SPORT has played a huge part in my life. I played quite a lot of sports – football, golf, tennis – and I always hoped one day I'd make a career out of one of them. So to have played two – cricket and rugby – at the highest level, and be involved in the coaching side of things for the best part of 30 years, I know just how lucky I am.
On a couple of occasions, I became very close to becoming the first dual cricket and rugby international for Ireland since Raymond Hunter in the 1960s. Sadly, he passed away recently because of Covid but I remain very good friends with his family. In 1995, I played cricket for Ireland against the West Indies and sat on the bench for the rugby team against Fiji in the November internationals without actually making it onto the pitch.
Still, dismissing Brian Lara made it a pretty memorable year. I spoiled a few people's afternoon in Dublin that day as they'd come down to see a masterclass of batting but he lasted less than an over.
When I bowled my first ball to him, he waited and waited and waited – he just seemed to have so much time – and hit me through square for four. I went back to my mark thinking ‘this is going to be a long afternoon'. I just fired the next few deliveries into his toes, and he dug them out. Then, with the second last ball of the over he came down the track at me and tried to put it back over my head but I got all of my 5ft 8ins off the ground and caught the ball. We actually tied the game; it was a great day.
While I continued to play cricket, the after-effects of a badly broken leg put paid to my chances of getting another opportunity with the Ireland rugby team for a good few years. A failed medical also cost me the fulltime pro contract I'd been offered by Ulster. Three operations later, it still didn't feel right and I was thinking about giving up the game altogether until a friend of mine, who played professional football, put me in touch with the Tottenham Hotspur orthopaedic surgeon who found bone fragments in my joint line.
Finally, it was put right and my form for Ballymena in the All-Ireland League, which resulted in me being selected at 9 in the AIL Team of the Year, caught the eye of Ulster head coach Alan Solomons.
Having made my provincial debut in 1995/96, I'd lost five years of rugby because of the injury so I was very emotional and had tears in my eyes before my first game back, against Leinster at Donnybrook. I actually went on to play the next 58 games in a row. Cementing my place in the Ulster No.9 jersey for the next four or five years and making it to the 2003 World Cup. They were probably my ‘Brian Lara' moments in rugby.
Eddie O'Sullivan had kept a place open for me for the RWC after I dislocated my shoulder and broke my nose leading Ireland to the Six Nations A title earlier that year. Aurélien Rougerie ran into me in the game against France and I needed a complete reconstruction. It would have been great to have pulled on the green jersey, but sadly I was never called upon. It was a great trip, nonetheless. I came close again to getting that elusive first cap in 2005, also against Fiji, when Strings (Peter Stringer) was a doubt but he came through a late fitness test in the end.
“I came close to being first rugby-cricket dual international for Ireland since 1960s”
Friday nights in Europe at Ravenhill were always special occasions as an Ulster player. Invariably, our captain Andy Ward and I would travel in on matchdays together as he lived close by. As you descended from Carryduff going into Belfast, you could see the floodlights at Ravenhill in the distance and that's when the excitement hit home, that it was time to get down to work and smash tonight's opposition. At that stage, we were so confident at home –I think we only lost three times to French teams in 24 games. A personal highlight was one of the two tries I scored against Treviso; I sidestepped about eight players and ran from inside my own half to touch down under the posts.
As a player, I was quite vocal on the pitch so coaching, both in cricket and rugby, came quite naturally. I worked for the IRFU as a development officer for many years and also coached Lisburn and Queen's University while I was still playing before transitioning into the Ulster academy setup and then the senior team, as an assistant coach and then head coach. At home, we were pretty successful. I think the only time we were beaten in around 30 games was by a thrown-together team called Toulon!
I kept telling the players how special it was to play for Ulster and never to underestimate the euphoria that they gave the whole region when they played well and won on a Friday night. But things changed a bit when Les Kiss came in as DoR, and we lost a bit of that edge. He was much more hands-on than Humphs (David Humphreys), and I didn't have the same input, which was a bit frustrating. It was the same with the other coaches and things started to go a bit awry. It was his first position as the guy in charge and if he looked back, he'd probably do things differently.
That didn't make him a bad coach or a bad person, he just wanted to put his own stamp on things and sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.
The first season at Worcester was really good. Rory Duncan came in as head coach from the Chiefs and we had the most Premiership wins in a calendar year in Worcester's history as well as equalling the points record. But Solly (Alan Solomons) decided Rory wasn't the guy to take over from him and after the second year, I decided to go and Mefin Davies and Gordon Ross went to the Dragons to link up with Dean Ryan again. It was a shame because we felt we had a really good coaching setup and succession plan in place.
It was great to be a part of the Georgia coaching team in the Autumn Nations Cup last year. We didn't win a game but from a coaching point of view, the change the boys went through was phenomenal.
Levan Maisashvili, the head coach, really wanted to focus on the attack and gave me a fair chunk of work, and I think the team came on massively in that area; a few of the guys have since been picked up by Premiership clubs. Levan and I got on well and I'd like to stay involved but a lot depends on whether he gets the job full-time, as he's only head coach on an interim basis at the moment.
Covid meant I wasn't able to work with the team as much as I'd have liked in the Rugby Europe Championship but I've been coaching Jacob Stockdale's old school, Wallace High School. We had one game in December against the defending champions Campbell College, my son Nathan's school, and we beat them by 30 points.
Nathan has signed a two-year contract at Ulster. He's a scrum-half, like me, but 6ft 2ins and 90 kilos. He was involved with the seniors, away to Ospreys, but ended up having to have emergency appendicitis surgery and was out for nine weeks. He's back fit now and a couple of weeks ago, he played alongside Humphs' son, James. It was good to see the old Doak-Humphreys combination playing for Ulster again!
