ALL my family are from Yorkshire and my dad played a good level of Rugby League and my grandad, Don Lockwood, is a bit of a legend down at Huddersfield Giants. Rugby Union wasn’t on my radar until we moved to Middlesbrough and then Sudbury, on the Suffolk/Essex border, when I was 14.
I’d still class Sudbury as my first proper club. My first Premiership jersey – Newcastle’s bright orange away strip – is proudly hanging on the wall of the clubhouse there. I was 28 when I came on for my Premiership debut off the bench at Bath.
I had no thoughts of becoming a professional rugby player when I was living down south. When I was 18 I became a firefighter and the station I was at was always busy because of the number of road accidents we’d be called out to on the winding country lanes. But after a couple of years I decided I wanted to become a student and got a place on the history course at Leeds Met, which indirectly led to me getting an opportunity with rugby.
Before I started there, I had a couple of months playing League with Featherstone Rovers’ academy but once I became a student, I fell back in love with Rugby Union, and at that point I moved from the back row to prop and was selected for England Students. Leeds Carnegie has strong links with the Uni and when their main loosehead, Mike McDonald, went to the World Cup with the USA, they needed cover for three months, which is where I got my chance. I made a good impression on Diccon Edwards, got a contract and ended up spending twoand-a-half years with Leeds.
It probably wasn’t the best introduction to a young kid fresh out of University as to what professional rugby was all about because that Leeds squad liked to go out and enjoy themselves. I wasn’t as professional as I could have been, either, and that’s probably what led to the club trying to loan me out to lower-division Wharfedale. By that stage, I had ambitions to play in the Premiership and had become accustomed to playing in front of relatively big crowds – we were still getting around 3-4,000 in those days – and I didn’t want to take a step back so I asked if they could find another Championship club for me if I was surplus to requirements. They agreed and I reached out to Dave Young, who mentored me a little bit at Leeds and was then playing at Jersey. He told me to go there as the forwards coach Steve Boden had worked wonders with the set-piece.
“The speed of the game in the Premiership was a shock”
Me and Steve had many fallouts and disagreements but we worked well together and he was great for me in terms of improving the fundamentals of my game. It wasn’t just me, a lot of us kicked on and reached the Premiership. I was twice named in the Championship Dream Team, once with Harry Williams, who was a Jersey team-mate at the time.
For me, things kept falling through or were taking too long but, finally, when I was in the hotel the night before we played Bedford, I got a phone call from my agent saying Dean Richards wanted to sign me. I just said ‘yes’ straight away, without even thinking about the money side of it because I just wanted to get it done.
My wife and I were just about to have our first child and I couldn’t afford to live on the island anymore, not with what I was on (around £35k) and the cost of living there.
Newcastle were in a relegation battle at the time but I knew even if they went down, the chances are they’d go straight back up and as I was on a twoyear deal, that would be alright. As it happens, they beat London Irish near the end of the season to secure their place in the Premiership.
Having done my hard yards in the Championship, the speed of the game and the skills of the players in the Premiership was a shock; it was through the roof. But I enjoyed the challenge. Unfortunately, I turned up with a broken arm having suffered it in my last game for Jersey against Leeds. But I was able to make a good impression and was in all the early squads, and got my first start against Wasps. Then, in the next game against Exeter, I snapped my Achilles and was out for 14 months. It was an arduous return and I wondered if that would be it for me.
For a prop, that is quite a big injury and, if I am being honest, my calf strength wasn’t great after that and I probably wasn’t the same player. Thankfully, Dean offered me a new deal. It came just after I started as an emergency tight-head in the Heineken Champions Cup against Exeter – at two hours’ notice. I’d only had one training session there and Pierre Schoeman tore me apart. At the first scrum, they won a free-kick and ran it, and I remember thinking, ‘please keep doing that all day’. But they got wise to the fact I couldn’t scrummage on that side of the scrum, and from then on they opted for scrums whenever they could and it was a very difficult game for me.
Even so, I think Dean must have appreciated the fact I stepped up when the team needed me to as playing loosehead is very different tight-head. As a loose-head, you are trying to pick the tighthead up and as a tight-head you are trying to bear down on the loose-head. You use a completely different muscle group.
Trevor Davison and Logo Mulipola are a rare, special breed who can do both sides equally well.
We improved as a team, and in one year, we got to three semi-finals. The hard-working attitude of the group, topped off by some flair on the edges from Niki Goneva and Sinoti Sinoti, enabled us to win some tight games and we got into the Premiership play-offs which was an incredible achievement, especially as we had the lowest budget in the league. To play the full 80 minutes in the two St James’ Park games, against Sale and Northampton was another memory I’ll cherish.
“The last person I scrummed against was Harry Williams”
Unfortunately, I was riddled with injuries while I was at Newcastle, a hernia was the next thing to set me back and I also suffered a series of hamstring pulls and a bad concussion against Ealing when we were in the Championship.
It must have been as frustrating for Newcastle as it was for me. Fair play to them, though, they stuck by me and gave me one last run-out, against Exeter at the end of last season. By then, I had secured my current job as head of rugby and head of boys’ boarding at Langley School in Norfolk and was in a very relaxed frame of mind and determined to enjoy what I knew would be last appearance as a professional. A 70-point defeat might not have been the best way to bow out but it was nice that the last person I scrummed against was Harry, who’d become a good friend of mine in Jersey.
I was massively proud of what I achieved in rugby. I essentially ended up being a squad player but I got to play Premiership and European rugby against some proper operators. If you’d have told me I’d be doing that when I was a fresh-faced firefighter at 18, I’d have probably laughed at you.
Injuries robbed you of some better performances but to have your name mentioned in the context of an England call up by none other than Austin Healey you haven’t done too badly. Enjoy Norwich
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