I learned via the school of hard knocks
WHEN Mike Brewer came in at Sale, we had a whole squad meeting and he said, ‘I’ve done my analysis on you all and know you all inside and out, and I’m going to get rid of a lot of you because you’re not good enough’. He then said, ‘Peely (Dwayne Peel), you prefer box kicking off your right foot more than your left’ and pointed to Oriol Ripol, our Spanish winger. Everyone was like, ‘who on earth is this guy?’
To be fair, a lot of aspects of professional rugby had been a bit of a mystery to me when Kingsley (Jones) first brought me to the club as I’d not gone down the conventional independent school/academy route. My early rugby education came at Chesterfield, my local club that went on to produce three Premiership players in myself, Charlie Davies – the No.9 that went to Wasps, Northampton and Stade – and Ross McMillan as well, who is now forwards coach at London Irish.
From there, I made county agegrade sides and was eventually picked up by Nottingham’s academy where Neil Fowkes’ dad, Bob, was coaching. I also made it into the England Schools team alongside players such as Tom Wood, Jack Adams and Glen Towson. I didn’t have a chip on my shoulder but I used being a roughand-ready state school lad as my point of difference.
Some Championship offers soon came in but I ended up going to Loughborough to do a Geography degree whilst also being part of the rugby programme. It was the best thing I ever did. In my first year, the league team was in Midlands 2 East and we’d be up against clubs like Matlock and Derby. They’d put you on the U10s pitch, that they hadn’t watered all week, and the ball wouldn’t get past the No.9. For a back, it must have been terrible but it was a great learning curve for me with all the rucks and mauls. We won two promotions whilst I was there, made the BUCS final – only to lose to a superstar Hartpury team, and got capped by England Students.
I then did a Masters at Oxford and got two Blues, winning my first Varsity Match in 2008 after Tim Catling became the first Oxford player to score a hat-trick in the match in a 100 years but losing the second. To play in the same team as someone like Anton Oliver was amazing in itself and I was also fortunate to be coached by Brian Ashton, the best rugby brain I’ve ever come across.
John Carter, the Sale player, was at Oxford and he sang my praises to Kingsley, and that’s how my move to Sale came about. Kingsley initially offered me a two-month trial as they were short of second rows. At that stage, I’d done a bit with Newbury in the old National One (now Championship) under Ben Sturnham but this was something else, and I got to play down at Bath in an LV Cup game. I had a decent game, doing the core stuff quite well after coming on at half-time and Kingsley offered me a contract there and then. David Tait, was unbelievable for me, taking me into his house and really integrating me socially into the group. My first involvement in the Premiership was tackling Nick Easter, who was then the England No.8 in a game against Quins, and I also played against Gloucester down at Kingsholm. The pitch was a real mud bath because the U20s had played on it the night before and there had been torrential rain.
It had taken me a couple of months to get in anything like the shape I needed to be in – Kingsley was fairly blunt at first that my conditioning was nowhere near the levels required – but looking back, I was still a bit too much of a ‘fan-boy’, wide-eyed at the thought of sharing a dressing room with the likes of Jason Robinson, and probably didn’t assert myself enough.
Choosing to take a pay out after that brutal meeting with Mike Brewer was a harsh lesson about the realities of professional sport but I still look back on my time at Sale fondly. I ended up switching places with Nic Rouse, who is now coaching with me at Richmond, and had an unbelievable year at Nottingham, playing 80 minutes every week.
We had some great players. At first I thought it was a joke that Ali Williams, an All Blacks great, had signed a short-term deal. Credit to him, he rolled up his sleeves, came to every training session and enjoyed a beer with us off the field. Tom Youngs was another I remember being a cut above the rest. We’d just started wearing GPS monitors and we played this system under Glenn (Delaney, DoR) where there was four forwards in the middle including Youngsy, Sione Kalamafoni and myself, and two out wide on each side of the pitch. One of the things that was being monitored was the force we put into collisions and I regularly found myself in the teens whereas Tom’s impacts were through the roof, around the 50 mark. It was clear early on that he would be going on to bigger and better things.
For me, at the end of that season there came a bit of a realisation that I’d given professional rugby a crack, which was something I’d never planned, but it hadn’t quite worked out at the top level. A lot of my mates had a good work-life balance, playing semi-pro rugby down in London so when Esher came in for me and offered me a good part-time deal, I was more than happy to take them up on it, and I had five enjoyable years there under Mike Schmidt, four as captain.
The first season was in the Championship. Despite having quality players like Nicky Little and my housemate Mark Atkinson in the side, we never really clicked until it was too late. I think it wasn’t until we beat Rotherham on New Year’s Day that we won, and from then on we went on a bit of a run. It all came to us needing to win with a bonus point against London Scottish at the RAG and we were looking good at 30-20 up. But the game changed when they intercepted one of Nicky’s passes, and we went down, and for whatever reason, we never came back up.
Andre Bester had seen me score against his Rotherham team from halfway and tried to persuade me that
“I was fortunate to be coached by Brian Ashton, the best rugby brain I’ve ever come across”
joining them would be a route back into the Premiership. He said he’d been watching me all season but was perplexed as to why I hadn’t started every week. I wore the No.24 jersey in the second half against them because I had a bad cut on my head and had to change jerseys at half-time, and that had obviously confused him. The reality was I had started every game I had played in so I didn’t think his research was up to much and decided to turn him down.
Now I’m at Richmond as forwards coach, working alongside Rob Powell as head coach. Rugby is all about the people you meet. After finishing playing, Hilly (Richmond DoR Steve Hill), who’d coached me at England Students, gave me a call asking if I wanted to come on board to coach the Championship squad and I’ve now just finished my fourth season at the RAG. We’ve got quite a habit of producing some good forwards who’ve gone to a higher level – Craig Trenier (Harlequins) and Will Goodrick-Clarke (London Irish) are two good examples.
With a full-time job as Director of Sport at Trinity School, life is very busy but both roles are very fulfilling. Trinity have had a great season, alongside Paul Roberts (ex-Bath, Doncaster, Plymouth and Esher) as Head of Rugby we won the National Schools Cup – what used to be the Daily Mail Cup, and currently have many players coming through the Academy pathway – and Richmond have a good young squad with some really pleasing results in the Championship too, as well as developing more players for full-time rugby, so things are going well. I have really enjoyed transitioning from player to coach and trying to think about the game differently and how I would have like to have been coached.
“Coaching helped me to think about the game differently”