Playing England 7s was an incredible experience
MY LIFEIN RUGBY
MARK BRIGHT
THE FORMER ENGLAND SEVENS INTERNATIONAL AND TASMAN, REDRUTH, LONDON SCOTTISH, RICHMOND & EALING TRAILFINDERS BACK ROW, NOW PLAYER COACH AT LONDON SCOTTISH LIONS
I KNOW I'm going to be on the sidelines for a very long time after I retire so while the body is still willing – which it is at the moment just about at 45 – then I'm going to continue playing as long as I can. There will come a time in the not so distant future where I'll have to hang the boots up but right now I have no plans to stop because I love this sport. I'll hope to play with with two of my sons, my middle boy Campbell will be 17 in September, so can then play men's rugby alongside my eldest Bailey and me.
One of my career highlights was playing at the Commonwealth Games. In 2014 I was at London Scottish where Simon Amor used to coach before he went over to the England Sevens programme. Mike Friday was director of rugby at the time and told me at training Simon was going to get in contact with me. The phone call came which meant I was going to have a crack at going to the Commonwealth Games. It was 10-12 weeks of slog to try and get ready but thankfully I made it and represented England which was an incredible experience, going on to win the plate competition. After that I went out to South Africa to play in a World Series tournament in Port Elizabeth which was good fun as well. I'm a huge advocate for sevens, I played until two years ago for Samurai who are now known as Shogun. Younger players want to play as much as they can, so sevens is great because it's fast, good for your skills and is fun.
Watching it at the Olympics this year was awesome, it was a bit of a shame how New Zealand performed finishing fifth which isn't where they wanted to be. GB didn't make it which is a shame but France were ridiculous, Antoine Dupont was next level and for him to switch in and out of XVs and 7s has been pretty freakish.
I got into the sport through my dad as he used to play at our local club Marist in Nelson, New Zealand. Me and my brother would go down and watch him play for the first team and then he started coaching us in the seniors. People often ask is New Zealand as rugby mad as people make it out to be? Well, we used to go to school and everyone would be hanging out just to get to lunch time. You'd then kick your shoes and socks off and have 200-300 boys out on the front field trying to smash each other for an hour before going back into class. It was pretty mad.
I got the call up for Nelson Bays in 2001. We played in the NPC final in 2003, 2004 and 2005 against Hawke's Bay in all three and won one of those in 2004. It was really good as I managed to get 45 games for them and then Nelson Bays amalgamated
“I'd love to play in a team alongside my two sons, Bailey and Campbell” with Malborough to form Tasman, who I started playing for in 2006. We had famous All Blacks playing for us like Greg Feek, Brad Thorn, Chris Jack, Rico Gear, Caleb Ralph and Todd Blackadder coached us. At the time there were numerous future players like Liam Squire, I played with him as well as other very talented players. I managed to get 50 games for Tasman, so looking back they were good times.
I first came over to England to play for Redruth in 2006. My wife wanted to come over as all her father's side are Scottish, so she wanted to come over and meet the family. She had a British passport and came over as a teacher. I played 118 times for Redruth. We would go down to Cornwall as much as we could when we had breaks. Redruth is a great club with great people, I made mates for life that I catch up with every time I'm down there. It's a different pace of life down there that is different to everywhere else I've been in the world which suited me down to the ground.
When I was down there I got the opportunity to play for Cornwall in 2008 and 2009. I got a call this year from some mates who are coaching at Cornwall and got a runaround 15 years later which I really enjoyed. In the 2008/09 season we pushed pretty hard in National One, we were second but just fell away and couldn't get promotion. We played in the old EDF Cup and faced London Welsh, who we lost to by just a point in a really good game in front of a few thousand people despite terrible conditions. They really love their rugby down there in the south west.
We then moved up to London in 2011. I'm over in Whitton, near Twickenham, so not anywhere near the heart of it which suits me. It was nice to come out of Cornwall to try something new and I managed to sign on with London Scottish where I have gone on to play over 150 times for them in the last 15 years.
My first spell was good, we started with half of us full-time and the other half part-time. That changed pretty quick as the club bit the bullet and all of us went full-time. In 2012/13 we pushed a bit harder and then 2013/14 we made the top four. We came up against Worcester in a home/away semi-final and pushed them pretty hard, and probably should have won at home but we got banged away. I played 123 times in my first stint and I didn't really want to leave but my hand was forced a bit. I signed on with Ealing Trailfinders in 2016 and had a pretty good two years over there.
I was nervous about making the change but the boys welcomed me in and the coaches were really good. When I went there they were near the bottom of the table and first year we got into the top four, played Yorkshire home and away, who were a very good side back then, but lost out in the semis. The following year we finished second going close with Bristol and ended up winning the Cup. I had an opportunity to come back to London Scottish from 2018-2021. It was an opportunity to rebuild the team with new coaches and I had two pretty good years but then Covid hit which meant I was sat idle for 15 months doing nothing which was weird as that's the longest time including injuries that I haven't played, so I didn't know what to do with myself.
One of my mates got me a job and I ended up going to Richmond in 2021 where I was labouring and working as a builder for a bit alongside the rugby. Captaining Richmond meant a lot because it's a good club, they look after you and they go pretty hard because they always want to win. National One isn't where they want to be, they want to be in the Championship, so hopefully they can get there this year. They put out four men's teams and two women's teams pretty much every week which is a testament to the club and how they do things. I got to play with my eldest son at Richmond last year, so that was really good to be able to do that.
Now I'm back at London Scottish Lions in Regional 2 Thames (level 6) as a player-coach, so we'll see how that goes. The Lions have had promotions in four out of their last five years, so we're under no illusions that this will be a different kettle of fish at this level. The boys have been training hard, I've been putting my input in and trying to help out as much as I can.
I'm also a PE teacher at Thames Christian School in Clapham, which is where my wife has worked for the last 10 years so she has been able to shoehorn me in the door there. I've been there for two years now and I'm there every day of the week, training and playing outside of that.
