MY LIFEIN RUGBY
PHIL BLAKEWAY
THE FORMER BRITISH & IRISH LIONS , ENGLAND AND GLOUCESTER PROP

Front row club: England prop Phil Blakeway in action against Wales in 1982
PICTURE: Getty Image

After we’d won the Grand Slam up in Scotland in 1980, England’s first for 26 years, Bill Beaumont shut the changing room door and shook all our hands and said, ‘We’ve now laid the ghost’. For some of the side that was their last game. Roger Uttley and Tony Neary were two who never played for England again.
For me, it was a case of being in the right place at the right ...