From Moseley to a bar in Buenos Aires
MY route to rugby was different from the modern-day route as my dad (Alun) was a former player at Moseley who also ended up being the groundsman there for 30 years. So I basically spent all my summer holidays down at the Reddings, occupying myself with a ball six or seven hours each day. I suppose it was my destiny to become a Moseley player from a young age.
As a teenager I was slightly built and it got to the stage where I thought rugby wouldn’t be my thing as all my contemporaries were that much bigger and stronger. I was also doing well in cricket, making Warwickshire U16s as a promising leg-spinner (now converted to an opening bat). But, by chance, in my first year at Uni I was invited to a rugby session having stopped playing for a year and a bit and I enjoyed it so much that I went fully back into it again.
In my first senior season at Moseley (2002-03), the squad was effectively made up of Colts who’d transitioned into the first team squad purely out of necessity. The club’s financial problems had led to most of the established and more senior players moving on and we got a bit of a walloping for a year. My debut was in a Cup game against Rugby Lions and was a win – a rare win that season.
I had three different spells at Moseley (2002 to 2015), scoring a club record 1,931 points, but I view it as one long stay interspersed with a couple of sabbaticals. Whilst I was born and raised in Moseley and loved Moseley, I knew I needed to see what else rugby had to offer. Rugby tours were great for that – more on them later – but I felt I needed to try my luck at different club environments. It was difficult to get it past dad, because he is a massive Moseley guy, but even he encouraged me to go and see the world. So I spent a good year-and-ahalf in Penzance, at the Cornish Pirates followed by a spell in France.
I was completely thrown out of my comfort zone in Cornwall but helped by the fact we had a really good squad and a very good coach in Jim McKay, whose playing philosophy fitted in perfectly with mine. He encouraged us to express ourselves on the pitch and developed a game plan around us.
I also enjoyed being coached by Richard Hill at Racing Club Chalonnais, he went above and beyond trying to help me in my career. But I don’t think he’ll thank me for remembering the time he ordered us to do full contract training in an indoor gym because the pitches were flooded. Hilly wanted us to go full bore and boys were absolutely whaling each other. I had my privates grabbed and I was throwing haymakers trying to get whoever it was off me. Afterwards I thought, ‘these are my team-mates, what are they going to do to the opposition?’
Our first pre-season friendly was against Carcassone and they had a reputation for being up for a fight. The game was abandoned after an hour because of the violence – there was a 28-man brawl, only me and the oppo winger weren’t involved. I had a two-year contract but the club effectively ceased to exist in its current form halfway through after the Mayor and the Club President fell out and the public money that had been put into the club was stopped.
Hilly went to Worcester and I was set to join him, to fill the gap left by Willie Walker on the presumption that he was going to get a contract somewhere else. But nowhere could afford to match the wages he was on and he stayed put, and there was no room for me. That led to me having a conversation with Ian Smith at Moseley about coming back ‘home’. I rate Smithy and Don Caskie up there with Jim McKay and Richard Hill, they added a level of professionalism to Moseley that Moseley previously hadn’t seen, and given my strong connections to the club, they almost feel like family.
I started my third spell in 2010, the year after we’d shocked everyone by winning the EDF Energy National Trophy, at Twickenham. I don’t know if any spice has been added to this story but we were told that Leeds had organised a post-match winners’ party because they were so confident they’d win. They didn’t look so clever when they got back on their coach all Tuxedoed up having lost 23-18. Another bit of folklore around the final is that Cavesy (hooker Adam Caves) did a whole slab of Carling the night before, and ended up being man of the match. Terry Sigley was sharing with him so there’s no way he would have held back. Apparently, they packed down at the first scrum and one of the Leeds front row said: “It smells like a brewery around here.”
Leeds were huge favourites as they’d won promotion back to the Premiership and came down with a strong squad. But there was a vibe after about 20 minutes that we were onto something. When you have got guys like Waggy (Neil Mason) and you put them in front of 10-20,000 people instead of a few hundred, they somehow raise their game
“I had my privates grabbed and I was throwing haymakers to get him off me”
and he was like a man possessed on the day. I was on the bench until the second half but came on and dropped a goal from bang in front of the posts. It wasn’t on my mind to do that because we were leading and I was just happy for us to be inside their 22 and away from danger. But one of the replacement tight-heads behind the posts was shouting. ‘pocket, pocket, pocket’, so I instinctively went for it. I don’t think it had any bearing on the game if I am being honest.
Whilst the Cup win was brilliant, it seemed like it was over in a flash so I wouldn’t say it was my finest memory with Moseley. I get more satisfaction from the fact we survived in the Championship for as long as we did on a lot less money than the rest of the league. I quite enjoyed the relegation battles. There’s something riding on every game. Week in, week out there’s an added edge, and my club record for points in a match (28) was set in one of those dogfights, against Nottingham in April 2007. Probably my best-ever performance in a Moseley shirt, though, was when we beat Bristol at their place in a midweek fixture. We went down with a bit of a scratch team but thrashed them in front of about 5-6,000 people. Strangely, we were a bit of a bogey team for them.
With England Counties, I did tours to Spain, Belgium and Argentina and France a couple of times as well. One of my favourite stories was from the Argentina tour. We’d been told to behave ourselves and to focus on the rugby, so for the first 15-16 days we trained hard and kept our heads down as we flipped between Uruguay and Argentina. When it came to the last night, the management said we’d done well and we could let our hair down. Obviously we took them up on it – and some – and ended up in a karaoke bar in central Buenos Aires. By this stage, my clothes had been ripped to shreds and were hanging off me and the rest of the lads looked pretty much the same. Despite looking like homeless people, we got in and decided to spoof for who would go up on stage to sing. I lost and found myself up on stage singing Mrs Robinson to a packed crowd of about 200 unamused, stony-faced Argentinians who I don’t think took too kindly to our behaviour and greeted me with an eery silence. I think I nailed the song but I could not have left the stage any quicker.
I struggled with back problems throughout my career, I was quite obsessive about goal-kicking practice so maybe I was putting too much pressure on my pelvic area. And it got to the stage where getting up in the morning was painful and I thought, ‘life is too short’ and I retired. Since then I have coached Moseley’s development team, Moseley Oak, as well as doing some skills coaching with the first team and also down at the Dragons after Simon Cross left Moseley to go there and coach. I’m still involved with rugby and am thankful for everything it has to offer, but with a one-year-old daughter and a new landscaping business taking up a lot of my time, it has had to take a bit of a back seat for the time being.