Best leaving Knights in search of a new home
IN the hope of setting himself up for life after rugby, Mark Best has decided to find a new challenge and leave Doncaster.
After a formidable campaign the 28-year-old inside centre was rewarded with a place in The Rugby Paper’s Team of the Season after scoring seven tries in 21 games as the Knights took the Championship title race down to the wire.
However, with the RFU cutting funding in the Championship and ongoing salary cuts, Best is weighing up his options and hopes to sort his future in the coming weeks.
He said: “I’ve decided to move on, purely because I’m 28 now and I feel like it’s time to take on a new challenge. What the challenge is going to be I don’t know, I could still end up in the Championship, France or staying in Belfast and playing locally. I’m just waiting for things to materialise now. Hopefully something comes up in a couple weeks.”
The former Ulster and Jersey Reds centre added: “Everyone knows the state the Championship is in with the wage cuts and all the salary cuts the RFU have done.
“You have to start setting yourself up for after rugby. Maybe semipro might be a better option as you can make some money working and then set yourself up for after rugby whilst being in a job, so that’s the stage I’m at.
“I’m wondering whether to play full-time in France or go semi-pro here and hopefully clubs can find me a job with a bit of progression.
“As a Championship player, when the Premiership wage bill came out it was hard to look at because of the massive gap.”
Best was a key figure in guiding Doncaster to second place, losing out on the final day to Ealing despite winning more games than them.
Best said: “No-one saw us getting that close to Ealing at the start of the season. If you’d said it would have gone down to the last game everyone would have laughed and said Ealing would have run away with it. We won more games than Ealing and just got done on bonus points.
“When you look at it that way it’s frustrating, but we also sneaked a couple tight wins against Ampthill twice, Richmond, Hartpury on the last kick of the game, so there’s different ways to look at it.”
On his inclusion in the Championship Dream XV, Best said: “I was delighted with that as a personal accolade because it comes from the DoRs so it shows you’re doing a good job and are playing well.
“I think for me personally it’s been the best season of rugby I’ve had since I came to the Championship.
“When you’ve got Sam Olver as your 10, he conducts things and makes your life easier as it allows you to do your thing. Joe Ford (backs coach) gave me a free licence to play, he saw my strengths in terms of my running and offloading game and it turned into a really successful season for me and the team.”