MY LIFE IN RUGBY
THE PRESTON GRASSHOPPERS HEAD COACH AND FORMER ENGLAND COUNTIES, LANCASHIRE, SALE, SEDGLEY PARK, ORRELL, NOTTINGHAM, MOLESEY, CALDY AND FYLDE LOCK
WHEN I started working as a coach at a private school last year a few members of staff came up to me and said, ‘you look amazing for 54'. I'm 41! They'd been Googling and the details of the Wales international of the same name as mine came up but with my picture. Sadly, I never made it to the top like him, although playing England Counties was a real honour and a brilliant laugh at the same time.
I think my big downfall was that I thought I'd made it when Sale signed me up in my early 20s. That's when you've got to work twice as hard but instead of doing that, I sort of coasted. I played 450 games of senior rugby but I probably never reached my full potential. That's why I try and push the young lads I coach now at Preston, to make sure they maximise what talent they have.
My involvement with Rugby Union came after I joined West Park St Helens. Up until then I'd played Rugby League and was quite good at it until everyone physically caught up with me in my teens and I wasn't the biggest and tallest player anymore. In my first game of Union I got stamped on the head and I wore a scrum cap from that moment on. It didn't deter me at all, I loved the physical side of the game and lived on the edge of the laws. Tim Fourie, one of my early mentors at Sedgley Park, said he would keep on picking me if I kept trying to go around and punch people, and I did my best to keep him happy in a team that had plenty of hard men – players like the big Romanian Christian Raducanu and Andy Kimmins, Bob's brother.
I think I was quite clever at not getting caught, though, as it was only in my last ever season as a player, while playing for Preston at Harrogate, that I got a red card, and that was later rescinded on appeal. But I did get 38 yellow cards and was cited on quite a few occasions. Northampton cited me for eight different offences in one game, they had clip after clip of me running into rucks with swinging arms. I ended up with an eight-week ban.
My relationship with County rugby started with Lancashire Colts, which is when Sedgley picked me up. Sedgley gained promotion to what is now known as the Championship and selection for England Counties soon followed. My first tour was to Romania, and when we got there the kit turned out to be manufactured by the ‘fashion' brand Fruit of the Loom. Tony Windo, the captain, was fuming. He said we're not going to represent our country wearing Fruit of the f****** Loom. So they went out the night before the Test and managed to cobble together an alternative England kit but it was a mish-mash of Canterbury, Kooga, Kukri etc.
One night we went off to find the local strip joint but got a bit lost so we paid this young lad to show us the way. As soon as we got there, he legged it at 100mph. Apparently the £30 we gave him was the equivalent of a month's wages. It says a lot about the quality of the establishment that the best act was probably one of the Knight brothers climbing to the top of the pole and trying to spin around it.
“Northampton cited me for eight different offences in one game”
Another good trip was when we went to Canada with Mark Nelson as coach. It was when the Churchill Cup was on and England A were over there. England A wanted to have a live forwards session against us and we rocked up in our team bus, which was a party bus with blacked-out windows, disco lights and a smoke machine, with the music blasting out. When the doors opened, all the smoke came out, and we strolled off looking a lot worse for wear after a big night out. Once the session started, Fullman, Wring and Luffman, the Otley front row, started dishing it out and they (England A) cancelled it after about ten minutes because it had got too feisty. That Canada trip, we had Shaun Perry, Dave Strettle and Matt Jess playing for us. Ben Foden couldn't even make the 23, it was that good a squad. The next year we went to Argentina but the tour after that got cancelled so we only played Tunisia at Broadstreet.
I was at Nottingham at the time, having joined from Orrell. I did all my own contract negotiations in those days and managed to get an additional £2,000 signing-on fee after The Rugby Times gossip column printed a rumour I'd made up on a chat forum that Plymouth and Cornish Pirates were interested in me. Nottingham met Orrell on the final weekend of the season and after the game ended and the rest of the players were having their food, (Nottingham boss) Simon Beatham invited me onto their team coach to sign the contract they'd drawn up. As we sat down, I said, ‘I don't know if I can sign this', explaining how there was interest from elsewhere. Luckily he had seen the article and the deal was done!
I had an enjoyable year at Nottingham and then almost went to France but Moseley made me a good offer and I stayed in England. We had a good squad bolstered by the dual-reg agreement and won the EDF Energy Trophy. We were probably responsible for the rise of Exeter. We beat them in a League and Cup double-header and they sacked Pete Drewett as a result, and appointed Rob Baxter. The rest, as they say, is history.
When I left Moseley, I wanted to move closer to home for family reasons. Matt Holt was coaching Caldy in Nat 3 and he said they had an investment guy called James Brown on board. About 10-12 of us, including ex-England prop Stu Turner, went there, and on good money – except there was no money. The bloke was one of those Walter Mitty-types.
Luckily for me, I'd played really well in the first few games, including scoring a hat-trick on debut, before it all unravelled. Most of the new players moved on but they kept me, on virtually the same terms.
I stayed there for a season and was really enjoying it but Nellie (Mark Nelson) phoned me up and asked me to go to Fylde, and Jason Robinson and Brian Ashton joined at the same time. I met the Fylde management at Charnock Richard service station.
During the discussions, they'd get up every now and again and walk away to have their own little convention by the arcade. After a while, the girl from the make-up counter came over to ask what was going on because she was fascinated by it all. So I told her I was sorting out a rugby contract. When they came back for the final time, I said ‘if you make it a two-year deal, throw in a car and buy my wife some make-up from that girl over there, it's a deal'. I went to the toilet and when I came back, the make-up was on the table!
“I went from being best mates with the players at Fylde to dropping them”
I had a great time at Fylde, we won our league and celebrated on the chairman's yacht. Brian was like a breath of fresh air. I remember playing at Moseley, and other different places, and they frowned upon me running with the ball and offloading. But straight away, Brian got what I was about and he got me standing at 12 to help bring the fast lads into play.
Sedgley offered me my first head coach role but Fylde were looking to make a change themselves and asked me to take over. I was reluctant at first because Nellie was still in the job, but Bill Beaumont rang me to say they would be making the change whether I accepted the job or not and I would be foolish to turn it down.
From the outside, it might have looked like I was trying to do Nellie over but it wasn't like that at all, Nellie was supportive the whole time and we remain good friends.
On taking up the job, I went from being best mates with the players to dropping them, which made the manmanagement side of things difficult. Budget cuts also came in and it was a challenging time. As a young coach, I didn't want to be remembered for taking Fylde down after so many good years so I moved on to Preston, a great club. I continued playing for the first couple of years, but for the last two, I've concentrated solely on coaching. Byron McGuigan from Sale Sharks has come in to help out.
After his altercation the other day, I told the lads what with my record and his red card, they should do as we say but not as we do!
