Lucky start with a mentor like Doddie
FORMER ENGLAND, NEWCASTLE AND SARACENS LOCK AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR AT GALLAGHER
SUFFERING a burst appendix while on a pre-season tour of France and spending a week in hospital wasn’t exactly how I hoped my career as a professional rugby player with the Falcons would begin.
I’d had a stomach ache for a while, but was too afraid to say anything to the physio or doctor for fear of everyone thinking the new lad is soft. It was only when my room-mate, Peter Walton, came back to our room and saw me sweating profusely that I got treated. Thankfully things picked up from there!
I was always very ambitious in my rugby. Coming from a big family of seven brothers, I suppose that was only natural, so a professional rugby playing career was something that had been on the radar for a while.
Spending half a season in South Africa after leaving Downside School had given me the belief that I could make it in the game. I played for a team called Villagers, who were coached by the brother of Nick Mallett, and as a skinny English guy I was an easy target for the big Afrikaans farmers. But I came through it and actually captained their U21s.
After that it was off to Newcastle and university, to study theology. It was at the time when Sir John Hall had just bought the Falcons, the first-ever professional rugby club. Under Rob Andrew and Dean Ryan, Va’aiga Tuigamala, Pat Lam, Nick Popplewell, Gary Armstrong and Doddie Weir were brought in as the marquee signings. I rocked up at the rugby club with Simon Best, Rory Best’s brother, who I’d met on Fresher’s week after they’d put out an invitation to 70-odd young hopefuls to attend academy training and I made it into the development team.
My first year at uni I got paid a grand by the Falcons, in my second year I got three grand and in my last year I got two grand, I couldn’t really work out the pay scale! But we always had this £500a-start rule and, in my last year, I started 20-odd games, so I was a very wealthy student.
Newcastle was a team full of
heroes: really great people who worked really hard. We won the inaugural Premiership with pretty much the same team week in week out and I count myself very lucky to have been in that environment. I was fortunate to have a great mentor in Doddie Weir and learnt so much so quickly. With people like John Bentley and Alan Tait coming across from Rugby League, we were much more professional than anyone else.
Sir John Hall pulled his money out quite quickly after we won the Prem, so a lot of those players either retired or moved on because they’d become hot properties, which opened the door for me to play a lot more first-team rugby. With people like Tom May, Jonny Wilkinson, Ian Peel and Jamie Noon, the make-up of the side was very young. By and large we were a mid-table or lower-mid table team, but we still managed to win a couple of Tetley’s Bitter Cups. I ended up captaining the team in my final year in 2004.
It was on a Churchill Cup tour that the seeds of my move to Saracens were sown. Steve Diamond was on the Saxons coaching team and had just been appointed as Sarries’ head coach. The tour went well, and he tapped up me, Matt Cairns, Kevin Yates and Dan Scarbrough as part of his recruitment drive. With the excitement of moving down to London and improving my England prospects, it was an opportunity I wanted to take. My girlfriend also had a good job down there, so that was another driver. Sarries have always had bags of ambition and I felt like I’d achieved all I could at Newcastle. It was time for a change.
Getting noticed by the England coaches was hard while I was at Newcastle. Then head coach Andy Robinson never came to Newcastle to watch a game. We were always very good at home but whenever he saw me play away, we’d normally be on the end of a good battering which wasn’t exactly helpful for my England prospects. Less than a year after joining Saracens, I won my only cap, off the bench against Canada in the 2004 Autumn Internationals.
Sarries was the polar opposite to Newcastle in many ways. There was a lot more pressure to do well and maybe the squad wasn’t quite as cohesive as Newcastle’s had been. Newcastle was essentially a bunch of young guys coming through together and having a great laugh, whereas at Sarries I was captaining a side full of superstars such as Thomas Castaignede, Taine Randell and Raphael Ibanez that did not have the same cohesion.
My time at Saracens finished with winning the Premiership in 2011 and in many ways started the unbelievable run of trophies the club have won in the last decade. There was a great deal of satisfaction with that Premiership title especially after the disappointment of losing the previous year’s final to Leicester in the last few minutes in an epic game.
The Premiership final is a big deal now, and it is only getting bigger and better with every year. Although I carried on playing for another season, that felt like a nice way to sign off.
I stayed at Sarries after I finished playing and ended up becoming commercial director, a role that I really enjoyed. I then worked for a sports marketing company Pitch International and we helped Premiership Rugby find Gallagher as title sponsors so you could say I’m a poacher turned gamekeeper in my new role at Gallagher.
Witnessing the growth of the Premiership at first hand, I can’t help but think back to the times when we were playing in front of crowds of a couple of thousand. Fifteen years ago, people wouldn’t be that bothered with club rugby, you’d just go and watch an international. But now, dare I say it, last season’s final between Sarries and Exeter was one of the best games Twickenham has seen for years. The popularity of club rugby is growing season after season and I am loving going to each ground to witness the passion of the fans for the big local derbies.
HUGH VYVYAN “Getting noticed by England was hard... Andy Robinson never watched a game at Newcastle”