My Life in Rugby with Phil Boulton: ‘It was a real honour to lead Cov to promotion’
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Growing up in North Lincolnshire, Leicester Tigers were my club. I idolised the ‘ABC Club' so to get a phone call from Richard Cockerill asking me to come down and have a trial, and to then be coached by him and Graham Rowntree after winning a two-year academy deal at Tigers was a really big thing for me. I thought they'd be very hard operators but they were very patient with us young lads and the technical detail was next level.
At the time, I'd just left Worksop College Sixth Form and had been playing a bit of Champ rugby for Rotherham. A bunch of us U21s were thrust into the Titans' first team the season after the club had nearly gone bust. There was me (18), Neil Briggs and Brendan Lynch making up the youngest front row in the club's history.
Unfortunately, halfway through my Tigers contract, the RFU changed the age-group system and because my birthday is in December, and the U21s age group ran from January to January, I was kind of stuck in no-man's land and I was loaned out to Nuneaton, where Darren Garforth was in charge, completing the ABC set. He left quite early on which was disappointing, but I had a good season nonetheless and played a lot of rugby which is exactly what I needed.
Whilst I never got to play for the Tigers' first-team – other than against the Baa-baas – that period shaped me as a professional rugby player and I went back to Rotherham, who'd just pushed Leeds all the way for the title, all the better for it. But Andre Bester left in the summer and the squad wasn't as settled as it had been. Phil Werahiko then departed as head coach before Christmas after a poor run of results and was replaced by Westy (Craig West), my old U21s coach, whose passion for the club shone through. Like a lot of Championship clubs, Rotherham didn't have the greatest facilities but that never bothered me, it was the people that mattered, and there were a lot of very good people at Clifton Lane.
Bedford were looking to bolster their pack and as Rotherham were renowned as a good scrummaging unit, myself and Sam Walsh, the loose-head, moved down there the following season. I stayed for eight seasons, which tells you how much I enjoyed it. For all that time, Martin Hynes was the forwards coach. A real salt of the earth bloke, he never took life too seriously but we had a lot of success – and laughs.
One season we went to Otley and won, and spirits were high. We'd hired a double decker bus for the trip and had just set off for home and he was stood up doing his usual thing of marching up and down the bus telling stories with beer in hand. All of a sudden, there was a sharp corner and his huge frame hit the door and it flung open. We must've been doing 50-60mph at the time and I don't know how he saved himself, but he did. Fair play, he didn't spill a single drop of his beer and he lived to tell another tale … literally. I think he started wearing his seat belt after that!
Most seasons we were at the top end of the Championship, playing good rugby in front of big crowds. Getting to the Championship playoff final in 2013 was bitter-sweet in some ways, though. We knew we couldn't go up because of the ground criteria so our main motivation was to ruin it for the RFU and PRL by trying to beat Newcastle. We came off second-best but we ran them fairly close and I think it showed just how strong the Championship is as a league. Unfortunately with the season going on as long as it did, we weren't able to recruit as early as normal and that affected us the following season. Quite a few boys left and others got picked up in the Prem, and rightly so, and it was a bit of a rebuilding job after that.
I stuck around for a few more years but then it was off to Coventry, where the sole aim was to get the club back in the Championship. To captain the club to promotion in my second season (2017/18) was a real honour. As we were winning most weeks, the social side of things was good too, and people like Max Trimble and Stokesy (James Stokes) came into their own on that front.
The squad was a good mix of players stepping up from Nat One, established Championship players and a few who'd experienced the Premiership such as Sammy Tuitupou. Being an All Black, he automatically had everyone's respect. I loved how he could switch from being the joker to the ultimate competitor in the blink of an eye. You always know that if you were out with Sammy you'd have a smile on your face and a good time but he'd also have your back if things ever got out of control.
As a captain, I preferred to lead by deeds rather than words but every now and again I'd slip the odd David Brent-ism in there. Quite a few of us were fans of The Office, and it made the ones in the know smile whenever I paraphrased him. I think one of my strengths as captain was testing the temperature of the room. Sometimes you don't need to say anything; sometimes you need to gee people up; sometimes you need to relax them and say something a bit left-field.
My pre-match speech just before we ran out to play DMP definitely fell into the latter category. Despite going on to win 24 games in a row and scoring over 1,200 points, there wasn't much between us in terms of league points when we went up there to play them in February in a rearranged fixture. Our preparation that week hadn't been very good and the captain's run wasn't any good either. Five minutes before kick-off, when the ref knocked on the door, I could sense there was uneasiness and apprehension in the room. So, and I don't know where it came from, I stood up and likened what we were going through to preparing for a Tinder date. It must've struck a chord with the lads because we won 42-0. It's fair to say we didn't do the walk of shame that night!
Winning Nat 1 was a proud personal moment for me. Having been to two Cup finals with Bedford and lost both, it was nice to get over the line, even if we had to wait six weeks before getting our hands on the trophy. Promotion was clinched at Caldy but we didn't get presented with the trophy until the final game against Hull, who ironically handed over the City of Culture status to Coventry on the same weekend.
We'd recruited well for our first season back in the Championship after seven long years and finished eighth, which was then the highest position ever achieved by a promoted club. The winning habit had given us a real sense of self-belief and I think we also took a few people by surprise.
Before you knew it, I had played 300 games in the Championship at three fantastic clubs. And, last May, after 15 years in the pro game, I decided to hang up my boots. I think I realised it was time to retire when I found myself playing with the sons of players I'd played with earlier in my career – Morgan Bunting, Simon's son, and Connor Tupai, Paul's son! Covid also played a part, being furloughed was a stressful experience and highlighted the fragility of professional sport. Also in January 2022, I sustained my first serious injury – afractured wrist, which took three operations to sort out.
It was during this period of rehab that it dawned on me the soft skills that you get from being in a professional rugby environment can easily be applied to other careers as well. Amongst those is a good work ethic, I feel I have always had that. Even during my time at Tigers, I used to earn extra money by cutting the grass at the club's Oval Park training base. That continued with community out-reach work at Rotherham, working in schools whilst I was at Bedford and a bit of teaching and then coaching during my time at Coventry. Lots of hours' worth of dedication led to me getting my RFU Level 3 badge and, last season, I coached Kenilworth to promotion to level five.
Next year, though, I am going to take a sabbatical from rugby, to concentrate on my new career with Frederick Cooper, a leading paint and coatings application company in Birmingham.
