MY LIFE IN RUGBY
THE BRISTOL BEARS RECRUITMENT MANAGER AND FORMER NORTHAMPTON FLY-HALF AND SAINTS AND BEDFORD COACH
I'M an east London boy, originally, so it was football on Hackney Marshes for me on a weekend rather than rugby. That changed, though, when I came back from living in Nigeria and was sent to Bankcroft's School. From then on, it became a lifetime obsession.
After attending St Luke's College in Exeter, I joined Wasps in 1980, where Nigel Melville was my half-back partner. It was a teaching job that took me to Northampton a couple of years later and what I thought would be a two-year stay turned out to be 25, as a player and then coach.
Having come from Wasps where you were lost in the mire of London, Saints were very much the heart and soul of the town and local rugby. You got to know the fans, they were with you home and away.
It's fair to say the 80s wasn't the greatest era for the club, not compared to the days of Piggy Powell and Bob Taylor. After we finished bottom of Division 2, it was clear a new approach was needed, and part of that was to bring in a paid director of rugby – Barrie Corless.
At this stage I was coming towards the end of my playing days. Captaining the Eastern Counties against a star-studded Barbarians side was particularly memorable and I always enjoyed it when the big Welsh clubs came to Franklin's Gardens. But not so much going down there! Then, in my final year in 1990, we achieved promotion to the First Division.
The day after we won promotion, I coached Saints to the National Sevens title, and I continued in that role until 1994, alongside my teaching job, before the Saints committee approached me to become coach. Luckily, I had Sir Ian McGeechan's shirt tails to hang on to as he'd been brought in as DoR.
Relegation followed, again, but in hindsight, it didn't hurt us to go down at the end of that first season in so much as we were able to build a style of play that both the coaches and players were comfortable with. We swept through Division 2, going unbeaten through the season, with a huge points difference of over 600.
The first years of professionalism were a steep learning curve though. Geech was in South Africa with the Lions in 1997 when Saints went full-time.
Myself and Phil Pask were left to take the first-ever professional training session and you almost felt obliged to fill an entire eight hours with rugby. But things settled down and we built a very good squad with overseas players like Pat Lam, Gary Pagel and Freddie Mendez adding to the young local talent. Geech had become Scotland coach by this point and John Steele had come in.
Winning the Heineken Cup in 2000 was the culmination of a five-year plan to be at the top of the Premiership and Europe. We finished runners-up in the league to Leicester in 1999 and although we lost around 12 top players to the World Cup at the start of the next season, it helped us build the depth of the squad, which was to prove crucial when we finished the season with six games in 20 days. Matt Dawson aggravated an old shoulder injury in the semi-final win against Llanelli and Nick Beal broke his leg against Saracens. But with plenty of game time behind them, Dom Malone and Ali Hepher slotted in seamlessly with Paul Grayson switching to full-back for the final against Munster.
“What I thought would be a twoyear stay at Saints turned into 25”
Because of our heavy schedule, we had only one light training run on the Thursday before the final. But it didn't seem to do us any harm. I watched the match back for the first time when it was the 20th anniversary last year and we actually played a lot better than the 9-8 scoreline suggests!
My time at Saints ended with relegation in 2007 and I joined Exeter at the start of their journey into full-time rugby. A defeat at Moseley ruined our chances of promotion and that was me and Pete Drewett done for, which is fine because rugby is a resultsbased business. Also, looking at what they've gone on to achieve, no one can really argue with the decision.
After leaving the Chiefs, I returned to Northampton and started working at Bedford School and Moulton College. Current Saints players, Mike Heywood, Tom Collins and James Grayson, were at the latter. My son was assistant analysis with me at Saints – an area of the game I have a real passion for – and he's now head of technical analysis at Clermont.
In 2011, I joined Bedford and had the best part of a decade at the club. While not having as a big a budget as some clubs, we rattled a few cages, were very rarely outside of the top four in the Championship, and developed a load of Premiership-ready players, something everybody at the Blues should be proud of.
Now I'm on another exciting journey at Bristol. When you hear Pat speak, it's inspirational and it takes me back to 2000 and the brilliant pre-match talk he gave to the players before we stepped out at Twickenham for the final. He got everyone in a circle and asked them what it meant to each and every one of them. When you win something like the European Cup and experience things like that together, the bonds last a lifetime.
