Enter Rugby

I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but I know that I was done playing football. I was 15 years old when I began playing rugby, except for the odd school game when I would make up the numbers rather than actually wanting to play. Our school was a typical state school where rugby made up a small part of the curriculum. We would play a handful of games against some of the other local schools, and the team would be a combination of footballers who were making up the numbers, bigger lads our PE teacher felt could be useful, and the two or three lads who played rugby outside of school at a local rugby club, carrying the rest of us as best as they could. Football ruled; it was the sport of choice for almost everyone, and I had been completely obsessed with it.

By 15, I had grown tired of football. In so many ways, it felt like a team sport played by selfish individuals where the currency was all about what boots you had, who was having trials at professional clubs, and constant one-upmanship. My two best friends at school, Chris Peacock and Joe Gorman, had always played rugby growing up, and I had never really considered playing it myself. It was always just their thing, but they knew I was getting bored of football, so they persuaded me to go down to Milton Keynes RUFC with them one evening. It helped that I knew a handful of the guys down there and the coach was Kev Gorman, Joe’s dad. I loved it immediately; it was the perfect place and the perfect sport for me. Although I had a lot to learn about rugby, I loved the physical nature of it, the confrontational attitude that was welcome and encouraged on the pitch. No diving, no screaming and writhing, no false bravado, and to top it off, we all had a good laugh afterwards.

Milton Keynes clubhouse was in the middle of the Greenleys estate at the time, a rough-around-the-edges type of place. The clubhouse was affectionately known as ‘The Bombshelter’—a bit of a shithole, but our shithole. I soon learned that within the Buckinghamshire rugby ‘scene’ we were looked at pretty lowly, and that feeling of being viewed as outsiders worked for me and a lot of our team. I laugh now, but it was normal at the time: one of my teammates was dealing weed out of his moped, unknown to any adults, and another played with a tag. We would turn up to places like Beaconsfield or Marlow to play against teams that looked like professional outfits. They used to hate us, and the feeling was mutual. These other sides were more traditional rugby clubs, where the kids often went to independent schools. We weren’t part of that demographic, and it only seemed to instil in us a will to win. It made us a good team, and I still value the idea that the team with the strongest will and togetherness should triumph over talent more often than not—or even better, the team with both. We certainly weren’t the most talented, but we were a tight group, and that is really what helped me fall in love with the game.

At the end of that season, I experienced my first rugby tour. We travelled to Eindhoven in Holland by coach and ferry, staying in a Holiday Inn right in the middle of the city. The rugby tournament was at a small club called Etten-Leur, and we did okay, but to be honest, that wasn’t at the top of our priority list. We dove in to experience everything Holland had to offer: we drank, we smoked, we sang, and we took the piss out of each other. Kev was great and never overbearing. He probably didn’t know half of what we were up to or turned a blind eye, but either way, I’m not sure he could have stopped us even if he had wanted to. I came back from the tour in no doubt that rugby was the game for me, but I knew I had to get up to speed with how to play the game properly, learn the laws, and understand what exactly I was doing. Coming from a football background, I had decent coordination, good hand-eye coordination, and I was a good size with a little bit of pace. More importantly, I was obsessive about sport and determined to get better. It was helpful to have my two best mates who understood the game; they would explain, demonstrate, and tell me what to do. It was up to me to soak the information up and start to use it to get better.

At 17, it was time for senior rugby. I played a lot for the second team at Milton Keynes. It was every shape and size of man you can think of, trying to beat you up. No TMOs, just a referee who had warmed up with two pints of Guinness and was trying to claw back some power from what he had lost at home. As a young, fearless 17-year-old, it’s fun. When you weren’t weighed down by the thick cotton rugby shirts, I would be quick enough to escape most of the older players, but they would make up for that when they got you at the bottom of a ruck. I learned a lot about the game, about drinking games, and made some good friends. These are some of my favourite memories.