MY LIFE IN RUGBY
Getting into a training ground scuffle over a driving lineout play with the then Wales A captain didn’t turn out to be the best move for my international ambitions as I was never asked back again!
However, I did go on to play at the highest level a few years later – for Scotland – on the summer tour to Australia in 2004. I qualified through my Edinburgh-born mum who moved down to Bridgend when she was eight weeks old. I also played for Scotland at the Churchill Cup in Canada.
Edinburgh made me an offer after the tour, but I decided to stay loyal to Rotherham despite the club’s relegation from the Premiership. I liked the club and the players; they were down-to-earth working-class blokes like myself who just got on with the job – Mike Schmid once played with a broken arm!
I signed a three-year deal, but it turned out to be worth nothing more than the paper it was written on because the club couldn’t afford to pay the players.
Worcester were having a bit of a front row injury crisis and I spent a month there before moving to Leicester as cover for their internationals.
I was a bit star-struck on my first day at Tigers but Austin Healey instantly made me feel part of the group. He jokingly said in the lunch queue, ‘do you realise we’ve put this all on especially for you, normally we only get a few sandwiches’. It was a real ice-breaker.
When the internationals were back on club duty I’d go on loan to Rotherham. During one spell I was found guilty of stamping on an opponent, purely on the say-so of a spectator, and was hit with a six-month ban.
The referee did not see anything wrong at the time and there were four or five of us in the ruck when the incident was supposed to have happened. All I can remember is making a tackle and getting back on my feet and thinking about doing my next job – clearing out the ruck. If I did anything wrong, it certainly wasn’t intentional. I was sacked by Leicester and Rotherham washed their hands of me. Not having any wages for six months really hurt as I had a wife and three kids to feed. I sometimes still think ‘why me?’ but I count my lucky stars that I played at the level I did.
At the time I feared my career could be over, but I managed to get a contract with Northampton. However, I suffered a torn calf muscle on my debut, a problem that reoccurred from my Rotherham days, and struggled to win my place back. Then, it was off to Biarritz for another totally new experience... I couldn’t believe it when I saw players enjoying a glass of wine with their meal on matchday!
As a prop, I was treated like a king. Dimitri Yachvili told me early on that he’d make my life very comfortable at the club if I got the scrum going forward to give him front-foot ball and he was true to his word, putting fresh towels out for me and giving me his priority place in the physio room and things like that. During my time in France we won the Top 14 and reached the Heineken Cup final.
People said I was too small when I first started out at Aberavon, but I’d bulked up to 19-and-ahalf stone while at Biarritz. They weren’t too bothered about me making it around the park; my job was to get my head down and push.
It was a different story though when I became Stuart Lancaster’s 17th signing at Leeds. He liked his running and got us very fit. I was a regular in the side until halfway through my second season when I broke two bones in my neck. That was me done.
I had one final run out for Maesteg, but I couldn’t move the next day and I decided enough is enough and retired for good. Nowadays, I’m running my own building business back in Wales.