My Life in Rugby: Darren Fox – former Northampton flanker

If I’m brutally honest with myself I didn’t fulfill my potential as a player. Yes, I played 149 games for Saints and made the bench for England, but, in hindsight, I could have got so much more out of my career had I left Franklin’s Gardens of my own volition.
I loved being a Saint and everything about the club but, at the age of 24/25, I should have followed Wayne Smith out of the door. Wayne was the best coach I ever had and led us to back-to-back Premiership semi-finals and the final of the Powergen Cup. But after he went back home to New Zealand there was a lot of instability at the club with feud after feud.
Having come through the academy – and endured four operations on my left knee in as many years – I felt a sense of loyalty to the club, and I had it in my mind that I’d see out my days there. In hindsight, a fresh environment would have done me good.
In the end the decision to leave didn’t come down to me, it was Jim Mallinder and Dorian West’s call. They told me late in the day, after we’d won promotion back to the Premiership, that I wasn’t part of their plans going forward. Every other club had done their recruitment so I ended up dropping down a couple of levels at Cambridge which was a real culture shock.
We had a decent squad, and we would have won promotion to what is now the Champion- ship had the RFU not moved the goal posts halfway through the season. We finished second to Birmingham & Solihull but the RFU decided only one team, instead of the usual two, would go up. In my second year there, 2009/10, the club ran into financial problems. I tried to stick it out for a while but with bills to pay I had to move on.
I ended up playing with some of my old Saints’ team-mates, people like Paul Tupai and Ian Vass, at Bedford. It was just what I needed at the time. I took over as captain when James Pritchard got injured in the year that we reached the Championship final. We took immense pride from pushing Newcastle reasonably hard. Unfortunately my last year at Blues was a bit of a write-off after I broke my forearm and ruptured a bicep.
Now I’m back in my hometown of Peterborough, as player-coach of Peterborough Lions and owner of Fox Fitness & Health.
In my first year we finished third in National 3 Midlands and just missed out on the promotion play-off spot after losing to Hinckley in the final game. So far, this season has been a bit tougher but I’m looking forward to working under Paul Turner as East Midlands’ forwards coach at the end of the year. Coaching can be rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. I tell the younger players to appreciate what they have.
I was left with too many ‘what ifs’: what if Clive Woodward hadn’t left me on the bench as an unused replacement in the end-of-season England v Barbarians game – something I still haven’t forgiven him for; what if I hadn’t head-butted Sean Lamont – later to become a friend and team-mate at Saints – and picked up an eight week ban just when things were going well for me; what if I’d have moved on from Saints and got a fresh start when I should have done so.
As I near retirement, I cherish the standout moments. Beating a Biarritz team at the peak of their powers at the time, with world class players such as Imanol Harinordoquy and Serge Betsen in their back-row, in a Heineken Cup quarter- final is right up there; as does running out at Twickenham as a 22-year-old for the Powergen Cup final against London Irish.
*As told to Jon Newcombe