim Kilfoyle called me into the club office and said, ‘Briggsy, I’ve had a call from England U21s saying do you want to train with them?’ I went down to Bath and trained for the week and they kept inviting me back and I played in the U20 Six Nations and then the Junior World Cup in Argentina; Dylan Hartley was a loosehead back then!
Jim (Mallinder), who was coaching the side along with Nigel Redman, sat me down and told me if I wanted to pursue rugby as a profession, I’d have to move clubs, which is how I ended up at Sale. Philippe (Saint-Andre) was head coach and James Wade was in charge of the academy. It was a brilliant environment to be in. How could I fail to learn off people like Sebastien Bruno and Andy Titterrell? Seb was probably the best scrummager and ‘Tits’ was the best thrower that I’d ever seen.
I just kept my head down and grafted and waited for my opportunities. I think I was involved in about six firstteam games in that Premiershipwinning season. Once Seb and a lot of the other stars left, I played much more regularly. I used to define my week if I had my name on the back of my shirt or not; it was validation that you’d had a good week. If you were on the bench, your shirt was blank.
For a couple of seasons, the club experimented with me in the back row. Luke Abrahams had got banned for a flying headbutt and we were struggling for flankers. It got to the point where I was packing down at the side of the scrum, at seven, as well as throwing in. I also had a short spell as captain. When Mike Brewer came in, he made James Gaskell the club’s youngest-ever captain but Jamma got injured quite early on and he asked me to fill in. I think I lasted about a month, including leading the side in our epic 6-3 win at Leeds, before I did my shoulder in and Dave Seymour replaced me.
In terms of his rugby knowledge, Mike was really good. He just clashed with some of the senior players and left the club very abruptly. Steve Diamond stepped in and we had talks about a new deal. I was close to resigning but we had a bit of a disagreement and I took up an opportunity to join Bourgoin instead. They’d just come down from the Top 14 and the coach was Laurent Seigne, or ‘In-Seigne’ if you called him by his nickname. He had a massive Tintin obsession, and had one of the biggest collections in France. I tried to make a joke about it once and he just growled at me so I thought it best to leave it at that!
I loved my experience there. Forward play was on a different level; I didn’t realise how little I’d pushed in the scrum until then. If Laurent wasn’t happy with the props at training, he’d push them out of the way and get stuck in himself. It was very confrontational, not a week went by without a fight in games.
I was also made to understand how big a part of the community the rugby club was. I remember going into town to get some meat the morning after we’d won a game, and the butcher treated me like a long lost brother. I pointed at everything I wanted and said ‘combien’ and he said ‘no, no, it is fine’ and I walked out without paying a single Euro for a week’s worth of steak, sausages and whatever else.
After the next home game, which we’d lost, I walked into the same butchers and I was about third in the queue. The butcher glares at me, doesn’t say a word, serves everyone in front of me and behind me first and I’m left standing there awkwardly. Eventually I get to ask what I want and he just slaps it on the counter and puts his hand out. I gave him 30 Euros and hoped it would be enough.
Bourgoin went bust at the end of that season and I went to London Welsh. I walked into a Portakabin out the back of Old Deer Park and had the strangest first meeting ever with a DoR. Lyn Jones shook my hand, looked me up and down and goes, ‘Sir, you’ve got some small feet, is that a family thing?’ That set the tone for what to expect from Lyn for the rest of the season. He is a brilliant man and I think we might’ve actually stayed up had we not had the points deduction because the squad worked so hard for one another.
I joined Leicester the summer after they’d beaten Northampton to win the Premiership and spent a couple of seasons there. You could see when you
“How could I fail to learn off Sebastien Bruno and Andy Titterrell?”
“Lyn Jones said, ‘Sir, you’ve got some small feet, is that a family thing?’”
walked in why they’d been successful for so long, they honestly believed they had the best of everything – the way they trained and the coaches and players and the fans and the stadium. That atmosphere and attitude is contagious. I enjoyed my time there but probably didn’t play as well or as much as I’d have hoped.
Luckily, I had been around other characters like Cockers (Richard Cockerill) and we got on well. I probably laughed with him just as much as any shouting that took place. I used to take the mickey out of him when he’d turn up at the club on his bike clad in full lycra. That always sticks with me because during the first lockdown, I bought a road bike and bought all the gear myself !
In 2015, I re-joined Sale and have been there ever since. My agent rang me to say, ‘you’ll never guess who I’ve had on the phone’. I knew Sale were after a hooker so I guessed it was Dimes. The last meeting me and Dimes had wasn’t ideal but I went up to Carrington to have a chat and the first thing he did was to crack a joke saying, ‘I never thought we’d be sat in this room together again’, and that helped to lighten the mood. I told him I’d love to come back.
Being a bit older, I didn’t take any opportunity I got to play for granted. At the same time, I helped to coach the U18s. It got to a point where I was offered a new one-year deal or the transition manager’s job. Thankfully, after some brilliant advice from my Mrs, Sarah, I decided on the latter. I am really grateful for the opportunity because I have seen so many other players come out of the game without having anything else to go into. To still be involved in rugby, at a club I love, is just brilliant.