My Life in Rugby with Alex Rae – The former Northampton Saints, Saracens, Wasps and Bedford Blues lock, now head coach at Coventry, talks about his life in the game
SOMETIMES sport can be a little bit romantic and I really enjoy being head coach of my hometown club, Coventry. It's a great club with a rich history and seeing the crowds grow to 5,000 plus is incredible. To have secured the best-ever finish by the club last season in the Championship was brilliant and being from Coventry makes it extra special. Coventry is by no means a pretty city but when I'm driving into work, I feel it's my city.
Growing up, my first love was always football, I played up until first year at secondary school. The only reason I picked up a rugby ball was because there wasn't a football team until year 9 at my school. I played school rugby at Coundon Court, a comprehensive in Coventry which is where ex-Scotland second row Jim Hamilton went and former Leicester Tigers winger Leon Lloyd. I played school rugby on a Saturday morning and football on a Sunday up until I was 16-17. I then went to Barkers Butts RFC which is a famous club in Coventry where Danny Grewcock, Tom Wood, Neil Back and Hamilton played.
I played England U18s a year young in 2002 and there was a coach there called Graham Smith who went on to coach England Women and he took me to Worcester. In the age group setup at Worcester we had Dylan Hartley, Mark Hopley, James Percival, Richard Blaze. When I was 18, I was on the bench in the Powergen Cup against London Irish but never got on and then playing for England U19s at the time, Northampton came and signed myself, Hartley, Percival and Hopley all in one go.
England U19s was brilliant, we did the Grand Slam with a really strong team and I got capped at U21s as part of a Grand Slam then as well when I was a year young – but when it was my actual year to play U21s, it changed to U20s, making me ineligible which was unfortunate.
When I was 19, myself and Dylan were selected to face Leicester in the first Premiership game of the season that year away at Welford Road which was when Carlos Spencer made his debut as well. It wasn't a very memorable debut as we got beat 32-0 which wasn't a great introduction to Premiership rugby! I went on to play 12 Premiership games for Northampton and 48 in total between 2005-09.
I was there when we got relegated and was part of the team that got back up. I made some brilliant friendships and it's a brilliant rugby town. Getting to play with players like Spencer, Bruce Reihana, Steve Thompson, Ben Cohen when you're a young lad was fantastic. I'm still in touch with Chris Ashton and people like that, so that's probably the biggest memory I can take from my time there. When we got relegated it was like a reset, so to be part of the team that got back up was really good.
“England U19 was brilliant. We did the Grand Slam with a really strong team”
Northampton never kept me on for whatever reason but I really enjoyed going to Bedford Blues in 2009. Mike Rayer, who is still there now, is a brilliant coach who plays a brilliant brand of rugby and I was fortunate to play 156 times for Bedford across two spells. Some of my best friends in rugby came from there, so I can't speak highly enough of my time there.
Saracens came along when I was at Bedford in 2012. I only played a couple games while I was still contracted to Bedford but I was lucky to go to Hong Kong and play against Asian Pacific Barbarians which was a good experience. I played one game in the LV Cup but felt I was never really at Saracens as it was more a result of the relationship between the two clubs, helping them out.
However, Wasps bought me out of my contract at Bedford halfway through the season in 2012-13. I was at an age where I was desperate to have another go at the Premiership and that came along. Leaving Bedford was a really tough thing to do and it never worked out at Wasps. Bedford went on to have a really good year reaching the Championship final against Newcastle Falcons, so I was gutted to have missed that.
In 2013 I went on to Jersey from Wasps and spent four years there; three as a player, one as a coach.
I love Jersey, my youngest son was born there so we've got really fond memories of being there. It was only their second year in the Chamu pionship when I joined and I was captain of Jersey for those three years; it was all about establishing Jersey at the time. I was given the opportunity to go into coaching as forwards coach so that was the first step in my coaching career. At the time I was coaching some players who went on to be inter nationals like Gary Graham, Nick Haining (both Scotland), Callum Sheedy, Kieran Hardy (both Wales), so to play a small part in their journey was really good. I was devastated to see their demise last year as when you've been part of building something you have an attachment to a place. I've got a lot of friends and fond memories there and it was really sad to see a club like that run down because there's some good people who lost their jobs. It's nice to see Jersey Amateurs pick up the mantel and no doubt they're going to rise through the leagues which is important for the people on the island having a team doing well.
The standard of players in the Championship is still really good and it's a good breeding ground for any potential Premiership, URC or inter national player. The funding has regressed which has had an impact across the board, hopefully they can get that ironed out and we can have a real prosperous second tier of English rugby and a pipeline to providing inter national players. It's a fantastic league, you only have to watch Coventry's recent game against Ealing the other week which was two very good teams going at it. Hopefully there's an opportunity to showcase that – the Premiership Cup this season has been great giving exposure.
Being a forwards coach was a natural step as I'd been a lineout caller before. Stepping into the head coach role last year meant there's no one above me here at Coventry so I went from forwards coach where you're just looking at scrums and lineouts to dealing with agents, signing players and letting people go. Being responsible for the whole team means more pressure but it's something I'm really thriving in and enjoying. I'm lucky I've got some really good coaches around me at Coventry.
I'm ultra ambitious, I want to coach as high as I possibly can. I'm privileged to be at Coventry, we want to get better and improve year on year. We want to keep pushing Ealing, who are the team to beat but we want to keep developing players which we've got a good track record of at the minute. We like to think we've got the best rugby programme in the league, so we want to keep building on that. But I want to coach in the higher leagues as well, so if there's a route with Coventry that would be fantastic, if not I've got to keep doing a good job and hopefully move into a higher league.
