Bathed in sunshine, nothing but cloud-free, bright blue skies in almost every direction, the only exception being the presence of that most famous of ‘non-rugby’ rugby landmarks, the 163ft Great Pagoda at Kew Gardens. Even without the rugby, there’s reason enough to want to be at the Old Deer Park, London Welsh’s historic ground on an unseasonably glorious day like this in April.

The sun’s not the only one to show up: turning up in their droves are the London Welsh faithful, who give true meaning to the latter, having followed their side in serious numbers as they climbed their way up the leagues, bringing the Exiles ever-closer to a league more befitting of their history within the game. 

Bracknell isn’t a game which usually pulls in the punters, and it’s not every club at level 5 of the English pyramid (or any pyramid for that matter) that can bring in four-figure crowds, but here we are, among what must be close to 1,500 rugby folk for the final home game of London Welsh’s Regional 1 South Central campaign. 

This season has seen them take the league at the third time of asking, securing a fifth promotion in eight seasons, an ascendency that took them from Herts/Middlesex 1 to National 2 South. “It’s 1,417,” says Danny Griffith’s, the club’s chair, correcting our crowd estimate. “We have it independently verified so we know for sure.”

Ironically, we’re speaking to Danny after the match, as he was absent due to illness that day. “I had a massive allergic reaction to something,” he explains, “nothing I’ve ever had before, I was head to toe in hives, my lips were double size, mouth swollen, I was just lucky it wasn’t anaphylactic.

“Not being funny,” he adds, “but if I’d gone to the game, I’d have just looked like a spotted gnome walking around the club…

“I was gutted, absolutely gutted not to be there…”

The day was as perfect as you could want from a day at the rugby. Even without an affiliation to the home side, the presence of the likes of British & Irish Lions legend John Taylor at a 400-strong pre-match lamb shank dinner; a live soundtrack provided by a young Welsh choir; and just the general feeling you get at a club which was once on the brink and is now enjoying the fruits of a hard-slog journey back, transcends the ground. Maybe not to Bracknell, who are soundly beaten 50-12, but even they enjoyed a cold pint in the sun afterwards, having pushed London Welsh for the whole game, the scoreline perhaps not completely doing justice to their efforts.

Not that London Welsh is a good place for any side to go. Before they fellto title rivals Jersey in February, London Welsh hadn’t lost in 23 matches, home or away. It’s the kind of form and dominance not seen at the ground for many years. They’ve known the best of times, it’s on almost every wall. One wall in particular, next door to their own museum, The John Dawes’ Room, tracks every great moment with a timeline, and it’s got plenty of ‘stops’. It tracks myriad moves across London – Stamford Hill to Tufnell Park, Kensal Rise and Cricklewood, Raynes Park, West Kensington, Hendon, Hampstead, Acton, Leyton, West Ham, Herne Hill – before home was found in the shadow of the pagoda on Kew Road.

It tracks the successes on the pitch: from being crowned the best club in England and Wales in the early-70s, to agonising cup final defeats at Twickenham, and the richest of Lions history. This was, after all, the club that paved the way for the ‘Welsh-style’ of play, and had seven players on the Lions tour of 1971 which culminated in a still-iconic Test series victory over the All Blacks (winning 2-1, with a fourth Test being drawn).  There are also promotions to the Premiership and more silverware in the British & Irish Cup, before it stops
in 2017, with liquidation, although perhaps in a show of defiance that the club was not done, it’s not actually a ‘full stop’, but an ellipsis that follows the words ‘The Journey Begins’. “We’re now going to get another bit made for this to cover all the promotions,” says Joe Jones, who finds us perusing the timeline while he looks for a place for the choir to practise. He’s the chair of the London Welsh Rugby Choir, a group set up by four friends (Joe being one of them) as a way of finding a good excuse to go on the British & Irish Lions tour of 2005. It went better than expected. “We had such a good tour, such a good welcome, from that welcome, we then got invited to the Olympics, onto the radio, we did Hong Kong Sevens,” he explains.

And for anyone who’s been a regular at Old Deer Park for the past seven season, they’ve provided the musical score for their rise back to the national leagues. Although Joe is more keen to talk about the London Welsh side of the 70s. “They had 14 internationals in 1971, I think the only non-international was Freddie Davis the prop,” he says. “But I didn’t start playing until 1973, because I was at university.

“When I came to London I needed to find friends,” continues Rhondda-born Joe. “ I had no idea you could just turn up at London Welsh, one of the biggest clubs in the world, with a pair of boots, and just ask to play. But you could back then.

“I always thought we’d do it, we had the right mindset,” says Joe, switching topics swiftly to the current generation’s fifth promotion. “And we’ve scored 900 points…”

The John Dawes’ Room is now open, Joe takes us through to a room adorned with walls full of shirts, assorted caps, rugby knick-knacks and of course a Grogg or two, and another London Welsh stalwart Morlais Evans joins the chat. “It’s our style, and we got  past the 1,000-mark today,” he says, picking up on Joe’s comment about 900 points. “We’re used to free-flowing games, and it was only when Jersey came to play at home a few weeks back that we lost, but that was their big hurrah. If Jersey had lost that game, their season was over, and they played out of their skin, especially second half. We led all the way through until the last minute.”

“The ref added ten minutes,” chips in Joe.

“Unbelievable,” agrees Morlais, “some of our boys didn’t know defeat until then: we’d won 23 or 24 games on the trot.”

Joe is keen to sing the praises of the London Welsh style some more. “I’ll give you an example,” he begins, “it’s always been about playing attractive rugby. The first game I ever played for London Welsh, away somewhere, I had the audacity to kick the ball for touch and after game I had to stand on a stool and drink a pint as punishment.

“Nobody at London Welsh kicked for touch, you always recycled the ball through hands.

“And it was John Dawes who changed everything,” he continues, “he introduced fitness regimes at a time when nobody even trained: it was turn up on Saturday, smoking a fag, and have a couple of pints after game.

“He also brought everyone into the idea that the ball moves faster than a man so if you pass the ball,  you’ll beat the man. He realised we had small forwards, but if he made them the fittest in rugby then we could move ball around, so rather than getting bogged down in a maul we’d get the ball going.

“Look at this photograph,” says Joe, changing topic again, “It’s the Prince of Wales, now the king, opening our clubhouse in 1969 – that wouldn’t happen to a normal club anywhere else in the world.”

It’s not just rugby brains that make Joe passionate about London Welsh, it’s the beauty too, as he points out of the window to the ground. “And I don’t think there’s a nicer ground in Britain actually… just look at it.”

After the match, while the celebrations look set to go on long after thesun has set on leafy south-west London, there are speeches from the terrace of the clubhouse, Champagne corks popping, fancy dress at every turn, and a fitting sea of red that would even make those other lions proud. The prize for winning ‘Regional 1 South Central of London & South East Division, English Clubs Championship’ is a humble wooden plaque adorned with those exact words, but the real reward has been the revival of a club that could easily have just left things as they were – with an amateur side already gracing level 9 of the pyramid – and not bothered the upper echelons of club rugby again. 

The record up to this point makes impressive reading. In 2017/18, level 9, the first post-pro-era season, they took the title with 21 wins, from 22; a year later, twenty wins, one loss, and one draw – 0-0 with rivals Old Streetonians. Year three, seventeen wins, one defeat. A fourth consecutive promotion was temporarily put on ice due to Covid’s intervention, before a fourth full season – twenty wins, four defeats – delivered promotion to where they stood this campaign, level 5. 

It took them three attempts to leave this notoriously difficult level, as they finished sixth, third and now, finally, first, with just the sole defeat a slight blotch on an otherwise perfect record: 21 wins, one defeat, points for 1,041, points against 393.  “It was a huge step up [to level 5], especially the quality of the top four or five,” explains Danny. “We also had Jersey coming into that league, so we knew it was a task, but Cai said ‘we’re going to win it’ – one of the players even got it tattooed on them last year, they were so determined to win this league, and believed they would. 

“But the way we did it,” says Danny, “if you’d said that at the start of the season, they’d have bitten your hand off, the results we’ve had, the way we’ve done it, we’re ready to go up. It’s a massive challenge in Nat 2, we’re up against fantastic teams, but if we can maintain position, acclimatise, work out what we need to do, then within the next three years our aim is to be a National 1 side, which is the max we can go with current model. We look at Richmond and what they’ve done to become a sustainable side at that level…”

Neighbours Richmond have been the inspiration behind a few things that London Welsh have got right, even before the professional arm of the club was liquidated in 2017. “When I was chair of the amateur side before,” begins Danny, who took over from Gwyn Williams for the 2018/19 season, “you always had the backing of the pro side with the facilities and finance, but when they went, we were completely on our own so we’ve had to find the money, and that’s been difficult.”

Luckily, even when the London Welsh name disappeared from the Championship, it was already living a second life in the lower reaches of the pyramid with an amateur side [launched in the 1990s]. “The reason we separated the clubs was because of Adrian Davies, who had come from Richmond, and was on our board at the time, and he’d learnt the lessons from Richmond, so we protected the London Welsh side,” says Danny. “It’s a fallacy that London Welsh got kicked to the bottom of the pile, because the [amateur] team already existed [in the league], it wasn’t like what happened with Richmond: they ceased to exist, and people don’t get the nuance with these different scenarios. 

“Although,” he admits, “it would’ve been good if [the pro side] had been able to carry on a bit higher up.”

It looked onerous on paper, but a return to National League levels was completely realistic. “We knew that four promotions would take us into the old National 3, so level 5, and that’s possible to do within a five-year plan,” says Danny. “We took that to the board and the penny dropped, ‘Christ we can do this within five years’, and get to a decent level of rugby.

“We put that to our supporters and they were absolutely fantastic, and then we were a team playing in Herts Middlesex 1 with crowds of 800 turning up because they bought into this vision. We weren’t knocked out, we were going to fight our way back, this was project reset.”

Sonny Parker, who’d been involved in the pro set-up, Cai Griffiths – another former player – and Will Taylor, formed the first new-era coaching team. And their charges were already in place, a group of London Welsh amateurs who’d just finished in the lower reaches of level 9. “It essentially was the same squad, the difference was how they were taking it seriously, training regularly, it was the attitude – they suddenly realised they were the first team, and people were going to come through the gate to watch them play. 

“Even as amateurs they had a much more professional attitude. It was a strange one: there was a group of players who gave up – regular training wasn’t for them, fair enough – but we had Cai as a player-coach, and having someone who knows rugby like that, an ex-pro playing alongside you, means you up your game. It was the little things, how he controls the game, it makes a massive difference.”

Naturally, success brought more players. “For people coming up from Wales, we were a good team to go to so it [recruitment] became quite organic, although Jon Shankland – a former player and director of the club – was also reaching out at every opportunity to find new players…”

The financial model was the same as Richmond. “We pay travel costs, give them food, and loads and loads of beer post-game,” says Danny. “We’re brutally honest up front about trying to do it sustainably. One thing I can’t dismiss is the sponsors, Chestertons, and the community, who shored up holes when we were struggling to make money for things like rent – ODP is not a cheap facility. At the moment, it’s the best part of £300-400k a year [to run the club], and that includes the whole community side, youth, minis, rent, feeding players, kit… 

“It wasn’t sustainable to pay people,” he continues. “It was about people wanting to be part of the club, and for them to go out on the field at Old Deer Park with 1,400 people supporting them – for a 24-year-old that’s pretty amazing. Those kinds of memories are ones that stick with you for life compared to playing on a park with two guys and a dog. So, we were lucky to retain players and people…”

They’ve also found other ways to bring in the crowds, and extra revenue. “We started charging on the gate because of two key drivers, one being, ‘why would someone buy a membership if it’s free to walk in through the door?’ The other thing was the British attitude of, ‘if it’s free, it’s rubbish’. And people who come here now are getting a decent quality of rugby. Now with members getting in for free, we’re taking about £1,500 with casual supporters coming through on top of that.”

Balancing the books is of paramount importance, it’s what stymies any talk of going all the way back to the top. “Realistically, the model we had as a pro side was unsustainable; we just had one guy, Kelvin [Bryon, who passed away last year], propping it all up, but what we’ve got now is working.

“It’s a multi-spoke wheel, I can’t point to one person, one sponsor that, if we lost them, it would be disastrous; we’re now in a good financial position, with the supporters, with a nice level of sponsorship. And much as we are grateful for sponsors, it’s not just one, we’ve spread our bets, rather than having the situation we had before.”

Danny believes that the lessons of professional rugby, learnt the hard way in the early days by London Scottish and Richmond, latterly London Welsh, and more recently London Irish, Worcester and Wasps, still haven’t been heeded. “Rugby union is like rugby league was in the 1980s,” he says. “Far too much money sloshing around, people getting paid ridiculous money for low spectators. Back then it was league and the likes of Jonathan Davies and John Gallagher getting paid huge salaries for playing in front of some 5-6,000 crowds – that’s similar now with union.

“I do wish there was a definite split between pro and amateur,” he concludes, “where for instance Premiership and Championship are paid, and everything below is amateur, as opposed to getting paid £300-400 – that just ruins it. Something has to give in the next three to four years, it can’t carry on, it’s just not sustainable.”

Not every ground in south-west London is equal. For every fan-packedOld Deer Park, historic Richmond Athletic Ground, or shiny Prem-standard Twickenham Stoop – not to mention that big lump of concrete down the road – there are also plenty of park pitches, full of lovely surprises. “The first session we took was next door to Pools in the Park: we couldn’t train at our place during the summer because of the cricket, so we were there picking glass off the fields,” recalls Cai, taking us back to the beginning.  “There must have been 35 players there: the majority of the players that year were the players who finished sixth the previous season.”

He echoes the thoughts of Danny, with the change in mindset and improvement in coaching having an obvious impact. Even when Sonny left after one season, and Cai had to step up, he was well-supported. “Sonny left and then Tom May came in as coach,” he explains. 

“Because we only have three subs, sometimes you have to look at it strategically. Who’s the best person to play? Who are you going to put on the bench as one back cover?  And because of that and a couple of injuries, Tom had to come in a few times. It was the same with Steven Shingler recently, he stepped up to play, and Tommy Bell too, both were in a coaching role with us, but have played when needed.”

The key thing for Cai, is that while the club have had a handful of ex-pros put on the jersey in their rise, it’s only been as a stopgap, the hard graft has been done by the squad. Perhaps the only exception is Cai, a tighthead prop by trade, who played Wales at age grade, before spending a decade with Ospreys, winning three Celtic League titles and an Anglo-Welsh Cup and having a stint at London Welsh in 2013, in the Championship, when they secured promotion to the Premiership. “I would have preferred if Sonny had stayed for another two years,” admits Cai, “Yeah, but things happen, I enjoy that leadership role but it’s hard to be director, forwards coach and player… 

“Within the first three seasons, I got 55 caps, so I was consistently playing, but the majority playing second row, because I think I had better props than myself playing.”

When rugby broke for Covid, Cai saw it as a chance to regenerate the body and go again for another two years, but instead his body ‘didn’t get better’, and he settled into a rugby life on the sidelines.

He’s carried out the role with aplomb, barely missing a beat in gaining year-on-year promotions. “Every year we’ve lost one game,” he says, “apart from when we came up to level 5, we lost six or seven our first year. 

“But every year we’ve had a game that shocked us, reminding us that, actually, we’re sometimes not as good as we think we are.”

For Cai, the journey has been a literal one, taking him to places he never got to visit as a player. “I love going to different rugby clubs and just seeing what that history looks like, so that was a really good because I’ve never experienced that. When I turned pro at seventeen, it was just straight into the top end and no sort of community game.”

He’s also clearly grateful for the path his life has followed since professionalism left him at something of a dead end. “I was lucky that retirement was my decision,” he explains. “It wasn’t a career-ending injury or anything like that. I did twelve to thirteen [professional] years, I think I had my fill, if you know what I mean. It wasn’t like I had only three years and I got injured and then I’m out. 

“I think coming out of the game is always a challenge but my fiancée has always been very supportive.

“My final contract finished in the May with the Ospreys, I’d just started dating her, I didn’t have a job, I didn’t have anything, and she said, ‘Oh, come to London. We’ll make it happen’.”

Like a rugby Dick Whittington, Cai arrived just with three bags and his retirement package (which would last six months), but after six weeks of searching he still had no work. “Then Bury St Edmunds came to offer me a player-coach role and then a week later I got a job offer as a training provider.”

While Sonny would bring him to London Welsh after a season, Cai now continues to balance his coaching with a role in sales for a training company (a different one). It’s a balance he’s been happy to manage, not least because of the success, but also because he’s keen for London Welsh to do the right thing, hence the word ‘sustainability’ being something of a catchphrase for anyone involved at the pointy end of the business for the club. “We’ve paid more expenses because costs are skyrocketing, and we don’t want players to be out of pocket,” he says. “But I’ve heard some horror stories out there where some players at this level get paid £250-£350 a game and that is absolutely disgusting. How is that sustainable? So for me, it’s, let’s look after the players. 

“But there’s no difference to what Shingler was getting paid compared to, say, one of our props – they are getting paid exactly the same. 

“I think for us it has to be sustainable, so if that means we’re here [National 2] for another three years just to find our feet to kick on again, then so be it. We’re targeting the top six going in there. 

“We are lucky that we’re probably coming out of the hardest league at level 5, so we are battle-hardened by having three years in that league. 

“And I think what I’m really excited about is to have five subs as well,” he adds.

With so much success – few coaches can boast records such as his – you’d think turning professional would be a consideration. “Shings, our attack coach, he’s with Ealing women and it’s definitely going to be his career, he’s going to go to the top, he’s so talented. But for me, it won’t be, I’ve got no aspirations at all.

“I’ve seen right at the top,” he adds, “I’ve seen the demand on those coaches, the time that they spend day in, day out, just reviewing games, coaching and everything else that comes with it. 

“And I’ve done that from a player’s perspective, and I haven’t got the energy to do it. I’ve seen it. They’re on their laptops 24/7, reviewing the games, sorting session plans, everything is just too demanding.”

Even his own future at the club seems to be ever-changing. “At one point, I thought this might have been my last season,” he admits. “It was just my work, it’s going really well and basically doubled in size, so it’s that balancing act. Sometimes it’s a challenge because I need to be in Manchester in the day, then need to come in on a Tuesday evening and still perform as a coach. 

“But,” he adds, “I’ll stick at it for another year.”

And if you win National 2? “Well, there’s always one more year isn’t there?”

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Danté Kim

This extract was taken from issue 30 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

On the Tuesday after England became world champions at Twickenham in September, while many of the squad are still appearing on screens and in studios across the world, voices still hoarse from the celebrations, one player is quietly going about their domestic chores. It’s not that the player in question didn’t play a big role, quite the opposite: she scored two tries in the final, and even captained the side en route to winning the World Cup for the second time in four attempts. Nobody could question her right to be front and centre, but that’s not the way Alex Matthews likes it. “Yeah, been a little bit busy,” Alex tells Rugby Journal, “but it’s back to reality now, back to normal life, I’ve just been doing the food shop and catching up on an awful lot of washing, I’ve done about four loads now. I’ve just been unpacking, getting organised…

 “It just feels normal,” she says of the past few days, “celebrating, it’s been lovely, lots of drinking… I saw the family yesterday, it was nice to see mum, she was reliving it all, getting emotional, comparing 2014 to now. She was looking back at pictures and seeing nobody in the ground [in 2014], versus the unbelievable scenes we’ve just had.”

A home final in front 81,885 at Twickenham, and not just any old 81,885. This was a crowd unlike any the old stadium had ever seen, fervently passionate, celebratory from start to finish, even those whose side didn’t win. It was a carnival. “Getting off the bus at the Allianz was unbelievable,” continues Alex. “The sea of people, looking up at the stadium and seeing every stairway, every stand full of people overlooking from the balconies, Twickenham never had a reception like it… 

“That’s the thing, for people who weren’t there in person, it is difficult to capture that, you can’t really describe it,” she says, reflecting the views of so many who were there. “I walked down [from the bus], saw Mum, and gave her a cuddle and had a cry before I went in. She was right at the front in a bright red jacket. 

“As soon as we cuddled, I burst out crying. I think it was just what I needed,” she admits. “I was quite overwhelmed the day before and morning of, not overwhelmed just, ‘wow this is going to be special’ and I think I needed to let it all out. By the time I got to the changing room, I was, ‘right, let’s go do this’. I’ve asked for one photo of the south stand to be printed out, as that [the atmosphere] is what made the day. Winning was the cherry on the cake.”

Every final is a finale, but not all are quite as fitting as this one. It was less a rugby match, more a coming of age of the modern women’s game, making the loudest statement possible that it couldn’t be ignored anymore. The crowds didn’t just gather for England either. “In New Zealand [for the World Cup] it was just the home team getting crowds, but the fact that Samoa and South Africa experienced their biggest crowds ever too, that made the tournament for me,” she says. “Just the amount of love every nation has been given. The New Zealand captain did a much better job of summing it up than I could: she said they were expecting nobody at Twickenham [New Zealand played their bronze final there], so were taken by surprise, when people showed up for them, it was one big celebration…”

Process-driven is how Alex describes the England World Cup camp, and, well, normal, a word that she keeps using. “Honestly, it’s so bizarre,” she says. “It was like the Six Nations, so normal, it felt like an ordinary camp, which is exactly what Mitch [head coach John Mitchell] wanted. It’s a big enough occasion already, speaking among the leadership team, we wanted to make it normal.”

That word again, she says even up to the semi-final against France, while there were some nerves, it was no more than she’d expect from a Six Nations clash.

Early in the tournament there had been a slight change from the norm for Alex: captaincy against Australia, in the absence of Gloucester-Hartpury clubmate Zoe Aldcroft. “That was pretty cool,” she says. “Mitch told me a week before, I gave him a punch on shoulder and said, ‘what are you doing to me?’. I wanted to say no, but the opportunity to captain a team at a home World Cup, well, I never thought I’d be able to add that to my CV, and again, having those girls around me, they’re great.  Mitch just said ‘you lead from front already, don’t change anything at all’.”

She also had to say the “last words before we went into battle”. Memorable? Not for Alex. “I can’t even remember what I said,” she admits, “I’ve got it jotted down somewhere, but I don’t know what I said. I know at half time it was very simple, because Australia had showed up, and what we were doing wasn’t working, the girls wanting to go off script, but we were very much ‘stick to game plan, keep it simple, let’s enjoy it, don’t go and do anything special’.”

A slim 19-7 half-time lead, became a 47-7 thumping by full-time; captaincy was a doddle. “We weren’t panicked by it, but it definitely gave us focus areas…”

England revelled in having a week between games, meaning they could slip into their usual routine for training camps: low-key on Monday, building up as the week went on. The squad was under the spotlight, which is exactly as they wanted it, being able to spread the women’s rugby gospel with such huge audiences watching as important as any win they could deliver. Different personalities emerged from within the squad, more voices for the next generation to relate to. 

Not one to post on social media – she says she only looks when she’s tagged in something – Alex did break the habit with a post after the Australia win: 

‘Yesterday was for the quiet ones – the overthinkers, the reflectors, the planners. The ones who thrive in stillness, notice what others miss and only speak when their gut rumbles. A reminder that it’s ok to not be the loudest or boldest, that impact doesn’t need volume and you don’t always need the spotlight to shine.

‘There’s strength in quietness’.

It resonated, not just in likes. “The amount of messages I’ve received from parents and children saying what impact we’ve had on them. I was just saying I was doing it for quiet people, I didn’t want to do it [the captaincy], I stepped out of my comfort zone, to be a role model for a different audience of people.”

And what an audience. For the final alone, the BBC reported viewing figures of 5.8m, a number that swelled to 12m across the entire tournament. 

The moment with her mum as she got off the bus aside, Alex only felt a little nervous before the final. Training was good. “Boring as it sounds, it was no different and we actually had the best week of training,” she says. “The way we trained on our tough day, if we played like that, we were in a good position, everything seemed to be clicking. At the same time, if we’d had the worst team run, we’d probably have said, ‘well, we’re going to play well tomorrow’.”

The team had got all of the ‘emotional stuff’ out of the way earlier in the week, the presentations, the video from home, so that they could focus on the job in hand, which Alex didn’t underestimate. “The last time we faced Canada at the World Cup, in the semi-finals [in 2022], was one of the hardest games I’ve ever played,” she says. “I remember coming off that pitch more exhausted and emotionally drained than in the final. 

“We saw how physically dominant they were against New Zealand [this year], which is a challenging thing to do, and how quick they were, but I was excited, I was up for a challenge, that’s what you want…”

On match day, the backroom staff had family and friends in, including coach and former captain Sarah Hunter’s baby. “It was really family-orientated, calm, so it was a very nice touch.” And then the anthems. “Oh, I’ve never sung a national anthem like it,” she admits. “I’m normally mumbling, so that nobody else can hear, but this was the loudest I’ve ever sung. I was just feeling this huge pride of being up for the challenge, ready for whatever they threw at us, I knew it was going to be a good fight.”

Emotions were kept in check. “Sadia [Kabeya] walked out [at Twickenham], and immediately said, ‘I think I might cry’. I said, ‘you can’t cry now, too soon’. It was just a whole range of emotions, I was just excited to be there. When we walked out, Mo [Natasha Hunt] gave me a tap, a little smile, and it was full on from then.”

Canada came out firing, scoring first, but few watching ever felt England’s third world crown was in doubt, Alex included. “I can’t remember the score, but I think it was only ten minutes in, and thinking ‘we’ve got this’,” she admits. “I don’t know what it was, but I remember being confident that unless we do something really stupid, we’ll have them. They kept coming at us, but our defence won us the tournament. We spoke about it before; our physical defence really showed.”

After Canada had scored in under five minutes, Ellie Kildunne then did her magnificent thing by finding space in a phone box to put England in front, Amy Cokayne stretched the lead, and then Alex stepped up for a try that seemed to secure victory, even with just 25 minutes played. The England scrum had driven Canada back, Hunt picked up, Alex broke too, took the pass from her team-mate and made it 21-8. There was no way back for Canada.

“Me and Mo all week, were talking about just backing our instincts, backing each other,” says Alex. She scored again, powering over from close range, for the final try in the 33-13 win. Job done, ecstasy right? “Again, it was a bit like 2014, I didn’t really feel like anything,” says Alex. “Jonny Wilkinson refers to it as just another win, and it is. Obviously, seeing other girls get emotional, getting happy, one girl cried a bit, but it felt like another game. Everyone puts so much expectation on it, when it happens, it’s ‘ah okay’. But the bit that got me was looking around the stadium, seeing it still full, people still cheering, as we were getting medals, all that happened, and it was absolutely rammed. 

“We were on the pitch for hours, I think, I’m not too sure,” she continues. “Once we’d done laps and thanked everyone, I tried to find the family, they wrapped me up in cuddles – there was a nice little picture of it – and said they were so happy, lots of cuddles and kisses. Mum was emotional, she had tears in her eyes because she was so happy, she cried at everything, and she’s the stable one in the family. When I scored, she cried both times. I’m not sure if that was because of the pint she was enjoying or what, bless her…”

Afterwards, there was a reception at Twickenham – with a free bar, Alex is keen to point out – then the Cabbage Patch, with Alex finding her way home at 3.30am. “Some girls were still going at 6am,” she adds. 

The next day, they were all off to Battersea Power Station  for the balcony presentation and party. “We bumped into two men [at Battersea] who had been to every single men’s World Cup, and this was their first women’s World Cup, and they’d travelled around the country, and said it was their best World Cup ever. For two men’s supporters to say that, we must be doing something special.”

Now, it’s back to normal life. As she’d already seen Lady Gaga perform, she declined O2’s offer of tickets to her gig, and left the team hotel on the Monday after the final. “I do feel a little bit lost now I’m out of it,” she admits, “leaving the hotel, leaving everyone after we’ve been together for months and months. Now I’m not living to a schedule, I’m going to have to work out what to do with my day, how is this all going to work? Even going food shopping was a bit overwhelming.

“We’ve been in such a complete bubble with the same people all the time, I don’t even know how to eat breakfast. This morning, I was piling my breakfast with eggs to get the right amount of protein and I had to remind myself I don’t need to do that, so I put some back.”

There was no emotional goodbye, with all the players dispersing at different times, to different places. “I left on my own,” says Alex. “It’s a bit like a prisoner being released, although you get the blues after any tour.

“I think visiting my  parents was a bit surreal,” she continues. “Everyone down the road stopped in to congratulate me, which was nice. I pulled up to my house in Gloucester, and the neighbours were coming out to say well done, and they’ve not met me yet, I only moved in during the Six Nations, so I’ve not been there. 

“But today is the first normal day, I’ve not had time to think about much, just got the life admin to catch up on…”

TJ’s is the kind of café we all know. Serving up giant plates of all things good and fried, but given the menu also has plenty of evening meal options, you know it’s a place for the locals to always find someone to chat to. And on the eve of the World Cup, for one old lady with a shopping trolley, grabbing a cuppa after a busy morning shop, that was Alex Matthews. We’re at TJ’s partly for the fry-up, but also to get Alex’s back story, something which the Gloucester pensioner may have already gazumped us to. Curious onlookers have also stopped for a chat, we are just a couple of hundred yards from Kingsholm, and we’ve got Alex wearing an England shirt, so it’s not hard for them to put two-and-two together, albeit some are coming up with five. “They thought I was Mo, blonde girl!” laughs Alex. “They wanted me to sign a picture from last year, and they were like, ‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ pointing to Mo. She’s half the size! Me and Zoe get mixed up all the time though.”

Gloucester-Hartpury are now the dominant force in English women’s club rugby, threepeat champions, so getting recognised, sometimes correctly, isn’t uncommon.

“More of the [Gloucester] men’s fans are getting behind the women’s game, because it’s a rugby city,” says Alex, “even our end of season was down at the Food Docks, they had a big screen, and I wasn’t expecting anyone to come, but it was full of fans, local people, getting behind us.”

Alex’s first title win came with Richmond, her first club, where she played alongside sister Fran, and it was while at the south-west London club, she got called up for England, making her debut in 2011, aged eighteen. “I have been doing it for a very long time, haven’t I?” she says. “But I also think, where’s the time gone? The season is so busy. I almost haven’t had time to stop and appreciate it all either This season, especially, I did think, ‘God, I have been doing this a long time’.”

Does she feel old? “No, I don’t,” she responds, quickly. “It’s crazy. And I think Mitch puts me in the ‘old’ group, because obviously it’s just the four of us – Scaz [Emily Scarratt ], Mo, Marlie [Packer] and me – from the previous World Cup [win in 2014], but I’m like, hang on, they’ve got like, four or five years on me, don’t put me in their bracket. So, I think I do get caught up with the ‘old, old’ group, but I’m not, I’m just ‘old’.”

Born in Camberley, Alex made the move to rugby to follow Fran, although being in the youngest possible minis group, she decided it wasn’t for her.  “I didn’t like it, I think because it was too kiddy-like,” she says. “Even at that age, I was super introverted and awkward. It was all ‘scream louder, I didn’t hear that!’, and I was very much, ‘oh, get on with it’. So, I stopped for a year, and then I went back, I think because I was watching Fran from the sidelines, beating up the boys, and I wanted to join in.

“Then my coach, Bob Jones, who was this big, bald, proper London-accented bloke, scar all down his face, was just shouting at us. And I was like, ‘I love it’. He just told you how it was, he didn’t shy away because we were little kids. Under-9s was my favourite year because it was tackling. I think the boys were quite scared of it, whereas I used to love the one-on-one tackle drills; they were like little battles.”

There was little visibility of where rugby could take Alex. “I think I had one photo of Paula George that my dad cut out of the newspaper, and that was the only memory I have [of England women], otherwise it was just whatever Fran did.”

Career-wise, the plan was just getting through school, although a PE teacher pointed her towards Hartpury, where she could ‘get to do rugby and do A levels on the side’, which sounded good. “I absolutely loved it. You get that freedom; you’re sixteen, yet you’ve got the schedule, and you can pretty much train like you’re a professional while doing the A levels. And then, obviously, you’re surrounded by friends all the time, and have the evenings to do whatever. It’s good fun.”

And then, easy breezy, she was playing for England. “It was almost like, and it sounds silly, but for me it was just the next step,” she says. “Everyone talks about barriers and all, but I’ve had it plain sailing really. I did county, I got selected for regional, one step into the next. I followed my sister into senior rugby and so on, time flies by and look where I am, a fourth World Cup.” 

Sevens has played a huge role in Alex’s rugby life, good and bad. Either side of the fifteens World Cup win in 2014, she was part of the sevens set-up, but the experience wasn’t always positive. So much so, she had to be persuaded to return to the programme after the 2017 fifteens Rugby World Cup. 

England’s fifteens boss Simon Middleton was keen for Alex to have her future sorted before the World Cup and, at the airport to New Zealand for a World Cup warm-up, coach Matt Ferguson took Alex to one side. “He said, ‘what are you going to do?’. I was like, ‘I don’t know, I don’t like sevens, it’s not for me. I hated it’.” 

It’s easy to forget that these were pioneering days in women’s rugby, professionalism was still new, and being a pioneer isn’t always a good thing. “The first two years I was in sevens, I don’t know if it was the environment, but I was miserable,” she admits. “It’s my biggest regret, because I was full-time with Fran and I remember driving to training at Surrey Sports Park, and thinking, ‘this is all I’ve ever wanted to do, to be a full-time rugby player, this is my dream, I should be happy, but I don’t want to go’.”

Such was her unhappiness, it manifested in a complete lack of confidence. “I think that fear of failure was drilled into us,” explains Alex. “I convinced myself I couldn’t catch or pass a ball. And I’d been playing rugby all my life, I was in the top fourteen players to be contracted, and I’d convinced myself I couldn’t play rugby. 

“I actually got really ill,” she continues. “I don’t know if it was this environment or my own stress, but I developed an autoimmune disease as well. I rapidly lost 10 kilos, everything was over working. You can have overactive thyroid or underactive but basically my thyroids were releasing too many of the hormones. 

“I just wasn’t getting fitter, all I was doing was extra running sessions, I couldn’t lift a barbell or do one pull-up. Nobody was paying any attention. And it was Fran that said, ‘Look, can we get bloods done or something?’. After that I said, ‘I’m done with sevens’. I wanted to go back to fifteens and find the love for rugby again.

“Individually I absolutely loved the girls there, but the standards they expected...” she pauses. “I don’t know what it was, it was quite an unhealthy environment, carbs were frowned upon. You’re in an elite programme, and yet you feel like you can’t eat carbs. It was professional, but so unprofessional. You look back on it, we didn’t get anything right in that sense. Obviously, it was early days, and you’re going to learn from it all.”

The programme back then was very different to what the Red Roses have today. “At Surrey Sports Park there’s a corner cupboard , the closet – that was our meeting room. We were basically in the janitors’ corner cupboard, that was where our lunch was, there was no daylight or anything. We were just in a cupboard. That wouldn’t have helped my mind state, either.

“My sister, equally, she didn’t really enjoy it,” adds Alex. “Even now, I’ll speak to Marlie [Packer] about it, no one particularly enjoyed it, but it was never anything we spoke about. I think because it was something you’ve wanted for so long, it was almost like you had to be grateful, you know, ‘oh my god, we’re finally professional’, it’s just what it is…”

The saving grace for Alex was twofold. “I went back to fifteens, and got on medication,” she says. “Actually, in the last few months, I’ve been ... what’s the word? Basically, I haven’t got it anymore. The meds have levelled my bloods out, I started putting on muscle again, and then just enjoyed rugby again.”

She did return to sevens, in 2018, although perhaps not with exactly the right attitude. “I basically told myself that by Christmas I was going to leave the programme, before I’d even signed anything,” she admits. “We only started in September, but then he [coach James Bailey] worked his magic and I enjoyed it.”

The two years after she rejoined the programme proved to be the most important, almost paving the way for what she would achieve later in her rugby career. “Just from the point of letting go and just playing, it almost completely changed my mindset,” she says. “James Bailey used to speak about loving the game. I think the first two years in sevens programme, we thought professional meant everything’s got to be perfect. 

“But I think this time [with sevens in 2018] was when I properly fell in love with the game again. I’d always been such a perfectionist and worried about failure growing up, but I just let go of that. And I was like, ‘all I have to do is enjoy rugby’, I’ve been doing this so long that the rest of it will take care of itself.”

The sevens might have been a mixed bag, but her career has, to date, been topped and tailed with World Cup wins in fifteens. “I think I was just happy to be there,” she says of the 2014 final. “I’d just finished my final year of uni, which was stressful, I had a hip operation in October because I wasn’t actually part of the training squad for a lot of the World Cup. I got back before our training games against the USA and had to do a fitness test.

“I just remember how much it meant to the old girls,” says Alex of the 21-9 Rugby World Cup final win, also against Canada. “They’d been to finals, lost them, it was a similar story, I just knew in the build-up how much it would mean to them to win, so I almost wanted to do it for them.”

It’s an experience she’s been able to apply this year. John Mitchell, she says, holds the key to the togetherness of the current crop of World Cup winners. “He’s good,” she says succinctly. “I mean I was a bit anxious when he arrived, obviously change and all of that, and you read the media, and they don’t seem to like him, but I think he’s been so good for our culture. It’s the tightest I’ve ever felt as an England squad; everyone gets on like, there’s less little cliquey groups. It’s so much more open and honest, fluid and less serious.”

One of Mitchell’s key things has been players finding their ‘why?’. “Mine changes,” she says. “At the beginning, I obviously wanted to be like my sister. Then it was to make my parents proud. Then, I had a brother that died of muscular dystrophy just before I was born, he was sixteen, and all he wanted to do was kick a football around, and he couldn’t, because he didn’t have the muscles to do it.Hearing the stories made me think, actually, I’ve got this body, let’s take advantage of it. My parents always said as well, as long as your body’s moving, keep doing it.”

Alex truly loves rugby, which is why it was so hard when her sevens life became difficult. The love of rugby, together with all of the above, is now the ‘why’: it always has been really. “You know when you’re little, you have a nightmare or whatever, and to get myself back to sleep, I used to picture myself playing rugby. Rugby, just thinking about it, is what relaxed me.”

Fourteen years of World Cups, Olympics, Commonwealth Games, title triumphs and continually striving to be the best is no easy thing. “Yeah, yeah, it’s hard to try to stay at the top all the time,” she considers. “I think I did lose a bit of purpose, just a little bit, for a couple of years, which is why I came to Gloucester.”

She joined Gloucester-Hartpury before the title-winning had begun – it’s no coincidence they started after she arrived – because of one person. “To train with Zoe [Aldcroft],” says Alex. “She’s literally the sole reason I came to Gloucester. She’s just got something about her, hasn’t she? We say she’s ‘tapped’! It’s just her mindset . I just find her inspiring, she’s so competitive, I wanted to train around her, be around her. If I was younger and I had to pick a role model, it would be Zoe.”

Alex’s dad, Dave, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2023. She found out in New Zealand, while on England duty in WXV. “We played Canada and then the morning after, I got a message off the doc saying to come see them when I was free,” she explains. “I was like, ‘oh God, my gum shield’s triggered something, I’m going to have to do an HIA, because I’ve got a history of concussion.

“I wasn’t expecting it,” she says of the news delivered, “I was absolutely blindsided. But Fran was with the refs out there as well, a couple of hotels away, so I got her to come to the hotel, and broke the news to her. I’m glad I could do that because otherwise she’d be in Australia  – where she now lives – by herself and she’s the softer one of us, I say she’s the nicer one. 

“I didn’t want to tell anyone for that whole week, because I didn’t want people asking me questions, to impact the team. I told Amber Reed, she was my roomie. And she said, ‘I’ll ask you one question a day, and that’s it’. She was very normal with me, but I just didn’t want to affect anyone or impact anyone. 

“I don’t think people realise how intense camps can be, because other than being in the shower or going to the toilet, I had no time to process anything or cry. Even when I went out for a walk one evening, I bumped into all the Welsh girls. It was Sisilia [Tuipulotu, a Gloucester-Hartpury team-mate], bless her, and she just caught me and gave me a big cuddle and didn’t ask anything.

“It was hard,” she continues. “It was one of the toughest weeks of my life. Even in the scrums in New Zealand, when it was silence, I remember just thinking of my dad and then being, ‘no, now’s not the time’. It just hit me in the most random moments.”

At the final whistle against New Zealand, when England won 33-12 , it did hit. “Sunts [Sarah Hunter] gave me a hug and I just cried, let it all out,” she recalls. “And I think that was the cliff of it. I just broke down there, everyone thought, ‘oh, it’s because, yeah, they’ve beaten New Zealand’. 

“I think England rugby even used it on a social thing, ‘Oh, they’ve beaten New Zealand. This is what it means’. Nope, nothing to do with that.”

England had offered to pay for the sisters to fly home, but they knew Dad wouldn’t want that. “‘Don’t change your life for us’, they always said,” says Alex.

However, she did consider it, including the possibility of moving to Harlequins to be closer to her family home in Surrey.  “He walks around, a bit unstable on his feet, just in a lot of pain all the time, and it ages you so much. Early on, when he started losing his hair, we used to call him a little chick, when the hair started growing again. 

“I remember at one of the Gloucester games, just catching him in the stand and, he just looks so old, that got me as well, with his little walking stick. He was just so, like, he’s always been so healthy, always active. He’s a little gardener, that’s his retirement job. So yeah, it’s hard.”

The challenge is also worrying about her mum. “I end up finding myself worrying more about my mum than I do about my dad. It’s horrible seeing your dad in pain and deteriorating, but your mum’s going to be the one left with everything to deal with. So, yeah, I worry about her a lot.

“I Googled it [prostate cancer] out in New Zealand, and the best-case scenario was five years; it’s crazy, but my dad is a stubborn man.”

The World Cup hasn’t just given both Mum and Dad Matthews even more reasons to be super proud of their epic daughter Alex, it has also led to more conversations, more awareness, about her dad’s condition. “We’ve had support from the rugby cancer charity [Rugby Against Cancer], which was quite nice that they reached out, and Prostate Cancer UK reached out too, offering support, inviting us to events, and other little things like that have been nice…”

Repeating the fact she’s not one of the ‘old, old’ England girls, she’s not yet too worried about what happens next in her career. “I worry a little bit about my career, I think because I’m one of the first to do solely professional rugby, I’m not sure what’s next, rugby is all I’ve known,” she says. “I don’t know what’s out there [for a post-retirement job ], I don’t know what I want to do, everything I keep doing just comes back to job satisfaction. 

“I’m not bothered necessarily about money or recognition or anything, if I’m enjoying it, and I help people, then that’s fine. But I still don’t know what that [job] is…”

There are other considerations about her future too, including a family. “Yeah I want to have a family,” she says, “but I’m 32 now, when do you do that in rugby? That’s the side of it the men don’t have to think about. They can still have a family, their wage will help support their family to move around with them, club to club. 

“And I think that is definitely where the women’s game’s going to struggle like that, because it’s hard, I know Abbie’s  [Ward] done it, but I don’t think it’s easy.”

All of that is for another time, though. Right now, Alex is happy in her rugby. She’s finding success, yet again, on the pitch. “Yeah, I am happy,” she repeats. “I’ve come around at a good time to be a part of all these incredible teams.”

Retirement isn’t something she’s considering, as she says, again, she’s not in the bracket of Scaz (35), Mo (36) and Marlie (36), so isn’t ruling out another World Cup. “I’ll be there in four years,” she says, “I’m in my own little bracket, because I was so young in 2014, but I haven’t thought that far ahead.

“I honestly can’t take anything for granted: anything could happen between now and then that rules you out, I don’t know. To be honest I’ll see where my body is, but I think I’ve got more to give on the pitch, and from that sense, I don’t think this is my last one, but we’ll see whatever else pops up… 

“When do I call it a day?” she asks herself. “I don’t want to be rubbish and just carry on playing, I don’t want to play beyond my time, and I want children, I’ve got to fit that in sometime. And I’ve also got to start looking at careers outside rugby, so when do you fit all that in?”

Who knows, but if anyone can make it all work, it’s Alex Matthews, double World Cup winner, double try-scorer, multiple club title-winner, Olympian, sometime captain, and most definitely in an England bracket all of her own.

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Richard Johnson

This extract was taken from issue 31 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

Irish hard-rockers Thin Lizzy were known to reserve their biggest hit, The Boys Are Back in Town, for the very end of their gigs; a signature sing-a-long to send punters home happy and fulfilled. Allegedly when Phil Lynott, Thin Lizzy’s frontman, penned the words to the smash hit, he was writing about a criminal organisation in Manchester who he encountered in his youth, the notorious Quality Street Gang.  

But as the song sounds out at Sixways, before Worcester’s first home game in three years, the Quality Street Gang are far from the returning Warriors fans’ minds. The song instead takes on a new quality – triumphant, defiant – as the moment these fans have been dreaming of for three years finally arrives. 

Under new ownership, with new players, but at the same stadium, playing in the same colours, with many of the same fans who watched them until the seemingly bitter end three years ago, Worcester Warriors returned in a pre-season friendly against the best team in the country, Bath. 

It has been 1,089 days, exactly one week short of three years, since Worcester Warriors were suspended from the Premiership and placed into administration by the RFU. This marked the end of a painful saga in which former owners Jason Whittingham and Colin Goldring failed to pay players and staff, amid mounting debts of £25 million and unpaid tax bills.

Likened to ‘the death of a dog’ by former director of rugby Steve Diamond, Worcester’s decline was slow and agonising. The club’s final hope appeared to lie with Atlas, a consortium made up of former Warriors executive director Jim O’Toole and business partner James Sandford. Atlas attempted to rescue the club from administration but consistently disappointed fans with poor communication.

Despite being named the new owners in May 2023 following a £2 million deal, Atlas failed to make the further £1 million payment needed to relaunch the club. Control eventually passed to Wasps’ owner Chris Holland in September 2023, after Atlas defaulted on a £1.5 million loan from his company, Loxwood Holdings, which had been made to help Atlas secure a lease for Wasps to play Championship rugby at Sixways.

For their comeback match, Worcester, who last year celebrated their 150th birthday while in administration, have commanded a sell-out 9,000 crowd and as the first few people wander through the gates, some two hours before kick-off, you get the sense that this evening could build into something special.

Among the early arrivals is Marcus Mulcahy, the chair of the Worcester Warriors Supporters Trust (WWST). His gaze is fixed firmly on the pitch, as if he can’t quite believe his club is back, and he can’t help but ruminate on the past, given how long it’s been since he last stood in this spot, waiting for a game. “Losing your rugby club is a sort of slow, waking nightmare really,” says Marcus a little absently, still looking on at the pitch. “The immediate aftermath was the most painful bit. The administrators came on the radio quite a lot and they were interviewed in the local press. 

“We thought we might be back that season or the next, but then when the players all started leaving to go to other clubs it was clear that it wasn’t going to be an easy sort out. From there you’re just hanging on every little bit of information you can and following social media, where there’s loads of rumours. It’s soul-destroying; people really do live and breathe the club.” 

As people drift through the fan zone, snacking on food, grabbing drinks from the bar, and soaking up live music from a local band, the WWST are hard to miss. Their gazebo is pitched right next to the face-painting tent, a prominent fixture in the bustling scene. “We were supposed to have a cabin,” Marcus says through gritted teeth, his tone edged with disdain. “But it was stolen from the supplier’s warehouse on Monday.”

This raises the obvious questions – who steals a cabin, and why? – but Marcus doesn’t have the answers. The WWST tent, however, is thriving. Nearly as busy as its colourful neighbour, it’s packed with people eager to talk to Marcus about the latest goings-on at the club. “When the club was just about to be sold for the first time to Atlas,” remembers Marcus, “we thought that nobody’s actually paying any attention to what the supporters of the club are thinking, there was nobody shouting in our corner.

“In November 2023, we started taking members, and we quickly gained a reputation as troublemakers. We tried to do things like nominating the stadium as an asset of community value, which was really well received. This was done to prevent anything happening to it architecturally which could make it less desirable as a rugby stadium, and possibly delay the return of Worcester. 

“We stepped away in the end, because it created problems for investment. When we knew the right people were in charge, we didn’t want to pursue that and make it more difficult, but we’ve got the legal basis as a supporters trust to potentially get more involved if the finances don’t work out in the long run, but we have no reason to believe that’s the case. I suppose we’re a supporters’ club on steroids.”

Their unprecedented legal prowess aside, the WWST have also thrown themselves into preparing Sixways for the return of matchday. With hundreds of volunteers turning up, the somewhat grandly titled ‘Sixways SOS Days’ have seen people scrubbing dusty, long-forgotten seats that haven’t been used in three years, washing the windows of the South Stand, and picking litter from the car park. It’s unglamorous but vital work, especially with the very real possibility that the stadium could be close to full this season. “Initially, the owner’s target was to sell 1,800 season tickets, and I think they went up to 2,100,” says Marcus with an incredulous shake of the head. “I was saying that we should get at least 3,000 but they’ve nearly sold 5,000,” he continues. “To get that number of people coming back when we’re not in the top tier is incredible; the appeal of the club is there and people are coming back in huge numbers.

“It’s the sense of belonging that’s important and it’s not like just going to watch your local club game, it’s different when there’s a stadium full of people with the same interest really.” 

With still ninety minutes to go until kick-off, the fan zone is already heaving; old friends reuniting, the buzz unmistakable. Things are going better than even Stephen Vaughan might have dared to imagine. Worcester’s new CEO is a proud son of the West Midlands. Once a footballer for Walsall FC, his playing days were short-lived (“due to an acute lack of talent,” as he puts it with disarming ease). From there, he pivoted into the travel industry, eventually finding his way into sport, where charisma, rather than footwork, would become his defining asset.  “I spent five years working on London 2012, as managing director for commercial and branding,” explains the quick-talking Stephen. “My first role in rugby was CEO at Gloucester, where I spent eight really happy years. Then I moved to Wasps and the Ricoh Arena, as it was at the time, to take on a much bigger challenge.

“We got to the Premiership final, and everything was going fantastically well, except for the unfortunate financial situation we inherited, which was obviously bleak. It was such a shame, because the actual business of Wasps was flourishing. We were making a lot of money from the venue, the team were performing extremely well, but the debt the club had snowballed over the years and it became very clear that the finances were built on straw.” 

Just weeks after Worcester Warriors entered administration, Wasps followed suit, burdened by a staggering £95 million in accumulated debt. The club’s parent company, Wasps Holdings, along with three firms linked to the Coventry Building Society Arena, cost taxpayers millions.

Dozens of local businesses were also left out of pocket. Wasps owed the government £16.1 million from their Sport Survival Package loan, the largest share of the £124 million distributed among all thirteen Premiership clubs, as well as
£2.1 million in unpaid taxes to HMRC.

Stephen and Chris Holland, former non-executive director and chief operating officer at Wasps, were left to pick through the mess Wasps Holdings created, with Chris being named as owner in December 2022.  “Having to deal with a club going under were the darkest days I’ve ever had in my career,” Stephen continues. “It was awful speaking to players and staff when I was a member of staff who was also being made redundant.

“I was approached by a number of different sporting clubs after that, because although perception is reality, the work that we did at Wasps would have been an incredible success story.” 

From Wasps, in November 2022 Stephen took the job in cricket everyone was shying away from, the CEO of Yorkshire in the aftermath of a racism scandal and a wrecked commercial model. Amid hefty points deductions, Stephen helped Yorkshire win promotion back to the first division of the County Championship and helped rebuild its entire commercial and financial structure. 

He had taken things about as far as he could with Yorkshire when Chris mentioned the prospect of taking Worcester Warriors out of administration. “Chris had three key areas that needed focus, support and management and leadership,” outlines Stephen. “First the actual site itself, redeveloping the many acres that surround Sixways. Next was to get the venue back up and running, making profit rather than being a loss-making organisation, and finally to get professional rugby back into Worcester. 

“So, I came in on the premise that I would help him out, as all of those three things are well within my experience.” 

As Worcester take the field for their warm-up, they’re greeted with a hero’s welcome. There’s a ripple of excitement in the stands as fans nudge friends and family, pointing out new names, new faces, some familiar, most not.

For many, it’s a first glimpse of a team still taking shape. It’s a fascinating scene: home supporters trying to map out their own side, half-guessing positions, scanning shirts, quietly sizing up what this new era might look like. Before a ball is kicked, the new-look Warriors complete an impromptu lap of the pitch, drawing a swell of applause. 

Each player returns the gesture with an open-handed wave, a mix of gratitude and showmanship, before heading down the tunnel to change. Talk of the squad dominates the day. There’s admiration, some curiosity, and no small amount of wonder at how it has all come together, somehow, just in time. “From a rugby perspective, we really should have done a Netflix documentary on how we put everything together,” laughs Stephen.

“We had to agree to pay all of the rugby creditors, and at that point, we could have made the decision, rather than to pay multiple millions of pounds, to say, actually, we’ll do what other clubs have done in the past, and just start at level ten, but then nobody gets a penny.

“Then I sat down with a pen and pad, and thought, ‘right, I’d better think about pulling a rugby club together’. We think that we spoke to over six hundred players, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

“I won’t give names, because some of these players have moved on elsewhere, but we’re talking very recent British Lions speaking to us about coming here.” 

Recent news reports have suggested that several rugby creditors, including former players and staff, have yet to be paid, potentially leaving Worcester vulnerable to regulatory sanctions from the RFU. In a now-deleted online post, the club stated that a significant number of creditors have already received payment and emphasised that all actions taken have been in line with the RFU’s outlined provisions.

Regarding the squad-building, given the calibre of players in contention, and new squad members like Josh Bassett who have stepped down a division, it would be easy to assume that Worcester’s new owners are spending heavily to assemble the squad. But Stephen is quick to dispel that notion, perhaps as a quiet way of drawing a line between this new era and the one that came before, without ever naming names. “I don’t want to talk about what happened here previously. It’s a little bit like Voldemort and Harry Potter, where if I mention the names of the previous owners in front of the staff, everyone sort of stops. 

“If you’re coming to Worcester, you’re coming to buy into the project, you’re not coming here for the money, because guess what? Our budgets are Championship budgets. We won’t be paying as much as some of the teams in the Championship this year, I’m sure of that.

“There’s a misperception, because some of the names that we have in here, that we’re spending highly. In reality, I think the attraction of coming to Worcester Warriors is that we have an amazing stadium, we have a Prem-level programme, Prem-level coaching, and players will be looked after as if they are in the Premiership, but on a Championship budget.

“There hasn’t been one person that’s joined us for a pay rise. Not one person from any club has come here on more money than where they were previously. There’s certainly been no poaching of players, everybody that has come has been out of contract.

“We owe it to Worcester Warriors players, supporters and staff, that we don’t let the business get to that point again. So, it actually becomes quite easy to make decisions, you can be quite non-emotional about it, because you know that you’re doing it for the right reasons.”

Worcester’s return to rugby’s second tier was confirmed in early April. On the surface, it felt inevitable, a club projected to inject nearly £30 million into the local economy through tourism and matchday footfall surely had a place waiting for it. 

But in speaking with Stephen, it becomes clear that nothing about the process was guaranteed. “Applying to the Championship was so hard,” says Stephen with a hint of a groan. “I will admit it, of the three things I came in to sort out, I thought that getting back into rugby was going to be an armchair ride. My view was, we have an amazing stadium, we’re in the middle of the country, incredible facilities, people knew Chris, and what a stand-up guy he was.

“We had people like myself who have got lots of pedigree within elite sport, a great head coach in Matt Everard and everybody that we’ve got for medical, strength and conditioning, they’re all from the Premiership. 

“So I thought it would be, get the cigars out, Worcester are back in a great league. It was the absolute opposite. We were forensically audited and checked against all of the key criteria on many occasions. To the credit of the RFU, I don’t have any issue with them not wanting a repeat performance of what happened previously at Worcester or anywhere else. 

“We have been held to a higher account than any other club would be. So our performance going forward will be subject to a higher scrutiny. You could argue that everybody should have the same level of scrutiny, but we appreciate that we’ve come from a different place.”

With kick-off imminent under the lights and the Cecil Duckworth Stand– recently renamed to honour the former chairman and local hero who passed away in November 2020 – packed and gleaming, the stadium announcer at Sixways sets the tone. “It’s been three long, torturous years without the club,” he begins, before urging the crowd to raise their voices for the return of their Worcester Warriors.

As pyrotechnics fire and Warriors-coloured smoke billows into the night air, the team charges out from the tunnel to a roar. A moment later, head coach Matt Everard emerges, quieter in his entrance but no less focused. He moves with intent to the sideline, joining his coaches with a set jaw and watchful eyes.

A former openside flanker for Leicester, Wasps and Nottingham, where he retired as captain, Matt has steadily built a reputation as one of the game’s rising coaching talents. After five years at Wasps, he moved to Leicester Tigers, initially as senior academy coach and then as defence coach. Now, for the first time, the head coach job is his. “I’m probably a little bit fast-tracked because I retired quite young at 28, went straight into coaching and had to learn quickly at Wasps,” says Worcester’s head coach. 

“Then overnight Wasps went under, and I had the good fortune to go and join Leicester Tigers, which was a brilliant experience. 

“I’ve probably been fast-tracked because I was a bloody average player, and I’ve found a real love for coaching earlier than a lot of players that were better than me, that had longer, more successful careers, and therefore came into coaching later.

“For me, the metrics of success are winning silverware, which we didn’t do while I was at Leicester. So, did I feel like it was a successful coaching campaign when I was there? I had a great time and learnt a lot, but we didn’t win, so, I don’t know.” 

Despite his own doubts, many would consider Matt’s time at Leicester a success. The Tigers reached a Premiership semi-final in 2022/23, followed by a Premiership Cup final the next season, and last year boasted the second-best defence in the league, behind only Bath. 

He was still with Leicester when the opportunity at Worcester first surfaced, though, by his own admission, he was kept somewhat in the dark during those early stages. “It was November last year that I first had a phone call from Chris and Stephen,” recalls Matt. “We’d all been affiliated and worked together at Wasps, so we all knew each other pretty well.

“At that point, it was all quite hush-hush around Chris owning Worcester and Sixways. They invited me for a coffee at Sixways, so then I drove down on a day off, got there and asked what the hell was going on. 

“Chris explained the situation and then Stephen talked about the project and how he wanted to build something at Worcester. They said they were really interested in me being head coach and assembling a team and a management group from scratch. 

“I remember driving home, my mind was absolutely going like the clappers. I sat down with my wife and gave her verbal diarrhoea for about two and a half hours about what an amazingly unique opportunity that is in sport and in rugby. 

“I think she could probably see the excitement in my eyes. At the end of that evening, she said, ‘you got to do this, this sounds unbelievable, and look how excited you are’. I probably knew that night that it was something I really wanted to be part of.”

Matt was ‘stood down’ from his role as defence coach at Leicester in February and announced as Worcester’s head coach in May. But he was far from idle in the intervening months, working behind the scenes with Stephen and others to pull the personnel of a rugby club together, basically from scratch. “Steve and Chris were incredible in giving me autonomy in putting the squad and staff together,” says Matt. “We definitely looked at the top four clubs from last season in the Prem, the URC and the Top 14, and what the demographic looked like in those clubs.

“That was a really useful project to do, and we understood the importance of getting players with senior experience, who have played in some huge games for huge clubs and what winning looks like. We also needed the energy and enthusiasm of talented younger players that are just so desperate to slingshot their career in the right direction.”

One by one, the new Warriors were revealed, often in playful, creative fashion. The club’s Instagram account leaned into the mystery with its recurring ‘Guess the Warrior’ posts: cryptic player facts teased in the captions, fans piling into the comments with their guesses, before a Top Trumps-style graphic finally gave the game away.

Away from social media, the team went hiking and camped in the Malvern Hills, where a few of the less outdoorsy members of the side failed to bring tents and had to sleep in their cars, and had bonding sessions where beers were passed around freely. Since then, it’s been all about the rugby, and how to challenge in a new-look league for all participants, not just Worcester. Matt is ready for the challenge. “I think the Championship is getting far better, it’s improving again and again,” considers Matt. “Ealing have deservedly been the flag bearers for a while, when you put people like Craig Newby into Cambridge, you put people like Dave Ward into Ampthill, they’re going to improve those clubs massively and the league as a whole. The clubs are all really well run, and there’s some brilliant coaches like Craig Hammond at Nottingham, who has done very well.

“What we’re doing here is far from a phoenix rising from the ashes, in my view. This is a new club with new ownership and new people. It’s a new team, but to have that extra little bit of emotional affiliation for the city and the fans is huge for us.

“It would be irresponsible of us to start throwing around the P word or anything like that, but let me tell you, I’m really excited about this side.” 

As the announcer runs through today’s line-up, which features experienced Premiership players like Tom Seabrook and promising young stars like Tim Hoyt, one name draws a louder response than the rest: “Starting at number seven… you might have heard of him, it’s Matt Kvesic.”

Among a handful of familiar faces, Tiff Eden, who broke through in his early days and Will Lane, a product of the academy, Matt stands out. At 33, with more than three hundred games behind him, he’s still flinging himself into breakdowns, chasing punts, and snarling into contact like a man with something left to prove.

“I get called old a lot, actually, it’s not fair mate! With the squad we’ve got, I think I’m like the seventh oldest,” laughs the veteran flanker and, let’s not forget, former England international. “I genuinely believe I can still add value as a player, but also around training, I want to help out with breakdown drills and all that stuff.”

After making his debut for Worcester in 2009, Matt went from being the youngest player to ever represent the club in the professional era, to playing for Worcester on 99 occasions over two spells, the second being cut short in 2022 when the club entered administration. 

Despite having spent the intervening years with Zebre Parma in Italy and then two seasons at Coventry, once the opportunity came back around, there was only going to be one answer, and Matt became the first signing of the Warriors’ new era. 

“Coming back was definitely a no-brainer for me,” decrees Matt. “I didn’t think I’d have the opportunity to play for Worcester again after what happened; to have the chance to come back was amazing.

“I had a great two years at Coventry, but when the prospect of coming back became a bit more real, I was always going to come back to Worcester. It’s a proper full circle moment. I started in the academy there in 2008, seventeen years ago… maybe I am quite old. I don’t know, it’s quite emotional.

“Chris spoke to me around April time, outlining the vision for the club and how great it would be if I came back. He didn’t have to sell it to me, to be honest. My first day was really weird – coming into pre-season has big first-day-of-school vibes at the best of times; everyone’s a little bit nervous, and this was all heightened because of the situation we were in.

“But for me, it instantly felt like all the bad stuff that happened to Worcester never happened. I turn up and the whole squad is different, there are a few members of staff who had familiar faces, but more than anything else it just felt totally surreal walking around the place.

“With the rugby side of things, you’re able to get into the process of training and back to a normal mindset. We’ve had some open training sessions which were amazing to have the opportunity to connect with the fans, it was moving to see a lot of genuinely emotional people. For a lot of the new lads, I think it’s important to understand how Worcester going affected people’s lives.”

From the very first kick, with blue and yellow smoke still hanging like fog above the turf, it’s clear the Warriors have the bit between their teeth. Bath have named a strong side, featuring stars from their treble-winning season such as Ben Spencer, Guy Pepper and former Warrior Ollie Lawrence, all of whom have been handed starting berths.

Barely three minutes in, Siva Naulago, the Fijian wing signed from Bristol Bears, streaks down the right wing and offloads to Louis Brown, the former Newcastle Falcons full-back, who barrels over the line for the Warriors’ opening try. The roar that follows is more than just excitement: it’s a cathartic blend of anticipation and release, three years of waiting, uncorked in a single, surging moment. It’s been a long time since the Sixways crowd watched their team pass down the line and a full-back go flying through to score. 

Every penalty, every scuffle, every loose ball sparks a cheer. The Warriors go into half-time with a 14-12 lead in a match played at a tempo that has no business belonging to pre-season. At half-time, the vibes are strong and the music blares once more, though not loud enough to drown out a few weary predictions that Warriors could tire in the second half, having put so much into the first.

This is a knowledgeable crowd at Sixways, and sure enough Bath begin the second half in ominously clinical fashion, scoring two quick tries and exploiting some of the weaknesses Warriors have as a new side who are yet to fully gel. 

There are wholesale changes in the second half, including Matt departing in the aftermath of another Bath try, which disrupt the flow of the game, but it does give the crowd ample opportunity to get a look at a lot of their new players.

With Bath leading 33-14 in the closing stages, there’s a sense that the match, after a breathless first half, might quietly fizzle out. But the Warriors dig in. There’s a final burst of energy, a few crisp offloads, and then Will Trewin slices through to dot down in the dying seconds, one last spark to stir the Sixways crowd before the whistle blows.

It’s been a solid outing against the best team in the land, and the slow, meandering lap of appreciation feels entirely earned. Among the last to begin the lap is Matt Kvesic, trailing slightly behind his team-mates.  

With his young son in tow, he strolls the perimeter, stopping often to greet familiar faces, pose for selfies, exchanging words that don’t need microphones. “We definitely feel the emotion circling around everything,” Matt tells us. “I’ve been saying to the team that we have to embrace it. I never left Worcester, when I played for Coventry, I just did the commute from where I’ve always lived.

“I’d be doing my weekly shop, and you bump into fans who ask what’s going on, telling me that they miss the club. That was on my mind at those open training sessions, the importance of Warriors coming back for the wider community.

“I think it does add a little bit of pressure, but it’s good pressure, because it’s up to us now to perform. To keep bums on seats and supporters wanting to come and watch us play, we need to play a good brand of rugby. 

“I think that’s exciting, you don’t get many opportunities to build relationships with fans like you do at Worcester.”

Around them, the usual post-match bustle begins to take over, but then, cutting through the chatter and the chill of early autumn, comes a noise rising from the Sixways speakers. The unmistakable opening notes of The Boys Are Back In Town sound out once more. 

“This is a rugby city,” asserts Matt as fans begin to gently file away, “it’s huge for Worcester to have their rugby club back. They say you never know what you have until it’s gone: well these fans have been through that, we’ve got to be hugely grateful to play with their support.” 

Story by Scott Duke-Giles

Pictures by Samuel Simpson-Pattison

This extract was taken from issue 31 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

It’s almost disconcerting when you get asked a question by Dan Carter. Such is the gravitas of the former All Black, you just don’t expect it, especially when he seems genuinely interested in your response and there’s even a follow-up question too. This is the man who delivered the perfect rugby performance against the British & Irish Lions, who was a key part of the most dominant All Blacks side of the modern era, who has been named best male player on the planet three times, and who still has the kind of chiselled good looks normally reserved for superheroes, and Brad Pitt. But, here we are, taking a taxi across town with Dan Carter, answering his questions, which mostly centre around the Rugby Journal, which he favourably compares to a French sports fashion magazine. He surmises, the journal was ‘kind of like a book that you sit on a coffee table, and it can stay there for a couple of years’, which we definitely take as a compliment. 

He’s in town for the women’s Rugby World Cup final, which he correctly predicts is going to go England’s way. “No team has beaten the All Blacks at a World Cup and then won their next game [since 1991],” he says, using the men’s example to explain why he reckons Canada may struggle to repeat the heights they achieved in their win over the Black Ferns. “England and the Black Ferns have
a great rivalry there, so I did think they [New Zealand] could upset them but, anyway, good for England because they’ve been so dominant for so long, and it’s been too long since they won a World Cup.”

We’ve got an hour with Dan, and for the shoot we’re taking him to Mountain, a Soho restaurant owned by a Welsh rugby fan [Tomos Parry]. No sooner have we arrived, than Dan is sharing rugby stories of Wales with Tomos, who’s perhaps also taken aback by the authenticity of this rugby icon. In return, Tomas quickly serves him up bellota (the really good jamon, from acorn-fed piggies), langoustines, and beef short rib, just enough to hopefully keep Dan chatting for a bit longer. Not that he needs much encouragement, but we’ve got quite the rugby life to cover, one that began around the late-80s in the minis of Southbridge (thirty miles south-west of Canterbury) and ended over thirty years later at the same club, where he completed his final rugby season with a Coleman Shield final
 win over rivals Waihora [40-32]. 

Before we get to that though, we start in the now. “I’m just looking after my four children,” he says of his current main role. “They’re four, six, ten and twelve, and actually I’m just loving having the weekends back again. 

“You kind of forget what it’s like,” he continues, “because when you play, your weekends are just dictated by rugby, even on a Sunday you’re tired, beaten up from a game, so it’s actually nice to have your weekend to just chill with the family and play the role of Uber driver for their sports.

“Now you’re on the sidelines of junior rugby,” continues Dan. “I do a little bit of coaching, I’m not the head coach, I just kind of fill in wherever I can. 

“I refereed a few games, you know, like under-8s; some of the sideline parenting is horrible at times. But yeah, if I had whistle in hand, I felt like I knew a little bit more about rugby, so they tended to shut up when I was reffing.”

Naturally, being one of the most famous rugby players of all time, his kids must hang on his every rugby word? “It’s funny because, for my kids, I’m just their father, so I might tell them something, and then their coach will say the exact same thing, and then they’ll listen to the coach more than they’ll listen to me.

“A year or so ago,” he continues, “my now twelve-year-old son asked if I could find him a kicking coach, maybe Richie Mo’unga or Beauden Barrett to help with his kicking. My wife just burst out laughing.

"That’s the beauty of being a parent," he says. "After about thirty seconds, he did say, ‘actually, you know something about kicking, don’t you?’. I can try to help, but they don’t really want to listen and I kind of enjoy that.”

It was his kids that made him realise it was time to bring to an end a career that saw him whitewash the Lions, win two Rugby World Cups, earn 112 caps, score 1,598 points at international level, and win three Super Rugby titles with Crusaders, while also taking Pro14 titles with Perpignan and Racing 92, and even a Top League championship with Kobelco Steelers in Japan. “I went back to New Zealand after they cancelled the Japanese season [due to covid], that was going to be my last contract,” says Dan. “and I started thinking about chasing other contracts and wondering if I should keep going. It wasn’t until my son actually asked if I was going back to Japan or not. I said, ‘no’, and he said, ‘that’s the best news I’ve ever heard’ and I realised, ‘oh my God, I’m playing for the wrong reasons’. I’m providing for my family, but to be honest, the kids couldn’t give a shit if I was playing rugby, they just want me to be home more. That just put everything into perspective, it was the right time.”

Southbridge might not be familiar to everyone, but it’s a long-time stomping ground for the Carter family. “It’s a small town, probably no more than a thousand people,” explains Dan. “Dad’s lived on the same street his whole life. He actually built a house about five blocks down from the same street from where he grew up. And it’s probably about five hundred metres from the rugby club, and that’s where I played ever since I first started playing, for Southbridge rugby club as a six year old.”

Rugby and cricket were Dan Carter’s first loves, one in the winter, one in the summer, with one just nudging the other into second place. “It was my dream to be an All Black, although I never actually thought it would happen,” he says. “I was always doing it just for fun, but when that dream became a reality, I never wanted that feeling to leave. I didn’t want to be just an All Black, I wanted to be an All Black great, that’s what was driving me each and every day.”

There were a few bumps in the road before then. Opting to go to Christchurch High School, instead of accepting the scholarships on offer at private schools, Dan put himself on a pathway that had been trodden by an awful lot of All Blacks before him. “Going to this big historical rugby school, I just felt this weight of pressure,” he says. “You walk down the hallway, and you’ve got photos of all these past students that have gone on to represent the All Blacks, there’s all these trophies, and then, all of a sudden, you’re playing in front of thousands of people. 

“And in that first year, I had one of the worst years of my life,” he admits.

“I was seventeen and I thought, ‘right, this is my pathway to be a professional rugby player’, but we had a really unsuccessful year, I didn’t play that well, and I lost the love for the game.”

As a result, he opted not to play senior rugby. “I went to social rugby with my mates [with the colts], it was a really nice reminder of why I played the game. 

“I was playing for the wrong reasons,” he admits. “When I was playing it was all about me, it was all about ‘this is my path to being a professional, right?’. I was far too serious, I wasn’t enjoying the game, enjoying the moments, and that’s why you should do what you do, because you love it. 

“I had an amazing year playing with my friends and someone must have noticed I was playing some good rugby…”

On the side, he was earning money the more traditional way. “I was doing a bit of building; my father’s a builder, so I worked for him for half a year, and I did a few other various jobs, just trying to get by. I was a horrible builder though.

“So that didn’t last long," he adds, “but through playing social rugby, I ended up realising I loved sport, I loved health, so I signed up for the local polytech to train to be a personal trainer.”

Dan did play for his school’s ‘old boys’ team, but he then found himself replaced by some serious quality. “We got to the final [with Christchurch High School Old Boys] and I got put on the bench because a whole lot of All Blacks came back. 

“This was back in the days when the internationals would play club rugby, so our backline had the two Mauger brothers, Aaron and Nathan, and Daryl Gibson, Reuben Thorne came back too.”

Before his career as a PT came to fruition, his rugby one took off. Canterbury’s selectors noticed him in 2001, and he made it into a New Zealand colts team featuring the likes of Luke McAlister and Jerome Kaino. “I came back from the [junior] World Cup and got selected in the Canterbury team,” says Dan, picking up the story. “All of a sudden, I was in the same changing room as my childhood heroes, Andrew Mehrtens and Justin Marshall. I was just thinking, ‘what the hell am I doing here? I was only playing social rugby last year, and now I’m playing with all these professional All Blacks.’ 

“I got my first contract as a Crusader later that year then," he continues, “fast forward ten months, and I’m playing at my first Rugby World Cup [2003], it all happened so fast it’s ridiculous…”

Dan learnt quickly: even at academy level, he was a complete novice. “I’d never been to a gym at this stage,” says Dan. “I’m nineteen years old, and never touched a weight, but with the academy I trained through the summer for the first time ever. Normally, I just played cricket, I wouldn’t be doing any gym work or running, but I loved it. That’s what set me up and put me on the steps to professional sport, even though I wasn’t really getting paid. I think my contract in the academy was about NZ$2,000 [£860].

“Even then from the academy when I started playing for the NPC team Canterbury, I signed a three-year contract, and it was NZ$10,000
[£4,300] a year.

“Then in 2004,” he continues. “I’d been in the All Blacks for two years, been to the Rugby World Cup, but my provincial contract was still only NZ$10,000.

“It was a bit of a jump from that contract to my next one.”

Once he’d navigated the age-grade system, Dan’s trajectory was rapid. “I just felt like every time that there was a step up, whether it was from club rugby to provincial rugby, to Super Rugby, to the All Blacks, it sounds weird, but it became easier.  The quality of people that you’re playing with is so much better, which means you just have to focus on your job. 

"And there’s the professionalism, in terms of specialist coaching you’re getting, the resources are better. It just felt the transition was really easy for me, in every level that I took a step up. I sort of really enjoyed pressure, I just wanted to prove to the people that had given me a chance, that I wasn’t going to let them down. 

"The fact that Robbie Deans [then Crusaders coach] had showed faith in me for my first professional contract, meant I was going to train harder than anyone else to prove to him that I belonged there.”

Andrew Mehrtens was the incumbent in the number ten jersey, one of Dan’s heroes, and while he expected to wait for his turn, it didn’t take long. “So in my very first professional game of rugby for the Crusaders, I got named in the number ten jersey ahead of Mehrts,” recalls Dan.  “As soon as the team was named, and he was on the bench, Merhts was the first one to come up to me and say, ‘Congratulations, if there’s anything you need this week, I’m here to help’. I mean, this guy would be hurting, and I think the fact he did that was a real reflection on him as a person, but also the environment of the Crusaders.”

The debut, in 2003 for the reigning Super Rugby champions against Hurricanes saw Dan thrust into the spotlight for the first time. “All week, the fans were, ‘who’s this guy starting ahead of Mehrts?’. And I was so nervous.”

In front of 30,000 at Jade Stadium, the pressure was on. “So, the game starts, I miss a kick from in front of the posts, and I’m already looking to the bench. I get another penalty from a similar position, miss that as well. I could just hear the whole crowd go, ‘okay, get this guy off’. 

“Unfortunately for Aaron Mauger, he got injured, so I moved to twelve, Mehrts came on, and says, ‘keep kicking’, and I’m, ‘nah, mate, I’m done’. So, he kicked but then I end up scoring a couple of tries, and had a great debut [37-21] after that.” 

The rest of the campaign saw Dan retain the number twelve jersey, a role he also took on for the All Blacks, playing next to both Merhtens and Carlos Spencer. “I’m just learning from these two different styles,” says Dan. “I just wanted to learn. On one side, it was backing your instincts and the flamboyant play of Carlos, then there was the real strategy vision of Mehrts, and I’m feeding off both of them.”

Learning first-hand, literally alongside, two great All Black fly-halves helped him ultimately to leapfrog both after the 2003 World Cup, during which he managed to nail nine conversions against Canada [in a 68-6 win], in his only start, with Spencer the first-choice. 

For the autumn series the following year, the All Blacks left both Mehrtens and Spencer at home, with Dan stepping in as the starting ten. Wins over Italy (10-59, a 19-point haul), Wales (25-26, 10 points), and France (6-45, 29 points) representing a decent start for Dan, and he was up and running. His emergence was timed to perfection. “Throughout that autumn series, after every game, I was doing media and all everyone was talking about, was the Lion series.

“You can’t really compare it to anything else,” he says. “The Rugby World Cup is the pinnacle, that’s what you want to win more than anything, but to have a Lions series during your time in the black jersey is so unique.

“You could have a ten-year All Black career and be one of the greats, like Jonah Lomu for example, and never get to play against the Lions. To get that early in my career, I just wanted to be a part of this.”

Dan Carter destroyed the Lions, never more so than in the second Test when his 33-point-haul – two tries, four conversions and five penalties – in a 48-18 win not only secured the series win, but marked him out as one of the greats, producing one of the all-time performances. He was still only 23. “People may have known of me, fans in New Zealand, it was my third year playing for the
All Blacks, but I guess it kind of stamped me on the world stage,” he admits. “It showed what I could do on the biggest stage, I was just constantly trying to strive for the perfect game, and that’s probably the closest I got to it. 

“It just grew the expectations of what I wanted to do every time I played,” he says. “And I didn’t want it to just be a one-off game, I wanted to have such high standards every time I played.

“But, obviously, it was a special game,” he admits.

Rugby World Cups were next on his list. He’d been part of the 2003 squadthat was expected to end New Zealand’s World Cup wait, since the inaugural 1987 win, but that ended in defeat to Australia in the semi-final. “I could see it hurt more experienced players a lot more than it was hurting me,” he says. “These guys that might never go to another World Cup, this was their one chance or their last chance. 

“That was was ingrained in me from then on, I want to be a part of the next World Cup, I needed to be there in 2007 to right the wrongs of 2003. I played some of my best rugby from 2003 to 2007 and I was in my prime in 2007…”

But again, the All Blacks failed, this time it was even worse. “We lost a quarter final [18-20 to France in Cardiff]. We were one of the best teams in the world, but we just couldn’t perform at Rugby World Cups. 

“It was hard in 2007, we were red-hot favourites, and there was even a sense within the environment that we were going to win, but we didn’t, we were the most underperforming All Blacks side in the history of the Rugby World Cup. 

“There was a lot of criticism, there was a lot of scrutiny, rightfully so; we didn’t perform when it when it mattered most and the country goes into a little minor state of depression, so it was hard, but you just have to bounce back.”

The All Blacks, says Dan, were in a cycle. Every four years new coaches would rebuild, right the wrongs, then when it didn’t work out, they were replaced and so it continued. “It’s only a failed campaign if you don’t learn from it,” says Dan. “At the time, it was really hard to deal with but that was the foundation to set us up for being a dominant team for the next ten years or so. That was the reason that we were able to win back-to-back World Cups, by taking the lessons of 2007 and growing.”

And also keeping the same coaches.  “Credit to New Zealand Rugby, they broke the cycle, they reappointed the coaching group that lost the 2007 World Cup: Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and Wayne Smith.

“Between the coaching group and the leadership team we realised that we didn’t deal with pressure that well. Yeah, we love beating teams by forty or fifty points. But we had to work on our mental strength to be able to win in really big moments when everything’s going against us. 

“We just spent the next four years really working on our mental strength. In 2007 we were the fittest team, we were the strongest we’d ever been, the fastest we’d ever been. We were doing PBs in the gym, amazing athletes, but we weren’t spending any time on our mental strength.”

Having a team that had tasted defeat helped too. “They had the hurt of losing a World Cup and that can drive as a great motivation. That’s something that the All Blacks didn’t have in 2019, there were no players in that team that had lost a World Cup.”

In 2011, they won. Albeit showing every ounce of resilience by edging thescrappiest of finals to beat France 8-7, the winning kick ultimately coming from the boot of Stephen Donald, the famously fourth-choice fly-half, who came in after injuries not only to Dan, but also Colin Slade and Aaron Cruden. Watching from the sidelines was far from easy.

“It sucked,” he says. “The nerves, it’s almost easier playing. You’re in control, you can dictate play, keep things cool and influence the game, but when you’re on the sideline, you’re a nervous wreck.”

Was it hard not being on the pitch when they broke the World Cup hoodoo. “Mixed emotions,” he admits. “You’re proud that finally it’s happened, as you’re thinking ‘when will it come?’ after 24 years. But you want, selfishly, to be in that moment. You want to be on that field, but at the same time, things happen for a reason, and that grew motivation inside of me to want to be there in four years’ time.”

Four years on, they were facing Australia in the final at Twickenham. This time, there was no doubt. A 34-17 scoreline a reflection of New Zealand dominance, Dan completing the triumvirate of kicks (two conversions, four penalties and a drop-goal) to notch 23 points. “I felt like everything in my career was building up for that moment,” he says. “The quarter-final losses, the injuries, I just felt we were in complete control in that tournament. It was a strange feeling, it was like everything had been working towards it.

“And the way it just all panned out, we were able to be the first team to win back-to-back World Cups, to win a World Cup outside of New Zealand, to have a great performance, and to finish playing in the black jersey with a victory alongside some of my best mates that were also finishing. 

“Seven of us players that had all played around one hundred Test matches were playing their last game in the black jersey that day,” says Dan. “So yeah, such a special period to share that moment with them.”

Relief had been the main theme of the 2011 win, but in 2015, it was celebration. “We could actually enjoy it a bit more. When you’ve been working so hard for something and to achieve a goal you set up to achieve, it was such a special feeling.

“It was the greatest moment,” he says. “I mean, my first and last games in rugby, are my most special moments.”

Then 33, Dan returned to France for his rugby, where he’d previously enjoyed success with Perpignan, helping the unfancied club to the Top14 title in 2009. This time, it was Paris and Racing 92, another title followed, and he’d leave to join Japanese club Kobelco, in what was his last international stop. “I never wanted to retire, but I knew I had to at some stage; you had to finish playing at some stage, but I dragged it out as long as I could.”

Even after his kids stepped in to force the issue, he couldn’t resist one final season where it all began. “I went to play club rugby in Southbridge, a season for them to end my career,” he says. “It was back to being just amateur players playing for the right reasons, to play with their friends, for a beer afterwards.”

Naturally, having one of rugby’s true global stars rock up on your local pitch was too good an opportunity for some players to miss. “I can’t remember if it was a semi-final or final, but as I was kicking the ball, I got absolutely smashed. And on the anniversary of that hit, the guy that hit me puts something on social media every year: three years since I smashed Dan, four years since I smashed Dan…

“You’d pass the ball, and then you’re trying to sidestep the next two guys that are trying to hit you, it was a lot of fun and we went on to win the Coleman Shield.”

He was playing alongside a cousin, with old mates, he even had mates on the opposition and even the performance was perfect. “We were down by twenty points at half-time, and then we came back to win [40-32], it was incredible.”

Dan has now polished off the langoustines, the bellota, and had his fill of the short rib, he’s given us more time than he had to spare, and yet is still effusive in his apologies that he has to go, albeit still willing to answer a few more questions. 

Some things you just can’t not ask, such as ‘who is the best he’s seen?’ “Richie McCaw, such an amazing leader,” he says. “There’s nothing that he would ask of his team-mates that he wouldn’t do, and he’d often still do more. Just to see how he put his body on the line, week in, week out...

“I would also have loved to have played with Jonah Lumu,” he adds. “His career finished the same year I started, but it would have been pretty special to have him playing outside me.”

Best team? “I played with really special teams, but 2015 was a special one, it was quite a dominant era. Yeah, so many players playing that, in their positions, were probably the best players in the world. 

“And we just worked so hard,” he continues, “and we had this underlying confidence around us to create history.” 

Aside from tending to the Carter flock, and trying to give his kids advice, Dan is wearing multiple hats these days. Like many, he struggled after rugby, eventually going through what he calls a ‘repurposing’ of his life. “I dragged out my career so long just because I wanted to block it [the future] out and thought it was a distraction to my focus on being the best player in the world,” he says. “And who knows, it might have been. It might not have been. 

“I was investing, and financially I was sound, but it was more ‘what’s going to drive me every morning to get out of bed?’, and that was the hardest thingthat I had to deal with.”

He wrote a book, The Art of Winning, he sought the counsel of other professionals who had been through the same thing, including Jonny Wilkinson, and he met with a former ad agency boss whose specialised in helping people find their purpose. “I was a little bit lost and it actually made me look inward for the first time. The whole ‘who am I now that I’m not a rugby player’.”

And what he discovered was a passion for ‘social impact’. And while the phrase is without doubt massively over-used by Linkedin warriors who have no intention to create any change beyond their follower count, in the hands of Dan Carter it means something. He’s not just talking the talk, he’s set up the DC10 fund, which works with UNICEF to help, among others, impoverished communities in the Pacific Islands; and he’s got a high school foundation with Richie McCaw that gives grants to teenagers to pay for everything from their boots and equipment to training fees; and he was instrumental in setting up the Global Rugby Players Foundation, alongside the likes of McCaw and Wilkinson. “We all achieved a lot in the game, and we had our challenges,” he says. “But imagine the players that get the dreaded tap on the shoulder from the coach and they are no longer wanted or had a career-ending injury and they have nowhere to go.

“There’s a lot of people like that, so that was the start of forming a support network for professional rugby players, men, women, sevens, fifteens, to help professional players navigate change as they transition out of the game.”

Before he heads off, the conversation turns to grassroots rugby, the one place where the far-too-often maligned concept of ‘rugby values’ is still alive and well. Now as a rugby dad, he appreciates those values more than anything. “I went to a rugby tournament for under-10s to under-13s, and my two kids were playing.

“And there were over one hundred teams, tents everywhere, barbecues, communities.  Once you get out of Auckland and you look at the rural parts of New Zealand, rugby is thriving, that’s the heartbeat of rugby. It’s like where I grew up, my little country town, that gave me so much energy.

“People are still going to the club rooms on the Saturday, forgetting the stresses of life on the farm or shit that went wrong during the week, and just coming together; everything is still centred towards the rugby club and the Saturday watching rugby, kids playing, adults playing, a beer afterwards, hot chips for the kids. 

“That’s the values of rugby,” he enthuses. “We don’t focus enough on those values. It’s all around safety and parents second-guessing whether their kid should play rugby or not, maybe they’re better if they play soccer or basketball…

“Those values of rugby, they’re still there in the amateur game, and that’s what we need to double down on, because what this incredible sport does is teach you life lessons, it’s not just about the rugby.” 

And, yet when the rugby is as good as when Dan Carter plays it, it’s easy to see why so many of us often think otherwise.  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Richard Johnson

This extract was taken from issue 31 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

It was acidic water that first made Scarborough what it is today. It was coming down cliff and running into the sea, and such was its chemical make-up, the healing properties were seized upon, put into print, ‘Scarborough Spa’ became a thing and Britain’s first seaside town was born, in the 1600s.

Anna, the lesser-known of the Bronte sisters, was tempted here to spend her final days, where she stills resides; it’s also home to The Vaults, aka the ‘Covent Garden of the North’. And, preceding all of this, is the 12th-Century Scarborough Castle guarding the bay, and its fine curve of golden sand, from any outsiders. 

For those that know, Scarborough is special, and Zoe Stratford, co-captain of Gloucester-Hartpury, the ‘three-peat’ champions of England, and captain of 2025 World Cup champions elect, the Red Roses, knows. Born and bred in the north-east Yorkshire town, until recently her parents had two different cafes right in the heart of the place. “My dad’s sold his now, but my mum’s still got hers,” she says, “but I think she’s looking to sell hers in the next couple of years, to enjoy a bit of retirement.”

Such is Zoe’s connection with Scarborough, she’s making sure that she keeps a little slice of it in the old town, with a cottage bought together with her husband Luke Stratford. “I still wanted to have some sort of strings attached to Scarborough,” she says. “Obviously we go up whenever we can but I just wanted to have something that’s mine, but also a little bit of a business as well. So we got a little Airbnb, a fisherman’s cottage, in the old town, it’s only about seven minutes from the beach.”

Aside from everything else that’s been happening to Zoe in recent times, winning domestic titles (on repeat), Grand Slams (also on repeat) and even World Players of the Year, she’s also managed to squeeze in a few off-field achievements. “I got married,” she says, before giving us a rundown of Luke’s current rugby activity. “He was with Leicester Tigers, he was their forwards coach the last two seasons, and now he’s at Sale to be the scrum coach for the women, so there’s a lot of travel at the moment. But we still do have our house down in Gloucester, which is our main base, and he’s sort of just finding his feet up in Sale, before we see if he actually wants to get somewhere there, if he’s going to be there long term.

“He’s actually up in Scarborough with my parents at the moment, it’s a bit nearer to Sale than Gloucester, so he’s with them for a couple of weeks, just while I’m in camp.”

The two met while students at Hartpury. “He didn’t coach me,” she says. “But we both went to Hartpury University, he did do a little bit of coaching with the hookers at Gloucester-Hartpury, and then coached around the local area and played for Hartpury RFC.”

There’s a lot of water still to pass under the bridge before the two settle on their forever house, not least respective careers on an upward trajectory. “It’s tough,” she says of the two having to always be in separate places. “If he wants to be the best coach he can be, he has to travel and move to those areas. But I’ve said to him that I’m going to be selfish for the next seven, eight years, however long I’ve got playing, and then he can do whatever he wants, and I’ll follow him around. But, it is difficult. It is difficult, but we manage, we’re all good.

“Although I’ve always said that eventually I would like to end up near Yorkshire,” she adds, “because I really want my parents to kind of be involved if we have children.”

But all that’s for future Zoe [and Luke]. Zoe is now in the midst of the mostimportant, career-defining period of her rugby life. Captain of club and country, recognised as one of the best in the world as a player, Six Nations’ Grand Slams in the bag, and a third title with the now-dominant force in club rugby Gloucester-Hartpury, who sealed their latest crown with a 34-19 win over Saracens back in March. How they came to be the force to be reckoned with, after years as also-rans, Zoe puts down to organisation off the field, as well as on it. “I genuinely think the biggest reason the success is James Forrester, who’s our CEO at Gloucester,” she says. “At that time when we were finishing fifth or sixth in the table, we were not even competing with the likes Saracens and Harlequins.

“Then James came, and he’s got a business mindset,” she explains. “He had businesses out in Singapore and then he came back to Cheltenham and wanted to get involved in Hartpury, because he played for them. He was our forwards coach for a bit, and I remember us clashing quite a bit, because he’d have these ideas, I didn’t agree, but it came from a place of just caring so much about the women’s game. 

“And then after that season, Sean Lynn came on board, and they created a plan where ‘Jango’ [Forrester], would become our CEO and he’d do the business side of things, he’d get the sponsorship.

“He obviously got a lot of investment for us, and got the investment from Gloucester, so we brought in the likes of Maud Muir, Sarah Beckett, Sam Monaghan, Alex Matthews, and then we had the right pool of players. His first thought was, ‘get the good players in’, and then we could work on the rest.”

Head coach Sean Lynn was then key to how they came together. “Lynny’s main ethos is about playing for each other, having license to inspire, bringing family feel,” explains Zoe. “And I think it’s something that we have always had at Gloucester, we have a very good culture, it always used to be about going out together after games.  But then if we actually wanted to take this seriously, it was about how we could bring that closeness on the pitch and work for each other every single week.”

The turning point came in November 2022, when Gloucester-Hartpury travelled to title rivals Exeter Park and came away with a 17-25 win. “I think we almost said at that point, ‘I think we might actually get to the final as I think we could actually win the Prem’,” she says. “It was all a little bit crazy. We’d beaten Saracens, Quins, Bristol but then Exeter at Sandy Park, just before Christmas, I think from that moment, we know we could do it. It was only halfway, but we were just creating so much momentum, and it kind of felt that we were like a force to be reckoned with.

“We got to that final [in 2023, against Exeter],” continues Zoe. “And when we won it [34-19], at Kingsholm – which gave it that extra bit of oomph – it was just the best day ever… winning that first final, I just remember it being so special. That we could do it in front of so many fans at Kingsholm, and obviously doing it with Mo [Natasha Hunt, her co-captain], lifting the trophy together, it was just unbelievable.

“I know there was a few girls in that group that had quite a rough year, obviously, Mo and Sarah Beckett  didn’t get selected to go to the World Cup, so it was something that we could do for those guys as well. It was my favourite, favourite final, definitely.

“I think the fact that it was a home team in the final, I think created so much more momentum, it was a real sunny, hot day, and I think people just came out in their droves. Before, maybe the finals haven’t been so successful in terms of the crowds so it was really special day, not just for rugby and Gloucester, but also, I think for the PWR, because I think it was kind of a point of change. It was when it wasn’t just the London clubs winning, it was about the likes of Exeter, Bristol and Gloucester-Hartpury also competing in those top four places.”

Even though success has continued in terms of results, the finals that have followed haven’t quite matched up in terms of crowds. “It’s still something to work on,” she says.  “I think for Gloucester this year, it’s been inconsistent in numbers, we want to be getting the big crowds,and obviously we see them come out for the semi-finals and finals. But we want to be able to have them consistently through the season. 

“I think we had a Friday night game against Quins which did well actually, so maybe we need to look at maybe changing up the days and times a bit too.”

Women’s rugby in England has certainly been eventful and such is the tinderbox nature of social media these days, it doesn’t take much to create a storm among the people of X, even if the incident is on TikTok. When England beat Wales 12-67 in front of a record 21,000 crowd at the Principality, a result that surprised few given the strength of the Red Roses, the other headline should’ve been around the attendance (the best for a women’s game in Wales), but instead it was about an impromptu TikTok danced performed by Sarah Bern and her Welsh rival, Bristol Bears team-mate, Jasmine Joyce-Butchers. “I was quite surprised by the amount of hate they got,” says Zoe. “You see the likes of Ilona Maher, and how many people she has brought into rugby from her social media, and it’s things like this that create that connection [with fans]. 

“I think all the hate comments are unacceptable, and I think for women’s rugby, we play because we enjoy it, and people expressing their personality is an important thing to do.

“Wales did lose [the game], but it doesn’t mean that she [Joyce-Butchers] can’t enjoy the celebration of the event – I think it was the first time that they got 21,000 fans at a women’s event.”

If as much energy could be put into celebrating the positives of the game, as it does the negatives, women’s rugby would be in a very different place. “I completely agree, there’s so many haters online that just want to be a keyboard warrior,” says Zoe. “I think people should celebrate the fact that people [players] want to give themselves to you, or the fact that we want to open our sport to so many different people.

“Women’s rugby is such an accepting sport, in terms of diversity, as well, any background will fit into women’s rugby, no matter where you’re from, or who you are. I think people need to understand that more, celebrating that it’s a positive place to be, there’s just a lot of hate that goes on and doesn’t need to be there at all.”

On the rugby side, one challenge for the Red Roses has been the comparative lack of competition in the Six Nations. While some sides, such as Italy and Ireland, had periods of holding off or even putting England on the back foot, to the supporters, the Grand Slam felt like a cakewalk. Five wins from five, 256 points for, 71 against. France’s late charge – having been 31-21 down at half-time – to lose by a single point 43-42, was the only time they were truly challenged. “Sometimes we don’t quite get the competition,” admits Zoe, “but say for the Red Roses, we make sure we’re doing the best that we can to put in those performances. We look at ourselves and how we can get better, because we see ourselves as the benchmark and we don’t know where the ceiling is so we try and just push and push our own standards. 

“That’s also why the likes of like the WXV has been so important,” she continues. “Because we’ve had the chance to play the top four teams in the world, we’ve had the chance to play the Black Ferns two or three times in the last few years, whereas before we’d play them maybe once in a World Cup cycle.”

Since England failed to win the 2022 Rugby World Cup, losing 31-34 to the Black Ferns in Auckland, Zoe has enjoyed nothing but success, for club and country. “It has been pretty wild,” she admits. “In my head now, I just want to win a World Cup, so bad. I think especially this year’s, it’s just about how can I now put myself in the best place for the team, so then we can now go and hopefully put ourselves in the best place possible…”

Has the ghost of 2022 (and indeed 2017, from an England perspective) been put to rest? “I think the biggest time we spoke about it was the following year we went back out to New Zealand, and it was a little bit of a touchy subject. We thought, ‘has anyone actually watched the final?’. Or are we going back out there to kind of relive this without any of us of acknowledging it? 

“A few of us were made to sit and watch that game. It was a tough game, and there was a lot of unfairness in that game, and I think it wasn’t about our ability, or if we could or couldn’t beat them, I think we all believe that we could have gone out there and beat them, but just on the day, it wasn’t our day and a lot things got in the way.

“These last four years has been about how can we still be at the top of our game, even with that unfairness, and how can we be brutal even if we face those challenges that we faced in that final.”

Unfairness? “Injuries, the cards, the lineout at the end, all those little key moments…”

What’s fair and unfair is obviously a matter of opinion, but what England have worked on is how to deal with the situations, that may seem unfair, and still progress, and ultimately win a World Cup.

It would be reasonable to expect Zoe, as captain, to feel more than a bit of pressure. “No, I wouldn’t say pressure,” she says. “I would say that I feel responsible for things, if that makes sense. In the game, I wouldn’t think about it, but then post-game, I might think, ‘Oh, damn, is that my decision that’s caused that?’.

“Before I got given the captaincy, the biggest thing I wanted to make sure was that I stay as myself as a rugby player, so that means going into games, I always try and keep it calm, think of my processes, because obviously it is a pressured job.”

How did she feel taking on the captaincy? “I was actually really nervous when I got the role,” she admits. “I think my first thought was obviously to Marlie [Packer] and how she would react because she’s been an amazing captain for us over the last the last couple of years.

“I was really nervous, because obviously I knew it was going to be difficult for her, and then I didn’t know how she would react, but she has been absolutely unbelievable.”

Her style of captaincy, she says, is lead by example. “I will do anything for the team, I’ll put my body on the line, and if I can do that, then hopefully people will be able to follow,” she says. “And hopefully that creates an environment where people are able to thrive, but also we can hear everyone’s voices in the group as well, and they’re having input into our game.”

The Red Roses bring a squad to their home World Cup, with plenty of experience from the bitter defeat of 2022, but buoyed by even more young talent, with Zoe highlighting the recent additions of Maddie Feaunati and Mia Venner, as proof of the abundance of quality within the English ranks. Is the squad better than last time? “It would be hard to say that it was better,” she says. “But I think we have a lot stronger culture now. I think that we have had very honest conversations. We have roles in the group that people are given, and they can help put the best team in the best places. 

“Now it’s like we are open with each other, about our emotions as well and how we’re feeling and I think that makes us a stronger side.

“I think it’d be so difficult to say if we were better in terms of on-pitch, because that core group is very similar to what it was last time.

“Competition in camp now is next level though,” she adds, “there’s competition in just about every single position which is incredible.”

Zoe is used to such competition, not least due to the fact her World Player of the Year win in 2021, instantly made her a target. “Just thinking back, I do remember it being completely pressurised,” she says of the individual win. “And I remember that first game back, everything was reflected in being world player of the year. In your head, it’s, ‘Oh, my God, I need to prove that I am world player of the year’, and I remember being extra nervous going into games. If did anything wrong, I’d be thinking, ‘Oh, my God, that’s not world player of the year stuff’. I kind of got to the point where I just hate people saying it.”

Hopefully, by the end of this year, they’ll be adding World Cup winner to any sentence with her name in. “I think it’s massive for women’s rugby, it could be like the biggest thing that has happened,” she says. “For it to be in England, I think we’ve created a massive fan base currently, and that’s without a World Cup.”

Zoe has seen how crowds were immense in New Zealand for the World Cup in 2022, but have since fallen away, but hopes the already existing presence of a Red Roses fanbase should avoid them suffering the same fate. “We have a fan base, we filling our stadium up more and more, so if we get it right, it could be an amazing sporting event.

“You could look at it as pressure, but we also had pressure going into the last World Cup, it felt like everyone hated us in that moment, we were also the favourites.

“Now we’ve experienced it,” continues Zoe, “and a lot of the girls were there too, and if we can put ourselves in the best possible place, I think that pressure will be relieved a little bit, but obviously pressure is pressure…”

And if you don’t win? “I would feel there was something missing,” she admits, before repeating the Red Rose thinking of being in the ‘best possible place’.

Being undercooked is something several critics have pointed to given how the Six Nations played out. “We know we’re going to get that extra bit of scrutiny whatever we do, even if we’re a little bit off it for a game,” says Zoe. “Like with the Italy game, we got a bit of scrutiny for that second half performance that we put out there. It’s just something that we have to deal with along the way.”

So not losing since the World Cup final, isn’t a problem? “We faced the biggest challenge in terms of diversity by losing a World Cup final,” asserts Zoe, “that is probably the biggest thing that we have learned off over these four years.” 

As accustomed as the Red Roses have become to growing crowds and scorelines, Zoe feels they’re on to something special, and knows, from almost a decade as a Red Rose – she made her debut in 2016, aged nineteen – what it was like when she began. “A goosebump moment was playing France at Twickenham two years ago in the Six Nations,” she says. “Obviously it was 58,000 people there, and we were not expecting it at all. 

“Just driving through the streets of Twickenham, we got off the bus, and it was just swarmed with people. I think just that moment was like, ‘Oh, my God, we have come a long, long way’.”

But, there’s still plenty more to go. “I don’t think there’s a ceiling to it,” she says of the potential of the women’s game. “We’re the girls that can drive it, we can keep pushing it and pushing it and I don’t think there is a ceiling to it. If we get it right with our fanbase, and we keep it so accessible, I think it could be an incredible sport, and then just keep on going and going.”  

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Sam Bénard

This extract was taken from issue 30 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

Every rugby player that ever earned the honour of facing Jonah Lomu has tried to track down a photo or two of them playing against the great man. Given that the number of players who squared up favourably to Jonah can be counted on one hand, a typical photo in this genre will see a player being venomously handed off, or dragged along the ground while holding on to one of Jonah’s feet, or variations thereof. It’s become its own artistic category.

And within it, Mike Catt owns the ultimate work of art. Jonah trampling right over the top of him in the 1995 Word Cup. If social media had existed in 1995, meme-land would still be pushing out fresh content about it.

For Catt, it’s something he’s gotten used to talking about. It’s consistently been a decent icebreaker in the workplace, and in some ways, it’s kept him young.

“Every time I come to a new job, there’s a picture of me getting run over by Jonah, even kids who weren’t born at the time say to me, ‘I’ve been on YouTube and I’ve seen Jonah, and all this stuff’.” Mike smiles as he talks to Rugby Journal from the Waratahs training base in Sydney, where he is five weeks into his new life as assistant coach at the club.

There’s a chance it’s a forced smile. After all, it’s 7am in the morning in Sydney and this is our first question to an England legend and World Cup winner, but Mike is nonetheless equanimous. “It is part of my journey. I don’t have a problem with it. It’s good banter, and I wasn’t the only one,” he says.

If the wider rugby world know Mike Catt for this moment in time, England fans know him for many more positive ones. His career was one that matched the fortunes of the teams he played in, whether they were Bath, England, the British & Irish Lions, or London Irish. There were crushing lows, false dawns but massive highs too.

There’s his World Cup 2003 final cameo and his thundering carry in the phase that led to Jonny Wilkinson’s drop goal, there’s his calmness off the bench in the quarter-final against Wales which turned the match in England’s favour, or his leadership of an unfancied England team at the 2007 World Cup, dragging them all the way to another World Cup final in Paris, or his time as player-coach at London Irish where he spear-headed them to a Premiership final aged 37. 

And that’s before you consider his twelve-year stint at Bath, where he won the Heineken Cup and multiple league titles during the glory days of The Rec in the mid-nineties.

But what of the bad times and the hard times, what sticks in the mind the most? “Well, you know, goal kicks. I missed five out of five at Old Trafford [in 1998].” says Mike. “The first time England had ever played at Old Trafford and we lost 25-8 against New Zealand. I should never have missed five out of five, they were so easy as well. So I got hammered in the press there. 

“It got to the point, before Jonny Wilkinson turned up, that if I missed a kick in the 20th minute, the press were blaming me for England losing the game by one point because I missed a kick. It was quite hard for me to stomach. You might have a good game, you might miss one or two kicks, and you get hammered for it … yeah, it’s funny, it’s a funny one, the press and me. 

“I understand the job they’ve got to do but without the press genuinely understanding what it feels like to stand up there, you know, to be in that situation,” he says. “It can affect kids, it can affect people. Not every article they write is a fucking good article, do you know what I mean?”

While media sentiment flickered in the wind around Mike in the early part of his career, it never affected his passion for the game – which became a powerful tonic for Mike on troubling mornings reading the newspapers in the late nineties after an England international. “You know, if I didn’t love the game as much as I did, there’s a good chance I probably would have packed it in,” says Mike. “I could very easily have packed it in. But it was just through the love of it. I’ve loved every single minute of it I can genuinely say. I’ve had my moments where I’ve been hammered in the press and all that sort of stuff, and sometimes justified, but I just love doing it. It was my escape from everything. I could just get on a rugby pitch and go and play the game. It was brilliant.”

Mike’s enthusiasm for the game not only kept him in the game but led to a fanaticism for improving his game and for reaching his own peak physical condition, one that saw him regularly head out for pavement-pounding runs the morning after a full-blooded eighty minutes for club or country. While his team-mates were negotiating how to roll out of bed and take on the stairs, Mike was lacing up his running shoes. “Sunday morning after a game, I’d go and run. It would clear my head, it was the only way I could clear my head. The only way I knew how to do anything. There wasn’t any hot and cold tubs then, you just manned up, had a drink on a Saturday night and then got up in the morning.

“My strength was my fitness,’ he reflects. “I always thought, you have to be a good decision maker as a 10 or 12, and if you’re the fittest person on the pitch, that means you can make better decisions later on in a game, when people start fatiguing. So I always drove that. It wasn’t until Jonny Wilkinson came along … otherwise, I never lost a fitness test the whole way through. I just loved it. I thrived on it. 

“It’s the way you become mentally tough as well, is running. You could sit on a rower, you could sit on a bike as much as you want, but when you run you’ve got to take yourself to a really dark place. But with that comes resilience so you can plough through eighty minutes pretty, pretty easily.”

There’s little doubt that Mike’s base level of fitness is what persuaded Clive Woodward he was worth a place on the plane to Australia for the 2003 World Cup, despite Mike not having played for England in nearly two years due to injury. 

“Clive called me up three days before they left for Australia,” recalls Mike. “I’d been texting him saying ‘just give me a game [in the pre-World Cup warm-up matches]’. And he wouldn’t give me a game. He said, ‘no shortcuts, no easy ways to go’. Okay, I thought, but I just kept training. I was in Spain flogging myself every day running. I don’t know why I was doing it because he wasn’t giving me anything. But then he phoned me up after England had lost to France in Marseille and said, ‘can you come up and do a fitness test?’. I did a fitness Test with Andy Gomarsall and Austin Healey, and I just blitzed that. I was buzzing. And then, he gave me a call on the Sunday, and off we went to Australia.

“I just loved it, you know, I was like a 16-year-old kid playing with my mates in the park because it was a bonus that I was there. We slowly got through the competition, and I played a little bit more, and then got selected for the semi-final against France. That’s why I think Clive took me – two seasons prior Serge Betsen had destroyed Jonny and the way we wanted to play. Since then Clive had always said he wanted another kicking option. Tins [Mike Tindall] and Will Greenwood weren’t kickers really, so that’s why Jonny and I got on really well. We could dovetail in terms of ‘you take five minutes, I’ll take a minute’; ‘I’ll take a kick, you take a kick’, that type thing. We had a brilliant, brilliant relationship in terms of that.”

After the win over the French – with Mike playing his part expertly in wet conditions, successfully nullifying the impact of Betsen on England’s gameplan – Mike famously told Clive Woodward to drop him for the final in favour of Tindall.

“Clive said ‘I haven’t made my mind up here’ and I said ‘put me on the bench’. The French match was the first time I’d played 70 minutes for two years and I was battered, so I was quite happy, and I did a really good job off the bench anyway.”

Had he ever asked to be dropped before? “No, you wouldn’t, it doesn’t come into it as a competitor. It just worked really well for us then. I hadn’t played for ages. You forget how emotionally and physically draining it is if you haven’t done something for a while. We were pretty open and honest with each other, and I just said to Clive, ‘look, just put me on the bench. I don’t mind it’. So that’s what happened.” 

Mike’s contribution in the final, although much shorter, was no less telling. Entering the field in the 79th minute when England were winning 14-11, his total assuredness in extra-time gave England the confidence to finish off the Wallabies in the 100th minute. And of course, after the mayhem of the Wilkinson drop-goal, it was Mike who delivered the touch-finding kick that ended the game. 

Mike arrived in England from South Africa in 1992 as a backpacker. His parents had given him a plane ticket to England as a 21st birthday present so he could meet his grandparents for the first time. 

“I went backpacking, got bored after a couple of months, moved to my uncle’s place in Gloucester, and then just phoned Bath up,” explains Mike. “I had never heard of Bath before. Gareth Chilcott answered the phone, I think. My uncle spoke to him, and he said just come down.”

In South Africa, Mike had played for Eastern Province at schools and under-21 level as well as six times for the senior side, so he knew he had the cut for first grade rugby anywhere in the world. However, Bath was not an easy gateway to the English game, housing as it did half the England team at the time, with players such as Jeremy Guscott, Ben Clarke, Richard Hill, Victor Ubogu and Jonathan Webb.

Mike’s ambition initially was just to play a few games in a new climate, so he started out in the Bath third team. Later in the season though, Guscott got injured and Mike, by now promoted to the second team, began to be fielded at outside-centre for the Bath first team. “It was an incredible life experience,” Mike recalls. “I stuck at it. I could easily have just packed my bags and gone back home, but I loved the way Bath played with Stuart Barnes and Phil de Glanville. They were winning and as a youngster that accelerates your experiences and your skills.”

Bath’s business benefactor Malcolm Pearce gave Mike a job in his newspaper business, providing him with an £8,000 income, allowing him to dedicate the rest of his time to rugby. 

“I used to work stacking newspapers starting at two o’clock in the morning,” Mike says. “Then I moved into one of Malcolm’s newsagents: Johnson’s News. I went and worked there behind the till and stacking shelves. A few of the boys worked in the dairy, as Malcolm had a dairy too. Some guys were in accountancy and stuff like that. He looked after us.”

While Mike was being looked after on the field, there was no arm-over-the-shoulder approach by his Bath team-mates on the field. Not before he had proved himself anyway. “It didn’t matter whether you were a nice guy or a horrible guy. It didn’t really matter. The John Halls, the Andy Robinsons, these are tough men who wouldn’t really acknowledge you until you had proved that you were a good rugby player. 

“Probably a little bit like South Africa at the time, it was pretty hard-nosed. If you wanted to change position for example, you had to go and play in the second team before you changed position in the first team, stuff like that.

“But, those guys are all friends for life now. It was an amazing time.”

At the end of Mike’s first season at Bath he was selected for England U21s’ tour of Australia in the summer of 1993, where he first met the likes of Will Greenwood, Simon Shaw, Mark Regan and Lawrence Dallaglio, all future World Cup winners heading to Australia for the first time.

Dallaglio and Greenwood have both since recalled Mike’s fashion choices in those days. Denim being the common theme to their recollections. So, what was he wearing on that first England tour?

Mike laughs, and pauses before making his defence. “Yah, I mean, fashion in South Africa wasn’t really fashion in the UK when I turned up. I had a white, knitted jumper from my grandma actually, a nice woolly one and all the boys were like ‘what are you wearing?’. The fashion police were definitely out.”

Once Mike started playing, his England U21 team-mates forgot all about what he had arrived in. England had a very successful tour to Australia, winning the age-grade Test against their Australian counterparts, with Mike scoring a try along with two from Kyran Bracken. 

After making a name for himself in England’s colours, Mike’s progress up the ranks was swift, making his England debut in the Five Nations against Wales in 1994 and being selected for the World Cup in his native South Africa in 1995. 

Meeting Jonah in that semi-final didn’t hold Mike’s England’s career back at all. While Paul Grayson moved into the fly-half role for England during 1996, Mike nailed down the full-back jersey, and England were a flowing running rugby outfit, winning the Five Nations despite losing to France.

The following season Mike largely had to make do with bench duty as Tim Stimpson emerged as England’s first choice full-back. But he impressed on England’s summer tour to Argentina and was a late call-up to the Lions squad in South Africa, in place of the injured Grayson, winning a full Lions cap in the third Test, starting at fly-half, as the Lions lost to a retaliatory Springboks 35-16. 

“It was the first time I had experienced anything with the Irish guys, with your Scots, with the Welsh boys, and it was just the most incredible camaraderie and bond,” he recalls. “It was professional at the time, but it was still amateur, and we had an amazing time on the back of playing good rugby. And it was just brilliant rubbing shoulders with the best of the best. And to win a series in South Africa was huge for me.

“I grew up wanting to play for the green and gold. That’s what every South African boy growing up in South Africa wants to do. But I’ve never looked too deeply into anything. I’ve always wanted to be a professional sportsman, whether it was triathlon, whether it was rugby, I don’t know, but I always wanted to be a professional sportsman. I just loved what I did. My opportunities came somewhere where I never expected them to come, but the opportunities were given to me and I took them.” 

Mike then takes the interview on himself. “Everybody asks me, who’s the biggest role model that you had coming through your career? And I’d go, well, it’s myself, because as a player you’re the only person that drives your mentality, your attitude, your ability to stay strong when you’re injured all the time, getting dropped, getting hammered in the press. Ultimately, you’re the person that makes you who you are. You look back at that person and you go, ‘yeah, it was me that was putting in those hard yakka’. I love listening to people and watching other people but it’s yourself that you look to, you know.”

He stops before adding, “getting carried away there, sorry mate”. 

It’s a rare delight to hear this kind insight, affording us another glimpse at the fire that has driven Mike all these years as a player and now a coach. 

When selection came around for the 2001 Lions Tour to Australia, Mike was playing some of the finest rugby of his career. Ensconced in England’s midfield with Greenwood outside him, England tore through the Six Nations only for an outbreak of hand-foot-and-mouth disease to stop them travelling to Ireland and wrapping up a likely Grand Slam. 

Catt was selected as a member of the original Lions touring party and widely tipped to make the Test team alongside Brian O’Driscoll and/or Will Greenwood. But he sustained a back injury before the tour, which almost prevented him boarding the plane to Australia. Once in Australia, his calf started playing up as well. 

“I probably shouldn’t have gone on the tour to be honest,” admits Mike. “But Graham Henry said, ‘I really want you to come’ and I did everything I could, I didn’t want to miss out again.”

Despite waking up at 5am every day on the tour to coax his body into action, Mike was losing his fitness race. As a last chance saloon, he was selected to start against Australia ‘A’ in the fourth game of the tour, but he pulled up lame. His Lions tour hitting the buffers before it had ever got going.

Mike was not the only England player with a tour-ending injury. Phil Greening, Dan Luger and Dallaglio had all been ruled out, so the four of them went on a roadtrip as a consolation prize. “We hired a car and we followed the tour up the coast, stopping at Byron Bay and places like that, it was amazing experience, a great, great time for us all. And we were always among the Welsh, the Scottish and the Irish, it was just a hive of activity.

“And one of the best experiences I’ve ever had was the first Test in Brisbane. Obviously, I wasn’t playing but walking out the tunnel there was this sea of red. The whole stadium was pretty much red. And it was like, ‘oh my God this is phenomenal’. Everywhere you went out, whether it was Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, it was just red. The support we had was so, so special.”

During the 2025 Lions Tour to Australia Mike will, at least professionally, be on the other side of the sea of red, in his new role as the Waratahs’ assistant coach.

So how did the move to Australia come about? “I got a call from Dan McKellar [Waratahs’ head coach] saying ‘look, I’ve got an opportunity out in the Waratahs, would you be interested in coming? It’s a shorter season and would be a new experience for the family. So I spoke to my wife Ali, and it was sort of a no-brainer as it would be a great experience for the kids who are thirteen and fifteen now. It’s the way I sort of grew up and I wanted to give my kids the experience of growing up like that, but also I’ve never coached in Super Rugby before. I admired it from afar like every northern hemisphere player does, so to get an opportunity like this is pretty special.”

Five weeks into his new job, Mike is staying with a friend before he moves into a small flat on the beach in Bronte [in Sydney’s eastern suburbs]. In January, his son will join him and in the summer Ali and their daughter will too.

Next summer will be a busy time for Mike with the British and Irish Lions turning up on Australian shores towards the end of June, playing Mike’s Waratahs on 5th July. It’s a match which will pit Mike against not only his compatriots but his recent colleague at Ireland: the Lions head coach Andy Farrell. Mike left the Irish set-up earlier this year after four successful years with Farrell and the renewal of acquaintances in seven months’ time will add an extra layer of intrigue. 

Mike’s focus for now though is on developing his Waratahs squad as players. The team finished twelfth out of twelve in last season’s Super Rugby table and Mike is relishing the chance to work with the raw talent at his disposal, and to pass on his love for the game to a new group of players. “If you can coach a young kid into understanding what loving the game of rugby is, and how he gets there, to put a plan in place for the kid to get there, that’s where I get so excited,” says Mike. “The way I sort of coach is the guys’ buzz, you know. They go back to when they were sixteen years of age and they are playing with their mates on the pitch, that just frees everything up and just creates a great environment. 

“That’s the crucial thing,’ he says, “especially with the new generation coming through, just being able to free themselves up. 

“And if you are part of a successful environment, that’s life changing. And if I can give that to a young player because of my experience, that is why I love coaching so much, to take them to their potential.”

The interview has only just begun to scratch the surface of Mike’s coaching career, but Mike has to start his work day for the Waratahs, so time is up. Tomorrow they will jet off to Japan for a friendly match with the Kubota Spears in Tokyo. Once in Japan, Mike manages to call us back and tick off a few of our extra questions; so many more could still be asked, but they will have to wait. 

His career may only have started when he got bored of backpacking around England, but really that backpack is still slung over his shoulder as he keeps travelling towards his next adventure on the rugby horizon. 

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by Hugo Carr/NSW

This extract was taken from issue 28 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

“I really want to make this point,” says Kent Bray at the start of our conversation. “I know I’ve had some really bad stuff happen but the one thing I want to express robustly is just how grateful I am. Grateful to be alive, and grateful to have had the life I’ve lived.”

Kent had that life, not just for a moment in time, or a purple patch when everything goes right for a year or two, but year-after-year through his 20s, 30s and 40s. Well, most of his 40s.

A hugely talented Australian fly-half, he was one of the youngest players in a New South Wales team packed with internationals – including World Cup winners David Campese, Marty Roebuck and Nick Farr-Jones – that faced the British and Irish Lions in 1989, narrowly losing the match 21-23. 

Then, he came to England, got a degree at Oxford University and spent six years as a player, then coach, at Harlequins, when their team featured Will Carling, Jason Leonard, Brian Moore, Mick Skinner and Peter Winterbottom. At the same time, he combined playing rugby with making a fortune with (and for) Citibank’s foreign exchange desk, eventually rising to the position of director.

Some may know him as Gary Stevenson’s boss in the best-selling book The Trading Game, and for being the man who openly questioned Gary’s claim of being, at one point, Citibank’s biggest trader.

Be it academia, rugby or finance, Kent has always excelled, either through talent or sheer hard work. Or both.

There was one other area in which he excelled, or perhaps excessed would be a more apt description. Ten years ago, Kent was sitting in a hotel room having accepted his fate, that he was going to die through cocaine addiction. It was just simply a matter of when. 

Kent was introduced to cocaine by a very successful businessman who supported Harlequins and who offered it to him at a match sometime in the early 2000s. By his own admission, Kent was somebody who would act on instinct. Yet while that first line of cocaine clearly had the desired effect, it took around ten years to go from something he did once a month, to weekends, to seven days a week, by which point he would start his working day by meeting his dealer. “I was in a toxic relationship with the mother of my two kids, I wanted to leave the UK, and I’d lost about three to four stone, having previously been around fifteen stone, because I was in the grip of cocaine addiction,” he recalls.

“And when I say cocaine addiction, I was doing twenty to thirty grams of coke a week. Some days I was doing six grams of cocaine a day, and I was spending £80,000 a year on the drug. Now, for those that don’t know anything about cocaine, twenty to thirty grams a week is like doing forty bottles of wine, and I wasn’t doing it because I was enjoying it. I was doing it because I was addicted.”

Kent’s account of that time is laced with moments of black humour. He would only use the drug on his own, which helped him to mask his addiction from his team at work. One colleague assumed Kent’s weight loss and behaviour was because he had a strict fitness regime and was training for triathlons. 

In 2014, he left Citibank knowing he was financially secure, but everything else about his life was unstable.

It was rugby, or more specifically a group of rugby players and coaches, that helped Kent to turn his life around to the point where this month he is celebrating nine years of being clean. Now he’s using that series of extraordinary life experiences to help others as a counsellor and mentor.

Rugby Journal meets Kent at his house in Billericay, Essex. This is where city boys go to live when they become men; when they have earned a seven-figure bonus. They come to Billericay to settle down, get married, have kids, buy a house, pay a mortgage and own a luxury car or four.

Kent’s spacious and immaculate abode is also now home to his office where he conducts online counselling sessions. He became a qualified counsellor in 2022. Because of Covid most of us had to work from home and using tools like Zoom and Teams became part of everyday life to the point where you don’t have to seek professional advice in person anymore. You can do it online instead.

There was also the impact of the pandemic on mental health across society, along with a growing willingness among men, especially older men, to talk about mental health. 

A survey published in 2024 by mental health charity MIND revealed that 54 per cent of men said they were comfortable speaking about their mental health, compared to 46 per cent of women, and those figures are higher among older males.

Because of the life he had, men of a certain age are more likely to open up to a guy who played rugby at the top level but also understands what it means to hit rock bottom when you seemingly have everything you need in life. 

There have been ten Rugby World Cups since the first tournament in 1987 and Kent has attended nine of them, including eight finals. “I’ve always gone with the same group of friends – Frank Austin, Dirk Hansen and Troy Coker,” he says. “I was in the stadium when Troy lifted the trophy [with Australia] in 1991, which was pretty fucking surreal!”

Kent knew it was going to be difficult for all concerned when they met up in London for the 2015 tournament. The moment they saw him they couldn’t help but see that he looked so strikingly different, but the confidence and bravado that you often need to succeed not only in sport but also as a trader, made him believe that he could simply tough it out. “Yeah, I was in a world of pain, really. They looked at me and I could see in their faces they knew something was wrong.”

They went out that night and Kent, by his own admission, did a rotten job of trying to cover up his addiction, making frequent trips to the toilet.

Being typically blunt Aussies, they said he ‘looked like shit’. “I said, ‘I’ve been under a lot of stress, a lot of pressure.’ They said, ‘mate, but you’ve left the city’.

“Then three or four days before the final, Troy said, ‘I’ve spoken to the boys. We’re going to have an intervention. You’re an addict. You’re addicted. You’re gonna die, you know that, right?’

“And I said to myself, I’m not having an intervention. I can get this under control. But that’s what addicts do. They deflect.”

Troy eventually got through to him. “The moment that would be a catalyst for change for me was walking through South Kensington,” begins Kent, “about two or three o’clock in the morning, and I was like, four or five bags of cocaine in, plus lots of drink. Troy just put his arm around me, which is unlike Troy. He’s quite an aggressive character! He said, ‘We’re leaving in two days. Please, please you’ve got to get professional help.’

“Dirk said to me a few years later, they were sitting on the plane going back to Australia, and one of the guys said, ‘you know, we might not see KB ever again’, because that’s where I was at. 

“I did everything I could in the next five months to stop,” he continues. “It’s that macho mate thing to prove you’re right. And I did reduce the amount I was taking but I couldn’t stop.” 

Troy’s words did at least convince Kent to go into rehab. “Eight days after coming out of rehab, I relapsed, and I ended up in a hotel room in Essex for three weeks by myself,” recalls Kent. “I thought, ‘If I keep doing this, eventually I will die because doing coke can put an enormous amount of stress on your heart, especially when you’re doing the quantities I was doing. It was the lowest point. I was filled with self-loathing, self-pity, guilt, shame, remorse and embarrassment about what I was doing and where I’d ended up, and I had anger, resentment and paranoia.

“I was on my own. I’ve got two kids who I love dearly. But I dropped out of all social groups. I hadn’t contacted any of the Harlequins guys in ages. Then I had what they call a ‘spiritual awakening’.

“I went to the toilet, and it said 3:22am on the clock on the TV, and my life just flashed before my eyes. And I had this moment of clarity, which was, ‘Mate you have got two choices – die from cocaine use or get recovery.’

“I threw myself into recovery and went to Narcotics Anonymous. The 18th June 2016, was my first clean and sober day.”

As part of his recovery, Kent moved to Southend, rented a flat and began to reacquaint himself with the man he used to be. “I walked into Westcliff Rugby Club one day just to watch a game. And this guy called Pete Jones, who I’d never met before, came over to me and he said, ‘Are you Kent Bray?’ I was amazed that he would have remembered me, for two reasons. It wasn’t as if I was a household name, and I had hair when I played for Harlequins.”

Westcliff had just taken on a young coach in Jacob Ford [son of Mike, brother of George] and Pete felt that Jacob could benefit from being around somebody with Kent’s experience. “When I got back on the training field and put the ball in my hands, man, it was beautiful,” he says. “It was fucking beautiful!”

And so, for the next three years, Kent would be Westcliff’s director of rugby. “It reminded me what I was about and what I had lost. To get back into that rugby community, I felt alive again. I’d lost a ton of confidence and self-esteem in my addiction. It’s like this cyclone that rips through your life, destroying everything and everyone in sight.”

That period also allowed Kent to reflect on his life and the events that had shaped him. He was sixteen when his brother, Scott, who was two years older, died having gone into hospital for what everyone thought would be a routine operation. The following day, Kent was playing rugby for Rockhampton, refusing to be consumed by grief.

One of the Rockhampton students watching on the sidelines that day was Sandy Horneman-Wren. Like Kent, Sandy studied law and he would go on to become a judge. ‘The most determined individual game of rugby I ever saw played was by Kent on the day following the death of his brother, Scott,’ Sandy later wrote. ‘I did not know Kent then, but had marvelled at his brilliance in past games. The deception of that day was that to most who were there, they were unaware of the grief of the boy wearing jersey fifteen; and he was going to play the house down. And he did.’

From that point, Kent always looked forward, not back. 

He played for Australia under-21s and spent several seasons at Queensland. Had he chosen any other team in Australia he probably would have been a regular fixture at fly-half. At Queensland, he played second fiddle to Michael Lynagh.

Although he practised law, Kent had no passion for it. He decided to move to England, to get a degree in social studies at Oxford University and play in the Varsity Match against Cambridge back in the day when the contest could attract a crowd of 50,000 at Twickenham, was screened live on BBC2 and was a showcase for future internationals.

He briefly returned to Australia but had to accept he wouldn’t become a fully capped Wallaby. So, he came back to England and signed for Harlequins.

Playing for Quins was known as a good route into the city. It put him in contact with guys working in finance who would welcome a well-educated rugby player with a big personality into their ranks and he got a job with brokerage firm RP Martin.

Kent’s aim was landing a role with one of the big financial institutions in Canary Wharf and after a seemingly endless stream of interviews, he joined Citibank in 1993. Soon after, he was earning £100,000 (£50,000 basic, £50,000 bonus), playing for a team that contained half the England XV and was dating ‘an absolute glamour’ who worked for the socialite magazine Harpers and Queen.

Also in 1993, Kent received a call asking if he would play for Scotland. There was a gap in the Five Nations schedule and the Scots had a game for a representative team lined up against Ulster at Ravenhill, except they were short at fly-half and Kent was eligible to play because of his Scottish grandmother.

Kent thought to himself, ‘ah, why not?’ and had a game of his life. “Mate, it was one of the days where literally everything I did came off,” he recalls. “It was freakish.” After the match, Scott Hastings asked if he would make himself available for Scotland. “It was the autumn series in 1993 and the All Blacks were coming over,” explains Kent. “The reason I remember it very distinctly was because Jeff Wilson made his debut and got a hat-trick of tries playing on the wing for the All Blacks. But leading up to that game, they picked me in a Scottish Development XV to play against New Zealand and I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to play against the All Blacks.”

Kent kicked four penalties, registering all of Scotland’s points in a 30-12 defeat. He couldn’t have done much more to make the international XV but ultimately Gregor Townsend got the nod. Years later, Kent was on a charity bike ride with ex-Scottish internationals Roger Baird and Iwan Tukalo. “Iwan said, ‘Your name rings a bell’. I explained that I played for Scotland and then I said, ‘Can I tell you right now I’m glad I didn’t get a full cap. I don’t mean that to be offensive but I’m an Aussie. I’m a proud Queenslander’.

In his final season at the Stoop, Kent was named player of the year, having set a new points record, although he still believes he got the award more as a ‘thank you’ for the six years he had spent there, rather than that one season. Looking back on that time at Harlequins, was there a sense that they underachieved? “It was a team full of characters,” says Kent. “Brian Moore: very intelligent, very intense. Will Carling: privately schooled army boy, movie star good looks, England captain at 23. Peter Winterbottom: absolutely hard as nails. Mickey Skinner: crazy as a cut snake. Jason Leonard: could sit with the King of England or a homeless person, and both those people would feel comfortable. Yeah, amazing characters, but, yeah, we underachieved for the ability that we had in that team.”

What happened next, is a story about life after rugby and what it means to reach a certain level of fame. “You play for a club like Harlequins or Gloucester or Northampton and you have an identity,” explains Kent. “Whenever you go into that club everyone knows your name. You go to the ground. You put on the jersey. You run out and the place erupts. You get interviewed after the game. You turn out for local charity events. You are validated. You are somebody. You feel that adulation. You feel the love and it seeps into every pore, nook and cranny of your soul, right?

“Then somebody else starts wearing that jersey,” he continues, “somebody else is getting that adulation, you go from this peak when you have this really fulfilling career and then you stop playing. Whenever you go back to the club, increasingly fewer people recognise you unless you’re a Martin Johnson or Lawrence Dallaglio. You start to lose that identity and that’s when guys struggle.

“I worked in the city, got a million-dollar bonus and I know this sounds crazy but it doesn’t compare to that five minutes before kick-off when you’re in this heightened physical and mental state. You’ve got that brotherhood: ‘I will be there for you. Will you be there for me?’ And you look each other in the eye and those moments cannot be replicated in the real world.

“Did you watch that documentary on 2003 World Cup winners?” he asks. “Ah, man, it was painful to watch at times. You would think winning a World Cup, you would be happy for life. But everyone has their own struggles. Life just turns up.”

As part of his programme of recovery, he went to see Peter Winterbottom to explain why he hadn’t been in touch and to open up about his addiction. He did the same with Gary Stevenson, who recently came to the fore again, going viral for his views on entrepreneurs. “Three or four years into being clean I thought, ‘I wonder what Gary is up to?’ because I was harsh on him at the end of my time with Citibank and the reason why was because I was high on coke.”

They met for lunch and Kent opened up. Gary was in the process of working on The Trading Game. Although Gary used pseudonyms for all the characters it was obvious to anyone who worked at Citibank that JB in the book was KB in real life. “When I read the book I was conflicted,” says Kent, “because if you didn’t know Gary, you didn’t know trading … look, it’s a really good book and what he says about the inequality of wealth is absolutely correct. But when I read it, well, yeah, there’s two things. One was having the opportunity to earn that sort of money, and he wrote some ridiculous, inflated stuff about how great a trader he was.

“For me, it comes back to gratitude. He ran everyone down in the book. And I thought that was distasteful, but that’s my ethical and moral code, right? 

“Grant Birkett played for Harlequins, and he got one cap for Scotland. It was Birko who got me my job at RP Martin and I’m eternally grateful to him. Harlequins, when they brought me over, sorted out my accommodation, got me a car, just let me settle. Again. I’ll always be grateful.”

Kent was offered jobs to go back into the city but was encouraged to become a counsellor by another member of his recovery group. He gained his qualifications and then began to promote his new life as a qualified therapeutic counsellor, initially through Instagram but predominantly through LinkedIn. “I didn’t want to go back to the city,” he says. “It’s a bit like your rugby career. When it’s over, it’s over.  And I thought ‘I’m gonna have to do something else’, and I just had a revelation that I’ve had a ton of experiences in my life. I tell you, it’s up there with the most bizarre things that have ever happened in my life – I presented myself [on LinkedIn] and I started getting guys contacting me and asking, ‘can you mentor me?’ I hadn’t really thought about mentoring or knew that much about it.

“We’re talking successful, professional men, decent level of education, a bit of sport in their background. On the outside it looks fine, married, kids, house etc … but they are struggling in different ways. And so I’ve become a counsellor and a mentor.”

The Trading Game is reportedly being adapted for TV. If and when that happens then Kent will be thrust into the spotlight as the ‘coke addicted trader’ which is how he is referred to in the book. He is more likely to see it as an opportunity to connect with more people who are addicted, and maybe even save a life. He also volunteers with MIND which can often mean dealing with cases of extreme abuse and multiple addictions. “It is by far and away the most fulfilling vocation I’ve ever had in my life,” he says. “I’m sixty. I’m in the last quarter of my life, my kids, who are fifteen and twelve, are now very much a part of that life.

“I want to use my experiences to help other people.” 

If you are looking for someone to talk with about an issue that is causing you concern, then contact Kent at his website kentbraycounselling.co.uk

Or listen to his podcasts on YouTube and Spotify.

Story by Ryan Herman

Pictures by Nick Dawe

This extract was taken from issue 30 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

“So”, asks British & Irish Lion number 676, “what’s two plus two?” Four. “Four plus four?” Eight. “Eight plus eight?” Sixteen. “Sixteen plus sixteen?” Thirty-two. “Thirty-two plus thirty-two?” Sixty-four. “Sixty-four plus sixty-four?” One hundred-twenty-eight. “Now, think of a vegetable, don’t tell me though.” Done.

“Carrot, right? It’s always carrot.”

It was carrot. Some British & Irish Lions tours are defined by individuals, for what happened on the pitch, or even off it, in defeat or victory. A dropped pass to lose the series, a searing run in the winning Test, incredible defence in the face of adversity, a barnstorming speech to rally the pride, or maybe even just coming up with a call that meant ‘one in, all in’. In 1997, when the British & Irish Lions embarked on a thirteen-game, six-week tour in the home of the world champions South Africa, the name that many of us of a certain generation recall is John Bentley, and it was for almost all of the reasons above. Jeremy Guscott too, perhaps, for his drop-goal to win the second Test 18-15 at King’s Park, Durban, to clinch the series and make history. But really, for that try, for that confrontation, and perhaps most important of all, that video, it has to be Bentos.

An entertainer in every sense, Bentos fills every moment; when one story finishes, his mind is already preparing another, maybe not even a story, just something to entertain, like the carrot teaser.

Sat in a leather chair with a pillow embroidered with the words, ‘Yorkshire Lad’ writ large, Bentos reels off his story, continually adding virtual ‘Post-it’ notes onto each anecdote when he remembers another connected story, but not wanting to lose the chronological thread of his own life. “We’ll come back to that one later,” he says, more than a few times. 

He is now living in Brighouse, a town sandwiched between two places that mean so much to him: Cleckheaton, where he grew up and first learnt to play rugby union, and even finished his career, aged 45; and Halifax, where he had his most enjoyable spell in club rugby, albeit in the other code, rugby league. He’s 58 now, almost 59, and it’s his favourite time of the decade, a Lions year. “Once every four years, the Lions talk comes around,” he says. “And I get the opportunity to travel all over. I’m actually going out to Australia as well, so I’m looking forward to that.”

Even for the three years when there isn’t a Lions tour, his role with the tourists almost thirty years ago, still helps keep him busy. “I got employed by Leeds in 2001 when they got promoted to the Premiership, my role was to try and encourage the rugby union playing community to embrace Headingley as an opportunity to watch professional rugby union, even though it was synonymous with cricket
and rugby league. 

“I got a foot in the door there because I played with the Lions,” he adds. 

Rugby began early for Bentos. “I started Cleckheaton as a six-year-old playing mini rugby, so my weekend involved playing football for school on a Saturday morning, rugby league for Dewsbury on a Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning playing rugby union with Cleckheaton.

“My sports teacher drove me to Bradford Grammar School, to a Yorkshire schools trial. Now, I could play, but I was quite small as a sixteen year old, so I didn’t get picked. 

“I came home and mum was making the tea in the kitchen, and she said, ‘How did you get on?’ I burst out crying, saying, ‘I didn’t get picked’. And my mum put her arm around me, and she said, ‘you can play’. I said it wasn’t that I didn’t get picked, it’s the fact that I felt inferior. I felt like a second-class citizen. My mum just put her arms around me and said, ‘Do you know, John, you can play. Just remember, when you’re on a sports field, on the rugby field, you’re as good as the boy you stand alongside. No better, no worse’. 

“And I went on a bit of a crusade then, and I went kicking shit out of all the public school boys I ever played against, which was probably not their fault, but I decided that was going to be my journey to play.”

Playing both codes until he was seventeen, despite the potential riches of a career in league, he chose the then amateur union. “I wanted to play for England,” he says, simply. “That was my goal. When I was eighteen-year-old, I went to Otley for two years, and then Sale under Fran Cotton and Steve Smith. 

“But throughout my rugby union career, every time I came off the field, there was always a [league] scout there saying, ‘do you want to earn this, do you want to earn that much?’. And of course rugby league scouts weren’t allowed in rugby union clubs, it was taboo to be involved with league clubs. 

“But I ended up playing for England and it was supposedly one of the biggest days of my life, but it was such an anti-climax.”

He’s jumped ahead, his mind racing to the next thought, almost before he’s finished vocalising the last one. He’s skipping how he won the Country Championship with Yorkshire, then played for the North to get on the radar of England. There’s also the story of the time he was with England B, who played before the first team, in France. “We’d climbed over the fence [for the main game], we’d no tickets. I ended up having probably a little bit too much to drink, and I’m in a quartet with Paul Rendell, Judge, sadly lost now, Peter Winterbottom and Wade Dooley. “I thought I’d have a connection with Wade because I was a police officer, he was also a serving police officer, but I also sensed he didn’t particularly respect me. He didn’t particularly like me, I knew that, I could tell. 

“And we ended up, a few drinks in, throwing drinks on each other. Well, it came to the last drink, and he said, ‘if you throw that on me, I’ll knock you out’. And I went to throw it and Pete Winterbottom got hold of my arm and split it all up. 

“He’s huge as well. Why would you get involved in a fracas with him?”

“Anyway, they tried to split us up, but Wade put his arm around me and said, ‘no, you’re coming for a drink with me’, and I went for a drink, and I poured my heart out to him, got quite emotional about it, about a lack of respect. From that day forward, he became my minder.”

The full England cap that followed, in 1988, was against Ireland. “It’d been a day that I’d planned for and worked towards for realistically, three or four years. I always remember very nervously getting to the ground, I hadn’t slept two or three nights prior, pull me England shirt off the peg, and there was the big, juicy red rose, and I kissed it, and I went out and warmed up, and then put the shirt on, looked in the mirror and went out on the field. 

“We sang the national anthem, and I cried, you know, just the emotion. Then I heard a whistle, and it had started. It was fast, it was furious, and then I heard another whistle, and it’d finished, and I’d been on the pitch for eighty minutes playing for my country, England, and I’d done nothing. I hadn’t done anything. I’d been a passenger.”

Then, there was the tour to Australia in the same year, where he earned his second cap. “I was probably remembered, for the first time, for the things that I did off the field, rather than on it, if I’m honest. I was only a young boy, 21 years old, and a little bit wild at times, and certainly had a great tour.

“I always remember Geoff Cook coming back and saying, you know, ‘[your] rugby was disappointing, but what a tourist’. Just being a prankster, I’ve always been where there’s a little bit of mischief to be had. I’ve never been far away from it, and I’m a big believer in life, even in moments of adversity, if we can smile, we’re going to be okay. And I like to make people smile. I’ve always enjoyed that.”

Bentos is also surprisingly earnest, continually talking about looking at the man in the mirror, and also admitting that the chip on his shoulder from that grammar school trial was often present, long after it should’ve disappeared altogether. 

Although a scrum-half when he started out, he was a centre when he was contending for caps. His rival couldn’t have been more different: Will Carling. “My goal was all to do with Will Carling, and he was being earmarked to become England captain,” he explains. “They [England] had assured everybody, the players in that season, 1988/89, that getting picked for England was all going to be based on performance. And when one squad was announced, I’d played against Will Carling the day before. 

“My role for Yorkshire was to destroy Will Carling [who was playing for Durham in the County Championship],” he admits. 

So determined was Bentos to get one over his rival, when an injury meant he was asked to play on the wing, he refused. “In those days, playing on the wing was very different than it is now, you know; I remember growing up at school, you know, the kid on the wing was a kid who could run fast, couldn’t catch the ball, was there to make the numbers up.”

It wasn’t just Bentos who believed the England-captain-elect could have his feathers ruffled.  “And of course, there was all the chat prior to the game. Will Carling was in the toilets and asked Richard Holmes, ‘where’s Bentos playing today?’. And Holmes said, ‘he’s playing in the centres and he’s going to kick shit out of you’. And I did for eighty minutes. The following day when they announced the side, Geoff Cook paused when he got to twelve in his team. He stopped and went, ‘this is probably one of the hardest decisions: Will Carling, 12’. 

“And I walked out.”

Not seeing a way through, Bentos left for rugby league. “I thought this is the time now. I’d been approached on a regular basis, and was about to get married as well, so I said, ‘right, I’m going to sign’.”

He went to Leeds, with a presumption that he’d “never, ever get to play rugby union again”, although in league, he also found plenty of challenges. “I had some big problems. Number one, everybody hated Leeds. They were deemed to be the rich boys, you know, the flamboyant club. Number two, I was from rugby union, so everybody I played against thought I was soft, yeah. That never happened twice. You know, you end up getting some credibility, some respect. 

“Thirdly, I was a serving police officer, so imagine playing at the likes of Featherstone and Wakefield and Castleford, who were extremely militant during the miners’ strike. Yeah, that was a little bit of a challenge, but it worked for me.”

Four years later, he went to Halifax. “Dare I say, I became a bigger fish in a smaller pond at Halifax. And Halifax for me, was a club that belonged to the people, playing at Thrum Hall, which was ten foot higher on one touch line than the other. Loved it. I had probably the happiest period in my playing career there, in terms of club rugby.”

Being paid to play rugby changed perspectives. “At Leeds, match-day winning money was £300, but if you lost it was £40, so you didn’t actually want to play on a Sunday afternoon and be the player that lost the game. And I’ve been that player, when I made a mistake at Warrington and kicked the ball out on the full, and as a result, we lost the game. 

“Playing for money was very different,” he continues. “And some players were playing for money. They were doing hard, hard jobs, manual work. And actually, the difference between winning and losing on our Sunday afternoon was that, if the washing machine is broken down, and you win, you get a new washing machine. If you lose, you don’t get that.”

When union turned professional, more doors opened for Bentos, not that it was a case of one door closing, another opening. He kept both open, because the top level of league switched to a summer season, with the founding of the Super League in 1996 , which meant he could play all year round, in both codes.

“I ended up playing twelve months of the year. I signed with Newcastle, who were in the second division, Sir John Hall was funding them, we had Rob Andrew, Dean Ryan, Steve Bates…  

“I basically had five years back-to-back without a break. 

“It was a bit of a combination: maximising my potential,” he says of his rationale, “in terms of, I’m there as a guy with three young children, I’ve got to provide for my family and I was sought after as well.”

In a Newcastle side that was flush with internationals, despite being in the second tier, Bentos ran amok, scoring four hat-tricks in one campaign. “I got a phone call from Fran Cotton in January of 97, ‘Bentos, it’s Fran…’ ‘Yeah, I know’. I hadn’t spoken to or seen him for eight, nine years.

“He said, ‘are you available to tour with the Lions in the summer?’. And I lied, said I was, but I wasn’t, I was contracted to play rugby league in the summer. He came back, ‘Well, with all due respect, you’re running riot, second division, great team. We need to get you a run with England B. Leave it with me.’ 

“And he rang me back three weeks later, saying ‘Bentos, the news I’m going to share with you comes as little surprise to either of us, England won’t touch you, because of league.’ Whereas, the Welsh boys came straight into the Wales team.”

Cotton left him with the fact they were watching, and it was down to him. “I was in the right place at the right time, fortunately for me, with the right type of people picking what they felt was the right type of player to go to South Africa.”

The prospective Lions first met in Birmingham. “There were 62 professional rugby players, six of us rugby league, which was unheard of,” recalls Bentos. “Previously, you weren’t allowed in the same room as your counterparts but Fran Cotton spoke about the challenge ahead. 

“We were given sight of a contract,” he explains. “It was £10,000 for being picked for the Lions, taking part in the tour and completing it paid pro rata. So if you’re injured halfway through, you only got £5,000. Bonuses: £1,500 for winning one Test match, £5,000 for winning the Test series and, because there had been problems on the previous tour, £2,000 for behaving. 

“There was no chance I was getting that,” he quickly adds.

The series bonus as well, says Bentley, was also highly unlikely to get paid out.

While selection was far from guaranteed, his wife, Sandy, still had doubts, as a Lions tour would bring in only a quarter of what the same time in league would bring, plus the risk of injury against such volatile opposition was certainly a considerable risk. “I was 30 years old as well. Everything was right in my world, as a player, in my life, you know my family, which has been extremely important to me throughout my life, a big focus, everything was just right.”

When the selection letter arrived, or rather Bentos read his name on teletext – as the post in his area didn’t arrive until later in the day – Sandy stood firm. “She told me I couldn’t go,” he says. “I sat on it for two days, and sat her down after two days and said, ‘you know, there’s some things in life far more important than money. You have to let me go, because I’ll spend the rest of my life thinking, what if?’ and she said, ‘right, you go’. 

“And I look back and now, and, you know, I still remind her. I say, ‘you told me, 27-28 years ago, I couldn’t go on the tour, and actually, if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this, or we wouldn’t be here, or we’re in Marseille…’ And she says to me, ‘Bentley, you made one right decision, one right decision, that’s it’.”

South Africa wasn’t just the pinnacle of a career in rugby, it was also something of a homecoming. “I grew up in South Africa,” he says. “We emigrated when I was four years old, and spent three years in Cape Town. My dad’s job took us there, he was a sheet metal worker, nothing flamboyant or anything. But we emigrated out there, although my mum struggled with the apartheid so we came back. It’s a magical country though.

 “We came back [to England] on a boat, and there was a doctor who was a traveling South African, and I was seven years old, and I shouted to Mum, ‘Mum there’s a kaffir in the pool’. Very horrible. My mum went across and apologised, because I didn’t know what I’d done wrong, although the doctor was fine. But people were subservient. Yeah, it was terrible. In the world that we live in, everybody’s got an opportunity. Everybody should be equal.”

He remembers very clearly when he left home to return to South Africa, this time as a Lion. “It was 11th May, 1997, and my son was seven years old, my daughters were five, and the little one, Millie, was six months.”

Travelling down with club-mate Tony Underwood – one of five Newcastle players selected – he asked about the English contingent, with one player in particular intriguing Bentos. “I’d formed an opinion of Guscott,” says Bentos, “and I thought he was soft, because he didn’t play in that game when Bath played against Wigan, and they got £10,000 a man for playing it. 

“And I asked Tony, and he said, ‘Bentos, if he respects you, you’ll get on very well. He will respect you…

“I said, ‘you know what, Tony, I’ll know whether or not he does, and actually, if he doesn’t, I’ll pick him as a partner in training, and he’ll hold the shield and I’ll go straight over the top of it and into the bridge of his nose, I’ll smack him.”

For all his bravado, Bentos was going to South Africa not to be a prankster. “My wife had allowed me to go, so it wasn’t just about entertaining people, it had to be about the rugby,” he says. 

When the players met, Guscott was among the first to say hello. “He said, ‘Bentos, I’ve heard a lot about you’. And we shook hands. He said, ‘I’m looking to spend some time with you’. And you know what? I’d got it so wrong with him in terms of what took place over the forthcoming ten weeks or so. He wasn’t soft. 

“I asked him about why he didn’t play in the Bath and Wigan matches, he said, ‘I knew they [the two codes] were different games, why did I need to go and get me head kicked in to have that proven?’. We ended up being great mates.”

The film crew who were there to shoot a fly-on-the-wall video, the iconic Living with Lions, were on board despite reservations from the management. They soon picked out Bentos as the ideal insider and handed him a camcorder [Google it, if you’re under forty], unleashing a man who would deliver the kind of content that modern-day Lions fans have no hope of ever seeing. “It’s very real, never to be repeated,” he says. “And actually, one of the key ingredients to me having the camera was none of the players knew. After three weeks, I said, ‘Do you know what? I kept giving them tapes and what have you, and you’re only getting my perspective of the tour’.  And I gave the camera to Doddie [Weir], who got injured, cruelly, got his leg snapped in half. Rob Wainwright used it a bit as well.”

It also helped that what was happening on the pitch was so good. “We were winning,” he says. “We only lost two games out of thirteen, and we were all winning, and that was a big ingredient equally as well.”

Any rules on alcohol consumption? “None,” he says. “If you want to drink, go for a drink, but just recognise, upon returning to the hotel, there is somebody in that hotel preparing for the biggest game of their life, so just keep it down. 

“I became the entertainment officer,” continues Bentos, “somebody said during the team-building that we need an entertainment officer, and there’s about five players, six players, shout my name out. I said, ‘No, I’m not doing it’. And Johno said, ‘yeah, yeah, you’re doing it’. I said, ‘well, I’m not doing it on my own. He said, ‘well, pick whoever you want.’ Who’s the first person I asked? Guscott Because I knew that if I’m in charge, we’re doing this, we’re doing that – if he didn’t want to do it, he wouldn’t do it. So I got him involved. The other two would be Scott Gibbs, get the Welsh on board, and Doddie, to get the Scots.

“I had a budget, a little bit of a slush fund from Scottish Provident who were our sponsors; everywhere we go we’d put things on like clay pigeon shooting.”

The first headlines came when he faced James Small, the Springbok wing turning out for Western Province. “A rabble rouser, bully,” says Bentos of his wing rival. “He was a big part of that 1995 World Cup win when he nullified the threat of Jonah Lomu alone. I was picked out of position from the right wing to play on the left wing to stand in front of James Small. 

“All the focus prior to the game was the threat that James Small would pose throughout the course of the game, and due to a sensational piece of wing play on his behalf and a shabby piece of defensive play on my behalf, he went around me, kicked the ball and it ran on, but Neil Jenkins got back and touched the ball down, resulting in a 22-metre drop out to us. 

“James Small then came up to me, goaded me, circling his finger, calling me names. And I could have done one of two things. I can either dig a hole, or get out and fight him. Five minutes later, same scenario, Small receives the ball, full of it, and goes to do the same manoeuvre, this time I took him quite high, he then tries to slam the ball in my face. I ducked. We stepped out of play, and as he lifted me, my forehead just accidentally hit him across the bridge of his nose, and we ended up getting split up. We had a bit of a tussle.”

During a 35-30 defeat to North-East Transvaal [now the Blue Bulls] on the following Saturday, Bentley was replaced in the second half. Knowing full well that being in the Saturday side meant you were in Test contention, being back in the midweek side with just two weeks to go before the first Test, he thought his chance had gone. “I went off tour for three days, I basically laid low. 

“I looked at the man in the mirror. Yeah, and actually that was the occasion when I wasn’t comfortable with what I was looking at, you know?”

The midweek game was against Gauteng Lions.  “My wife always says to me, ‘you went on one tour, scored one try, and you’ve got one speech, get over yourself Bentley’. 

“I can remember every single moment of it, my strength has always been broken field play, kick reception is where you’re at your most dangerous. 

“Because,” he continues, “all of a sudden, when a game has turned professional, it’s very defence orientated but on kick reception, certainly on a hack through, you’ve got a disorganised defence in front of you. 

“So, Neil Jenkins picks the ball up, but just before that I’d looked up and saw a backrow and a hooker in front of me… 25 metres away, so there’s thirty metres of space on the outside. I’ve called for the ball prior to him getting it, and he’s given me it, so the first bit’s planned. 

“I’m going around those two next, finding my space, picking my gap, and then all of a sudden, I’m under the posts, and we score and then we’ve won the game [20-14]. And I’m back on tour.

“That was a moment that changed my world, really, because nobody knew me,” he says. “Yeah, I was playing in a corridor in the Pennines, playing rugby league, then a bit for Newcastle in the second division, so it was, ‘who’s this guy, Bentley?’ ‘Who is he?’ But, all of a sudden, dare I say, when I came back from the tour, because of that one try, and the fact that we won [the series], I was nearly famous, and actually it was a really awkward place to be. I’d never been famous before.

“There were book deals, people ringing me up to do this and do that. I was put in a place that I’d never experienced before and I lost sight of what I was for a short period. I was just a rugby player. I was a boy who started playing at Cleckheaton, finished at Cleckheaton with a little bit in between. I just played rugby.”

He couldn’t sleep the night before Test selection, instead he was found waiting in the hotel corridor by team liaison Sam Peters who was handing out the letters. “I took the letter downstairs, put it on a table in the team room located in the basement of the hotel – we had decided we wouldn’t sit in each other’s rooms, we wouldn’t gather privately, we’d have a team room which was the focus.

“I put the camera to one side, and thought, ‘You know what? This is my moment’. I just stared at it, and it had, ‘John Bentley, British and Irish Lion’ on the front of the envelope. I picked it up and the first word I read was, ‘congratulations’. I couldn’t believe it, I’ve been picked and I thought, ‘oh, who shall I tell first? My mum, my dad, my wife, my children?’. And it went on to read, ‘you’ve been selected a replacement’. I was gutted.”

The first Test was fast and furious, and Bentley never got on, but Ieuan Evans would get injured after the game, opening the way for the boy from Cleckheaton to start the second Test. “The biggest day of my life, 28th of June, 1997,” he says. “Kings Park, Durban, sheer place, 80-90,000 people there, only 10,000 Brits. There weren’t many supporters in South Africa for us. But actually, I think having won the first Test, a lot of people got flights out for the second Test. And we were second best in the second Test, probably for a good sixty minutes of the game, they were unbelievable, the South Africans. 

“It was like tanks coming at you,” he says of the Springboks. “I’d worked hard all my life, I really had, and the Lions tour became my time, but that game had been ferocious. There was about three minutes remaining, we were fifteen-apiece, and I remember Guscott demanded the ball from Matt Dawson, received it, dropped a drop goal. It went over, gave us three points. Then three minutes later, the final whistle went, and that moment was probably one of the most frustrating places that I’ve ever been in my life. 

“There were just so many places I wanted to be at that one moment,” he continues. “There was all the boys on the pitch, all the fifteen, the lads in the stand who were integral to being successful. And then there was the people that are most important in my life, my wife and my three young children. I wanted to be with them, to share it with them. And then I just remember stopping and thinking, ‘Oh, no, shit, of all the people, why did it have to be Guscott’,” he laughs. 

Bentley recalls the speeches of head coach, Ian McGeechan, how in ten, fifteen or twenty years’ time, the players would need only to look at each other, not say a word, but know what they’ve done, what they’ve achieved. Geech’s words were immortalised in Living With Lions, which came out in November 1997, and the first to review the video was Sandy. “It arrived when I was away, and she said, ‘I’ve watched it, and it’s just you being a dickhead’.”

Bentos talks of Doddie Weir a lot: his illness, what he achieved, what a great man, the moments. “You know, when Doddie got injured, I always remember, I’d given him the camera to go to his room, he was packing his suitcase and what have you, and I took the camera back to my room, and I cried because the tour had finished for him. Just like that.”

The one time during several hours together he’s almost brought to tears, is about a party organised for Doddie, who died from Motor Neurone Disease in 2022. “The sad thing was,” he began, his voice struggling, “he missed the party, and he loved a party…”

After the Lions, although he’d earn two more caps – nine years on from his first ones – his professional career began to wind down. “I started to break down a little bit, I had a bit of a fallout with Rob [Andrew, the director of rugby at Newcastle], and what I certainly recognise from that, you can’t beat the boss man, ultimately, no matter how strong and opinionated you are… 

“I ended up leaving Newcastle, I went to Rotherham for a short period, which was probably a mistake. It’s nothing disrespectful to Rotherham, but my body was breaking down, and it became a bit of a struggle to look in the mirror, you know. 

“I ended up retiring professionally then, and ended up going back to Cleckheaton, which is where I first started, which I left when I was eighteen years old, which I didn’t really leave. 

“I stood there as director of rugby for three games, and thought, ‘oof, the only way I can change this, is if I get on the pitch’. And I ended up playing for another twelve years, until I was 45. 

“We got four promotions in six years. We were way down, but we ended up on Saturday afternoon on Grandstand. We ended up on the results, yeah, top four divisions, which was a real accolade for a little tiny club, which meant so much to me, which you’re so thankful to for giving me the start.”

Bentos has almost as many mantras as he does anecdotes. “You know,” he says, “life’s like climbing a tree: you’ve got to get to the top of the tree, occasionally you branch off and it bends, and that’s quite exciting. But, now and again, that branch snaps, you are on your arse. Then, you’ve got to get back on the tree. 

“I always remember, not long after retiring, stopping playing, I stood in the garden one Saturday afternoon and thought, ‘what you going to do now big shot?’

“Playing professional sport, you become a little bit institutionalised. In a sense, it’s a little bit like being in the armed forces. Not as intense, but you’re told what you got to do, what you got to wear, where you got to be, what you got to eat. And you suddenly come away from that, you exit that and there’s a big void, and the void needs filling. And I got lost for a short period went a little bit bonkers, a little bit crazy. 

“I was making poor decisions, hurting the people that are probably the most important people in your life, people who are close to you, inadvertently hurting them, but also recognising that and actually putting things in place to try and recover the situations that you’ve created, but all good. 

“There’s not much good about getting old,” he concludes, “and I love talking about family, and I’ve got three beautiful children. They’re all grown up now, but I’m embracing a different chapter in my life and it’s called grandparenting, and I’ve got four and I’ve worked out there should have been a way to bypass the parenting and go straight to the grandparenting. It’s far more enjoyable.” 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Russ Williams

This extract was taken from issue 30 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

In the north London borough of Haringey, on a park pitch in Wood Green, close enough to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium that you can clearly see the blue fluorescence emitting from its lights, you’ll find a rugby club which literally looks different to everyone else. ‘I recently joined the rough-as-all-fuck rugby team round here [north London],’ said Northern Irish comedian Vittorio Angelone recently on his podcast. ‘It’s me, twenty of the biggest black guys you’ve ever seen, and three Turkish guys who don’t really know what’s happening.’

Vittorio is among the newest recruits at Haringey Rhinos, one of the few amateur teams still going strong in north-east London, an area that’s among the most diverse around, with a non-white population of 43 per cent. For a sport whose followers in England are 87.8 per cent white, that represents a challenge for growth, at least in fighting perceptions. Haringey Rhinos, a club founded in 1963, are here for the fight. “There’s no chance there’s a club in the UK more diverse than us,” asserts Dominic Dyer, Haringey Rhinos’ captain. “First of all, we’ve definitely got the most black [adult] players of any club in London.

“The cheeky thing,” he continues, “is that if we’re playing against another side and they have one or two black players, we sidle right up to them and go, ‘you’re looking a little lonely bro, why don’t you join us, there’s a team full of us in Haringey!’.”

They certainly lean into their diversity too. “It’s Ramadan right now,” adds Dominic, “so we asked for water breaks at twenty minutes each half. No one’s gonna say no to that are they? There’s no other team that can get away with that … anyway it’s their own fault for not knowing that you actually can’t drink water during Ramadan.”

Dominic is a calm and measured presence in the changing room before today’s league game against Belsize Park IVs in the second division of the Middlesex Merit Table, the group of leagues outside of the traditional rugby pyramid. Inside, loud rap music blares and the players bob their heads as they get changed in a pre-match environment the like of which will be replicated hundreds of times across the country on any winter weekend. 

But cast your eyes upwards in the Rhinos’ changing room, and you will find exactly what it is that makes this club unique: a ceiling adorned with national flags, put up by players from those countries who have turned out for the team. There must be a dozen or two, from Albania to Kenya to Wales, and the Rhinos’ line-up today reflects this diversity, with eleven different nationalities taking to the field.

Perhaps the extremity of Rhinos’ commitment to diversity is epitomised by the sight of Hal Jones, a very tall and posh white man whom the other Rhinos have taken to calling ‘The Baron’, sitting laughing away next to Tayo, an enormous Nigerian tighthead prop. As well as being a forward for Rhinos, Hal has represented Great Britain in fencing, ensuring there truly is the full spectrum of life here. “I’m Jamaican, well my family’s Jamaican but I was born here,” explains Dominic while wrapping some tape around his ankles. “There definitely aren’t too many rugby players with Jamaican heritage, so I’m pretty proud of that. You’ve reminded me that I actually need to get a Jamaican flag on the ceiling!

“We have Jamaicans, we have a guy from Tajikistan, a guy from China, Algeria, Romania, Nigeria, literally every continent is represented … actually I don’t think we have anyone from South America. There’s got to be a big bloke from Chile knocking around somewhere that we can get in the team.”

Rhinos have made a very deliberate decision to celebrate and revel in their diversity, in a way that sets them apart from other clubs. Player-coach Aiden Morrison, who is here today in his capacity as a coach and pseudo spiritual leader, is sitting next Dominic and can’t resist chiming in on the topic of team diversity, especially on how it is perceived by opposition teams.  “When you go to certain places in west London,” Aiden says in a quintessential north London accent, “you see the posh boys that we’re going down to play against and you’re like, ‘yep, we’re very different from these guys’.

“We had a guy come over from Belsize Park to join our team last year, and he was telling us that when we got promoted last season, the other teams ‘all caught wind of how we want to play rugby’. Apparently, the rumour is spreading that Rhinos are just turning up to games looking for a fight, so everyone’s been stacking their teams against us, playing their biggest boys, you know? We’ve been able to teach them a lesson, because it hasn’t worked out for most of them.

“This rumour is definitely not fair,” insists Aiden, “but it’s something we understand, because we don’t look like common rugby players. We know there’s always going to be a target on our backs in that sense.” 

What is also striking is the significant age disparity in the group, as players no older than twenty ready themselves next to guys who are knocking on the door of vets rugby, possibly with “vets’ pass” already in hand. This is due, in part, to the fact that Aiden also coaches at City University of London, and is able to advertise Rhinos as a social rugby club for students who always have half an eye on a beer after the game.

It falls to the big boys to accommodate this commitment to youth, meaning Dominic, normally a blindside flanker, is sacrificing playing in his usual position today. “I’m not a hooker, but I am a hooker today bro,” he says. “For a lot of young players we try and bring through, it’s all about the experience to be honest. We don’t just want them to enjoy it, we need them to enjoy it for the future of the club. We need them coming back every week, so there’s free pints whenever they want them, and if they get hit too hard or too high, we have five or six of the biggest black guys in north London to show up for them.

“Because so many of us have grown up together, it means so much to pass on the uniform. We’ve worked hard to make sure the clubhouse is somewhere everyone wants to be too; we used to come here to do our GCSE revision back in the day.”

From GCSE revision to captaining the team, Dominic has had his own ascent which is mirroring that of the Rhinos who, for all their variations in age and background, are a serious and unified club. They’ve also gotten used to winning, securing three victories in their last four games before today. “So, we got promoted last year, and we had a bit of a slow start to this season,” explains Dominic. “To be honest, this was fine by me because I didn’t want to get promoted again as recruitment was dead slow last summer. 

“But then around winter time the team really picked up,” he continues. “I was like, well maybe this weird way of doing things, getting people who have heard of us through Vittorio’s posts on Instagram and also nicking random black players from around the leagues, is sustainable.”

When we meet, Rhinos lie sixth in Division Two of the Middlesex Merit Table, having been promoted from Division Three in the previous season. The team that finishes first in the league secures automatic promotion, but the teams from second to fifth are put into a playoff bracket to fight it out for the second promotion place. With just two games left of the season, a recent string of wins means Rhinos are lurking behind the pack, just one point behind fifth and daring to dream of back-to-back promotions.

Today’s adversaries, Belsize Park IVs, are one of the teams above Rhinos, in third place, meaning this afternoon’s encounter is, in essence, a play-off decider. “Yeah Belsize are alright I suppose,” says Nick Critchlow, president of Haringey Rhinos, with a wry smile, “but we’ll have anyone on our day, I’m not just saying that either, it’s a fact.”

If he has any big-match nerves, Nick, known as ‘Mr Nick’ around these parts, hides it well behind a warm smile and magnanimous offerings of pints and warm food to those still in the clubhouse once Rhinos have taken to the field for their warm up. Keen to escape the music still blaring from the changing room, we retreat into a quieter corner of the clubhouse where Mr Nick insists that we eat something, ‘so that we don’t go out there on an empty stomach’, as if we were shaping up to play ourselves. “You expect coming into a new league to struggle a little bit,” he explains, “but we’ve ended up near the playoffs for this league as well.

“It’s happened before in the club’s history,” Nick explains, “where we’ve been promoted twice in two seasons and it hasn’t always been helpful, because all of a sudden, going up three leagues with the same players, they might struggle to adapt. 

“But, to be brutally honest, at the level we play it doesn’t matter what league you’re in really. As long as you’re in a division that’s competitive and one which you have got a chance of winning, to me it doesn’t matter if we’re in league one or league nine.

“The league we’re in now is really competitive and no one’s slaughtering each other by points, which would be a pointless situation to be in. In general we’re playing in solid, really tight games against clubs who are on the whole, bigger than us – Belsize Park are a much bigger club than we are and we also play Hampstead who have three teams. 

“I hear some of our boys calling the west London teams posh, but I still think rugby is very much a game for all walks of life really.”

The point about Rhinos being a smaller club than many of their opponents is a salient one, but perhaps not as much as their geography. Put simply, this part of London isn’t very ‘rugby’.

Anyone who has ever been to Wood Green knows that it imbues a certain chaotic quality. Stepping off the tube, one is immediately confronted by the madness of the junction of Station Road and Lordship Lane, surely one of the loudest places in London, where dozens of shouted conversations are regularly interspersed by urgent honks of frustrated drivers.

The fifteen-minute walk down Lordship Lane and Perth Road to the New River Sports Centre, home of the Rhinos, is lined with kebab shops, a Polish supermarket, and the Kardesler Baklava Cake Shop, a north-east London institution. 

This can be heavily contrasted with the locations of the teams Rhinos play, many of whom reside in the leafier climes of west London. Already this season Rhinos have travelled to Hampstead, Belsize Park, Ruislip, and West London Rugby Club, who play near the Hornesden Hill Nature Reserve. Wood Green, to put it diplomatically, is a little more rough and ready than those parts of London. 

Recent census data reveals that 36.7 per cent of households in North and South Wood Green are classified as ‘deprived in one dimension’, a figure notably higher than the national average of 33.5 per cent. Haringey also ranks among the London boroughs with the highest levels of wealth inequality, surpassed only by Tower Hamlets and Barking and Dagenham. This stark contrast is evident just a short bus ride away to the west of the borough, where one can find the affluent suburbs of Highgate and Muswell Hill with their gastropubs and arty shops. 

As is often the case in some of London’s more disadvantaged areas, football is the dominant force here. Rhinos literally play on White Hart Lane, within walking distance of the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and four stops away from Arsenal on the Piccadilly Line. Next to the New River Sports Centre are the White Hart Lane and Tottenhall recreation grounds, where there are seemingly ever-present games of eleven-a-side taking place. “Rugby has always been played here though,” says Nick somewhat defensively after mention of the area’s football prestige, “it’s not revolutionary for the game to be played in north-east London, but these days there are so few rugby clubs here. 

“Old Totts [Tottonians RFC] used to be up White Hart Lane and they packed up and moved a few years ago. Old Grammarians have now moved further out there near the Green Dragon Lane, way deep in Enfield. It does feel like we’re the last club standing our ground on this patch.

“The origins of the club started off in the 60s,” explains Nick. “It was started mainly by Welsh blokes in the area, who were teachers from local schools. They started the club so they could all get together and play and also bring in some of the lads from their schools so they’d have a club to play for as well.”

As if conjured by our discussion of the club’s history, two old boys, one called John and another simply known as ‘Magic’, enter and shake Nick’s hand heartily. Thrilled at the prospect of sharing the history of the club with an interested stranger, the three men attempt to trace the history of the club from one location to another, a task which proves harder than one might imagine.

“No, no, the club was initially based in Crouch End,” Nick says firmly, after an incorrect assertion from Magic, “and we were a bit nomadic for a while, playing all over north-east London. We were in that place in Lordship Lane [the road that connects Wood Green with Tottenham High Road] for a while,” intervenes John, “and that really was a shithole.”

“What you’ve just heard is very unusual,” Nick says amid the ensuing laughter. “If a rugby player says a place is a shithole, it really is a shithole. I do remember that place; it was proper wipe your feet when you left stuff.”

John and Magic have turned up in their smartest gear as today is not only a crucial playoff decider on the pitch, but the date of the annual lunch put on for the old boys, the Rhinos of yesteryear. At the far end of the clubhouse is a small room bursting with sausage rolls and a splendid array of sandwiches. 

As Nick, John and Magic giddily reminisce about old European tours between mouthfuls of pastry and pork, Aiden is wildly gesticulating on the side of the pitch. He is leading his team through their final paces in the warm-up, urging Rhinos to move the ball faster and hit the tackle bags harder. 

Despite Aiden’s demands and the pressure of a big game looming, there is an abundance of laughter in the warm-up, and a definite community feel as volunteers muck in to make sure everything is ready for the game. 

Aiden has played for Haringey Rhinos since he was fifteen. A local boy having gone to school in Enfield, a teacher encouraged him to go to school rugby trials and he abandoned all dreams of other sports on the spot. This is his fourteenth year playing for the club and third as player-coach. “I’m not supposed to be in this role I can’t lie,” chuckles Aiden. “We had this coach who was supposed to be here for three years, and then one year in he was like ‘yeah, I’m done with this’. Then my friend took over, he’s just one of those club guys that’s always around, but for the life of him he couldn’t coach rugby. He just came to me and asked me, he’s like, ‘do you mind doing it?’.  I said that I’d take a couple of sessions towards the end of the season, see if the boys reciprocate. At the time I was 25, so there were quite a few lads older than me. Telling older guys who have played rugby for longer than you what to do sometimes doesn’t go down well. 

“But the reception I got was quite good. I clashed heads with some of the older players, but it was a thing of ‘you fall into line, or you find a new club’.”

To make such a statement is typical of Aiden’s character, as he is at once exceptionally friendly, but totally uncompromising. While he’s not playing today, he still turns out for Rhinos sometimes, despite a nagging injury which has kept him sidelined in recent years.

As kick-off nears, he brings the Rhinos together for a final team talk. He bellows commands at the gathered players, imploring them to go out and hit Belsize Park hard early doors to give them a true and proper welcome to Haringey. Aiden is a principled coach, and his values align well with the current iteration of Haringey Rhinos, where there is a strong focus on accessibility and inclusion – principles that are upheld at every level of the club.

At Haringey Rhinos, it’s completely free for kids to play rugby. The minis section, launched just over a decade ago, numbers over 200, including boys and girls aged five to seventeen of all abilities, and operates without any training or match fees. The club raises £10k each year to cover all the expenses for the minis and regularly seeks support through appeals to ‘sponsor a junior Rhino’. With over seventy per cent of the young players coming from BAME backgrounds, Aiden highlights how this helps foster a culture of inclusivity within the club. “Everyone else, they’re paying like £200 a year, which obviously allows them to have a nicer kit, maybe some nicer facilities. But luckily, through sponsorships and funding, we were able to give the kids boots, gumshields, some recycled kit for free. We want to prioritise getting people involved, instead of making it elitist, where you have to have money to play.

“I mean, I remember first playing,” Aiden smiles wistfully, “I would have liked that for sure. Getting into rugby wasn’t that strange for me because my mum’s side is Irish; my uncle played rugby and my cousins in Ireland play rugby. My Irish lot were pleased when they heard I was playing; they thought I was going to be a footballer and before that, I was going to be a boxer. It was cool really, they just really supported me, no matter what I chose, and the same goes for my Jamaican side of my family too.”

As the game kicks off, there is a tense vibe in the air reflecting the magnitude of the encounter. This is soon quashed as Rhinos score a well-worked early try and nail the conversion, taking a 7-0 lead. However, Belsize Park, following a penalty try which causes much consternation among Aiden and the Rhinos substitutes, score right before half-time and take a 12-7 lead into the break. 

On the side of the pitch, the old boys aren’t really watching the game too carefully, thrusting their cans towards each other and punctuating the tense air with hearty laughter. The same cannot be said of the current iteration of Rhinos, as Aiden prowls around an imagined technical area and the substitutes keep their eyes locked on the action. Aiden explains how this is another conscious decision to re-orient the priorities of the club.

“So, when I first joined Rhinos, we were known, notoriously known I should say, for being a drinking club. Rugby wasn’t the priority really, the priority was getting off the pitch and getting into the bar. 

“In a major sense, we’ve totally shifted it so that rugby is the priority now, and you have to earn the drinks that you have after the game, it’s not a reason to turn up. 

“Of course if we win, we enjoy ourselves properly, you can tell the mood’s better in the clubhouse after a win and people will stick around longer. After a loss, people are dead quick to leave, even the older boys who were around during the heavy-drinking era won’t stick around if we’ve lost.”

Fears of Rhinos losing this particular game are furthered as Belsize Park score a try immediately after half-time. Despite spirited resistance from Rhinos, their opponents are a slick, powerful outfit and end up winning the game 31-14. 

In the final moments, Aiden grows increasingly irate and is dismissed by the referee for using bad language in an episode which is actually a case of mistaken identity as, while he was venting frustration, the swearing instead came from an injured Rhino who had come down to watch the team play.

The disappointment around fading prospects of a double promotion is palpable as Aiden again gathers his team, assuring the players that they can keep their heads held high despite defeat and instructing them to chat to the old boys who have made the effort to come down. The promise of the impending ‘court’ session also brings mischievous smiles to certain players.

Though it was a disappointing day for Rhinos, their fly-half put in a commendable performance. Scorer of the neat opening try, Zac Mistry, a second year accounting and finance student at City University of London, was the best player on the pitch. After Dominic sustained an ankle injury in the second half, the young man from Carmarthen had to assume the role of captain for the remainder of the game, illustrating how highly thought of he is among the group. “I’ll play two games and then two training sessions every week,” says Zac, who also plays at uni. “To be honest with you mate, I’m absolutely knackered.

“I love being in London,” he continues, there’s so many cultures and it’s really helped me as someone who has grown up somewhere very different to that. I mean look around; [Zac gesticulates around the clubhouse, to indicate the breadth of culture on show in this very room] you wouldn’t get this in Wales.”

“If you check our team sheet on Instagram before every game, there are flags next to every player’s name. I love that they do that, and I love that I’m repping the Welsh boys. But in the backs alone, I have guys from Bangladesh, Scotland, Portugal to pass to behind me – it’s class. You know I had to put that Welsh flag up on the ceiling too.”

Under Zac’s Welsh flag the clubhouse is a happy scene despite the loss, as the laughter volume quickly increases after the players get their hands on a beer and a hot dog. Off-colour jokes begin to fly with marked freedom and both Rhinos and Belsize Park players make great headway with the special ‘four drinks for £10’ offer. “Uni is very serious, maybe a little bit too serious,” admits Zac. “Playing for Rhinos is serious when you play, but outside of the games I’ve really found a proper sense of community. More than anything else it’s just really fun to be honest, I mean, we’re a bunch of lads in our twenties and thirties on a Saturday in north London, we’re not going to be monks are we? 

“If you want it to be boozy, it will be boozy. Usually I just leave straight away, but when I do stick around everyone buys me drinks. So, it’s usually worth it.”

During a speech from Dom and the Belsize Park coach, Aiden begins to wield the gavel in his hand, Samurai-style, preparing to take charge of the room for the court session. Before he can do that, drinks are being readied for specially selected players to step onto a bench and see off. 

“Shit man, I might get our team’s man of the match,” Zac says, nervously eyeing the pints being poured. “I was also a few minutes late and I captained the team for the first time, so it could be a long night for me.”  

Story by Scott Duke-Giles

Pictures by Karen Yeomans

This extract was taken from issue 30 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

Mention the name of Maurice Colclough to those who played alongside him and you’ll probably get one of two responses.

First, there is Maurice the player. They will speak of him in glowing terms, as one of England’s finest, blessed with a combination of strength, height and speed.

He was also one of the first Englishmen to play club rugby in France and remains a cult figure in the town of Angoulême where he suddenly turned up as a wide-eyed nineteen-year-old and left as a rugby legend.

Then there is Maurice the team-mate. They will talk about the pranks, the team talks inspired by Shakespeare’s Henry V, and the entrepreneur. Indeed, he was once described as ‘the Arthur Daley of rugby’ by former England captain Roger Uttley, likening Maurice to TV’s fictional wheeler-dealer.

There was also Maurice the man, the husband and father. In his final years, he embraced Christianity and wanted to turn a boat he owned into a floating Christian ministry to help young people. This happened after he’d been diagnosed with a brain tumour that would see his life cut short in 2006 aged just 52.

Whichever version you gravitate towards, Maurice Colclough stands out as one of the more remarkable figures in rugby.

Born on 2 September, 1953, his father was an army officer while his mother often struggled to cope with Maurice’s seemingly boundless energy and so he was packed off to boarding school aged nine. Then, aged eleven, he was enrolled at the Duke of York’s Royal Military School in Dover which was also his dad’s alma mater.

It was at Duke of York’s that Maurice first learned to play rugby and he went on to play for the Kent Schools team. During his school holidays, he would see his mother in Selsey Bill at the southernmost part of West Sussex. His parents had split up and his mum was living on a caravan site. It was in Selsey Bill that Maurice had his first dinghy – and sailing would play a big part in his life.

He went to Liverpool University to study geology, but spent too much time enjoying the social side of university life, then switched to Egyptology, but ultimately dropped out. Yet his time in Liverpool was far from wasted. He played for Liverpool St Helens RFC, where he first came up against Bill Beaumont who would later become his captain in England’s 1980 Grand Slam-winning team. 

“Fylde played them twice a season once in October and then around Christmas/New Year,” Bill recalls. “I remember playing against him at Fylde, seeing this huge guy with massive frizzy ginger hair and he had obviously been out the night before! And I had a decent game that day, but we then went back to play them in the return game, and he absolutely murdered me.” 

Maurice left Liverpool and decided to go travelling around France. While working his way around the country, he was kicked off a train for apparently having the wrong ticket and hitched a lift – a life-changing car journey.

The driver just happened to be the coach of Angoulême, based in the south-west of France, and Maurice clearly made a good first impression. Following his first match he was given a flat, a car and expenses to cover the cost of his trip from England. They also set him up with a job, first as a welder, before he ended up running a bar.

Rumour and suspicion surrounded how Angoulême were funded. This was fuelled by the fact the town’s mayor was Jean-Michel Boucheron, a politician who lived by the Cs – charismatic, colourful, and corrupt. 

Maurice spent several years there and thrived in French club rugby. He became known as the ‘Prince of Angoulême’, and you can still see pictures of him gracing walls of bars and restaurants in the town.

Naturally, he embraced the local culture and went into a partnership with a friend from Liverpool University. Together, they bought boats from the Norfolk Broads and set up a company called Holiday Charante, running riverboat cruises on the Charante River. He then recruited other friends to help build a house and office alongside the river and his mum would take the bookings.

Before he’d left for France, Maurice had already made his mark on English rugby, with his performances for Liverpool, together with County Championship games for Sussex and Lancashire. 

Invitational rugby followed at Angoulême, where, in 1977, he was selected to join Penguin Rugby who had been invited by Russia to take part in the Eastern European Inter-Nations Championship (EEINC) after England had declined.

In the 1970s, Penguin Rugby, the self-proclaimed ‘World’s Premier Rugby Touring Side’, attracted players who had either been overlooked by the international selectors or hadn’t sustained their breakthrough into the highest levels of the game. It was an opportunity for them to get a second, or even third chance of showing their ability against international opposition.

Among them was Derek Wyatt, who would go on to play for England and the Barbarians and would become founder of the Women’s Sports Foundation and serve as MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey. “England had been approached to play but can you imagine people at the RFU who were to the right of the Tory party allowing a team to go to Russia!” explains Derek, who was a member of the Penguin squad that played in the EEINC.

The tournament was an opportunity for emerging talent to show if they could cut it against more experienced players. “One of the reasons why it was so popular with the players was everybody knew that the selectors would come and watch us although the only thing was that we never played in England,” says Derek.

Also, on that tour to Russia, or the Soviet Union as it was back then, was Philip Keith-Roach who would become scrum coach for England’s World Cup winning team in 2003, and Ollie Campbell, who had earned one cap for Ireland in 1976 before being dropped but would later go on to become one of Ireland’s greatest fly-halfs and a veteran of two Lions tours.

Then there was Maurice. Nobody knew much about him before the tour, but he ended up making his own special contribution to the history of Penguin Rugby both on and off the pitch. Derek takes up the story. “We flew out on an Aeroflot plane [an airline which was notorious for its safety record] to Moscow and then trained in Gorky Park. It was like eighty degrees out there and we jumped into the Moskva to cool down and came out covered in shit. It was quite an eye-opener.

“Russia was fascinating. All our hotel rooms were bugged. You had to shout into the microphones to say, ‘We’re home now!’.

“Maurice,” continues Derek, “to his great credit, brought jeans and t-shirts and sold them from underneath a table in our hotel in Moscow for hundreds of pounds. He was selling to the KGB, they couldn’t wait to get their hands on Levi’s!

“The rugby was terrific. We all thought Maurice was fantastic as well. He was a giant at 6ft 4in but also so quick. There wasn’t any fat on him. He loved training but was mentally strong and if you don’t have that bit, you won’t be a good player.”

Maurice caught the attention of England’s selectors and made his international debut a few months later in 1978 against Scotland where he was reunited with Bill and they would go on to form a formidable pairing in the second row. “He used to call me the ‘Chief School Prefect’,” says Bill, “whereas he wanted to challenge authority, but in a good way.”

Although he didn’t figure at all in England’s 1979 Five Nations squad, he continued to play club rugby in France and his form and performances for Angoulême eventually saw him recalled into the England set up for the 1980 Five Nations campaign. He missed the first match against Ireland because of injury and Nigel Horton proved to be a more than able deputy, but Horton was still unceremoniously dropped for the next game away to France as by then Maurice was viewed as an automatic first-choice player. “I thought it would be a case of normal English selectors, and they would have kept the same team,” says Bill. “But they told Nigel on Saturday night, straight after the game, that he wasn’t going to be picked. And he played bloody well against Ireland.”

To prove his fitness, Maurice played for Angoulême the day after that victory in Ireland and then flew to Coventry for a training session with England.

He then became a secret weapon for England for the second match of that 1980 campaign, against France in Paris, which they won 17-3 to claim their first victory at the Parc des Princes. As Bill recalls, unbeknown to the French, Maurice had figured out all their lineout signals, to help deliver a victory that was a pivotal moment in England’s 1980 Grand Slam.

The final match of that campaign saw England beat Scotland 30-18 at Murrayfield. There was one moment early in the match when Bill and Maurice combined to lay down a marker on the opposition. It was described by England hooker Peter Wheeler as “the best scrum I’ve ever been part of” adding that “It took place near Scotland’s line and Billy called for a double shove. I can still recall the feeling as we surged forward, like a supercharged car in overdrive. It was an uncommon experience. Occasionally it happened at the end of a club game, but you don’t expect that surge in the early stages of an international.”

Two years later, Paris was also the scene of an infamous incident that one could argue has a tendency to overshadow what Maurice achieved as a player for England whenever stories are told about him. After a 1982 25-17 England victory over France, both teams gathered for an after-match dinner. There are various accounts of what happened next although they all have the same ending.

Jeff Probyn’s version is that dinner had been a soporific occasion, so Maurice decided to liven it up by engaging in a drinking game with team-mate Colin Smart.

It started with Maurice downing a half, followed by a pint of beer, followed by a half bottle of red wine, followed by a bottle of red, followed by a bottle of aftershave (which had been a gift left for all the players on their dinner tables) . What Colin didn’t see was that Maurice had emptied the aftershave bottle, filled it with water, and then proceeded to down the contents. So, Colin followed suit and then had to be rushed to the nearest hospital so he could get his stomach pumped. England scrum-half Steve Smith later said, “He may have been unwell, but Colin had the nicest breath I’ve smelt.”

That was far from the only incident abroad. One time in Dublin Maurice dived naked into the Liffey. The Gardai were waiting for him when he came out of the river and he had to pay a fine in court. 

Maurice and Bill also played alongside each other on the Lions tour of South Africa in 1980, a trip notable as much for hard-drinking and devil-may-care attitude of certain players including Maurice, as the rugby. On one occasion tour manager Syd Millar was speaking at a dinner and Maurice poured a tub of beans over his head. It was a rugby tour of the times.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he put in his best Five Nations performances against the French although Bill picks out a 15-11 victory over Australia in January 1982 as the standout. “He was just unbelievably good that day. He was a great athlete. You know, he probably wasn’t the most coordinated player I’d ever come across. But when he set his mind to it…”

Another stellar match for England came in 1983 when they beat New Zealand 15-9 at Twickenham. Maurice and Peter Wheeler were the only survivors from that 1980 Grand Slam winning team and it was Maurice who scored the winning try, powering his way over the line from a lineout.

Peter then hailed him as ‘the Marquis de Colclough’ as a nod to Prince Obolensky, the Russian who scored two tries in 1936 and had played a key role in England’s only other victory over New Zealand at Twickenham at that point.

At club level, Maurice would go on to join Wasps from Angoulême where he became captain. According to one player, “He modelled himself on Henry V’s speech before Agincourt, but Maurice’s words contained more spittle and invective than imagery. He finished once with a tumultuous battle cry, then turned to lead us out onto the pitch and fell over on the highly polished floor.”

That same year, 1983, Maurice met his future wife Annie at an event to publicise the new Cardiff Arms Park. Three years later they were married and Maurice moved to Swansea RFC from Wasps. Again, he was juggling rugby with his entrepreneurial pursuits; he’d bought a small dockyard and converted a trawler into a Spanish galleon, getting the boat towed up to Swansea Marina to become a floating pub and restaurant. 

Maurice should’ve played in the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987, but those hopes were scuppered due to a serious bout of mumps and it led to his retirement from international rugby in the same year with 25 England caps and seven appearances for the Lions to his name.

Life after rugby often proves to be complicated and Maurice was no different, but his particular addiction was business. Instead of focusing on one or two ventures, he always wanted to have fingers in many pies and irons in multiple fires. Sometimes that business acumen wasn’t as strong as his work ethic.

In 1995, the Colcloughs bought a boat, named it the Four Sisters and headed off on their travels eventually settling in South Africa where Maurice became managing director of a company involved in slot machines. Annie and the daughters came back to Wales after the family were victims of a car-jacking. Maurice would visit his family during the school holidays and three of the daughters ended up playing rugby at Llandovery College. The eldest, Morgane, recalled that when they were little girls, “all three of us would be hanging on to Dad’s legs as he ran with the ball”.

However, Dad’s influence didn’t go as far as their allegiances – whenever the family watched England v Wales, everyone else supported the Welsh.

Annie and the daughters were also practising Christians whereas Maurice did not embrace religion, until 2003 when their lives would be turned upside down.

It was on a visit to see Maurice in South Africa, that Annie couldn’t help but see that when he smiled only half of his mouth moved. She took him to hospital and he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. The doctors said it was malignant and gave him a year to live. They operated on him and soon after that, Maurice became a Christian. It was at this time that a sailing trainer by the name of Chris Wren received the following correspondence from a friend:

‘I recently had an email conversation with a chap called Martin Bateman at Operation Mobilisation (a Christian missionary organisation) who knows a 70s/80s rugby star who is unfortunately ill with a brain tumour.

This chap’s name is Maurice Colclough and he has a boat in South Africa which he wants to launch into the Lord’s work.’

Martin then followed up by explaining that Maurice was one of his heroes, and that he wanted “to start a yachting ministry” using the boat, which was berthed in Cape Town. Chris offered to bring the boat from Agadir to Milford Haven, but the journey was fraught with complications. He discovered the boat – anything but ship-shape – wasn’t insured, there was a standoff with a gunboat, and one of the crew members almost died. A three-week journey ended up taking three months. This totally haphazard trip seemed entirely fitting given the vessel’s owner.

Even if that boat could have been restored to realise Maurice’s ambition of becoming a floating ministry, it is doubtful he would have lived to have seen it happen as the tumour had grown back in the same cavity. “He rang me and said he was in South Africa and that he was coming back to Wales,” says Bill Beaumont. “He asked me if I knew anybody in Wales who could look at the tumour. So, I rang up a pal of mine at the Welsh Rugby Union, I think it was Gerald Davies. I said, ‘Can you put me in touch with anybody?’.

“He said ‘Yeah, one of our committee doctors is the top oncology guy at the Whitchurch Hospital in Cardiff.’ So, I went to visit Maurice several times in Cardiff. Against the odds, he lived for another three years.”

Maurice passed away on 27 January, 2006. In Angouleme, they staged a testimonial game in his honour and one of his daughters started the match with a drop kick.

The last time Bill and Maurice met was at Twickenham in 2005. “He gave me a bottle of brandy,” explains Bill, “and said, ‘drink this when we meet again’. I knew what he meant.

“When I went to his funeral a lot of the England lads were there. I brought that bottle of brandy along with me and put it on the bar. I said, ‘right guys, I said I would only drink this when we meet again. Well, here we are, Maurice’.”

Story by Ryan Herman

Pictures by Getty Images

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

It’s not possible for the BAFTA award-winning filmmaker Robert Young to pin-down the exact moment he realised he had come across a rugby story so rich in the improbable, the impossible and the outlandish that he decided he had to turn it into a film. All he can say for certain is that it happened over the course of a few hours while sat at the Sun Inn pub in Richmond, listening to Sue Dorrington, Mary Forsyth, Deborah Griffin, and Alice Cooper recount the story behind the first-ever women’s Rugby World Cup in Wales in 1991. 

Perhaps the penny dropped when he heard about the impoverished USSR team trying to peddle cheap vodka, caviar, souvenirs and £50 watches to pay for food. Or when he was told about the Japanese team bowing to their opponents every time they conceded a try. Which happened a lot. Or maybe it was the one about the England team being turfed out of their rooms a few nights before the World Cup final because the hotel was double booked, forcing them to sleep on the floor of a conference room. 

Likely, it was a heady cocktail of them all, combined with a growing realisation that the four women sat opposite him in the pub that day were just as remarkable as the stories they were telling.  “It’s hard for me to describe the exact quality they had,” Robert tells Rugby Journal, ten years on from their meeting. “The best I can say is that it was a quality I had never come across before in any sport, and that it was an extremely attractive quality. There was something indomitable about them.”

The leader of the gang, who were all team-mates at Richmond RFC, was Deborah Griffin, the chair of the organising committee. Known as Debs, she was 31 at the time of organising the first women’s Rugby World Cup, seven months pregnant and still going at it hard in her job as an accountant in the City of London. Mary Forsyth, an American from Pennsylvania, was also an accountant, who went on to represent her adopted nation. Alice Cooper, the youngest of the four, and the newest to the sport, was a copywriter in advertising at the time, and also wrote about the women’s game for Rugby World & Post magazine, as it was known at the time. Then, there was Sue Dorrington, an American from Minnesota who had traded up life at home to experience rugby in the UK, and never went back. Her rugby talent flourished in England where she became a Great Britain and England international alongside her career in events and fundraising. 

Not long after their meeting, Robert pitched the idea back to them to make a film about how they organised a World Cup for twelve nations in just eight months, with no funding, with no support from the game’s governing body, beyond a few kind words here and there. And yet they achieved it, survived it (just about), and laid the groundworks for the rapid progress of the women’s game thereafter. Progress which will almost certainly lead to a women’s Rugby World Cup final in England this September that sells every one of the 82,000 seats at Twickenham. The attendance for the World Cup final they organised in 1991, by the way, was 3,000 – a staggering number at the time.

Robert’s film proposal gathered pace. A draft script was written in 2016, with Sue, Debs and Mary offering input on all subsequent drafts. By 2019, a female director had been lined up and casting had even begun. But then: Covid. And the project went to the wall. Offers of funding evaporated and potential crew and actors had to move on. Now, after three years of stagnation, the film is alive again. 

Sue is leading the charge to raise the money required to bring it to the big screen, just as she led the charge to get sponsorship for the 1991 women’s Rugby World Cup. And the comparisons between now and then are all too ready.  “We’re fighting money, it’s that story again,” Sue explains to Rugby Journal. “We’ve got this genre of film that is quintessentially British, about the underdog making good, like Bend it like Beckham, or Calendar Girls. It’s a really lovely story to tell and we can’t get our heads around why the final finance isn’t landing.”

Sue’s fundraising target for the film is £4million, with half already committed if she can raise the first £2million. “We’re feeling energetic about it,” Sue adds. “I think we had gone a bit flat after Covid. We’ve just started talking to a really important person in Wales, who might unlock some funding, so we’re enthused.”

There is certainly a mounting interest in the rich story behind 1991. In 2022, the journalist Martyn Thomas wrote a superbly detailed book about it called World in Their Hands. It’s a forensic look at how the World Cup was organised, and the personal toll it took on the four women who delivered it. 

So, what’s it all about? Well, if you haven’t heard the story before, here’s an attempt at an abridged version. You’re probably going to need a seat.

It starts at Richmond Rugby Club in south-west London in 1990, where all four women played their club rugby. Debs was one of the founding members of the Women’s Rugby Football Union (WRFU), a totally separate organisation at the time to the Rugby Football Union (RFU) that ran the men’s game. With England due to host the men’s World Cup in 1991, Debs believed that the women’s game should have its own World Cup too. Her initial plans were met with such positivity by her WRFU board members that she was encouraged to take the gargantuan next step of trying to put her idea into practice. 

She recruited Richmond team-mates Sue, Mary and Alice to help her pull it off. And the thing was on. 

So how do you begin organising a World Cup with no budget whatsoever? “We literally just started one morning,” Sue cackles at the absurdity of it. “Firstly, you decide what teams you want to invite, and to where. That comes at the same time. We thought about England, and about Leicester. But then we thought ‘oh gosh, we’re going to get lost in these big stadiums, we’re going to get lost in the mayhem of [people] not being remotely interested in women’s rugby’. 

“Instead, we decided to take it to Wales because we had written letters to the Welsh Rugby Union and the Sports Council for Wales, and they all said, ‘yeah, come down, we’ll help you’. And they helped us with venues, with referees, they helped us with everything. And then we started inviting the teams. 

“Everything was done through letter, phone and fax, and we came up with twelve teams. There was no qualification other than ‘do you play international rugby? Great, come on over’.”

By November 1990, the organising committee were ready to officially launch the tournament and announced the following teams to compete at the inaugural World Cup the following April: Wales, England, New Zealand, Japan, Sweden, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the USA and the USSR.  “I remember that [journalist] Barry Newcombe was at the launch, and he said ‘Sue, that’s only eleven teams. And I said, ‘yes, we’re hoping France will come in’, so we launched the tournament with eleven teams, and the French did eventually come in.”

With a date, a host nation, almost twelve teams, five host clubs – Pontypool, Swansea, Aberavon, Llanharan and Glamorgan Wanderers – and Cardiff Arms Park for the knock-out stages, the tournament looked on track.

And that made money an even more necessary requirement. However, there wasn’t any of it to be found. “I was the one responsible for trying to find money to pay for the tournament,” says Sue. “I was on the market looking for £35,000 of sponsorship. You can imagine that 35 years ago there was no money in women’s sport, particularly women’s contact sport. So I also went out to look for gifts-in-kind instead because I thought, if I’m not going to get money, I need to start offsetting costs for balls, kit, accommodation, that type of thing.” 

In these value-in-kind negotiations, Sue was remarkably successful, while the organising committee had the clever idea of hosting the tournament during the Easter holiday week when student accommodation in Cardiff and the surrounding area was more likely to be available, and going cheap.

Despite this, their hopes of covering the costs of the nations competing fell way short, meaning they had to send memos out to every team saying they would need to be self-funding in every regard. “We thought this might actually be the end of it,” says Sue. “But it wasn’t. Every team came back and said ‘yeah, we’re in’. So thankfully they all paid for themselves.”

Because Sue was encountering closed doors at every commercial turn she sought help from a sponsorship consultancy – with payment based on commission after a deal was struck – but they had no luck either. 

The organising committee’s lack of funds was no secret. One journalist asked Alice Cooper what they would do if they couldn’t pay for this tournament. Her reply: ‘Oh, we’re going to re-mortgage our homes’.  “That was not true, she made it up,” says Sue. “But that went everywhere, because the story was the four of us were going to re-mortgage our homes. The point is, we were committed that this was going to happen with or without anybody.”

One of the helping hands the foursome were understandably hoping to rely on was that of the International Rugby Football Board (IRFB) – now World Rugby. 

Sue and Debs, with Debs’ newborn baby Victoria, even travelled down to IRFB’s offices in Bristol to try and persuade them in person. “We thought that if we had their sanction, their approval, it would help us get money. But I mean they gave us about ten minutes and then wanted us out the door. 

“These guys didn’t want us playing rugby and what they certainly didn’t want was a World Cup in any shape or form because they were having a World Cup that year, and [they thought] we would be going for the same funds as them. Well, we wouldn’t be. We might ask the same people, but they’ve got the weight and everything they need to go and get that money and deliver the commercial benefits.”

World Rugby’s stance towards women’s rugby in 1990 is of course at opposites to today. Evidence that the dial has shifted so significantly is all around Sue as she is speaking to us from the library of the World Rugby Museum at Allianz Stadium, where Martyn Thomas’s book sits on a shelf less than three metres from her chair. Written on the wall of the museum itself is a quote by Sue: “We didn’t need approval to play the game we loved.”

In 1990, that was a tenet she was keeping close to her heart as the commercial knock-backs kept on coming. By one estimate, Sue and the sponsorship agency collectively received around six hundred ‘nos’ to sponsorship requests, over the course of just ten months. 

Less financially pertinent, but no less frustrating, was the tone of the broader media coverage the tournament was starting to gather. “We were covered in a very different way,” explains Sue. “The press, bless them, were like, ‘oh my word, have you seen this!?! Women play rugby! And they’re holding a World Cup!!’ They were aghast. And there were some dailies that got the [England] team together and made them put on dresses, took them to make-up  and did shoots like that. They didn’t cover us as an aspirational team who wanted to win a World Cup. No, we were just girls playing at rugby.”

Did it annoy her? “No,” Sue says decisively. “We’d had that shit all our lives. Particularly in England. I started playing in the USA, when both men and women started playing at the same time, so it was genderless. Then I came over here and I discovered the gender thing and the class thing. It was just amazing, so I had a lot of learnings very quickly. But none of it surprised us. And none of it deterred us. We just shut it out. It was noise.”

Despite the tone of the broader media coverage, Sue singles out a number of contemporary rugby journalists who understood their passion for the game, and respected it: Peter Jackson, the late  Barry Newcombe, and above all, Stephen Jones. “He was with us from day one and he really championed our cause,” says Sue. 

While Sue was working tirelessly on all possible commercial avenues to make the World Cup a reality, she was also training tirelessly in an attempt shore up her place as England’s starting hooker for when it came around. 

And in this regard she was leaving nothing to chance either. “When I was leading up to the World Cup as a player, on top of my job, husband and World Cup, I decided that I was going to be the first woman [in rugby] to bring in a fitness coach, so I was working out twice a day outside of work. I reduced my body fat to eleven per cent. I hired a sports psychologist. I hired a nutritionist.”  

Sue didn’t stop there, seeking the advice of the England men’s team coach, Dick Best, and England hooker Brian Moore. “I wrote to him and I said, ‘Dear Mr Best, my name is…’,  and I said, ‘can you please come to Richmond and watch my game because I want some strategy from you’. And Dick Best just showed up at a game once. And we’re still friends today. 

“And then Brian Moore, because I wanted him to help me with my lineout. He was a little trickier to pin down, but I would turn up to Harlequins training, which was opposite my gym, and I would come in my England kit and he probably thought ‘what is this mad woman doing?’. One day he said, ‘what do you want?’, and I said, ‘Oh Mr Moore, would you please help me with my lineout?’. And we’ve been friends ever since.”

Sue’s only rival for the England number two shirt was Nicky Ponsonby, who Sue describes as a ‘much better player than I was’. But Sue’s intense training regime paid off and she went on to play the whole tournament at hooker, with Nicky playing in other positions. “I had to work my butt off,” says Sue. “But I was ready, mentally and physically for that tournament.” 

As the new year arrived in 1991, the organising committee quartet could now see their World Cup – beginning on 6 April 1991 – rapidly appearing on the horizon.

But fires were still needing to be put out. One of them was about the tournament logo, which the IRFB felt was too similar to the men’s Rugby World Cup logo because of the angle of the rugby ball, the ‘speed stripes’ on the ball, and because the ball was enclosed in a box. While at the smaller end of their issues – they still had no money – this conflict threatened to cause financial issues as the committee had spent significant money on letterheads, labels, press packs and other promotional material featuring the logo. 

Like many of their obstacles, some smart brinkmanship would resolve it as the organising committee told the IRFB that they would be happy to change the logo again (they had already revised it once) if the IRFB covered the cost. There were no further complaints from the IRFB after that. 

Sue, meanwhile, was tasked with procuring a trophy, which she did, from Hatton Garden, for a price tag of more than £1,000, which raised a few eyebrows from the committee, especially from Debs. But Sue’s taste for ornate trophies was a marketing boon with the trophy standing proud and prestigious at the tournament launch next to England players Karen Almond and Carol Isherwood, giving the tournament added legitimacy. 

One month out from the tournament – with unpaid invoices accruing – a cheque to the organising committee did arrive. It wasn’t from a commercial source – still no luck there – it was from the Sports Council, a precursor to UK Sport. 

It was for £5,000, £4,000 of which immediately went to pay off debts, leaving a float of just £1,000 to see the organising committee through the final month of preparations ahead of the World Cup. 

Two weeks later, programmes went to the printers complete with the approved logo and information, including statistics about all twelve teams competing.

With no TV deal, a press pack that couldn’t be relied upon to report the tournament without resorting to ‘Women play rugby!’ histrionics, and digital and social media yet to be invented, creating that programme was an important milestone, and an impressive journalistic achievement from Alice and Mary.

One week out, Mary Forsyth gave birth to daughter Kathryn, so was naturally ruled out of operations from that point on (in fact there are faxes showing that she still corresponded with the USSR about their funding plight two days after giving birth). With Sue also excused from administrative duties to focus on playing for England, the total sum of the organising committee was now Debs and Alice. 

But with teams from the twelve nations beginning to arrive in Wales, the project they had been striving for so over the course of the past ten months was becoming a reality. The Women’s  Rugby World Cup 1991 was really happening.

Yet storm clouds were gathering. Firstly, in the form of the weather, and secondly in the form of the USSR.

With matches scheduled to begin on 6 April across four venues, south Wales was being lashed with rain. No surprise, perhaps, but April 1991 was proving to be one of the wettest Aprils on record. It was bitterly cold as well. The combination saw sports matches all across the country either not played, or called off halfway through. Any cancellations of matches in Swansea, Pontypool, Aberavon or Glamorgan Wanderers, however, and the World Cup – which was spread over just eight days – would have been sent into a tailspin. Thankfully all the World Cup matches on that first weekend went ahead. 

England played Spain in Swansea, and the memories of how cold Sue felt stick firmly in the mind. “It was horrific, it was the coldest I have ever been in my life,” she recalls. “I had no body fat and I was freezing, we all stood in the shower for an hour after that.” 

Sue’s England jersey from that match is on display at the World Rugby Museum, complete with a darker patch of ‘Swansea mud’ in the very centre.

Seeing the back of that first round of completed games was a big relief for everyone, but no sooner was it behind them than a story broke that the USSR team had run out of the salami and cucumbers they had brought from Moscow to eat and were now planning to barter Russian produce such as vodka, Soviet champagne, caviar and watches with Welsh locals in order to feed themselves. ‘Booze is one of the few things still plentiful and cheap in Russia,’ one of the Soviet coaches told the media to explain their plan to feed themselves. 

The local media reports of the Soviet team’s intentions were not only picked up by Alice and Debs, but also by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise, who sent a couple of officers down to the USSR’s digs to investigate. 

Matters were soon cleared up with the customs officials reportedly satisfied that the Soviet team was not going to try to sell their produce to locals, despite their previously stated intentions. This ‘friendly chat’, as the media reported it, was aided by both HMRC and the Soviets struggling to converse. “The only reason why it all went away,” says Sue, “was because no one could find a Russian translator, so HMRC gave up.”

The story of the Russians’ plight had two major impacts. Firstly, the local community in south Wales rallied around them. Despite the Soviet Union still being the west’s major political and military threat, no one seemed to hold that against their rugby players, as local companies tripped over themselves to help.

As Martyn Thomas recounts in his book: ‘The following day, the squad was treated to a three-course lunch of leek and potato soup, chili con carne and cheesecake at The Bank café bar on St Mary Street. Clothes vouchers worth £1,800 were also provided by Cardiff Marketing Ltd, while Industrial Cladding Systems Ltd paid for the hire of a minibus for the party. There were offers of pizzas, food and accommodation from elsewhere too. An unnamed male Welsh international was reported to have donated £1,200 to their cause, and the mother of Bess Evans, a hooker in the Wales women’s World Cup squad, pledged £100.’

The second impact was that the story generated national press interest, and suddenly the tournament found itself gaining coverage from corners it never expected to before. 

Meanwhile, on the pitch the skies were clearing up and the rugby was finally taking centre stage, impressing journalists watching the women’s game for the first time. The Sunday Times’ Paul Nelson reported: ‘Once the purist has stopped tut-tutting over the kicks to touch that fall short, he is impressed by the amount of running this produces once hoofing the ball into touch is no longer an option.’

The nations doing most of the impressing were England, France, New Zealand and the USA, all making it to the semi-finals. Japan charmed everybody with a mixture of their enthusiasm and sportsmanship, bowing to their opponents every time they conceded a try in each of their three quite heavy losses, and presenting their opponents with gifts such as origami at the final whistle as well.

Off the field, the camaraderie was legendary with every contemporary account from players hailing the collective thrill of being involved in something bigger than they had ever before experienced. Most teams were staying in student accommodation, although England were staying in the Celtic Bay Hotel, where they whiled away plenty of hours playing the game ‘murder’ around the hotel. The USA went uptown, stumping up the cost to stay at one of the city’s smartest hotels, the Grand Hotel on Westgate Street. The Netherlands, meanwhile, were in a youth hostel. 

With the matches coming thick and fast (some teams played five games in eight days), most players were living off a cocktail of adrenaline and excitement, and very little sleep. No one was getting less sleep than Alice and Debs however, especially Debs, who was juggling looking after her newborn World Cup and her six-month old baby Victoria.

By Friday, 12 April – just six days after the opening match of the tournament – it was semi-finals time. England had drawn France and New Zealand were facing the USA, with both matches being played at the Arms Park. 

For Sue and her England team-mates, it was time to stand up and be counted, even if it meant cracking a few French eggs in the process. “I know this isn’t very nice,” Sue whispers apologetically, “but I made the French hooker cry.

“I was given some advice by a Scotland international at London Scottish. He said to me, ‘Sue, you know what I’d do? Just get in her face and disrupt her’. So, every time it came to the lineout I would be right in her face and she ended up breaking down and then the front row got up tight, the back row got up tight and it had this ripple effect. It wasn’t very nice of me but we beat them, I don’t care.”

England beat France 13-0 to set up a final with USA, who had beaten New Zealand 7-0 in their semi-final. For Sue – born and raised in Minnesota – it was the match-up she was hoping for. “I knew that America would be there [in the final] because their backs were amazing,” she says. “And I just had to meet them in the final.”

While the Star-Spangled Banner tugged at her heartstrings before-kick off, thereafter Sue had her fellow countrywomen in her sights. “When you’ve got an England shirt on that’s it,” she said. “They [the USA] didn’t matter to me. I just wanted to beat them.”

England started the final well with a tighter and more disciplined approach than the Americans. They went 6-0 ahead thanks to two penalties from Gill Burns, however once points started to come for the Americans, they didn’t stop, going on to score three tries, two from Claire Goodwin and one from Patty Connell, to win the inaugural final 19-6. “It was shit, it was devastating,” says Sue. “I wanted the first ever World Cup to be ours, but it didn’t happen.” 

Three years later when England beat USA in the final of the 1994 World Cup, Sue didn’t play. She had captained the team against Scotland earlier in the competition but lost out to Nicky Ponsford as the team’s first choice hooker for the knock-out stages. “Yeah, I still feel it” she softly blurts. “Sorry … I’m one of those middle-aged women who cry a lot … and I’m not proud of this but I went home after that final [in 1994]. I got on an overnight train and I left because I couldn’t be around it. The thing is I loved those women. I played with them, and we grew up together. But I had to pack my bags and leave.” 

Back in 1991, Sue’s disappointment was more than tempered by the fact that the final whistle also meant that she, Debs, Mary and Alice had reached their organising committee’s finish line.

At the tournament-ending dinner that night, no one was in any doubt about where the credit lay for making the tournament happen and the awesome foursome received a standing ovation from players, teams and dignitaries.  

While Sue was able to break with her strict diet for the first time in a year and unwind somewhat with her England team-mates, Alice’s plan to ‘get shitfaced’ failed as the venue had run out of booze by the time she had wrapped up her media duties. Mary was busy looking after her two-week-old baby, who she had brought to the final that day. Debs found just enough time to breathe a sigh of relief, before realising the true extent of her exhaustion and collapsing into her bed.

And the next day? “We just packed up and went home and never talked about it again. We saw each other a lot of course. But we never talked about it again.”

If the film of this story were to end now, the reveal of what happened next to the central characters – as is common for dramatised versions of real events – would leave people wailing in the aisles on their way out. 

In short, new mother Debs had a breakdown and withdrew from her usual self for six months. Sue’s marriage fell apart over the course of the next year. And Alice lost her job, after taking a holiday at the end of that year – her first break since organising the World Cup in April. The reason cited was that she had taken too much time off work over the previous twelve months. Mary, ensconced in the early throes of new motherhood, mercifully avoided any such World Cup retribution.

In 2025 however, we can take a longer-term view, and the picture is much rosier. Once the new rugby season came round in September 1991, Debs started playing again and rugby soon put her back on her feet. She would go on to be a trailblazing rugby administrator for the RFU and World Rugby, winning an OBE in 2011 for services to women’s rugby. 

She kept playing at the top level for England and for Richmond for another decade, while continuing to climb her career ladder, organising scores of royal events over the years and relentlessly fundraising for charities, good causes and good people, such as former England coach Gary Street. She also married again. 

The youngest of the quartet, Alice continued to play rugby for Richmond and might have earned an international cap for Scotland had injury not struck at the wrong time. She went to the next World Cup in 1994 as a freelance journalist before later pivoting into scriptwriting. 

Mary Forsyth continued in her role as Richmond’s treasurer, staying closely connected to the club, and gave birth to five more children. 

And fittingly, eventually, in 2022, all four of the organising committee were enrolled into the World Rugby Hall of Fame. 

That would be a better ending point for the film. Better yet would be the Rugby World Cup final later this year at Allianz Stadium. All four women will be there as guests of honour, amongst 82,000 others. And if the Red Roses do as they are expected to do and win the tournament? “Oh, I’ll be crying,” says Sue. “That’s for sure. In fact, I’ll be crying before kick-off.”  

Story by Jack Zorab

Pictures by Jamie Chung

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

The Gurkhas have long been the most famous foreign nationals in the British Army, with the military prowess of the Nepalese catching generals’ eyes as far back as the 1800s. But, the army’s connection with Fijians is almost as old, with the islanders being recruited in the late nineteenth century and as many as 1,600 fighting for Blighty and the Allied Forces in the First World War, a number that swelled to 8,000 for the Second World War. 

Even in the post-1970 independence world, Fijians continue to serve, remaining the second largest group of foreign nationals in the forces, around 1,600, compared to the 4,270 Nepalese. Considering it’s one of the smallest Commonwealth countries, with a population of around the 924,000 mark, Fiji is punching, almost literally, well above its weight. 

Understandably, being the most naturally gifted rugby nation on earth, many Fijians in the British Army, have found their way to Twickenham for the inter-services matches, and others have found a different way to serve Britain. In the case of Ilaitia Cokanasiga, a sergeant in the Royal Logistics Corps, he delivered two sons to the game of rugby: Joe and Phil Cokanasiga. “We were called pad brats, kids of soldiers,” says Joe when we meet him in south-west London, at a suitably rugby-player friendly pub, The Butchers Tap & Grill. “We were in this little base in Mönchengladbach, we moved twice in Germany and then went to Brunei. We never played rugby at first [in Germany], because rugby was on Sundays, but we had church, so I’d always missed that, so it was always football.”

Joe’s route to Germany, had started in Fiji where he was born. “I just remember being carried all the time,” he says of his earliest memories in Suva. “By aunties, uncles, I didn’t like to walk! That’s pretty much all I remember.

“Then we landed in North London, where my brother was born, then to Abingdon, and then all of a sudden we were in Germany for five years.”

The army gave him friends for life. “Wherever you moved, you’d have the same kids, because they were in the same battalion, so you always knew people.”

His friends were a mix of British and Fijian. “The Fijians would always meet together,” he says, “I was always surrounded by Fijian boys, it was such a close community wherever we went. We’d always go to church together, always do the Fijian celebrations, that’s where I felt most Fijian. Although these days, when I go back to Fiji they just take the piss of my accent and call me a plastic Fijian!”

While he didn’t follow in his father’s footsteps, it was certainly an option. “I just loved it as a kid, I’d always watch army films,” he says. “The army was my main dream, I loved it, I was always around it, I wanted to join the army. Even now I’ve still got a massive interest in the army, I try and do stuff with them as much as I can. 

“My dad was in the Royal Logistics Corps and they used to deliver supplies, he did two tours to Afghanistan, and one to Iraq. 

“I just remember waking up early in the morning to say goodbye to him,” he says of his dad’s tours. “But it was nice because all the other kids would have to say goodbye to theirs too, so we were all in the same boat.”

Then, a move to Brunei, a tiny nation in south-east Asia on the island of Borneo. “We lived ten minutes from the beach and the jungle, but my family’s got a massive fear of snakes, my sister will literally start crying if she saw snake, and snakes are the biggest thing there, so we stayed out of the jungle pretty much.

“Although we did go to one army camp, it was right in the wild, and it was just bunk beds out in the open, and it turned out the SAS used it for jungle training.”

Would SAS life suit him? “I’ve still got my friends from the army, and one of them said I could be in the SAS, but I don’t think I could handle the training when they’ve got you hooked up to the sound of babies crying for hours on end.”

Luckily, he found rugby in Brunei, mainly because there was a higher proportion of Aussies and Kiwis there.  “If you think of Brunei, you wouldn’t think of rugby. But even the Bruneians loved rugby. There was only three or four clubs though.”

The move was good timing for several reasons. “I had a growth spurt when I got to Brunei,” he says. “And my dad knew a coach, he was a Kiwi Samoan, and he just said, ‘I can definitely use you’.”

How tall had he got? “It wasn’t how tall,” he laughs, “it was how heavy I was!”

At sixteen he found himself playing men’s rugby and also had his first rugby heroes. “I loved watching Manu [Tuilagi], yeah, he was my idol,” admits Joe. “And then it’s funny, because I first met him at my first [England] camp in 2018, just before we played Australia for my second cap, Manu was going through his Facebook messages, and found one from me, saying he was my idol, please be my friend … it’s funny how the world works.”

To England as a teenager, and what was the Bushey Academy, near Watford. “I joined halfway through the GCSEs, and they said, ‘oh we can’t take you in unless we hold you back a year’. 

“I hated the idea, but they said, ‘this is the only school we can take you in’… and so my parents took me to Twickenham, to the shop, and said, ‘buy whatever you want’. And it was weird, because we saw one of the regiment rugby tops from Brunei there. Anyway I got that and other stuff, then when I was back in the car with all my new things, they said, ‘you’re going to have to do the school thing’.

“I hated it because I just didn’t feel comfortable because I was with younger kids, I felt like I should have been with my age.”

His rugby had stopped too, until his dad met with an old friend, ex-Gloucester backrower Akapusi Qera, and he put him onto another contact, who was a friend of the London Irish academy manager. He got in, and would balance playing with the academy, and turning out for a men’s senior side, Old Merchant Taylors’. “The head coach [of Old Merchant Taylors’] was ex-army and knew a couple of Fijians, and somehow I got picked up by them. I would train on a Thursday with London Irish, then play on Saturday for them. “It was funny,” he says of his introduction to senior rugby at grassroots level, “I was there, seventeen, in my prime, and these guys would be rocking up to games hungover.”

Of all the mainstream sports out there, a passion for eating is probably more likely in rugby than most, and Joe was no exception. So much so, that when he starting earning a crust for his rugby skills, he’d then spend it on crusts too – often cheese-filled. “I just kept having Dominos, Super Tuesdays [two for one day], I loved it,” he says. “We’d also go to Costco and you could buy a tray of pastries – about twelve of them – and they were massive, like this [Joe spreads his considerable hands] and eat all of them in one go. Dominos, pastries – I’d have days where I’d eat twelve pastries and eat nothing else. Man, I got so fat.”

Perhaps, luckily for Joe, less lucky for Dominos and Costco, London Irish fell from the Premiership. “We got relegated, I was about eighteen, and for me that was a blessing in disguise, because that’s when I started playing,” he says. “I somehow stripped all those pastries and I don’t know what game it was, I think it was the British & Irish Cup, and I played one game against Connacht and it went well.

“Nick Kennedy [then director of rugby] had been my head of academy, and he took me in, and was like, ‘I’ll start you the next game to see how you go’.”

A televised Championship clash – something it feels like we’ll never see again – at the Richmond Athletic Ground, an exiles derby against London Scottish, was the setting for Joe to make his entrance. In a game that was nip and tuck to begin with, Joe received the ball in his own 22 from London Irish full-back Tommy Bell. Gathering pace, he ran into a cluster of Scots, dummied, sending three players awry, stepped inside another then turned on the gas from the ten-metre line to go in under the posts. “Look at this young man go,” said the commentators, “to have the confidence to do that at eighteen years of age…”

The following summer, he found himself on the England tour to Argentina in 2017. “I was getting my hair cut with all the other academy boys and I got this email saying ‘confidential’, it started, ‘You’re being, selected…’ and I ran outside, to call my sister, shouting, ‘Oh my God, what is going on…’.

“Dylan Hartley, was captain at the time, and he called me – he called all the younger boys – to say, ‘this is how we do things, if you have any questions…’.

“We won the Champ, I tore my hammy, came back, and then tore it again, but Eddie [Jones] still wanted to take me, to ‘be around the environment’.” 

While the British & Irish Lions took some of England’s number to New Zealand, the remaining squad had plenty of talent, including the experienced James Haskell, Mike Brown, Chris Robshaw, George Ford and future prospects Tom and Ben Curry, Sam Underhill and Ellis Genge. “My nickname then was ‘Keith the thief’,” laughs Joe, “because I was basically there for a rehab holiday and taking the tour money, I didn’t really train with the boys.”

While he was in and out of England’s camp the following season, when London Irish were relegated again, he moved to Bath. “I’d already agreed with Bath that I’d go if we got relegated,” he explains. “Then once we got relegated, because I loved Irish so much, it was my boyhood club, it was the people – most of the boys that were from academy were now playing first team with me – I didn’t want to go. 

“I was a bit scared of the change, I went back to my agent, and was like, ‘look, I don’t want to go’, but then I spoke to Anthony Watson, someone gave me his number, he’d been in the same position, and he gave me a bit of advice. I felt at that time, if I wanted to play for England, that was the time to go.

“Although before Irish went down [into administration], it was always in the back of my head, that I’d like to come back here at some point.”

The England cap duly followed, against Japan in the 2018 autumn series, a 35-15 win and a debut try. Eddie had kept faith with Joe. “I loved him,” he says of the ex-England coach. “I think the fact that he still took me on that tour when I was injured, meant I kind of knew he saw something in me, and then after that, he just gave me my opportunity.

“I think he knew what I needed, he knew that I was still young and immature rugby-wise and knew that all I needed was hard work. 

“Whereas in Argentina I was just happy to be there, in that camp going up to the 2018 autumn, he wanted to see me work hard, and everything fell into place.

“I’d get a bollocking from him sometimes, he knew how different players worked, and I think with islanders, he knew what they’d react to, but I think he always had good faith in me, he helped me a lot.”

That said, his second cap against Australia, a 37-18 win, and another try for Joe, hadn’t been part of Eddie’s plan. “I don’t think I was supposed to play that game – I remember after the Japan game, Eddie was like, ‘I’m going to rest your body [at training] because it’s your first game – so I was watching the boys train, and then Jack Nowell gets injured, and I’m like, ‘there’s no other wingers there’.

“The whole build-up of that game was my favourite part,” continues Joe. “The week in Pennyhill, where you train and then the boys all get to the spa, you can feel the vibes, it was the last game of the autumn series and you’re playing against Australia – the bus through Twickenham was the best thing.”

Many expected Joe to tear it up. Given the way he started, by now, he should be past the half-century mark, in tries as well as appearances given his cap-to-try ratio is 16:13. But injuries have taken their toll. “I think the 2019 World Cup one was one of the hardest,” he says.  “I tore a piece of my tendon on my patella, underneath my knee, before we got into the World Cup. I rehabbed back, played summer warm-up games, played really well. I was on good form, healthy, and then I got off the plane in Japan and it felt completely different. 

“Literally, I remember walking off the plane, thinking ‘this is weird’. I did that first training session, and it held me back a lot, so I was rehabbing/training.

“I could still train and I told him [Eddie], ‘I’m not getting sent back home’. Then, when it was my first game in that World Cup against USA, on the bus on the way there, it was starting to get really sore again, and in my head, that just messed me up mentally, which is shame, because I felt like if I was fairly fit, maybe I would have played a couple more games.”

While he scored two tries in a 45-7 win, it was his only game. “I roomed with Manu a lot, the whole of that World Cup, and he was someone that I could always speak to, because he had a lot of injuries, he gave me a lot of advice. 

“I had the operation afterwards, and was out for a year. But when I think about that, my mum always reminds me, ‘everything happens for a reason, everything’s always a blessing in disguise’. So that kind of taught me how to deal with injuries.”

Which is lucky, because they would strike again. “During Covid when I just came back after surgery, I didn’t have to go into the club, I wasn’t running, I got back to myself when I was eighteen again– just eating, drinking every weekend.

“I left the club at 115kg and when I came back to get weighed, they said, ‘what’s your weight?’, I said, ‘Oh, 118kg’. ‘You sure?’. My face gets proper puffy, so they could tell, but I weighed and I was 127kg, I was like, ‘oh my God, this is really bad’.”

But again, he came back, and did his PCL (posterior cruciate ligament). “It was against Cardiff, and after that. I was just like, ‘it’s over’, I was in the brace.”

Joe didn’t just mean the game was over, but his rugby career. “I messaged Ant [Watson], and he asked me how my knee was, and I was like, ‘I give up, I’m done with rugby’, and he was like, ‘what are you going to do then, be a baker?’”

Much as Joe clearly had a soft spot for pastries, Watson’s pep talk helped. “He kind of gave me a kick up the arse,” says Joe. “That was a really hard one for me to get back; I got back playing, but I wasn’t finding my form.

“I think it was Sale and I got dropped from Bath completely, not even on the bench, I went up as a travelling reserve, I just couldn’t get into the team.”

Aware that Joe’s problem went beyond the physical, the club put him in touch with a psychologist. “I still work with her now [Katie Warriner], and I was trying to rediscover my ‘why’, because I was just playing for the sake of playing. I told her my whole life story, and it was the best thing for me, because I started to find my form again.”

And the ‘why’ was? “My family,” he says. “Pretty much to make them proud, to see my mum and dad or my sister and brother watch me running out in a Bath jersey – that was the thing we always spoke about doing as a kid.

“It’s kind of changed now,” he adds. “I still play for my family, but now I play for myself too, I also play for the little Joe.”

Bath have changed too. Given they finished bottom of the table as recently as 2022, a time when the Premiership was flush with clubs, numbering thirteen members, Joe is now part of a side that not only finished on the same points as eventual winners Northampton Saints last season, but are the favourites to go one step further this year. “The club completely changed when Johan [van Graan] came in,” says Joe. “Hats [Neal Hatley] is one of my favourite coaches, and he was our head coach but I think us players just didn’t know where we wanted to go as a team, we weren’t all aligned.

“Whereas now with Johan, he wanted to make this club like a family club, and there’s one rule ‘treat others the way you want to be treated’, that’s it.

“There’s a sense of belonging,” continues Joe. “Every Monday meeting, he always puts this chart up, like a pyramid, and at the top, it’s a happy team. And he always goes back to this, whether we win or lose, we go back to zero and start again. Whether you’re the kit man or physio, everyone’s going in the same direction.”

Does this season feel different? “It feels, and we spoke about this in the changing room last night after we won, it feels like a proper special team, we feel something special is coming.”

One big change has been to the training ground, often mentioned in the past for, ironically, being too plush. “He came in and made Farleigh [House] into an actual rugby club, we’ve had a lot of stuff redone,” he says. “Farleigh was kind of like a hotel before, whereas now it’s like a rugby facility.”

The impact of Finn Russell can’t be overstated either. “We were all really excited, when he signed,” explains Joe. “Everyone’s wondering, ‘what will he be like’. And then he came in and you think someone being paid that much money is going to be arrogant, but he’s completely the opposite, he’s a proper team man. 

“Everyone thinks, on the pitch, he just does his own thing, but now playing with him, he’s a lot more calculated than that. I am very close to him now, and he’s good guy always willing to help people, which is a good thing. He’s always got time for the younger tens, like Orlando Bailey and Ciaran Donoghue, and other backs like Max Ojomoh, who’s always asking questions. I think he’s just a good person. If you met him, you think, ‘oh, he’s completely opposite of what people think he’d be like, he’s a lot more relaxed’.”

Marriage is also on the cards for Joe, as he prepares to tie the knot with his partner of six years, Rosie, whom he met during his London Irish days. “I met her in a pub called The Ship after we’d beaten Worcester, Lovejoy Chawatama was my wing-man, and I told him when I popped out to ‘leave that seat empty so I can sit there when I get back’. And I took her to McDonald’s next to the pub for the first date and the rest is history.”

He jokes, but Rosie has been key to Joe’s return to form. He talks of his old habits of keeping his thoughts to himself after he had a bad game, and how Rosie helped him. “Now we have rules where we have to speak to each other,” he says. “Because after games, if it’s a bad game, I’d just sit down, I’d say, ‘yeah, I think it’s fine’, but, in my head, it wasn’t.

“She bought me this book last year,” he continues, “it’s a manifesting book: you write down your thoughts, how you want to be, who you want to be; she gave me that just after the World Cup, after I got dropped. I just felt like that helped me massively and my form last season was the best I’ve ever played for Bath.”

Food continues to be a challenge for Joe. “Sweets, I love sweets,” he says. “And when I’m injured, I must be more careful of what I’m eating, but when I’m playing I don’t eat much. In the mornings, I probably won’t eat till like 12 o’clock because if I fast the whole day, then I can have a big dinner.

“Rosie is always there to be, ‘right, we’re eating healthy today’, it’s like she’s got this little kid and trying to coax him to have a sprout.”

Joe’s in a good place. England is still there. “It’s tough because, I still feel I’ve got a lot more to achieve in the England jersey, I just need that opportunity and it’s frustrating, because I’m playing well, my form’s good, but I’m not in the squad. 

“But,” he adds, “I’ve got to a point where, if I’m playing well at the club, then I’m happy, and now we want to win a trophy.

“I’m also just grateful that I’m healthy and playing well,” he adds. “There was a time when I didn’t want to play for England anymore. I think after getting dropped for the [2023] World Cup I was devastated. I played the [warm-up] game against Wales, and if you got a message the next day, you knew you weren’t going. I got a message, I met up with Steve, and I was just devastated,” he repeats. “I went back up to the room, Rosie was staying with me, and I was just, ‘let’s get out of here’.”

Again, Rosie has helped his comeback in another way. He didn’t, for instance, question enough why he wasn’t picked. “Now Rosie has told me that I need to fight for myself a bit more, I need to ask these questions because it won’t hurt anyone. I think when he kind of told me, and told me the reason, I just dropped everything and wanted to get out of there.” 

He does know one reason for his omission. “One thing that let me down was the high balls,” he admits. “I was just dropping loads, and with international rugby that’s one thing that’s so important to get teams into the game.

“But, as I said earlier, that was such a big blessing in disguise for me, because I went back to the club and then worked on it so much, and it kind of affected my confidence. I was so low, but Johan is very good at knowing what I need as a person, and I had a bit of time off, and I remember the first game back, and I just started playing really well again, and hit top form.” 

Joe knows England’s back three is full of competition and he also knows consistency is key, but he’s more relaxed about what happens next. “In the summer I had meetings with the coaches, I feel like my time will come, and if it doesn’t, it’s fine, I’m happy where I am.”

And there’s always Fiji. “The boys keep taking the piss out of me, because every time I don’t get into an England squad, they’re saying, ‘how many more years do you have left to be eligible to play for Fiji?’. That said, I don’t think I’m good enough to get in that team, either!

“But I do love Fiji,” he says, finishing on his first love, “I love it every time they play, I love watching them, I love supporting them, my cousin is their captain, Wais [Waisea Nayacalevu] too, so, yeah, I’ve always got big love for them.” 

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Oli Hillyer-Riley

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

The Normans, with their brand of strategic ruthlessness, brought the concept of castles to England in the wake of their 1066 conquest. These formidable structures, like the one that still stands in the Kent town of Tonbridge, were originally built for security, intended to anchor their control in an unsettled land. 

Tonbridge, with its vantage point over the winding River Medway, was an obvious choice for Norman fortification. Strategically placed to command the road from Hastings to London, it was not merely a defensive structure, but a crucial point in the military and political landscape. From the outset, Tonbridge was a coveted prize, its tactical value ensuring it would always be a target, a focal point for conflict; and this was proved again during the Second World War. “Tonbridge is a [railway] junction to all of southern England,” explains Eddie Prescott, a Second World War historian and the man colloquially known as ‘Mr Tonbridge’. “That’s the reason why the Luftwaffe tried to bomb the living daylights out of Tonbridge station during the war.

“It was a Dornier Do 17 [a twin-engined light bomber designed and produced by the German aircraft manufacturer Dornier Flugzeugwerke] which flew low over the station in July 1944, dropping bombs as it went. They missed, dropping the bombs on the houses adjacent to the station and killing a number of people. The junction itself remained, so Tonbridge is still a gateway to these different parts of southern England.”

“On this very sports ground,” Eddie outstretches his hands to the field before us, home to Tonbridge Juddians Rugby Club, “we had two doodlebugs [nickname for the German V-1 flying bombs used in WW2] land and it devastated the surrounding area, damaging shops and houses.”

Historically, the route from Hastings to London has been a familiar path for invading forces from Europe, passing Tonbridge as they marched on the capital. 

Today, for the people of Tonbridge, a town of 36,000 or so souls, half an hour’s drive south-east of London, a different kind of challenge arrives from the south coast. Havant, a mid-table side from just outside Portsmouth, are here to do what only one other team has managed this season: defeat Tonbridge Juddians [TJs] in a game of rugby. After seventeen games in the league so far, the only team to have succeeded in this task was Bury St Edmunds in November.

This game matters also, not just for Tonbridge, but for Kent. The county, with a population larger than Lancashire, Merseyside, Devon and Surrey, is not typically seen as a rugby stronghold. In fact, it’s not a football hotbed either, with Gillingham FC, the county’s highest-ranked team, struggling in League Two. Even in cricket, a sport which is synonymous with Kent’s own brand of verdant summers and pastoral England vibe, things are tough. Kent County Cricket Club hasn’t won the County Championship since 1978, and since then, twelve of the eighteen counties have won the title.

TJs are trying to buck the trend as they lead the National 2 East table with one eye firmly set on promotion to National 1, level three of the rugby pyramid.

While TJs work hard to put Kent on the rugby map, their name often leads people to believe they hail from a neighbouring town, a mix-up that club stalwart Eddie knows all too well. “But the amazing thing is, if you meet someone for the first time and they say, ‘Where do you come from?’ You say, ‘Tonbridge’, they immediately say, ‘oh, Tunbridge Wells!’. 

“You have to say, ‘No! Tonbridge!’” exclaims an animated Eddie, “Tonbridge has the history, Tunbridge Wells doesn’t.

“Tunbridge Wells doesn’t have a Norman castle, Tonbridge does. There are Saxon parts to the parish church in Tonbridge, that’s how old this place is. Tunbridge Wells’ history basically goes back to taking the waters in Georgian times.” 

The people from Tonbridge and nearby Sevenoaks (where a market was established back in the thirteenth century) like to recount their history with a knowing nod and a touch of pride, as if to suggest that while Royal Tunbridge Wells might have its trendy spas and cultural buzz, it certainly doesn’t have the deep roots of time and tradition. 

Unsurprisingly, these strange geographical afflictions bleed into rugby. This is all the more inevitable when you consider the legacy of the local schools who ensure that rugby is a matter of pride, and something that has been going strong since the days when Eddie himself was out there playing. “It’s a rugby town really. Yes, there’s the Tonbridge Angels Football Club and they’ve been around for a long time. They used to play down at the south end of the town, on what was formerly the Kent County cricket ground.

“I played with Old Juddians way back in the day,” continues Eddie. “The training and dedication and effort that’s put in all round by players these days is incredible. They’re much fitter, they’re much bigger, they’re much faster. 

“When I played a million years ago I was a full-back, I mean look at me,” Eddie gesticulates downwards, indicating his slight frame, “I mean look at full-backs now, it’s an entirely different game. “We thoroughly enjoyed our rugby, I played till I was 56 and we used to get about a dozen people on the touch line.

“The rugby I played was old boys’ club rugby. Once you came off the pitch, you forgot the game and got into the opposition’s bar where the beer really went round. We started singing – oh it’s a shame that we don’t sing anymore. 

“We used to sit around singing rugby songs for a couple of hours. We could out-sing any club out of the county. Today, I think it’s more a case of the game is never forgotten after the game, there’s so much analysis afterwards.”

While there is certainly less singing and more analysis today, TJs are a club who have quite a storied history. For a while, Tonbridge was a town that had two rugby clubs, Tonbridge RFC, who were formed in 1904, and Old Juddians, who were formed in 1928 and comprised of former pupils of the Judd School in Tonbridge. The two clubs merged to form Tonbridge Juddians in 1999.

Before this afternoon’s game against Havant, the social pulse of TJs is unmistakable as the clubhouse hums with a pre-match buzz. It offers a cosy contrast to the punishing February cold and the sharp, biting wind swirling around the playing fields just a stone’s throw from the River Medway.

With around 150 supporters enjoying a pre-match meal, the atmosphere grows increasingly boisterous. The servers, in an almost comical frenzy, glide between tables, plates of mains and desserts in hand, while the bar queue grows ever longer. The drinks flow and the chatter crescendos, creating a scene that, in all its unrefined, chaotic warmth, seems well-practised and well-loved. 

Club captain and assistant treasurer Ady Crouch was an Old Juddian and was part of the committee when the two clubs merged. “I wouldn’t necessarily say the merger was a totally smooth process,” Ady admits diplomatically. “Rugby has changed a lot since then, in terms of playing numbers and both clubs were struggling to get two teams out.

“Old Juddians had an ageing first team, but a higher league position, Tonbridge was a younger first team with a lower league position, but needed to find somewhere else to play because their clubhouse had been condemned and was sold for building land. A merger made sense, Tonbridge was never really big enough to support two ambitious clubs anyway.

“There was a fair amount of resistance from members of both clubs, but in the end, it got voted through and we rejoined the league pyramid, meaning 1999/00 was our first season. There’s still inevitably banter about it all, but the majority of those dissenters have now been won over.”

What has swayed the sceptics is a sustained period of success. After challenging years in London 2 South in the 2000s, TJs dropped to London 4 South East, but then claimed three league titles in four years between 2010 and 2014. 

Their progress continued in 2018 when they won the National 3 London & South East title, followed by a promotion to National 1 in 2020 as National 2 runners-up with the best record. Though relegated back to National 2 East the following season, one of only two clubs to be demoted across the entire RFU league structure due to the impact of Covid-19, TJs have rebounded strongly.  “Halfway through last season, Jordan Turner-Hall came in as director of rugby,” explains Ady. “He streamlined the playbook a little bit and gave the players a greater clarity of thinking.

“I think the last couple of seasons we had huge quality in the backs, but now we’re really getting the most out of them. The forwards have also become a bit more robust; we had George Merrick, who was player/coach for a while, and I think he brought a lot of strength to the forward pack which has carried on since he’s gone.

“We’ve managed to stay in games that perhaps previously, we would have tailed off towards the end, we’re just more confident in our patterns and abilities now. One of the observations we made last season was that we weren’t quite fit enough to compete at the top of National 2, and they’ve worked hard on that in preseason.”

The hard work is clearly paying off for TJs this season, with the team not just winning, but dominating, and often claiming victories by huge margins. At the heart of their success lies a remarkable ability to launch relentless, destructive attacks, meaning it has become rare for them to score fewer than thirty points in a match.

Given Tonbridge’s rich rugby heritage, you’d expect the local community to be buzzing with excitement, desperate to watch their team in action. However, as Ady concedes, there are still some hurdles to overcome in getting that full support on match day. “Rugby looms large in Tonbridge, but only for those who are in this world, and a lot of that comes from the private schools in the area,” he says. “There are an awful lot of people in Tonbridge who probably have no idea that the rugby club even exists, and certainly don’t have any idea of the high level we play at. There’s also the constant challenge of increasing our crowd numbers, getting more members in and more kids playing rugby here, but obviously the reputation of the academy does a lot of work in that regard.”

The pride and heart of this Kent club lies in its academy, which has been led from the front by Gareth Withers since its inception in 2013. “I’m director of sport at Hilden Grange prep school in Tonbridge, which feeds Tonbridge School,” says Gareth. “It’s one of the bigger public schools; they play Millfield, Whitgift, Wellington School and Eton at rugby.

“The TJs academy is the sixteen to eighteen-years-old section at the club, which we think of as being the leading grassroots academy in the country. Obviously, there are Premiership academies and licenced England Rugby academies, which are based around the Premiership clubs. But then below that you’ve just got grassroots rugby, and that is from Championship down.

“We’ve won the National Cup three times since we set up the academy twelve years ago, and no other club in the country has won it more than once in that time. We’ve also lost a final, a semi-final and a quarter-final.”

With around 150 players in the TJs academy, they not only have numbers but they’re also giving the kind of feedback you’d expect from a professional club. “We use video analysis with broadcast news-style cameras that we can use with proper mics which allow us to get a great insight into the games,” says Gareth. “Genuinely, I’d love you to find another academy in the country who could argue any of that, or at least half of that.

“The last time we won the National Cup a year and a half ago, we had Bury St Edmunds away in the semi-final, and we took five fifty-seater coaches of supporters to the game and I would estimate that just as many people drove as well. So we took five hundred people away to watch an under-18 game of rugby, that’s how special the club is.”

Should they reach National League 1 level, it’s almost a given that TJ’s will need to look beyond their current roster for new recruits, but the goal is to ensure the club not only has the depth to compete when they get there, but also that a strong pipeline exists from the academy to the first team. This isn’t just wishful thinking: since the academy’s inception just over a decade ago, nearly 450 first-team appearances have been made by academy graduates.

A handful of those youngsters feature for TJs today as the game kicks off and Havant make a strong start.

Despite the early pressure, TJs’ defence holds firm, restricting Havant to just three penalties in the first half, but TJs’ superior strength begins to tell and they score two quick tries before the break for a 17-9 lead. In the second half, TJs play with growing confidence and flair, running from deep and entertaining the crowd as they comfortably pull away from Havant.

A 39-16 victory sees TJs secure their sixteenth win of the season and their fifteenth try bonus point, putting them six points clear of second-placed Barnes with a game in hand. The home crowd lingers to applaud the team, before gradually making their way back across the muddy fields to the clubhouse. 

Expertly operating in the frenzied post-match atmosphere is William ‘Bill’ Little, in his third and final year as president of Tonbridge Juddians. He flits from table to table, wearing a big smile and speaking enthusiastically to everyone as he gears up for his post-match speech. “The president’s role on a day like today,” the quick-talking Bill explains after stopping to wish a happy birthday to an elderly fan, “is to represent the club in a social capacity. Often I feel like I’m organising the biggest Sunday lunch ever where I have to invite everyone I know, but I do love welcoming our guests and making them feel welcome.”

“I also like my wife being involved so that I’m not disappearing to rugby every week alone. She comes with me to all the away games and we have date nights; it really is a team effort between me and her.”

Bill perfectly embodies the role of a rugby club president, but for him, this path has been anything but inevitable. “The strangest thing is, I’m traditionally not even that much of a rugby man.

“I played semi-professional football quite seriously for Dorking Wanderers and others. Honestly, I loved playing the game but got sick to death of the cheating, the language, the fans. 

“The social side of football doesn’t even come close to rugby. I’ve been to events up and down the country where I have put this tie on,” Bill proudly shows us his blue, white, and red striped Tonbridge tie, “people recognise it and I end up having an hour-long conversation all about rugby. It’s amazing.”

As fans file out of the clubhouse and into the cold Kent night, they are surely warmed by the fact that TJs continue their seemingly effortless glide on towards an inevitable promotion. Can Bill share any potential plans being made for next season and the prospect of National 1 rugby returning to Tonbridge? “Plans…I am aware of plans, but with all due respect it’s far too soon…,” Bill says before laughing heartily. “I mean, we have played in the National 1 league before, and obviously we came straight back down again. I don’t really know whether we were totally prepared last time, but we’re better aware of it this season. There won’t be drastic changes, but we desperately want to have a side that can compete at that level.

“For me as president, this season I’ve been at every first-team game on a Saturday to represent the club, I’ve watched all the academy cup games and I’ve pretty much watched all of the women’s first-team games this season as well. I will miss it, of course I will, but I’ll still be watching on, don’t you worry about that.” 

Story by Scott Duke-Giles

Pictures by Danté Kim

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

Hazelwood, the former training base of London Irish, tucked away on the outskirts of London in the tranquil suburb of Sunbury-on-Thames, is a place that every young England rugby hopeful knows well. For many years it’s played host to national pathway sessions, where bright young prospects from academies, schools and clubs across the country are invited to get their first taste of the national system, under the watchful eye of coaches looking for prospects with England potential. Some have it, most don’t.

Today, those that ‘do’ have one final rung to climb on the England pathway: England A, effectively the national second XV. Having operated under various guises over the years – England B, Emerging England and England Saxons – the England A set-up was revived in 2024, ending an eight-year hiatus after financial and structural considerations had left the programme without a defined place in the pathway or the calendar. A first attempt at a return in 2021 was thwarted by Covid, and while the old Churchill Cup in which England, Scotland and Ireland’s second teams competed against the Maori All Blacks, Canada, and the USA, was disbanded in 2011, England A is now back with the same objective, helping to nurture those next cabs off the rank.

Its return comes at a time when the pathway system is once again riding high, with England claiming the 2024 under-20 World Championship crown, their first in the best part of a decade. Root-and-branch cutbacks inflicted on the pathways between 2016 and 2019 had consigned them to a period of soul searching, but with Conor O’Shea’s appointment as director of performance rugby in 2019, their importance was once again back on the agenda. Success soon followed, a squad featuring the likes of Henry Pollock, Asher Opoku-Fordjour, Afolabi Fasogbon, Junior Kpoku and Lucas Friday beating France 21-13 in the 2024 final. With Pollock and Opoku-Fordjour already winning caps for England, and in Pollock’s case being called up for the Lions, it’s fair to say England are currently sitting on a generational, potentially golden crop of young talent – not to mention senior squad members including Ollie Chessum, Tommy Freeman, George Martin and Freddie Steward, all of whom are still 25 and under at the time of writing.

Unsurprisingly then, the squad gathered at Hazelwood in November has a heavy contingent of recent under-20s graduates. There’s some older heads too, Ethan Roots, Jamie Blamire, Ollie Hassell-Collins and Max Ojomoh among them, but the fresher faces including Vilikesa Sela, Greg Fisilau, Rekeiti Ma’asi-White, Nathan Jibulu and Noah Caluori make up the bulk of the squad. After a 14-31 defeat to an experienced New Zealand A side the week before, Rugby Journal is in camp as they prepared to jet off to face Spain in Valladolid.

Heading up the operation, the man charged with ensuring this potentially golden generation fulfils its potential is Mark Mapletoft. The former Gloucester, Harlequins and London Irish fly-half who coached the under-20s to glory in 2024, Mark has now moved into an overarching role as head of men’s pathways, while also acting as head coach for England A.  “My remit now is the whole of the men’s player pathway,” Mark tells Rugby Journal. “A young player usually comes into us at sixteen, in lower sixth, and depending on when their birthday is, they get a certain amount of time in the pathway. If they’re born between 1 September and 31 December in their school year, they have less amount of time in the pathway than somebody who was born 1 January onwards. “But theoretically, a player could join in, let’s say September 2025 just gone, and their last involvement could be July 2029, at a junior World Championship. That’s a long time, close to 46 months. “We’ve already had a couple of lads in over the last twelve months who’ve been in northwards of fifty days in camp with us – so we have an awful lot of contact time with young players, and having a really clear purpose to what we’re doing underpins all of that. What does that identification of talent look like? What does the development of that talent look like? What experiences do they get along the way? That can’t be done in isolation. So, my job, now, is to make sure that there’s a clear strategy in place for those players.

“But it doesn’t just end when they graduate from the under-20s,” he qualifies. “It’s looking at how we can keep the pathway moving forward trying to get a better connection into the next level. Just because you graduate from the 20s doesn’t mean you’re not at the forefront of our minds.”

England A sits in a critical point in a player’s growth where, according to England’s development framework, players are transitioning from one development purpose, ‘adapting to win’, to the final purpose, ‘win’. “Most of the A players are in that ‘win’ space, but equally, some of them are much younger,” says Mark. “If you look at the age profile of our side, compared to New Zealand A on Saturday, it was a much younger profile – David Havili and Sevu Reece probably had double the number of caps themselves than our entire squad.

“So how we pitch this camp, it’s got to be appropriate – we’re always in a rush to push players forward, but that’s really hard to gauge, because youth development isn’t linear. The player will demonstrate whether he’s capable of playing in the next level – your job as a coach is to give him that opportunity, his job is to take it.”

And for this crop of players, who after their success in the under-20s are being tipped as the finest generation since Owen Farrell, George Ford, Elliot Daly and Mako Vunipola’s class of 2011, the chances are certain to come, if they are willing to take them. “There’s so much talent, it’s a very exciting time,” continues Mark. “I think the challenge, which I’m often laying down to the players is, if you look at the age profile of the senior England team, it’s quite young. There are some players moving towards the end of their careers, so there will be opportunities that get opened up, but these players are going to have to work incredibly hard, I think, to get into that group and be better than what’s already there.”

Noah Caluori

If you were tasked with dreaming up a player perfectly suited to starring in the next decade of English rugby, then you might just come up with Noah Caluori. The hyperbole might seem unjustified, after all, at the time of writing he’s only started two games in the Prem, but the catch is, in that first-ever start against Sale, Noah crossed the line for five tries, displayed an aerial ability unmatched not just in England, but globally, and showed the swagger and the confidence that any player hoping to rise to stardom in the modern game needs.

He may only be nineteen years old, and literally only just, but the young man from Forest Hill, south London, born to a Swiss-Italian father and Nigerian mother, is now the standout name in this England A squad, catapulted from relative anonymity to being called into training with the senior men’s squad earlier in November. “I just didn’t want to let the opportunity go to waste,” says Noah of his call-up to Steve Borthwick’s squad. “I treat every single opportunity the same. Two weeks before I was called up to my first senior camp, I was playing for Ampthill in the Champ, and I feel like I treated that opportunity the same way I treated the senior men’s opportunity. It allows my mental side of the game to just keep consistent, even if the level I’m at changes, so I don’t drop my performance.

“I don’t drop my training attitudes,” he adds. “I think that’s probably why I was back into the Prem the next week, and then off the back of that, done pretty well.”

We’re only one answer into the interview and Noah’s self-confidence is tangible – who can blame him after the month he’s had – and it’s clear this is a quality he would have regardless, five tries in a single game or not. “My best rugby is when I’m the most confident person on the pitch, and I just have full, full belief in my ability, and I know I’m gonna go do what I’m gonna do,” he says. “But I wouldn’t say, like, overconfident, cocky, just self-belief.

“Certain aspects of the game are changing, we do need characters in the sport. That’s what brings interest, grabs people who’ve never watched rugby before to be like, ‘oh, this guy seems cool, I like what you’re saying here’. If you want to be the best, be the best and go do it, say you want to be the best, it’s words of affirmation. There’s a certain line between being confident and then being cocky and arrogant – you’ve gotta have a hint of arrogance to be a successful athlete, in my opinion, but there’s a line where it becomes disrespectful.”

With that approach, he’s already walking in the footsteps of the athletes he always looked up to. “Kobe [Bryant], that Mamba mentality, if he’s on the court, if there’s one game-winning shot, he’s taking that shot, he backs himself every time to do it. I also looked up to Ronaldo, he came from nothing but built himself up. He set out to achieve what he’s achieved, and goes after it every time with one hundred per cent every single time, and that’s what made him great. I’d say I take certain parts of those mentalities and try and implement that into mine.”

It’s been barely a month since that game against Sale, a month in which the spotlight has been firmly and intensely on him, but it’s something he’s relishing. “[I’ve found it] quite good,” says Noah. “I don’t read too much into people’s opinions and comments, because everyone’s entitled to their opinion. It’s been quite enjoyable on the pitch, speaking to the fans, making time for them has been a real nice touch, because I feel you can never be too big-time to just appreciate the people that support you. And then social media has blown up – I was on like ten thousand, now I’m on 38,000 [up to 42,000 by the time of writing], so that’s been great, just a little flex to my mates back home.

“I just don’t want to let it get to my head,” he assures. “I don’t want to become that player that has that one game, lets everything get to his head, and then he never has a performance like that again. I’m using that Sale game, the spotlight being on me, to motivate me to do even more.

“When I go home, [my mates] see me, the same old Noah, they will mock me the same and keep me grounded. They’re the first ones to congratulate me, but also the first ones to tell me to sort myself out if I’m getting too cocky.

“I’m loving my rugby. I’m loving every minute of it. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It’s my dream to be doing what I’m doing right now.”

Starting at ten years old, there was no rugby background in Noah’s family, so it took a teacher at school noticing his natural talents before he properly got involved. “One of my teachers told my mum, ‘You’ve got to get this guy into a club like this, this is for him’, so I joined Blackheath rugby club, because a couple of my friends were already there from the school.”

By fifteen it was clear he had something, he just needed that extra kick of motivation. “I just remember having that competitive edge. I was like, I’m pretty good at this, I’m gonna see where I can go, but I was a bit half on, half off until I got into the Saracens academy.

“My coach, Jack Pattinson, he said to me he thinks I have the talent to go far, but he wants to know if I really want to go pro. There was a quote he said to me, something like if I don’t get a professional contract, he will still sleep the same at night, but I’ll be staying up wondering what if I actually put my all into this. And then after that moment in my under-16 season, I was all in every day, all in striving to go pro. That’s when I properly flicked the switch.”

He already had the physical attributes and the talent to excel – he stands at six foot four, and hit 21.7mph on the way to his debut Prem try – but his aerial skills, the part of his game that has got people most excited, is something he’s worked hard on.  “It wasn’t until year twelve that it became a super strength for me,” he reveals. “I was playing thirteen at school [Mill Hill], and I would always be thirteen, that was my position – I only switched to wing at the end of year twelve. But after the South Africa tour with the England under-18s, the coach Will Parkin came to watch me at my school and grabbed me after, and said he thought I was one of the best schoolboys he’d seen at high ball, and how we can make this into a real weapon.

“After that with him, my Saracens coaches, coaches at school, I went after it and just tried to perfect my craft, actually gain a bit of technique. I had the raw spring, but I didn’t really have any clue what I was doing, so I actually sat down and tried to work out how I can catch the ball at the highest point.

Because of him, that has now become second nature.”

Already training with the senior squad, Noah has had to grow up fast. “I feel like it’s helped me mature, as a person, as well as a rugby player, but then I still have the young side of me, I’m still quite jokey, quite happy-go-lucky. Around my mates and around the training centre, everyone always says to me, you’re actually like a child. I mean, I was born in 2006.”

With the cohort of players also breaking through alongside Noah, it’s an exciting time to be involved in English rugby. “The amount of talent that’s coming through, and then how tight all the groups are, is going to help so much in the future, like we were going to have that chemistry between us from such a young age,” he says. “I’m just thinking about all the things that we can achieve together over the next couple of years. I feel like we’re just going to dominate world rugby for years to come. English rugby is going to become a powerhouse, I just know it.”

Vilikesa Sela

Standing at six foot four, and with a fighting weight around 125 kilos, you wouldn’t expect Bath tighthead Vilikesa ‘Billy’ Sela to also possess the dynamism and handling ability of a centre. But then, the twenty-year-old is of Fijian stock, so it all makes sense. Welcome to the new age of the front rower. “I grew up with a rugby ball, it’s the Fijian in me, everyone grows up around rugby,” says Vilikesa. “When you’re born in a Fijian household, you learn about all the Fijian legends, like Serevi and Jerry Tuwai. Especially sevens, growing up that’s the main thing you’d watch. But then with the 2015 World Cup happening in London we kind of went off more into fifteens.”

Born in Hounslow, his father Ilaitia was in the British Army, which meant an early childhood that moved across the length and breadth of England. “I had my childhood in Colchester, and then we moved to Aldershot. I grew up there for a bit, and then we went to Lyneham, and that’s how I got picked up by Bath.

“It was always weird going to school, because you’re always the new kid,” he continues. “And it’s like, you have to make friends every now and again. I remember going to the school in Lyneham, that’s where I got into rugby, because the rugby boys picked me up, and they’re like, ‘oh, you’re big, you can play’.

“They told me to come down to the club for the whole of year seven, and I couldn’t go because me and my family are really religious and Sunday is always a church day. But then, my mum thought it’d be good to just let me go, and when I tried it, I really enjoyed it.”

As one of the biggest in his year group, you’d drink the the physical side drew Vilikesa in, but as a Fijian, it was about the skills. “I really love the skill side of the game, the offloading, which is what Fijians are normally known for, that’s the thing that really caught my attention. I always had a problem with the physical side, because growing up, I didn’t want to hit anyone, I hated inflicting pain. My mum had to give me a chat and say, ‘this is how the game’s supposed to be’.”

Playing for the joy of the game, it took him some time to adjust to all the necessities of academy rugby. “I hated going to the gym,” he admits. “Sometimes I would just skip, but then our scrum coach here Catty [Nathan Catt], he was at my school [Beechen Cliff], he kind of noticed that I wasn’t really taking it serious, and then they started making me do one-to-ones with him.”

It clearly made a difference – during the forwards’ gym session, we watch as he chest presses 64kg dumbbells for reps. “I’m just blessed with the Fijians genetics,” he says, “but I’ve still got my own spot in Farleigh [House, Bath’s training ground] where I just chill, just to hide away from everyone.”

Tracking Vilikesa’s development from schoolboy to England A, the most significant period was undoubtedly when, at sixteen, he almost quit rugby altogether after he was released from the Bath academy. “That was probably one of the toughest moments for me in my career,” he says. “When I first got accepted into the academy, I was like, ‘oh, I’ve made it, this is my place now’. And then I think I got too complacent.

“At the time [I was dropped], I was just pissed, and I generally just wanted to throw rugby out the window. That’s how bad it was. My brother was still at the academy, so he would be going off training, but then my mum would force me to come to watch.

“Watching him play at Farleigh kind of motivated me to go further with rugby. I ended up picking it back up at my local club, and then from there, I got put into the last DPP [developing player programme] session to get into the academy, and that’s when I got picked up again [at seventeen]. From there, it kind of skyrocketed – now I have no idea what I’d be doing without rugby.

It was at this point that a switch from backrow to the front row was almost inevitable. “I was playing number eight, we had a scrum session at academy training. Catty was like, ‘all the props over here and all the rest of the boys over here’, I went with the others and he’s like, ‘Billy, get over there’.”

It was a difficult transition, but slowly he’s learned to love it. “Thomas du Toit and Will Stewart, they’re actually legends, honestly,” he says. “When Thomas came to Bath, he actually took me under his wing. Like even mid-session, he would tell me to stand there and just watch him do his setup and everything, and pick up techniques from him.”

And, with their free-flowing style, he still gets to flex his natural Fijian muscles. “I’d say my superstrength is my mobility. I feel like, for a prop, I’m pretty agile, I can move around well, and I’m decently fast, but yeah, I feel like that’s the point of difference I’m trying to bring. I think that’s where the new generation of props is going, everyone’s more mobile, you see Asher [Opoku-Fordjour], he’s not that heavy, but he gets around the park well. You’ve got to move well, but scrum well too.”

Given the quality ahead of him at club level – Thomas Du Toit, Will Stuart and Archie Griffin are all senior internationals – finding a way into the Bath line-up has been difficult, leaving Vilikesa to appreciate all the more his experiences with England under-20s, where he was part of the 2024 world champion side.

“It was just a very good platform to test my ability,” he says. “You get to play with the best players in your age group across the country, and it definitely challenged me seeing where I was with my scrums and my game. Everywhere you looked the competition was just so heavy. Every scrum session was always a challenge. Like, you couldn’t step off the accelerator because someone would just get you. But I believe that’s why we won the under-20s World Cup.

“After leaving the 20s stage, there wasn’t really a platform, I only had the senior team at Bath to play. I find it pretty hard to break into the senior team, so getting this chance now with England A is a very good platform for me to be with other boys that are in the similar positions and keep competing and improving.”

Greg Fisilau

If fortune had favoured Exeter’s Greg Fisilau, the 22-year-old could now be England’s number eight. Having been called into the senior camp ahead of the autumn campaign of 2024, Greg had been touted as all but certain to join England on their tour to Argentina in the summer with the British & Irish Lions away in Australia. However, injury robbed him of that chance.

During Exeter’s record 79-17 loss to Gloucester last season, the misery was compounded as Greg suffered a season-ending shoulder injury, leading to a long summer of rehab and surgery on both his shoulders. It brought an early end to his season in which he had been one of the few bright sparks for the Chiefs as they finished ninth in the league, with just four wins all season. “It was my first long-term injury, first operation,” says Greg. “It was all pretty scary after the first one, but I knew what was coming for the second one, so it wasn’t as bad I guess. The rehab was a bit dark, it was over the summer whilst everyone’s on holiday, so you struggle to find motivation to come in and get through everything.

“[The Argentina tour] was in the back of my mind that season, there were a lot of discussions, going through operations and rehab and stuff, but I think most important is getting your body right to give yourself the best chance to perform.”

Born in Plymouth, Greg is the son of former Tonga international and Plymouth Albion stalwart Keni Fisilau, and grew up in a busy household of five siblings. “It was a fun childhood, when we were getting along, but I think that happened very rarely, there was always something to complain about or argue about in the house,” he says. “But we’ve all moved out now apart from my youngest brother, so I think my parents, they’re still struggling to cope with the empty house.”

Greg has rugby running through his veins. “My dad being the rugby player he was, he definitely wanted me to follow in his footsteps and try and go further than he did,” he says. “As soon as I could walk he had me trying to pass a rugby ball.

“He’s a hard man to impress, but he always wanted the best for me. He’s always wanted me to do as well as I can, and he’s always been there supporting me.”

Weekends in Plymouth were spent watching his old man play for Plymouth Albion on the Saturday, who were in the Championship at the time, before turning out for Devonport Services on a Sunday morning. Aged ten they moved north to Kidlington, a village just north of Oxford. “I was playing club rugby for Oxford Harlequins, and I got invited to the DPP sessions for Wasps academy, which are like the development stages. Eventually I got into the academy and did under-17s, under-19s and it went from there.”

Greg managed to make a couple of appearances in the Prem Cup for Wasps before the club fell into administration, but it was after his moved to Devon that things started to take off. “Wasps going down was pretty tough for me, coming through the academy and all that, emotionally, it was quite hard to have to say goodbye to the club and move on,” he says. “I don’t think I had a breakthrough moment, but I got lucky with the timing of my move to Exeter,” he says. “I think a lot of players at Exeter were out of contract and were looking to move clubs, a lot of the back row especially moved on the year after I joined. So after that I had a few decent games in Prem Cup and made my Prem debut [against Saracens].”

Since that debut back in 2022 he’s demonstrated his physicality time and again, and with fourteen caps for the England under-20s also under his belt, Greg is sure to be one of the names on the tip of Steve Borthwick’s tongue as he looks for a replacement for number eight Tom Willis, who is joining Bordeaux at the end of the season. “I like to think my super strengths are being physical and as dominant as I can be on both sides of the ball, in terms of ball carrying and in the tackle,” says Greg. “In the next five years I hope to see myself in the England set-up, as an experienced Premiership rugby player, and fingers crossed we can win some trophies with Exeter.”

RekeIti Ma’asi White

Born in Cornwall, playing his rugby in the north with Sale and the son of a Tongan legend, Rekeiti Ma’asi-White has all the ingredients for the hardiest of centres. His father, Vili Ma’asi, played 36 times for Tonga, including at the 2003 World Cup, while his two brothers have also played professionally: Suva for Coventry and Sonny for Northampton.

Last season it became hard to ignore the exploits of the player many see as the new Manu Tuilagi. After starting the season on loan at Championship side Caldy, Rekeiti finally made his first start of the season for Sale in January at home to Bath. While that one went 23-32 in favour of the visitors, the 22-year-old’s thumping carries in victory against Toulon in the Champions Cup showed what he was capable of, and starts in wins against Newcastle and Harlequins cemented his place. He scored his first Premiership try in a 25-7 win over Saracens, and from then, he couldn’t stop scoring, with four tries in four consecutive games as Sale advanced to the playoffs.

With Vili still playing for Cornish Pirates while he was a young boy, rugby was part and parcel of life. “It wasn’t really a choice, pretty much every Sunday you go throw a ball around,” he says. “I’ve got two younger sisters who play, and they seem to enjoy it. And then my two older brothers, they play as well.

What is dad like? “Psycho,” he laughs. “When it comes to like training he loves it, even now. Especially the rowing machine, we used to have a rowing machine a couple of years back and most mornings will do some horrendous circuit training sessions.

“He was tough on us but that’s why I got here. Every little thing we would do wrong he would correct us, but it turned out well I think.”

Growing up Tongan was important. “Rugby in Tonga is very popular, and that’s how we got here, into the UK. But I’m not only half Tongan, my mum’s also from Kiribati, so there’s a lot of different cultures in my family. A lot of cousins, lot of siblings to do things with, you’ll always be busy, which I liked when I was younger. I don’t think you’d see that in a typical English family.”

Rugby started properly for Rekeiti at eight years old, but not in union. “I played a bit of rugby league to start off with. My dad played for Leeds Carnegie up there, and obviously there’s a lot of league going on up north. When we moved down to London that’s when I first did union.”

Joining Caldicott School just outside of Slough, the same school as Greg Fisilau, he was similarly picked up by Wasps and was making a name for himself in the academy when the club went under midway through his second season. “I was still kind of like maybe fourth or fifth choice at the time at Wasps, and I was obviously still young – if we stayed on, it might have been a different outcome. We had Manny Feyi-Waboso, Greg, Charlie Atkinson, Ollie Hartley, there was a lot of young boys.”

Fortunately for Rekeiti, with a handful of Prem Cup appearances plus some experience on loan at Moseley in National One, Sale had seen enough to snap him up. Fortunately, again, there were some familiar faces at Carrington. “Manu [Tuilagi] used to know my dad quite a bit,” he says, “when we lived in Leeds he used to come over for a couple drinks down the basement. We had a pool table, darts, they would just come down and chill. I was a little kid at the time, so I didn’t know who he was, I was just this little kid running around everywhere.”

With Manu and Sam James in the starting centre berths, Rekeiti managed just four Premierships appearances that season including one start. He had to wait until the following January for his next opportunity in the twelve shirt, but it’s one he took and never looked back. “When my opportunity came I just had to take it. When I knew I was put on that team sheet the coaches were very helpful, especially Byron [McGuigan]. He was basically saying that I had licence to do what I do best. So, for me, that was just physicality in attack and defence. He was like, ‘just go for it, carry hard and bang hard, and then the rest will come after a couple games when you’re comfortable’. I think that helped in terms of my confidence.”

After his impressive run of scoring, a first call up to the senior [England] squad came at the end of the year. “It was obviously very cool to be in with the big boys, but obviously [I was] nervous, I didn’t want to get things wrong. It was tough, the standard there is even higher than you think when you come in there, just the pace, the speed of everything. But now I know where I need to be. I want to bring that back to Sale and just try and not to lose my momentum.”

Nathan Jibulu

When it was announced that one of Harlequins’ brightest young stars was upping sticks and heading north to Sale Sharks, few doubted that this was something the south London club would live to regret. At the age off 22, hooker Nathan Jibulu looks to the manner born an international front row; boasting plenty of power and a ball-carrying ability reminiscent of prime Billy Vunipola, he demonstrated just that in a try-scoring Prem debut for Sale against Gloucester, hitting all fifteen of his lineouts, fronting a dominant scrum, and showing why he might just be England’s next hooker.

“The way Sale want to play the game is how I want to play,” says Croydon-born Nathan, “and from a selfish point of view, that’s shown through my performances and the impacts I’m getting around the pitch now. And that’s not to say I wasn’t getting that at Harlequins, it’s probably just enjoying the brand of rugby more.

“It’s definitely more set piece orientated itself, which helps as a hooker. Having Dickie [Luke Cowan-Dickie] as well, it’s a real privilege to be able to learn off him.”

Rugby started relatively late for Nathan, aged twelve, when he joined Wimbledon College, converting from football. “I loved the physical side of the game, north-south carrying, yeah it was nice when I was bigger than everyone else. It’s a bit different now everyone’s the same size.

“I started off as a second rower because I was quite tall, and then I moved to number eight when I stopped growing, and then finally moved to hooker when I stopped growing even more. I moved to hooker at sixteen, seventeen, so quite late on, but it’s probably the best thing I could have done. Obviously, there’s a closed skill with it, with throwing lineouts, but I enjoy it now.”

Now into his fourth professional season, Nathan is finding that confidence is key to performance. “When I was at Quins when I was eighteen, the first thing I did was ask Marcus [Smith] how he is so confident and comfortable. He’s like, you take confidence from your process and the stuff you do throughout the week – with a game, it’s fear of the unknown you’re going into, you don’t know the opposition and what it’s going to feel like on game day, so it’s about going in there knowing I’ve done everything I can.”

It’s a mantra he’s stuck to and one that’s served him well, especially when it comes to lineout throwing, a skill that has its ups and downs. “Recently I’ve kind of gone through the yips with my throw, and I’ve been talking to a sports psychologist about that, and that does help,” he says. “Confidence, and what you’re feeling going into a throw, is huge, because you are going to mess up a throw. I’m going to mess up a throw from now to the end of my career, that’s bound to happen, but it’s my reaction and what I’m thinking mentally after that, which I probably wasn’t getting right a few months ago.

“I reckon every hooker goes through this, where you missed your first one or two throws, and your next one you’re just like making eyes with the caller saying, ‘please give me one at the front’. It’s weird, because you’ve got to say to yourself in those moments, ‘I’ve thrown this a million times’.

“I talk to Fordy [George Ford] quite a lot at the club; he’ll say, if you miss a kick, you’re not going to then start changing what you’re doing mid game. If you have a process and a technique that you’re working on for years or months, you got to go back to that and feel confident going back to that. Whether I’m at my best or worst, that always will stay the same, and I’ll never try and change that, because that’s when you start getting inconsistent. And that’s probably a scarier place to be than someone who’s missed one or two in a game.”

Not only does Nathan spend plenty of time thinking deeply about his own game, but he’s got the physical attributes to put it into practice. “My point of difference is, I’d like to think, contact work and carrying, tackling, breakdown stuff,” he says. “It’s something I love doing, it is why I started playing rugby, and something I think I will always do throughout my career.”

After a year in the England under-20s in 2023, this is Nathan’s second time in England A camp, and while he knows he’s in the right place, he’s also aware of how far he’s got to go. “I want to use this as a stepping stone into hopefully a senior cap in the future, God willing, but I definitely don’t look too far ahead,” he says. “I’ve just got to be where my feet are each week as it comes.

Story by James Price

Pictures by Ben McDade

This feature was extracted from the new issue of Rugby Journal, also featuring Len Ikitau, Peter Winterbottom, Sophe de Goede, Tom Shanklin, England head chef Tom Kirby, and a 7,000-word deep dive into English cup rugby.

Order your print copy now here.

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To the right of the farmhouse, just behind the hens clucking happily in their coop, a flock of ten or so sheep are grazing away in the mid-morning October sun. In front of them, a small herd of four-month-old calves are curled up together underneath a tree, awaiting their next feed, and to their right, a row of stables lodge two ponies, both poking their heads out inquisitively. A daschund – we soon learn she’s called Delilah – scuttles between our feet, rolling over in expectation of a belly rub, while Daphne, an older, wiser terrier, has nestled herself comfortably in a basket of boots and riding chaps. But its Iggy, the one-year-old working cocker spaniel, who is the most energetic and eager to greet us, accompanied by the ‘get downs’ and ‘sorrys’ of his owner, Gloucester-Hartpury’s Pip Hendy. 

Rugby Journal is here to visit the 22-year-old utility back, already a two-time PWR champion, to learn about her origin story, and where better than at the family farm she was brought up on. Sandwiched between Bristol and Bath on the lower fringes of the Cotswolds, it’s set in rolling hills that more than live up to their status as an area of outstanding natural beauty, with panoramic views stretching all the way to the Severn Bridge. It’s a proper working farm – its 350-plus acres are home to 550 store cattle, one hundred suckler cows and five hundred breeding ewes – but it’s also an idyllic countryside haven for any person to spend their early years. 

“I just remember being outside all the time,” recalls Pip. “I became really independent growing up on a farm because we had our own animals to look after – I had a horse and a few cows – and they were our responsibility. I guess life was a bit different because my chores were mucking out the horses or putting straw in the cow shed, rather than doing the laundry, or something like that. It’s definitely made me the person I am today.”

It’s been an extra-long off-season for players like Pip, who ply their trade in the PWR. With last season being condensed due to the Rugby World Cup, the final between Gloucester-Hartpury and Saracens, which Pip’s Gloucester-Hartpury won 34-19, took place on 16th March, leaving a 224-day gap, more than seven months, before their first game of the new season on 26th October. 

So long has it been since the last game, it takes Pip a moment to remember how she’s spent her summer. “Um, what have I been up to?” she ponders. “Honestly, my life has just been a lot of rugby since we’ve been back, we train three times a week and I’ve been doing a lot of rehab [after a shoulder surgery]. What did I do in the off-season, let me just have a think … 

“Oh, I got a new horse,” she remembers, scrolling through the photos on her phone to jog her memory. “He’s called Rebel. It’s the name that he came with – I wanted to change it, but it’s bad luck. I wanted him to be called Hugo or something.” Why Hugo? “Well, it’s just a nice name, isn’t it?”.

“I went to South Africa too, and my cat had kittens,” she says, continuing her off-season wrap-up. “I’m going to Spain tomorrow on a rogue solo trip, just to get some sun, read a book and lie on the beach. I was just so tempted last week, and then booked it, so I guess I’m going now. 

“I also went to Wimbledon for the first time, that was very cool, not that I knew anything that was going on. I didn’t realise how long a rally was … is it called a rally? I have played before, but I can’t say I’m very good at racket sports, due to my coordination which is absolutely terrible. I can hit the ball, but the aiming is not very good, it will usually go out or over the fence.” 

As one of the brightest young talents at the most successful club in England, it’s no surprise that sport has always been a passion for Pip. “I was one of those kids that just tried anything,” she says. “I was always very sporty, even if I wasn’t very good. I’m just average at everything; I can do it but I’m just not the best. 

“If I had to choose another sport outside of rugby,” she ponders, “it would be hockey or netball, but my other main sport is horse riding. But not many people count that as a sport, do they?”

It’s in the Olympics, it’s definitely a sport. “It is, but horse showing, which is what I do, isn’t in the Olympics,” she says. “In dressage, for example, you’re scored on the moves you do and the performance of your horse, but with showing, you ride around in a ring and show your horse off, basically. You’re judged on your horse’s confirmation [physical structure], it’s a bit like a dog show, a pageant really. 

“I also do ‘working hunter’, which is also showing, but you do jumps, and your score is based on how you jump the jumps, not how quickly you jump them, like in show jumping. It’s all basically marked on how good your horse looks.”

Given where she was brought up, her equine skills are to be expected. “Growing up on a farm I always had a horse, basically as soon as I was born I was sat on a pony. My mum comes from an equine background, she was very into horses when she was younger, so it’s always been in my life. I’m quite a confident, ballsy rider, I’ll jump on anything. 

“My first ever pony was called George, he was an absolute legend, you just pointed him at a hedge and he’d jump it. But he was a rascal, he’d bolt quite a lot and he’d just run off with you, you couldn’t stop him.” 

It was a full childhood, one that never had a dull moment, especially with such a big family around her. “I actually have five siblings,” she says. “I have a brother that’s two years older than me and one that’s three years older than me, and I have three sisters, the youngest is twelve and the oldest is thirty.

“I was very much the middle child of the family; I’m definitely one of the most independent. It’s difficult being a middle child, you’re sort of forgotten about. I think it makes you a good person, doesn’t it? You’re very aware of everything going on, you don’t have people fussing about you all the time, you don’t need that fuss. That said, I still can’t make a phone call to a stranger, I still need my mum to do it.

“We’re definitely a close family. My family is so chaotic to be honest – it’s always been chaos at my house, always has been, always will be.”

While Pip has been riding horses as long as she can remember, rugby has been part of her life almost as long. “I was four when I joined Walcot RFC [on the outskirts of Bath], that was my local club. My older brothers used to play and I was just watching them on the sideline, I would just be cartwheeling around, doing anything other than watching. So, my mum was like, ‘why don’t you have a go?’.” 

It turned out she was rather good. “I moved up an age group when I was in under-8s, so I started tackling before all the boys I played with, they got angry with me – we obviously start puberty before boys so I was always taller than them. It’s funny, there’s a team picture and I’m one of the tallest there. 

“Me and my brothers used to play rugby in the garden, that was always fun. When my parents went away, we’d get the sofa cushions out from the house and tackle each other, so there was a fair few times I’d get smashed into cow poo or something, because the cows were always walking around the garden too. Yeah, that’s a great memory that sticks in the mind…

“When I was ten, I moved to Chippenham because they were a better club, but when girls rugby started I moved back to Walcot as they’d just started a team. Later I went back to Chippenham, and then to Weston Hornets when I was sixteen. That was an hour away, so after school I was getting the train for an hour.” 

Tackling her brothers may have been Pip’s pastime, but contact wasn’t everything. “It’s definitely the skilful side of the game for me,” she says. “When you’re on a rugby field it’s fun, it’s not about bashing and hurting someone, for me it’s running around smiling, enjoying being on the pitch, win or lose. 

“As long as I have fun out there, I don’t really care about the result,” she adds. “It sounds terrible, of course you want to win, but it’s true. I want to move the ball, I want to try something fancy, even if it doesn’t come off. Even the props have got insane skills these days. It’s amazing how much the sport has developed, the speed of it and everything.”

After moving to Hartpury University, she featured heavily at BUCS level. “I never knew what I wanted to do after school,” says Pip. “I wanted to go to university and study something I was interested in, but it’s never been like, ‘I want to have a career in this thing, I’m going to go study it’. With Hartpury, I just wanted to play rugby, I wanted to be in the best environment, so that’s what I did.”

And it didn’t take long for the Gloucester-Hartpury coaching staff to take notice – in fact, she was just eighteen when she made her debut for the club in the league. “I played atrociously,” she remembers with a slight wince. “I came off the bench and was playing on the wing against Worcester, and I remember I went to tackle and I got handed off so badly that I literally flew in the air, it was a joke.” 

Shaky start aside, the 2023/24 season brought Pip’s first proper run of games in the side – not a bad time to make her entrance, with their maiden league title now in their back pocket. “I was in Mozambique a couple of weeks before the season, and somebody got injured and they were like, ‘can you come and train?’. I came back, trained for a couple of weeks, and I was playing. That season there were a lot of injuries, so I got opportunities and I just had to make the most of what I had.” 

And make the most she did – she got her first start of the season against Saracens in January 2024 in a 24-15 win, and kept her place as they beat Leicester, Bristol and Sale. A rearranged fixture meant they played Sale again the week after, Pip coming out of the blocks firing and touching down within a minute.

As Gloucester-Hartpury’s winning run continued, so did Hendy’s try-scoring, touching down the following week against Exeter and the week after against Harlequins. With the Red Roses back from the Six Nations she kept her place, and with three tries in nine appearances she cemented herself a starting spot on the wing as Gloucester-Hartpury went into the play-offs looking to go back-to-back. 

They faced Exeter in the semi-final, their opponents in the final the previous year, and swept them aside by 50-19, with Pip scoring one of the tries of the season from fifty metres out, pacing past the cover defence before evading the full-back with an in-and-out to score in the corner. 

But her try-scoring endeavours weren’t over yet. The following week, in the final against Bristol, a nervy first half had seen Gloucester-Hartpury fall 17-7 behind at half time. Up stepped Pip Hendy – early in the second half she dotted down in the left corner, a score that kickstarted the comeback from the reigning champions as they went on to claim their second title with a 36-24 victory. Pip had been the instigator.  “I don’t know about that,” she laughs, “but what I do remember about that game is I just wanted the ball to get wide, but we just couldn’t get it out to the edge. Then we finally scored, and then we scored again… it always happens with Gloucester, we start off a bit slow, but then we get into it.”

The 2025 final, this time against Saracens, was much the same story; after twenty minutes, the three-peat had looked in danger of slipping away as Saracens stormed to a 19-5 lead. “I think when everyone said, ‘oh you’re going for three in a row, is there going to be a third?’, they think they’re putting pressure on us. But for us, we just go out there, have fun, and put on a show. There’s no pressure on us within the team, and we know how to pick each other up.”

Tries from Emma Sing and Mia Venner had got Gloucester-Hartpury back on track before the half-time break, then a second-half flourish saw them home by 34-19 – an unprecedented third PWR title in three years secured. 

In between league titles with Gloucester-Hartpury, Pip also got her first taste of the international scene, when she was called up to the Red Roses’ pre-season camp in the summer of 2024. “That was a very cool experience,” she reflects. “I was excited, I knew a lot of the girls in there so I wasn’t nervous. It was definitely a big jump up – it was a very different environment to under-20s and under-18s; you have to be properly switched on, you can’t be dropping a ball. 

“It was just a very cool opportunity,” continues Pip, “but then, on the last day I found out my shoulder was injured, which was gutting. I played the season on it, and then I tore my labrum, which is why I had to have surgery. They’ve put some ropes in my shoulder to keep it together.”

Having more opportunities with the Red Roses is certainly on the radar for Pip, but still being only 22, she is in no rush. “I want to be the best player I can be, physically, mentally, and headspace as well; I still feel I have a lot to learn as a young player. There are so many good girls out there, I just have to be one hundred per cent committed.”

There’s no doubt that Pip has plenty ahead of her in her career – a fourth league title in a row would certainly put her in the England conversation as they enter a new cycle, but for now, it will be rugby, farming, more rugby, more farming. 

She now lives on her own small holding, just five minutes down the road from the family farm, where she looks after her horse, Rebel, as well as rearing up to one hundred calves at a time. “It was always my favourite job when I was younger,” says Pip. “I had a couple of show cows myself that I looked after, I had Midnight, Moonlight, Starlight. I also had one called Orange. 

“They [the calves] come from the market, they’re little babies and I just feed them, ideally twice a day, just to get the best out of them really. I have them for a couple of months and then they go onto hard food, then they go outside and graze. They live a nice lifestyle actually. But they make a bit of a racket – I live in a rural area but I don’t want to disturb them [the locals] with the cows mooing. One of my neighbours was like, ‘can you make your shed soundproof?’, and I was like, ‘I don’t know how you want me to do that’.

“Having a horse and training for rugby can be difficult, because you have to feed them, ride them and fit in training,” she continues. “And when I’m looking after calves, the day is even longer. 

“I get up around 6.30am and feed the cows and my horse, that takes about an hour. We have daytime training sessions now, so I have to be in for 11.30am, and it takes me an hour to get there. Then we have evening training too, so I don’t get back home until 10pm, when I take my horse out. If I have cows my dad will feed them before I get back.”

It’s long hours and a lot of responsibility, but it’s the life that Pip has always known. “Sometimes I think life would be so much easier if I lived in Gloucester and didn’t have all these animals to look after, but I don’t take it for granted – I know if I didn’t have it, I would definitely miss it.

“Rugby is definitely my priority – it always has been ever since I started, really – and the nice thing about farming is that, after I’ve stopped playing rugby, it will always be there for me.”  

Story by James Price

Pictures by Danté Kim

This extract was taken from issue 21 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.

This Origin Story was brought to you in partnership with Vodafone #TheNationsNetwork

With his brother Josh flying for Ospreys and Fiji, Sam Matavesi had every reason to feel left behind. He had worn the Fijian jersey three times in 2013 as a number eight, but since then had drifted from view, plying his trade in English rugby’s fourth tier with Redruth, far from the bright lights of the arenas Josh was starring in.

For many younger brothers, that distance might have bred resentment or regret. But in true Matavesi fashion, Sam refused to let bitterness take root. Instead, with the quiet resilience and optimism that would come to define him, he found motivation where others might have found despair.

“When I joined the Navy,” Sam remembers, “Josh was playing for Fiji and had just signed a contract to play in the Premiership with Newcastle. He was definitely my hero, my beacon of hope.

“There was never any jealousy or anything like that, just pure admiration for what my brother was doing…plus I got some decent kit from his career.

“When I joined, I was playing in the back row for Redruth who were in National Two at the time, but I had given up any hopes of playing rugby professionally.”

With full support from his brother, in the Navy Sam thought he would find some much needed stability at a crucial time. “I joined up when I was 24, in 2017. At this point my wife and I had a baby, and in my second week of training we had our second baby, so it was a slightly manic time as you can imagine.

“For me, rugby wasn’t really working, and I needed a career to be able to provide for my family. I did my phase one and two training, and I was posted to Culdrose where I worked in the stores, sorting out all the equipment and parts that aircrafts and squadrons had to have in order to fly.”

At Culdrose, which is home to naval aviation primed for warfare like AgustaWestland Merlin HM2 helicopters and BAe Hawk T1 jets, Sam found work he enjoyed and a valuable source of income for his young family. He also found a culture which resonated with him, one based on egalitarianism and equality.

“What struck me about the class I trained with is that people came from all walks of life. I find that people have a real misconception about the type of people that join the military, because truthfully, you can’t pin a label on it. The aim of my training class was to turn sixty civilians into sailors, and that was the only aim. It’s a great equaliser and we all bonded because of it.”

What the Navy also gave Sam was the opportunity to play rugby on a bigger stage and speaking to him these days, his respect for military rugby shines through above all else. That is perhaps unsurprising for someone who made his Army v Navy debut in 2017, aged 24, in front of 82,000 fans at Twickenham on the centenary of the fixture.

“There are people playing in that Army v Navy game who play at the very top level, and they say there’s nothing like it,” he says. “The crowd, the intensity of the rivalry, it can’t be replicated anywhere else and I promise you that the culture in the Navy rugby team is as good, if not better, than any team that I’ve been.

“This is mostly because of the togetherness and the fact that everyone’s quite like minded, you’re constantly laughing and working hard. It’s a culture built on respect, and at the end of the day, we’re sailors who get a three-month window where you get to act like a top rugby player, which is incredible.”

Sam has played in some modern classic Army v Navy games, from the 35-27 Army victory in 2022 to the 39-22 Navy win the following year, their first win since 2010.

But the Sam Matavesi who played in 2023 was very different to the number 8 who had lost his way with rugby in 2017.

“I was a few months into work when I got a phone call from Alan Paver, who was the head coach at Cornish Pirates,” he recalls. “He said ‘Sam, we’re really short of a hooker, could you come and help us out?’

“I laughed and I said ‘firstly I’m at Redruth, secondly I’m working in the Navy, and thirdly I’m not a hooker.’ But he said they were desperate, and I spoke to my bosses who were both Cornish and rugby mad, and they let me play.”

What followed was a period of transition to life at Cornish Pirates. His lineouts were terrible, Sam admits, but a period of unadulterated success playing in his new position soon began to develop. His Navy bosses allowed to train twice a week and play on the weekends, and he played every game after signing in December 2017 to help Cornish Pirates to a fourth place finish in the Championship.

“As if that wasn’t weird enough already,” Sam says, laughing as he recounts this incredible period of his life, “John McKee, who was Fiji head coach at the time, was spending a bit of time down in Cornwall. He was there on a ‘passion development tour’ I think he called it, and he came to Pirates, where Alan Paver said I was worth looking at for the Fiji squad.

“I was picked for the 2018 tour, and I spent a few days in complete disbelief. We played Scotland, Uruguay, and France at the Stade de France, where we won 21-14.

“The Friday after that game, I’m getting ready to play the RAF at Harlequins on the weekend, and I get a phone call telling me that Toulouse are interested in me. That turned out to be genuine, and I went from wanting to give up rugby to sharing a changing room with Cheslin Kolbe and Antoine Dupont.”

Sam played just three times for Toulouse, who, with his assistance, ended up winning the Top 14 in 2019. He was back working at Culdrose for three months, before fulfilling his ultimate rugby dream as he travelled with his brother to Japan to play in a World Cup for Fiji. But, even in this rugby dreamland, he was still receiving calls reminding him of his duties at home, as Culdrose notified him of his overdue fitness test.

After the World Cup, Sam joined Northampton Saints, making eighty appearances and becoming the first male serving military player to win the English Premiership. Spells at Lyon and a return to Camborne followed, along with the chance to coach Navy Rugby at under-23 level, an opportunity he eagerly embraced as a way to give back to the service that had given him so much.

“Now that I’m sort of at the end of rugby, having my Navy career to fall back on is important to me, and I’m so happy to get the chance to coach,” he says. “It’s also quite nice to be on the coaching end of the process. I was so used to playing, but now I can focus on driving the standard at training, which has always been my biggest strength.

“Parts of it take some getting used to though, on game day I find myself thinking, ‘How do I stand? How do I watch the game? Should I be making notes?’ It’s quite a fascinating thing.”

Sam is preparing his under-23 side for their upcoming clash with the RAF, part of the military’s Remembrance fixture series. Featuring some of the brightest emerging talents in military rugby, this match marks the opening round of the under-23 Inter-Service Championship. It will take place at Stourbridge RFC on Wednesday, 12 November, with free admission for all spectators.

Although the Navy and RAF share a close and respectful camaraderie, Sam insists that the rivalry between the two services burns just as fiercely at under-23 level as it does among the senior sides.

“The rivalry between services feels exactly the same at the under 23’s level, which is fantastic. Super hard tackles, little scraps, it’s just passionate, proper rugby.

“The Navy have won the inter-services in the ‘23s for the last couple years, and so this one against the RAF is so important, as we need to beat them and the army to retain our title.

“The remembrance side is the most important aspect of this game coming up though. We tend to get a speaker in to talk to the lads, it could be someone who has won the Military Cross or has had more experience in the services, to remember the people that have ultimately made the biggest sacrifice.”

Come and see the next generation of military rugby stars play at Stourbridge RFC on 12th November 2025 as the RAF under 23’s take on the Navy under 23’s. Free entry for all. Click here for more information.

This article was brought to you in partnership with Vodafone, Principal Partner of UKAF. #TheNationsNetwork

When Semesa ‘Roko’ Rokoduguni was deployed to Afghanistan, he wasn’t yet the free-scoring England winger who would later light up Twickenham. He was a young man far from home, having left Fiji to serve as a British soldier in an unfamiliar land, driven only by the hope of supporting his family and making his dad, who had served in the infantry of the Fijian army, proud. After five years of training, the call came, and he was ready.

“I went to Afghanistan in 2011,” Roko remembers, “where I was attached to the 4SCOTS [The Royal Regiment of Scotland] regiment. We did a six-month tour, where we did foot patrols with them for the whole six months.

“It’s always dangerous out there, and it would have been if I had been sent out there at any time, because you never know what to expect from countries like that. But I felt like I had been training for that moment for five years, and to have the opportunity to put everything I had learnt into practice was important to me.

“It was common for soldiers to want to get posted over there, it’s like playing on the rugby field, you can train as much as you want, but if you do not get to play, it gets frustrating.”

Roko was deployed to Afghanistan in April 2011 as part of Operation Herrick, where the 4SCOTS supported the Royal Marines. Their six-month tour centred on mentoring and training Afghan security forces, as well as conducting foot patrols, moving from village to village on the ground, working to maintain security in a country that had already claimed the lives of 395 British service personnel by 2011, with the heaviest losses coming between 2009 and 2010.

“In Afghanistan, there are compounds and we had a variety of tasks to undertake to go out and make sure that everything is secure in these compounds,” Roko explains. “We’ll be gathering intelligence, asking whether there is anything unusual that is happening in the area, then we’ll feed this back to the headquarters, and then they will come up with the aim for the next foot patrol.

“I remember the change of scenery and environment in itself took a lot of getting used to that. But in terms of seeing a lot of action, like all that stuff that you might hear about, it definitely happens, but it didn’t happen in our area of operation.”

Roko joined the Army aged 19, when all he had known was the picturesque town of Nausori, on Fiji’s main island Viti Levu, and its surrounding highlands. He received an invitation letter to come and join the British forces, and committed himself to a series of mental and physical tests, which he passed.

“When I got that letter to come and join the forces, I was excited for the opportunity, but so nervous leaving home for the first time. This was not leaving to go to the other side of Fiji,” Roko says, arms stretched out wide, “this is leaving for the other side of the world.

“There’s quite a lot of Fijians in the forces because over the years, the British services have been sending recruitment teams out there in Fiji to see whether anyone would be interested in joining the military.

“They’d teach us a little bit about what the Army stands for, and often Fijians are keen to sign up and depending on where you finish in the physical and mental tests.”

When he joined, he felt as though he had an idea of the type of soldier he was going to be, but his Army career took a very different turn out of necessity, rather than choice.

“My dad is a soldier in the Fijian army,” Roko says with a smile, “and the picture I had in my head is a soldier picking up a rifle and going to war.

“When I finished my training, the armoured infantry and the tank regiments were undermanned, so I had to join the ‘tankies’. I knew that because I had spent so much money just to come over here, I should just go with what was available.

“It took me a couple of months to study everything, because as a tank driver you have to look after the whole tank, changing the track oil and running a series of checks, and then I went over to Germany where I did the gunners course.

“There I learnt how to operate the mounted machine gun on top of the tank. So you control that from the inside, using something like a remote control. For me, I was blown away by the whole thing, I’d never even seen a tank in real life before I joined, it was awesome.”

In Germany, Roko was posted to Bad Fallingbostel, a town in Lower Saxony, famed for its military postings. The British had a military base at Bad Fallingbostel because the town sat within what became the British Zone of Occupation in Germany after World War II, and it remained a strategically important location throughout the Cold War.

It was out there that Roko made up the numbers in a Sevens tournament at the behest of his fellow soldiers. His side won, and he was named player of the tournament as he bombed through to the try-line on countless occasions, leaving a trail of floundering servicemen in his wake.

A coach took his details and, before long, Roko was called up to play for the Army sevens team. “From there I played in lots of sevens tournaments, and I was away from my regiment quite a lot, I was based at Aldershot Garrison at the time,” he remembers.

“I was drafted into the Army XV team, and in my second year playing for the side, I won man of the match at the Army v Navy game at Twickenham. Mike Ford [defence coach at Bath at the time] was watching the game and phoned up my regiment directly asking if I was available to play.

“I spent three weeks at Newcastle, and then three weeks at Bath, who decided that they wanted to sign me. My Army boss turned round and said ‘we’ve never had to deal with a player joining a Premiership club before, but you should go, everyone at the regiment is backing you’.”

Roko was easy to root for. By the time he joined Bath, he was already an Army rugby hero, a man whose name stirred something among those in red and black. His Army v Navy debut came in 2012, where he announced himself with a hat-trick in a 48-9 victory before a crowd of 65,000. He repeated the feat in 2013 as he scored another hat trick, notched another try in 2015, and two more in 2016, all in wins for the Army, ensuring he became something of a legend in the process.

As he settled into life at Bath, still serving part-time with the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards, the tries kept coming. Four in his first three games of the 2014/15 season brought an England call-up for the autumn internationals and, on 8 November 2014, against New Zealand at Twickenham, Semesa Rokoduguni made his Test debut, the first serving soldier to play for England since Tim Rodber in 1992.

“When I joined Bath,” Roko says with a big smile, “I phoned my mum and dad who laughed at me, because I had only played two games of rugby in my village at home, and there wasn’t even a glimpse of a future rugby player in there.

“When Stuart Lancaster called up two years later, I was like ‘nah, this must be one of the boys’. It was for real, my dad was speechless and my mum was in tears. My Army boss spoke to me and said I’d be out there representing England, but also my family and my regiment.

“I had a few mates, because I’m in the Scottish regiment, joking with me, saying I should take my stuff and leave, but I told them I hadn’t got a call from Scotland, and I had to go with this.”

Between 2014 and 2017, Roko earned five England caps, a number that might have been far higher were it not for the calibre of his competition, with Anthony Watson, Jonny May and Elliot Daly all in their prime. It was a remarkable journey for a man who once gave up the game after just two matches in Nausori.

In his eyes, everything since has been built on military rugby. It’s why those memories of Army v Navy still mean so much, and why, even after pulling on the England shirt and meeting his Premiership commitments with Bath, he continued to turn out for the Army whenever he could.

“The reason why I hold military rugby so close to my heart,” Roko explains, “is because they’ve given me the opportunity, they’ve opened the door for me. If it wasn’t for them telling me that I was good enough to play, I would never have played for Bath or England. I’d still be spending my days fixing tanks.

“I’m so grateful to have been able to showcase my talent, so for me, representing the Army and now the UKAF team, that’s my way of giving to them to say thank you for everything they’ve done.

“I have six years left to complete my full service to my regiment, and I want to do as much as I can for the next generation.”

Next up for the Army side is a challenging test against a United States Combined Services team, the return leg of a fixture first played in last year’s inaugural meeting at Esher RFC. On that occasion, the British Army ran out 47-17 winners, etching their name as the first on the Field Marshal Sir John Dill Shield. This year’s clash forms part of the military’s Remembrance fixture series, following UKAF’s meeting with Germany at Kingsholm and the RAF U23s’ encounter with the Royal Navy U23s.

“I wasn’t involved in that game last year, but from what the boys were saying, it sounded like a very physical and fast game. They were all big boys, and great ball carriers too, so it’ll be a great game.
“At the time of Remembrance, we need to focus on where we are in the world right now, and how the sacrifices of those who have come before us have given us the lives we have today.

“I said to one of the Army boys earlier, ‘look at those soldiers back then, they fought so we could be in tracksuits getting ready for a rugby game’, we are so lucky man.

“It’s so important to me because I’ve lost a few friends and family members who have served over the years. It’s not only representing our brothers in arms, but representing my family too, saying thank you for what they’ve all done.”

The British Army Senior Men’s Rugby team will host the US Military in the the Rugby for Remembrance fixture at Aldershot’s Army Rugby Stadium on Tuesday 11 November, with kick-off at 18:30hrs and free admission for all spectators. Find out more here.

This article was brought to you in partnership with Vodafone, Principal Partner of UKAF. #TheNationsNetwork

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Tim Osman knows what it means to fight on multiple fronts. As a Lieutenant Colonel in the Royal Regiment of Artillery, he’s fought in Iraq and Afghanistan; as head coach of the Army’s men’s rugby team, as well as the UK Armed Forces [UKAF] men’s side, he’s battled for victory on the pitch. However, it was only after receiving a diagnosis for Parkinson’s disease eight years ago that Tim fully understood the meaning of fighting.

“When I was first diagnosed, there was a period of what I called ‘look-after-me’ time,” recalls Tim. “I quickly realised what was going to get me through was having a routine, simply getting out and about.

“Coaching rugby energises me, which helps when I’m tired and not feeling up to it, because of the way that the Parkinson’s kicks in and disrupts the way my body works and how I feel. Being head coach of UKAF and the Army has very much been a good thing to keep me ticking over, despite me shaking randomly on the side of the pitch and getting strange looks from the players who don’t know me that well.”

With his trademark determined and jovial spirit, Tim refuses to let his diagnosis sideline him. In the last eight years he’s taken on challenge after challenge in multiple fundraising campaigns, including cycling a thousand kilometres in a month in May 2024 to raise money for Parkinson’s UK. “I take 120 tablets a week, but at this point you just get on with it really,” he says. “Whenever we all get back into camp, the lads are great, they all take the piss out of me a little bit as well, which is all part of it.

“You learn to laugh at yourself, because sometimes I won’t be moving too well, or I’ll be a bit more grumpy than I should be, but hopefully the lads know that it’s the Parkinson’s and it's not just me being me.”

As Tim brings his UKAF squad back into camp, attention turns to a special occasion at Kingsholm in Gloucester, where his side will face Germany on 5th November in what promises to be a memorable contest. The fixture forms part of the military’s Remembrance series, which also sees the Army host the US military for the Field Marshal Sir John Dill Shield at Aldershot, while the Royal Navy U23s meet the RAF U23s at Stourbridge RFC.

With his service team lining up against a full national side, Tim welcomes the challenge as his players will be tested against well-drilled opposition. “It’s brilliant to have a chance to play against an up-and-coming international team who play in a really good setup in that tier of Rugby Europe,” he says. “It’s really good to pit our wits against a team like that, who are properly organised and preparing for their campaign in the spring. It’d be great to try and turn them over.

“It is an exhibition game,” he continues, “but it’s a remembrance game, so it's really important. From the players perspective, they’re sacrificing their time and energy into this with the blessing from their civilian clubs, so they’ve got the opportunity to represent what service rugby is all about.

“Having said that, we’re not going to be as dogmatic as adopting a ‘win at all costs’ mentality,” says Tim. “We’ve got the opportunity to play and enjoy ourselves how we want to, so I’ve given that over to the skipper Jarrard Hayler and the leadership group, to determine how they want to best enjoy their time.

“I dare say this will perhaps be a little bit more relaxed than as we build into the first pool game of IDRC [International Defence Rugby Competition] 2027 in Australia, but this is a stepping stone moment. We’re trying to get the boys together and bonding, which shouldn’t be too hard as while there’s a massive rivalry, we all know each other very well across the Army, Navy and Air Force.”

This meeting marks the second chapter in what is fast becoming an enduring rivalry between UKAF and Germany. The two sides first met in last year’s inaugural Remembrance fixture, when the visitors made a strong impression on their debut; Germany had stormed into a 17-0 lead after half an hour, before UKAF mounted a spirited fightback, narrowing the deficit to 26–29 with just over ten minutes to play. The visitors’ structure and composure, however, ultimately told, as Germany crossed for two late tries to seal a 43-26 victory.

Despite that result, Tim remains confident. With a strengthened squad and the lessons of last year still fresh in the memory, he believes his side is well placed to turn the tables this time around. “One of the exciting things for me personally this season is the fact that some of the bigger names like Semesa Rokoduguni, Josh McNally, and Sam Matevesi, are wanting to get back involved again and play for what is the best side in the services,” explains Tim. “The team is selected totally on merit, we’re going across to pick the strongest team possible, a bit like any other selection, like what Steve Borthwick has just done for the England squad for the Autumn internationals.

“There is representation cleared across all three services there, but I don’t necessarily feel as though the team should be selected on a quota system, because that’s not necessarily the best team you can put out on the day.

“This squad has a massive amount of experience, the lads have a combined 349 single service caps, which is absolutely fantastic and should allow us to put our best foot forward.”

With a seasoned group at their disposal, this UKAF squad comes together with purpose, eager to right the wrongs of last year’s Remembrance fixture, a match that carried deep emotion for all involved. The significance of the occasion has only grown since, as the team continues to honour the memory of their late teammate, Steffan Rees.

Steffan tragically passed away after an accidental fall while the squad were together at the International Defence Rugby Competition in France in 2023. French authorities later confirmed his body was discovered along the coast at Dinard, not long after he was reported missing from training.

In the days that followed, tributes poured in from across the rugby community. The UKAF side remained in France, determined to see the competition through, with their journey ending in a hard-fought semi-final defeat to Fiji. For Tim and the rest of the group, that experience, and the shared loss that bound them, has since become a source of strength and one which they continue to commemorate.

“The remembrance element will be particularly strong for the UKAF game, as we lost Steffan at IDRC ‘23,” assures Tim. “Last year his dad and brother came along to the UKAF remembrance game and presented a little trophy to Ryan Crowley, the RAF wing who won man of the match, which was a really nice touch. I had seen them at the funeral after we came back from France, but we haven't seen them for a year or so after that, so that was incredibly special.

“This year, we’ve got a number 12 embroidered on everybody’s shirt as a sort of little nod of remembrance to staff and Steffan as well. So that’s quite a nice touch for this year, to keep him at the forefront of our thoughts as we go into such a fun and enjoyable period with this massively important game in there as well.”

Tickets for the UKAF v Germany remembrance fixture are £5 for adults and £1 for under-13s, get yours now at eticketing.co.uk/gloucesterrugby.

This article was brought to you in partnership with Vodafone, Principal Partner of UKAF. #TheNationsNetwork

It was another typical Meg Jones performance. Her first try opened the scoring for Leicester Tigers, a left-foot step easing her round the first Sale Sharks defender before a second sent her past the full-back and across the line to score. That same step made short work of Sharks’ defence again a few minutes later, the centre darting between two helpless props for her second of the game. The hat-trick score was created and finished by the Red Rose, sending Natasha Jones through with a short pass before regathering on the wraparound and cantering in for a third. And that was just the first half. 

In a performance rounded off with thirteen tackles to go along with nineteen points, Meg powered Leicester Tigers to a crucial 38-17 win over fellow strugglers Sale, their first ever PWR win at Welford Road.

Anyone who has watched Meg Jones on a rugby field knows there’s something different about her. Born and bred in Cardiff, she’s played the game since the age of six, used to go to bed with a rugby ball in her hand, literally, and by aged twelve was better than any of the boys she played with at her club Glamorgan Wanderers. By seventeen she’d made her England sevens debut, by eighteen she was a Red Rose in fifteens, and by twenty she was starting in a World Cup final. 

She’s a player with an instinctive rugby brain, custom built for the big occasion, but what sets her apart is a grit and determination that some are just born with. And it’s because of that determination and dedication that, as she crossed for her third try against Sale at Welford Road, you wouldn’t have known Meg was carrying the weight of the passing of her mum, Paula, just a few weeks before, only four months after the death of her dad, Simon. 

Asking ‘how are you?’ is too big a question to expect Meg to answer, so instead we ask, ‘how are you today?’. “I like that … how am I today?” ponders Meg as we meet on a cold Tuesday morning at the Tigers training ground. “I was up early and I’ve been busy all morning, so I haven’t really sat in my thoughts yet. The fact I’ve mentioned it and didn’t cry is always a positive. Rugby has been my escape a little bit, so I’ve enjoyed being in and being full on, because it’s kept me busy.

“The grieving process is wild you know, sadness, anger, I’m in that searching period,” she says. “So, it’s kind of a good space to be in, but also can probably become a spiral effect, but I’m searching for answers and help as well. 

“I’ve been trying to be really transparent with how I’m feeling. It’s not easy for everyone, I’m quite an open book anyway. Even just telling people, it allows you to articulate it in ways that you probably hadn’t felt that you could articulate it before. It gives me a sense of relief as well, I hate people looking at me as if they feel sorry for me, so I try and say it in a way that yeah, my mum’s passed away, but it’s also now given me an opportunity to reflect on those amazing memories.”

Paula, who was from Bristol, worked for the NHS as a neuro nurse for over thirty years, but battled with alcoholism for much of her life. “My mum was an addict, she was an alcoholic, but when she passed it was unexpected, let’s say, because she was a functioning alcoholic,” explains Meg. “My mum and dad had been divorced for ten years, but she carried a lot of resentment around him for leaving her because of the alcohol. There’s more ins and outs, but she grieved massively, and she was such a proud woman she would never let anyone know she was sad. 

“Those four months between my dad dying and my mum passing away were really tough, because she became really dependent on alcohol to the point where she wasn’t working and was basically sedentary.

“You try and intervene, but quite frankly you have to allow them to suffer in their own suffering, which is really hard to watch. And you can’t enable, you can’t clean up after them or take the alcohol away because you won’t fix the root cause.”

Simon, who had worked as a plumber in Cardiff, died from lung cancer shortly after watching Meg feature for Great Britain at the Paris Olympics rugby sevens. “My dad was so down to earth, he just worked enough to have a few pints on a Friday night,” she says. “I embody so much of my dad in the way he thinks, the way he motivated himself, the way he inspired people around him. 

“He didn’t have many GCSEs or O levels, but he was a really practical man. He loved history and science, and he used to teach me some random facts. He’d do magic tricks, he was a great storyteller, he had a small circle but was the most genuine bloke ever really. And he loved snooker. 

“He was the one that always told me if you want to be good at something, you’ve got to live, drink, eat and sleep it essentially, and that was when I started going to sleep with a rugby ball in my hand.” 

It’s been a whirlwind few months for the 21-cap Red Rose; processing the comedown from the Olympics and beginning preparations for a home World Cup would be enough to fill up most people’s time, but that pales in comparison to experiencing the grief for losing a parent for the first time, before going through it all again within just four months. 

“My dad’s passing was my first real grief,” she says. “He had lung cancer, so I was sort of grieving him while he was alive which was a very bizarre concept. That was strange, but yeh sadness is very new to me, it’s that feeling of a very heavy heart, anxiety, worry; I get those feelings quite regularly now. 

“I’ve had an amazing support network around me: Celia [Quansah, Meg’s partner], family and friends in Cardiff, and I’ve been speaking to a bereavement therapist as well. 

“I’m probably not at that acceptance stage yet,” she adds. “Yesterday I was looking through photos and getting welled up and crying and really in my feelings. But I was thinking on my way over here, my mum gave me so much, so many values that I just relish in my day to day, and I’m living on through those values: hard work and resilience. 

“Being an addict is a resilient characteristic, because you don’t want to do it, but you’re doing it. It reminds me of those days when I don’t want to be training, but I’m doing it because, you know, I’m probably a little bit addicted to it as well.”

Changing perceptions on alcoholism has become a passion of Meg’s in the wake of her mum’s passing. “My mum carried a lot of shame and embarrassment around about being an alcoholic, which I want to change. It’s way more common than you think, I talk about her and people go, ‘yeah, my partner drinks every day after work’, and that was my mum.

“She was an NHS worker, she was so loyal to her work and worked relentlessly, she got an award for the most shifts on the bounce, I think it was like thirty night shifts. She was really invested in looking after people, but one thing she didn’t do was to look after herself. She showed me how important that was, even though she didn’t possess it at times.”

As a young Meg grew from rugby obsessive to professional rugby player, both her parents played significant roles in her journey along the way. “My dad didn’t actually want me to play rugby initially, my mum was the one who pushed him to allow me to play,” says Meg. “He just didn’t want his little girl getting hurt. He wasn’t a rugby man, but he was the one who was standing behind the posts, catching a ball for me and kicking it back, not giving me technical points but if it went over, thumbs up. That would be an hour before my actual training session and that was at the age of fourteen. So, he was fully invested in my rugby career.”

It all began when her dad had started taking her older brother down to Glamorgan Wanderers, and it wasn’t long until Meg was demanding to be taken along too. “At the time I had a buzz cut,” she says, “my dad had given me a buzz cut so I looked like a boy, not shaped up or anything, it was a shambles. It was just a training session, but I got player of the session, and the comments on the side were like, ‘that new boy Megan is really good’.

“I’m not from that area, but Ely in Cardiff is quite a socioeconomically deprived area, so a lot of those boys used the club as an escape: a lot of single mums or single-parent houses, some that didn’t have mum and dads and would have to be taken to rugby, but the community would come and pick them up. And it was just such a community-embodied environment, and it taught me from a young age how important it was to look after the people next to you.”

Being the only girl naturally came with its challenges. “I didn’t gain respect immediately, I wasn’t the loudest, but what did earn respect was how I played,” she says. “I’d go to games, and they’d say, ‘I’m not tackling the girl’, and then I’d score tries and they’d be like, ‘we’ve got to start tackling the girl’. 

“Being the only girl within the rugby community, and when you’re going in from a working-class family – because it is quite a posh-boy sport –from a young age I learned that if you work hard, if you’re good enough, you’re good enough. I remember I trialled for Cardiff Schools at under-12s, kind of like county, and I knocked out one of the boys from the team. His dad was one of the key sponsors, but I trialled ridiculously well, and they couldn’t not pick me. It used to be called Cardiff Schoolboys; they’ve taken the boys bit out now.” 

By sixteen, Meg was so good that she was personally courted by then Wales coach Rhys Edwards to start training with the senior team, who were in preparations for the 2014 World Cup. However, a gut feeling told her that the Welsh setup was not her future: instead it led her across the River Severn to Hartpury College, an institution of rugby development. 

Leaving Wales behind was a decision based on what was best for Meg, one that led to her representing England at both sevens and fifteens within two years, but it didn’t change her Welsh-ness. “The thing is, I’ll always play with the same amount of pride no matter what badge is on my chest,” she assures us, “and I think to be honest that has come from being Welsh. At the beginning when I did come over to England, with the natural rivalry between England and Wales, I always had the thought of ‘don’t be too Welsh’. But now I’m the opposite; I want to show people that I am Welsh, and that I’ve got this beautiful heritage in the motherland, and I’m also English as well, my mum’s from Bristol. 

“It just came at a time when the opportunity was far greater for me in England, and weirdly in a team sport, you do have to do selfish things in order to get the best for the team. And I’ve fully contributed to that team, and I continue to do so with my heart on my sleeve.”

The decision paid off, as a twenty-year-old Meg was selected in the squad for England’s World Cup defence in 2017. After starting against Spain, then coming off the bench against USA and Italy, she was thrown in at the deep end in the semi-final against France. “Nolli [Waterman] got injured, she got concussed in like the first ten minutes. I was just buzzing to be on the bench, especially coming into that team, which was really established, and when she got concussed, they were like, ‘Jonesy, you’re on’.”

Slotting in at thirteen she had a stormer of a game, a last-gasp tackle preventing flanker Julie Annery from inciting a French revival before going over for a try, even if it came with England 13-3 up with the clock in the red.

The final, in which she was elevated to a starting shirt, went less smoothly, with Meg unable to get a foothold in the game as England fell to a 41-32 defeat. “I was saying to Scaz [Emily Scarratt] the other day, I had no clue that whole World Cup how we played the game,” she reflects. “I was a deer in headlights, I didn’t think, I just did. And that’s kind of been my motto for most of my career. I think you learn way more because you probably make way more mistakes, but own it as well.

“When you’re that young you’re not fully in the feel of things, you always think you’ve got another opportunity, that’s kind of where I was at. My path changed after that, going back into sevens, but that’s always been one of my dreams, to be part of a winning World Cup team, and now I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to do that.”

As Rugby Journal goes to print there are less than two hundred days to go until the Red Roses face the USA in the opening game of the Rugby World Cup at the Stadium of Light. It’s a defining year for all involved with the Red Roses, who’ve fallen at the final hurdle in the last two World Cup finals, but with a PWR season to finish and a Six Nations between now and then, it’s all about the here and now. “We had what we call a communication camp last week, anticipating the year ahead, and the quote was, ‘be where your feet are’, so not to get too far ahead of what’s happening,” explains Meg. “It’s about being present. When we do win, we’ve got to really enjoy those wins; when you’re a winning team, when you do have the expectation on you it’s difficult to know how to act sometimes.

“We want to be leading the way in how the women’s game is being played, we don’t want to be like, ‘you’re in this part of the pitch, you have to do this’. There’s flair and there’s synergy in this group, we’re amazing individuals but as a team we can create huge strides and be genuinely unstoppable.”

Life as a Red Rose is different for Meg – having been a Bristol, Wasps and Leicester Tigers player she’s long been used to the underdog status at club level, but at international level the Red Roses have lost just one game since 2019. “I love striving for a common goal, and when you’re an underdog it gives you adversity and it gives you a bit of firepower to kind of go, yeah, we’ve got nothing to lose,” says Meg. “When I flip to the Roses’ point of view, I actually do quite a lot less in terms of how I work on the pitch, but also it becomes more about how I am getting the best out of the person next to me. It’s the finer margins. Whenever I go to Roses, they do everything for me bar wipe my arse. My life is way easier in that environment, there’s nothing to do other than play the game.

“But, similarly with the Roses, we haven’t won a World Cup in eleven years. I was part of the 2017 World Cup, I’m really holding on to that and I want the story to end with a big trophy.”

Everything is set up in England’s favour, with recourses from home advantage to an extended build-up period thanks to a shortened PWR season, but it’s still not going to be an easy task. The Black Ferns are six-time champions and always turn up at World Cup time regardless of recent form; Canada gave the Red Roses a real scare at WXV and are ever progressing; and the likes of Australia are bringing their best players across from sevens.  “I don’t think people realise how hard sevens is,” says Meg, a staunch defender of sevens as a development tool. “On the women’s sevens series you are playing the best players in the entire world, fifteens doesn’t quite have that yet. You look at the Aussie girls who are coming over for the World Cup, Charlotte Caslick, Tia Hinds, Maddison and Teagan Levi; a lot of our forwards would never have come across these quick, agile, decision-making girls, and now they’re in the world where we’re number one, but they’re number one from a sevens capacity.”

Meg is not shy in voicing her desperation to win a World Cup, but the recent losses of both her parents have also given her some perspective. “The only way is up. They’re all life lessons. We were disappointed with the Olympics but Paris was actually a beautiful occasion, because it was one of my dad’s wishes to see me compete at the Games.

“Albeit my mum passing away, it’s just given me such a different perspective on things. People don’t know what other people are going through, you think you’ve got it all figured out until you get punched in the face. I do think what a privilege it is for me to have my mindset, to have this opportunity. My mum struggled to get out of bed, but what an amazing opportunity I’ve got to feel motivated to go out and run, to be paid for what I do. I think about my dad when I kick because of all the sessions he helped me with. 

“This year, I’m just genuinely going to be where my two feet are, and I’m just going to try and be. I’m not going to be a human doing, I’m going to be a human being.”

A rare character, one thing that’s for certain is that Meg will always be Meg. “There’s no other way I can be,” she says, “and I think people really value that. When someone’s really sure of themselves it radiates off them, and you find confidence in them as well. I hope the girls see that, and they can confide in me and they trust me as well.

“Sometimes you forget how much of a small speck the rugby world is. Rugby gives me a platform to be who I am, it’s given me the identity that I have, but the biggest thing it gives me is to be a good human. Whether I have a World Cup medal winning medal around my neck, or I don’t, that will always remain the same.” 

Story by James Price

Pictures by Ben McDade

This extract was taken from issue 29 of Rugby.
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