Former St. Benedict’s pupil Joe Simpson will make his bow for his school old boys team this Saturday, a month and a half after his retirement from professional rugby.
Simpson, 34, played his last game for Sale Sharks in a 40-5 win against Leicester Tigers on the penultimate day of 2022, three weeks after announcing his intention to hang up his boots.
His 2023 rugby experience will be very different though, as the 2006 school leaver joins his fellow alumni in the sixth tier of English Rugby.
Priorians still have an outside chance of promotion, but the team in third need to beat fourth placed Amersham and Chiltern tomorrow, with most sides in the league around them having two games in hand on the Perivale club.
“It’s great to be back playing at Perivale,” he said. “St Benedict’s was a big part of my life and I’m looking forward to having a run out with some of the lads I’ve grown up with.”
Simpson’s bow this weekend will come in the second team, known as the Saints, as they face London Sussex in the Middlesex Merit Table’s top division.
The game kicks off at 1:30pm, with the first team kicking off straight after at 3:00pm.
2nd XV manager and Club Secretary, Mark Machado, also commented on the news.
“A regular face round Perivale over the years, it’s brilliant that only weeks after retiring from the professional game Joe is getting his boots back on.,” he said.
“Even though Joe has torn it up in the Premiership, in Europe and for England, critics have always questioned if he could cut it in the Middlesex Merit Tables in mid-February and if I know anything about the Simpson family, it’s that they never back down from a challenge.”
“I look forward to taking to the pitch with Joe soon.”
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