My Life in Rugby: Aadel Kardooni- former Wasps, Leicester and England ‘A’ scrum-half

I don't think I had ever seen, let alone held, a rugby ball until I came over to the UK from Tehran to board at Sherborne School in 1977 – but I took to the game immediately.
Being under the tutelage of David Scott, who played at Blackheath, and Mike Davis, England's 1980 Grand Slam-winning coach certainly helped. It was thanks to them I got picked for England Schoolboys where I first came across future Leicester team-mates Steve Hackney and Tony Underwood.
I count myself very fortunate. Not only did I get a fabulous technical grounding in the game, doors seemed to open for me at just the right time.
My debut for Leicester was a case in point. Having played in a couple of first team friendlies for Wasps, where I understudied England internationals, Nigel Melville and Steve Bates, I got my first league outing against Leicester at Welford Road.
I'd never seen anything like it. At Wasps we played in front of a few hundred people but all of a sudden I was playing in a cauldron of noise.
The atmosphere and the thrill of playing in front of so many people stayed with me and when applying for university places, De Montfort in Leicester topped the list. My Middle- sex county coach Dick Best put me in touch with a few people and that's how I joined the Tigers.
I went on to play more than 300 games over nine seasons and was capped by England A while there.
At first it was hard to break into the first team. Ex-England scrum-half Nick Youngs had decided to come out of retirement once British Rail decided to put a new line in that made it easier for him to commute from his farm in Norfolk, and club stalwart Steve Kenny was still going strong.
Around the end of October, though, Nick got kicked in the back in a game against Orrell and Steve was on a family skiing holiday. So Peter Wheeler decided to give me my big break. In my first two games I played against no less than Wales legend Robert Jones (Swansea) and New Zealand Word Cup winner David Kirk at Oxford University. I then made my league debut away to an international-laden Nottingham. We drew and Peter decided I merited a longer run in the team.
I won the Daily Tele-graph's Most Promising Newcomer Award and, a second season wobble apart, kept hold of the nine jersey thereafter. Les Cusworth said I was the best Iranian scrum-half he'd played with!
We had good young talent coming through – the ABC Club plus Martin Johnson and Neil Back – and we still had the experience of John Wells and Deano. Backy and Johnno never had a bad training session; they trained as though it was an international match. Achieving through hard work is a lesson I pass on to the lads I coach at Old Grammarians.
Suddenly we had a set of forwards who could win good ball and a set of backs who could do something with it, and the 1993 Pilkington Cup win against a good Harlequins side gave us belief that we were on the right lines.
I left Leicester to take up a job in the City but continued to play part-time at Bedford alongside Rory Underwood.
We won promotion to the old First Division at a canter. Geoff Cooke wanted the squad to go full-time but I didn't want to quit my day job so that was it for rugby until I was persuaded out of retirement for short spells at Blackheath and Rugby.
I also managed to get a taste of international Sevens … for all of 60 seconds, after I tore my hamstring a minute into my Arabian Gulf debut in a 1997 Sevens World Cup qualifier. But in the overall scheme of things I count myself lucky to have played for a great club for so long with so many great players.