I just ran around and smashed everything
AS a professional sportsman you always try and maximise what talent you have but I’ll happily admit I was never anywhere near as good as the ESPN computer game version of myself at any stage of my 15-year career. I was faster, stronger and more powerful as a PlayStation player than the real me. I think they must have got the stats mixed up!
Almost half of my time in the pro game was spent at Wasps, where my dad Stefan had also played along with Harlequins. I joined them just as the team were on the verge of doing great things and came into a changing room with lots of big names. But as I was never really a big watcher of sports or a rugby fan as such, I wasn’t too star-struck.
In my first season (2003/04), we won the double and I was in the match day 22 for all but one or two games. Not a bad start! We beat Bath in the Premiership final and Toulouse in the Heineken Cup – the one made famous by Rob Howley’s opportunist try at the death. I bumped into Clement Poitrenaud in Ibiza a few years later and we were chatting about his blunder and he said, “I’ve won five Heineken Cups – four for Toulouse and one for Wasps!”
I literally had a touchline view of the try as I was on the bench, for that final and the other one. I did a lot of warming up but didn’t get minutes which was frustrating. I also got zero minutes in the semi-final against Munster so it was a very strange couple of weeks in that I was involved in these hugely emotional games, just not physically.
Being physical was what my game was all about. Away from the field I have a first from Cambridge but I was never what you would call an intelligent rugby player. I just used to go at it 100 per cent and not hold anything back. It was the only way I knew how to play and it suited how Wasps played. My job was to run around and smash anything I could see and hit as many rucks as I could and let the superstars score the tries.
I actually suffered a really bad head injury in the act of trying to score what would have been my one and only Premiership try. It was against Saracens in the London double header at the start of the 2005/06 league season and they had a two-man lineout on their own line. The throw got tipped over the top, and I was the acting scrum-half on our side and caught the ball and dived for the line. Their prop came in and I headbutted his shin as I flew through the air. My arms were pretty much over the line at that point but the impact knocked me out completely and I dropped the ball. It split my head wide open and there was a massive pool of blood on the pitch, you could see it from the stands so it was a nasty cut which needed about 25 stitches.
I had little regard for my own safety on the pitch and picked up my fair shares of injuries. I was going well and due to start an important Heineken Cup tie when I broke my arm tackling Tim Payne in a training drill in the week leading up to the match. It turns out his head is pretty hard! Then, not long after I’d come back, I broke my cheekbone.
I was also no stranger to concussions, but I was quite lucky as I had a kind of early warning system. Whenever I got a blow to the head, it did something to my optic nerve which made my vision go funny, a bit like a migraine, and it meant I couldn’t carry on playing and suffer the risk of further blows. One time I had after-effects for a week or so but every other time I was good to go two days later. I suppose the fact I was injured so much reduced the amount of minutes I played so that probably helped prevent me suffering any long-term damage.
I was lucky to be at Wasps at the time I was, as I got to work with some great coaches. But it got to the stage where I felt I’d stalled a bit and needed to move for my career to develop. Bath were interested and it seemed like a good move, but their style was very different to Wasps and I didn’t really adapt to it.
Bath’s style was more nuanced and they wanted everyone to be on the ball and for the team to try and create opportunities whereas Wasps’ game was more simple and involved wearing teams down with relentless fitness and pressure. At Bath, everyone had to be good at rugby whereas at Wasps some players needed to be good and others, like me, could just run around smashing things.
After Bath, I did an NPC season for North Harbour in New Zealand after accepting an approach from my old Wasps team-mate, Craig Dowd. It was a bit of a weird period for the NPC because not as many All Blacks or even Super Rugby players were playing as had been the case before. They always seemed to be rested, so it was quite an inexperienced league missing its superstars. We didn’t have a fantastic team and came 11th out of 14. Even so, it was brilliant to go to New Zealand, the work ethic among rugby players there was something special, even the amateurs.
Then it was on to Italy and GRAN Parma. I made a lot of good friends in Parma and wanted to stay on, albeit with the team’s city rivals, Overmach Parma, but they had stuff going on behind the scenes and a delay in naming their president meant nothing could be finalised. I started to get a bit twitchy as
I was worried I’d be out of a job and decided to sign a contract with L’Aquila.
At L’Aquila, our coach Massimo Mascioletti – the former international head coach – had a stroke in September and we ended up with a bit of a shambolic coaching set up, and it wasn’t a great season. It was just after the earthquake and the club officials thought we’d be this emblem for the city’s rejuvenation and supporters would get right behind us. But with large parts of the city and lives needing to be rebuilt, we were way down the list of most people’s priorities.
My intention was to always return to the UK at that point and I signed for London Welsh. I really enjoyed my three years there and enjoyed Lyn Jones as a coach. He is slightly mental – I heard a rumour he conducted an interview in his office completely naked – but very, very talented in what he does. Having missed out in the semi-finals in my first season, we won promotion in my second year. We were basically a rag-tag bunch of players who did very well in the Premiership all things considered. Plucky is a word that commentators used a lot.
The cycle of promotion and immediate relegation continued in France with Massy and then I went down south to be a player-coach at Grasse. I did that for four or five years before a sea-change in life direction saw me become a carpenter, here in Nice. I’ve got my own business and make bespoke pieces; recently it’s been a lot of doors and windows for some of these magnificent villas on the Côte d’Azur. I can’t complain, touch wood.
“I had little regard for my own safety and picked up my fair share of injuries”