THE FORMER PERTEMPS BEES, BRISTOL, DONCASTER, VIADANA AND DINGS CRUSADERS FLY-HALF
WHEN Pertemps Bees beat Wasps in the 2004 Powergen Cup, it was just one of those days when everything came off for me. I kicked six penalties from six in the 28-24 win, and I was convinced that the drop-goal from halfway that Paul Honiss wrongly disallowed went over, even if Mark van Gisbergen protested that it didn't.
The match was played on February 29 and the funny thing was our prop, Kevin Tkachuk, said in the hotel before the game that it was a superstitious day, with it being a leap year, and that Wasps would be in for some bad luck!
Tim Watts, the Pertemps owner, had as big a smile as anyone when the final whistle went because he put something like 100 quid on us to win at odds of around 800/1!
I think it was just a case of everyone buying into what we set out to achieve and hanging in there and giving that extra ten per cent. A good example of that was when Baxo (Nick Baxter) chased all the way back to stop Mark Denney two metres from the line. Everyone wants to knock the top team off, and in Wasps' defence, they had that every week because they had won everything, it was just lucky for us on that day that it came to pass.
Unfortunately, we couldn't back it up against Newcastle in the semi. I remember going on a tour to Australia and speaking to Noony (Jamie Noon) and Tom May about the match and they said they had seen how Wasps had been caught a bit unawares and were determined the same wasn't going to happen to them. They crossed every ‘t' and dotted every ‘i' to make sure they weren't embarrassed.
That season at the Bees was my first as a semi-professional/professional rugby player. Graham Dawe had warned me when I went for a trial at Plymouth Albion that the ‘streets weren't paved with gold' and he was right as money was never the main motivator for me; I just wanted to play the game I grew to love as soon as I took it up at Dings, aged 11.
On leaving Newbury, I recollect Keith Richardson's parting shot was that ‘Mark Woodrow wanted to be a big fish in a small pond'; he thought I thought I was better than I was. I also had similarly brief spells with Bath U21s, where I played in a testimonial for Phil de Glanville and Adedayo Adebayo, and Exeter Chiefs.
Playing for Gloucestershire alongside the Knight brothers, Dave and Paul, opened up the opportunity for me to go to the Bees. They introduced me to Phil Maynard and not long after my first training session, I was given a contract.
I had four different spells at the Bees, and life was never dull. The owners had got a bit carried away after we'd beaten Exeter and put £20,000 in the prize pot for us to share. They then raised it to £25,000 before we played Bristol at the Mem. The first we knew of it was when Phil pulled out his flipchart. Normally he'd have his pre-game notes written down on it but on this occasion, all that was written down was ‘25 grand'. He followed it up by saying, ‘this is what you get if you get the job done'. It was the shortest and sweetest team talk I'd ever heard. We put 40 points on them! We were a bit of a rag-arse rabble but somehow it worked!
I moved to Bristol midway through the season after we beat Wasps. Playing at the Mem was amazing as I grew up watching the likes of Ralph Knibbs and Mark Tainton there – when they still had letters on their backs. It was humbling to be part of the same team as Matt Salter, Rob Higgitt and Sam Cox, a good mate of mine who I spent some time out in Italy with at Viadana. I actually got to play in the Heineken Cup with them – all 15 minutes in a trouncing by Leicester, but it was a good experience, nonetheless. We also got to the Super 10 final that year, against Treviso. I wished I could've stayed longer at Bristol, and the same goes for Viadana, but my attitude at the time probably wasn't right and Hilly (Richard Hill) let me go. Being at Bristol, with all the backroom support on tap, was a massive eyeopener for me, especially coming from Bees, where everyone was part-time.
I had four different spells at Bees, and enjoyed them all – even when the club ran into money problems. If Russell Earnshaw and Eugene Martin were given the necessary budget and a decent squad, I'd back them to be really successful in a short space of time. It was the lure of playing for Russell that tempted me away from an enjoyable and successful spell at Doncaster.
Russell and I had been teammates at Donny and when he got the Bees job, I decided to follow him. We spent a lot of our time at loggerheads, despite being very good friends, as we are very opinionated about the game and Eugene spent most of his time stuck in the middle trying to calm things down. Russell had ideas that far surpass a lot of what is out there now in coaching. He is a great thinker and on the car journeys to Bristol and back that we used to share with Simon Hunt and Jack Preece, he'd be writing things he had to do up and down his arm. By the end of the journey he'd be covered from his knuckles to his elbow joint in ink. It was like he'd been tattoed which, for someone so pale skinned, wasn't a good look! Sometimes you wondered where his head was at, it was so full of ideas. On one occasion, we had to wait for four hours in Birmingham while he had the wrong fuel pumped out of his car.
“Carlos Spencer had it all and the confidence that comes with being on £380,000 a year”
After leaving for Viadana and then returning to the UK for a short spell at Cinderford, I re-joined the Bees for the 2010/11 season. It was dubbed ‘The Great Escape Part 2', but unfortunately, we weren't able to stay up. That season did still have some highlights, though, like setting up a last-minute try to level the scores and then nailing the conversion from near the touchline as we beat Bristol 35-33.
I remember seeing Dan Sanderson standing on the wing, he looked about eight foot tall. I thought ‘if I kick the ball cross-field to him, surely he'll catch it', and he did. Jack Preece was brilliant that season and I don't know how he never got to play Premiership rugby. We also beat strong teams like Rotherham and another of my former clubs, Doncaster, but we still went down.
With a new job at Western Power to focus on, it was becoming more and more difficult to balance that with my rugby commitments. My time at Stourbridge came to an end when I kind of bumped heads with Thinus Delport. He's an absolutely fantastic bloke and it's a superb club but I was a bit put out that having asked for my input on how we should play, none of my ideas were taken up. I wasn't really ‘feeling it' there, and as I was becoming a bit long in the tooth, I thought it best to go back to where it all started at Dings – but not before a fourth and final stop at Bees.
I did a bit of player-coaching late last year and realised I should have hung my boots up long before that. I was never known for making any hits but my body just feels broken, and I probably played one season too many. Even so, I wouldn't change it for the world. I feel extremely grateful for the memories and joy I have from the game and to have been able to grace the same paddock as some amazing players. I once played against Carlos Spencer while I was at Donny and he was at Northampton and he was right up there as one of the best; he had it all and the confidence that comes with being on £380,000 a year.
– as told to Jon Newcombe
