MY LIFE IN RUGBY
I’d love to say that the biggest crowd in Rotherham’s history (6,894) turned out specifically to see my club debut against Bath in January 2004, which we lost 18-34.
But the fact the World Cup trophy was on show at Millmoor might have had more to do with it! The club went into liquidation at the end of that season but lived to fight another day thanks to new owners, Nick Cragg and Martin Jenkinson.
Midway through my third season there, having had the honour of captaining the side, I moved to Leeds and my Premiership debut for a second club ended in similarly heart-breaking fashion as Leicester snatched victory with a last-gasp pushover try.
Relegated to National One, I had a stinker in the first game of the Stuart Lancaster reign – a home defeat to London Welsh. And, unfortunately, I had plenty of time to dwell on it because, 14 minutes into the next game, I suffered a double fracture of my leg.
The following season I made a little bit of history against Newcastle by scoring the fastestever try in league history – all of 8.28 seconds. The timing couldn’t have been better as contracts were up for renewal.
It turns out I’d played with a collapsed lung after taking a bang to the ribs in the game against Worcester five days before. No wonder I was breathing heavily! Even so, I earned myself a new deal on the back of a strong performance.
Neil Back and Andy Key came in once Lanny left to join the RFU but I had to bide my time before getting a chance to impress after suffering another injury, a badly sprained ankle, in pre-season. I worked on my speed during the three months I was out and returned to play on the wing.
One of my most memorable tries in terms of its importance was the game-clinching score against Saracens as we battled hard to avoid the drop. We’d narrowed the pitch for that game – by two-and-a-half metres either side – as we’d noticed how much better we’d performed on tighter football grounds.
Having saved our top-flight status, we moved away from a back-to-basics approach the following year and results were hard to come by. I think like most people we thought that Exeter would go straight back down again and we were maybe guilty of taking our eye off the ball.
I saw out the last year of my contract at Leeds before a clear out of the senior players led to me returning to Rotherham, initially as assistant to Andre Bester and then Alex Codling with a spell as interim head coach in between.
Once Alex left, Martin, Nick and I interviewed applicants for his position but, as no-one seemed that suitable, they took a gamble on me instead for which I am eternally grateful.
Hours spent with Simon Middleton analysing opposition plays and long M1 trips to coach Sheffield Hallam University stood me in good stead and I was confident the squad I’d assembled could defy the doom-mongers.
By February, we were top of the league and we made the play-offs quite comfortably. For a split second, in the play-offs against Bristol, when everything was going our way, I even dared to dream we’d make the final.
Backing that up with another semi-final appearance is one of my proudest achievements as a coach, because our hopes of making the top four looked dead and buried with two-and-a-half months of the season to run. We changed tactics and adopted more of a kicking game and it paid off as we won six of our final seven games.
I left Rotherham on extremely good terms and still have a lot of friends at the club.
Stepping up to the Premiership with Wasps was a roller-coaster at first. We only won three of our first eight games and our attack stats were way down on where they should have been.
The saving grace was a good set of results in Europe and the support I received from many quarters, but particularly Jimmy Gopperth and Elliot Daly. They kept promoting my messages to the boys and we ended up winning nine of our next 10 games and reached two semi-finals.