The former England sevens international and Leicester, Worcester, Harlequins and Bath back rower talks about his life in the game

When Ben Ryan rang me up to tell me he’d picked me for England Sevens, I just thought it was one of the lads winding me up. When I was at Uni, we’d prank call people and tell them they’d got a trial at Cardiff Blues and things like that. This time, I thought that I was on the receiving end so I told him to ‘eff off ’ and slammed the phone down, not once but twice! In the end, he emailed the head of rugby at UWIC (now, Cardiff Met) and that’s when I knew it was ...