SOMEONE pointed out to me that winning silverware doesn’t happen very often so I can count myself as one of the lucky ones having celebrated two Championship promotion-winning campaigns with London Welsh, a County Championship win with Lancashire and a Lancashire Cup win with Waterloo. I came close to a Championship hattrick with Leeds but we we lost the 2017 play-off final to London Irish.
Two spells playing in New Zealand really cemented my belief that I wanted to be a pro rugby player. The first came after I deferred my final year at Uni and I played alongside Tom Wood, the former England flanker. I enjoyed it so much, I didn’t want to come home but I had to complete my studies. While back at Uni, I played a bit for Waterloo and that’s when I got a phone call from Graham Dawe asking me to go down to Plymouth. After a season there, I went to Dunedin to play for a club called Green Island. Former All Black, Ben Smith, was our 13.
Two more years at Plymouth followed and in one of the seasons in the old Nat One, I scored 236 points, falling just short of the club record. Playing for Dawesy was an experience to say the least! He always used to line up on the defensive side in training and loved to dish out a few cheap shots.
We had three or four scuffles but there was a mutual respect. He never gave too many compliments away, he always kept you wanting more from him, which kept me motivated. I do remember one phone call after a bottom-four relegation play-off game against Bees away, when I’d kicked seven penalties. He said, “I’m just ringing to see how you are and to say well done. I’ll see you on Tuesday.”
That was quite a big thing coming from him. Even when I signed for Bath, he text me. He did so much for Plymouth Albion – about ten jobs.
That season I scored all those points for Plymouth, I finished with the Bill Beaumont Cup success at Twickenham. I used to love playing for Lancashire. There was a bit of a no-kick policy whereas at Plymouth the ball rarely got past 12. It was good to have that balance. A lot of the Lancashire boys I was with at Sale Jets played for Lancashire, people like Paul Arnold and Matt Riley, and it was good to be a part of that side.
I signed for London Welsh in 2011 and we achieved our goal of winning promotion. Lyn Jones was a genius of a coach, he really was. He studied the opposition and found ways to out-smart them. He would always watch what people were doing off the ball and devised a number of sneaky moves. It opened my eyes to a different game and I’ve taken a lot of what I’ve learnt off him into coaching.
We won four of our first six games in the Premiership, including against Bath, but then it was discovered Tyson Keats wasn’t registered properly and we were docked points and things went downhill. I belatedly made my Premiership debut against Sale in the February, playing 9 with Gavin Henson at 10. My mate was getting married out in Canada that weekend, and I was best man, but obviously I couldn’t go.
I missed the first half of our second Premiership season due to the ACL injury I suffered in the Championship semi-final at Leeds, which kept me out for nine months. I’ll always be grateful to Rob Vickerman for the way he shielded me from suffering any more damage. He could see I was in a lot of pain after my knee buckled, and aware that a breakdown was happening nearby, he bridged his body over mine to prevent anyone falling on top of me. We never got to play together at Leeds because he’d retired by the time that I joined the club from Ealing.
Another bad injury while at London Welsh, this time to my MCL, in a training game against Dragons, caused me to miss a lot more rugby. Quins were interested in signing me and I turned up to meet Conor O’Shea with my leg in a boot. Not the best look, I know, but they were great and understood I’d be ready for pre-season. Ultimately, though, I think it was my lack of game time that meant the deal never went through and I signed for Ealing instead. Ealing was a great move and I really enjoyed my time there with a great bunch of lads. But then Bryan Redpath rang me in the January and I decided to return north at the end of the season.
That first season with Leeds (2016/17) is my fondest of all my time as a pro. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great first year at London Welsh and made some very good friends, but I was moved around the houses a bit, at 9, 10 and 15 and never really settled position-wise. Bryan and Jimmy Lowes made me first-choice scrumhalf and I was vice-captain and captain and felt really valued. Leeds is an amazing city and there were no egos in the squad and the coaching was great. Jimmy was all for looking after the lads, and if I had a bad game, I felt really, really bad and would apologise to him. He had something powerful, an aura about him.
Losing to London Irish was a crucial moment in the club’s history. After the match, the owner came into the changing room and said, “don’t worry lads, we’ll keep the squad together and we’ll go right after it again”. Nothing happened. Four months in, we were having crisis talks, they were getting boys off the payroll, we lost the sponsorship from the university, no money was coming in … it was rubbish. I felt sorry for Jimmy because we had such a good team and he was getting boys pulled from him. We lost awesome players like Ryan Burrows and Jonah Holmes. Before Christmas I bust my thumb. They were talking about offering me and Rich Mayhew a three-year deal. I went away with my girlfriend to Dubai, proposed to her there, came home and the next day I went into Jimmy’s office and was told “there’s no contract for you”. To be fair to him, he told me straight away.
I said to Jimmy, “do me a favour, please pick me if I am fit because I need to get another contract”, which he did. But, at the end of February, one minute into the game down at Pirates, I snapped my MCL. I thought “that’s it, I’m done”. As luck would have it though, Bath needed an experienced head at 9/10, to guide the youngsters through and provide cover for Rhys (Priestland) and Freddie (Burns). I had the option of going to London Scottish, which would have enabled me to be nearer my wife who is a lawyer in London, but the money was pretty rubbish and I was never going to say no to a club like Bath.
Tough sledding: Alex Davies in action for Bath. Getty images
Unfortunately, it didn’t go how I wanted. Those two years at Bath were the toughest of my career. I was lonely and mentally I was really struggling. Having been in the team week in, week out at Leeds, and been a leader, I’d found myself going three to four months without a game of rugby. Obviously, I understood that Rhys and Freddie were internationals and better players than me but there were times when I could have been picked due to injuries and I wasn’t.
On one of the few occasions I was on the bench, I had a big kick to win at Wasps in the European Cup and it just drifted wide. That kind of summed up my time at Bath: it was going over, going over and then faded away. I did have some good moments. One of my best memories was the second to last game against Wasps, Freddie went down with cramp and I came on with 20 minutes to go and we got the tries we needed to get a bonus point win to stay in contention for Europe.
Coaching the Bristol club, Old Reds, in National 2 was brilliant for me because it gave me something different to focus on away from Bath. I did the backs initially and was then made head coach. Bath were good in that they allowed me to spend weekends with the team whenever I wasn’t required by them.
I’m now coaching full-time. With my own businesses, AD Elite Kicking and a half-term coaching camps, and my new role as backs coach at Rosslyn Park and the coaching I do at Hurst Pierrepoint College, you could say I’m a busy man!
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