Young Gun: Tom Dunn – Bath hooker

Tom Dunn rose so rapidly through the Bath ranks last season he had a parody Twitter account set up in his name – and now ‘the Dunnanator' has vowed he'll be making more waves this term.
An academy loose-head prop this time last year, 20-year-old Dunn's conversion to hooker was fast-tracked in the winter after a positional crisis at the Rec.
He came off the bench during the ten-try thrashing of Calvisano in the Amlin Challenge Cup in December, before being thrust in for his first start the following month against Bucharest Wolves, going on to make seven appearances for the first team.
Dunn was taken aback by the speed of his promotion but had no trouble fitting in with the first team squad, and having signed a senior academy contract in April, he's determined to prove he belongs.
He said: “I got my break from nowhere – I wasn't training with the first team but I was called up to the bench and suddenly I was on the pitch.
“I had been at Bath since I was about 15, so I knew a couple of the older boys.
“They made a parody Twitter account for me – The Dunnanator.
“It wasn't the image I wanted to have of me and it got to the point where people didn't know it was a spoof.
“On the playing front, everything went too quickly for me to realise what was happening. It was five or six weeks in before I fully realised I was playing for Bath and living the dream.”
Dunn was a football fan as a kid and didn't start playing rugby until he was 12. But he made up for lost time by racing through the levels, from Corsham Rugby Club, through the county circuit and onto Bath's radar in just three years.
Dunn cites Chippenham's year seven coach, Tim Dunford, and Alan Lowe, community rugby officer for Dorset and Wiltshire, as a major influences in stoking the rugby fire in his belly.
But he's the first to admit he stumbled across the sport by accident.
“My mum and dad went on holiday and I was staying at my friend's house and he took me along to Corsham,” he explained.
“I was a footballer until I was about 12 – I then played rugby and football for about two years and, when I was 14, I chose rugby, hands down really. I just enjoyed rugby a lot more. That's when I signed for Chippenham.
“Alan Lowe was a big influence on me. He took me for my first gym session and showed me the ropes.
“I was very lucky really. I don't know what I would be doing if not for rugby.”
Now thriving as a hooker, after spending much of his formative years concerned about his physical ability to make it as a prop, Dunn agrees he has a hunger for first team rugby.
“I was never really big enough to be a loose-head prop, so becoming hooker solved my problems,” he said. “People always said I might not be big enough.
“I played back row at school and, after the coaches at Bath saw me playing there, they decided I could be a hooker. I wouldn't say I was a natural thrower, but I had some pretty good coaching.
“I have had a bit of shoulder trouble so I've been rehabbing over the summer. But I am hoping to get on the pitch as soon as possible.”