Glad dad was there to watch me win my cap
IRONICALLY, even though I grew up in the town of Rugby, football was my sport and I was good enough to be offered a YTS contract by my local club, Coventry City, which I turned down to focus on my A Levels. It was only through playing the sport at Lawrence Sherriff School that rugby came onto my radar, initially as a scrum-half.
Even my first-ever game of senior rugby, for Rugby Lions 3rds away at Evesham, was overshadowed by football. All I could think about when I came off the pitch was how my team, Nottingham Forest, had got on in the FA Cup semi-final against Liverpool at Hillsborough. I was frantically going ‘what’s the score, what’s the score?’ only to be told the game had been abandoned. I couldn’t believe it when I found out what had happened later. No one who supports football will ever forget that tragic weekend. I was 17 at the time and had been pleading with my mum and dad to allow me to travel up to Sheffield to go and watch the game with some mates. It was a flat no from them, thankfully.
I was always a fringe player at county level up until the Upper Sixth when I was invited to go for an England U18 trial. It was all thanks to John Wilkinson, the local reporter and brilliant bloke that he is, that I got the opportunity. I think he lived on the same street as Dick Tilley, the head coach, and told him they should have a look at me.
I did well in the first trial at Nottingham and got selected after doing well in the second one at Rosslyn Park. I remember walking back to Barnes Station with Lawrence Dallaglio, who was then a second row, and I’d got in and he hadn’t. That just goes to show how things can work out for people in different ways, something we are always telling the young lads we work with now.
Injuries at full-back paved the way for me to get into the first team and I made my first team debut against Moseley, aged 17. I went on to play close to 100 games, a few of them alongside my dad, (there is only a 17year
age gap). His last game was when we beat Newcastle Gosforth to win promotion from the Second Division in 1990/91. God knows how we stayed up for the next two years but we did, and took down a few big names too, including Quins. I scored a full-house against them, including a left-footed drop-goal. You never forget those!
With Rugby having fixtures against the best sides in the land, I opted to carry on playing club rugby rather than university rugby at Loughborough where I’d gone to study sports science. When I graduated, it would have been natural for me to go to Leicester as it was on my doorstep and they were all over signing my housemate, Tony Diprose. Nothing ever came of it though and I heard through a mutual friend that Mike Burton was keen on me signing for Gloucester.
I was reminded by someone that only people from Gloucester played for Gloucester in those days but I’d played there once before and thought
what an amazing place it would be to play with the crowd on your side, so I jumped at the chance. I took to the place like a duck to water. People like Dave Sims, Andy Deacon, Mike Teague and Don Caskie were great, and I loved the fans.
After 15 months out with a serious knee injury, from January 1995 to March 1996, the following season I managed to establish myself as the first-choice fly-half and kicker, scoring 458 points in 33 games.
It was while I was at Gloucester that I won my one and only England cap, on the summer tour to Argentina in 1997. Had it not been for the Lions tour happening at the same time, who knows if I’d have been picked but I was, and we had a good time even if the rugby wasn’t that great. I didn’t come on in the first Test but started the second. It was nice that my dad was able to fly out and see me get capped.
Obviously, at the time I wouldn’t have known that no more opportunities would come my way. My best chance was a few years down the line when I was playing out of my skin and had a really good game for England A against Ireland A. We battered them by about 40 points at Donnybrook. I knew if I didn’t get picked then, I’d never be picked again.
At that stage I’d moved on from
Gloucester in search of a new challenge, at Saracens. I never really wanted to live in London but Dips was there and had captained the club when they won the Cup the season before, so there was a good vibe about the place, and I knew Hilly (Richard Hill) from playing age-group stuff together.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work out for a couple of reasons, one of them was the back injury that I’d picked up in the New Year which ruled me out for the rest of the season. Mark Evans, who’d been instrumental in me getting there, had left to join Quins and said, ‘do you want to come and join me at Quins?’. Six games into my first season there, in 2000/01, the other knee to the one I’d injured at Gloucester gave way in a game against Bristol. Because I’d done it before, I knew what it was and knew there wouldn’t be any quick fixes. I didn’t get training fully again until July the following year.
An interesting thing happened to me in the intervening period. I was thinking how long can I keep doing this? I’ve always been into horseracing, particularly jump racing, and I saw a job advert in the Racing Post and I thought I’d give it a go and put my CV in. I had two years to run on my contract at Quins, and at some point I’d have to go back to full-time rugby, but the guy talking to me there,
Ian Healy, said, ‘we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it, you’ve got the job’. I was writing about rugby union and rugby league for this new online platform they’d created, which as a sports fan was very enjoyable.
So my life from November 2000 through to July 2001 was to get up, drive to the club, do my rehab, drive to Aldershot, where we trained, park up, catch the train to Canary Wharf and work 11-7 and go home. Once fit, it carried on for a bit with me now working at home but eventually it petered out, like my time at Quins.
Game time was harder and harder to come by and I was ready to knock it on the head. I remember telling Nick Burrows, who was off to Irish, how I was feeling and, a few days later, he said to me, ‘are you serious about knocking it on the head?’. I asked him why and he told me that Brendan Venter and Conor O’Shea were interested in having a chat.
“Only people from Gloucester played for Gloucester in those days”
“Brendan Venter is one of the most persuasive people you will ever meet”
Irish were on the up having hammered Northampton in the Powergen Cup and were right on my doorstep, so I thought, ‘why not’! Brendan is one of the most persuasive people you will ever meet in your life and he talked me round, and gave me a twoyear contract. Going there was like a breath of fresh air, and one of best things I could have done. It was an amazing three seasons. I don’t think I could have played any better than the last two games of my first season there, when we won at Leicester and then at home to Bristol to stay up.
I genuinely had no interest in coaching when I eventually did retire but a few people said I should give it a go. Toby Booth advised me to go and speak to Kevin Bowring, who was the RFU’s head of coach development. I don’t think I’d be half the coach I am now without his ongoing support. He’s been a mentor to me ever since that first meeting.
I did 18 months in the Sarries academy but the rest of my time in coaching has either been at Quins, where I had an amazing time, capped by winning the Premiership, and the RFU. I’m now an RFU pathway coach helping to guide and develop the best youngsters through the professional game. It definitely made me feel old when we recently went to France with the England U18s and Ben Douglas, the son of Steve Douglas, who I played against in that Rugby win over Newcastle Gosforth, was on the trip.
This is the fourth time I’ve worked with Conor. Tongue in cheek, my wife calls us, ‘O’Shofty’!