I worked really hard to maximise my talent
MY LIFEIN RUGBY
THE FORMER ENGLAND U20, BATH, BRISTOL, NORTHAMPTON AND ZEBRE SCRUM-HALF
I CAN look back on my career two ways. One way of looking at it is that I didn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve and I would have done things very differently, especially on the mental side of things, as I suffered from imposter syndrome and a lack of self-belief for the majority of my career.
I think I would have been 10 times the player I was had I not suffered from crippling nerves, but the other way of looking at it is that I achieved a lot. I played 142 games for my childhood club Bath, I got to play for them in a Premiership final and things like that, I played for England (7s, 18s, 20s), and I got to travel the world playing against some of the world’s best players. Antoine Dupont‘s jersey from a Bath-Toulouse game is one of my most prized possessions. I think the longer retirement kicks in, the more I will look back at my career far more positively than perhaps I maybe do now. What I did achieve came about because I worked really hard to maximise my talent, so I can definitely be proud of that bit.
My career at Bath didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts. I turned up at the club ‘fresh’ from three days at Glastonbury, having just left Millfield, in my school kit, as that’s all I had, and late for my first meeting. After about 15 minutes of desperately looking for the right room, I found where I needed to be and opened the door to be confronted by 40-odd faces, including imposing figures like Danny Grewcock and Butch James, staring back at me as all the chairs were facing the door. Steve Meehan said, ‘this is Chris,’ and I sheepishly found a spare seat to sit on. I was 18 and petrified.
We had good scrum-halves at that time – Michael Claassens, Scott Bemand and Mike Baxter – so it was a while before I actually got on the pitch to make my first team debut. I got on the bench against Ospreys and remember it well because Jerry Collins was playing for them, and it was the first time I had come up close and personal to someone of that calibre. Helen Shand, who kept records at the club, told me I was on the bench 11 times and didn’t get on.
Eventually I made my debut against Cardiff in the LV Cup in November 2010. When Geech took over , my game time increased as he liked me and trusted me and I played in the Heineken Cup ahead of schedule.
I won the U20s Six Nations with England that same season as my debut and went to the Junior World Cup at the end of the year. We had an amazing group of players with George Ford and Owen Farrell outside of me at 10 and 12 and others like Elliot Daly in the back line. But New Zealand had an even more outrageous team, including four players who have gone on to be Test fly-halves, so there was no disgrace in losing to them in the final.
Even as time went on, I found it difficult to break the academy graduate mould. Gary Gold told me that he didn’t think I was good enough. But that open and honest
“Moving to Zebre showed me you can do well outside your comfort zone” conversation was just want I needed as it made me leave my comfort zone and I ended up going on loan to London Welsh and winning the Champ with them, as my step-brother Ed (Jackson) had done before. Being a Bath boy, it was pretty cool to win promotion after beating Bristol in their last-ever game at the Memorial Stadium.
Gary left that summer and Mike Ford came in and offered me a one-year deal. We got to the final, against Saracens, and I think I played in every league game. Having George at 10 was big for me and that season was probably the most enjoyable of the 11 years I had at Bath. I still got nervous, I still had imposter syndrome but having him outside of me made things so much easier because we knew each other’s game and he has an amazing commanding presence and a player you trust implicitly.
When Mike left, Todd Blackadder and Tabai Matson came in. Tabs was probably the coach I most enjoyed playing with, he was class, so much fun. At the same time, you knew if you didn’t deliver he would come down on you. But it was always for a reason. The whole squad would turn up for training and be excited about what the day would look like – a far cry to what the mood was like a few years down the line.
But by the time it came to leave Bath, I was very unhappy at the club. I thought the atmosphere wasn’t great, there was a lot of negatively, and I didn’t really want to turn up for work. I told my agent I wanted to move clubs and to have a new challenge, and that new challenge was all of 12 miles away, in Bristol. At the time, I loved the way they were playing, their adventurous approach was me all over, and Pat Lam is a great coach. He’d won the Pro 12 with Connacht, and had taken Bristol up. Whilst they didn’t finish that high in his first Prem season in charge, you could see the trajectory they were on, and the signings they were making, and I wanted to be a part of that.
Purely from a rugby point of view I didn’t really have any closure from Bath. The last game I played in, I wasn’t even supposed to be playing. My wife Caroline gave birth to our daughter Florence on the Wednesday and Hoops said take the rest of the week off and come back in the following Monday. But Oli Fox was throwing up on Friday night before our game down at Exeter so I was told to keep my phone on and be ready to drive down there the next morning. I came on for about 10 minutes in a 50-point drubbing, and the following week lockdown happened. So I never got the farewell game I’d hoped for in my head. Unfortunately, the move to Bristol didn’t go as I had hoped, either. Asides from the traumas of lockdown with a newborn and the fact we were staying at my motherin-law’s in Reading because we were homeless, I had a calf injury when I joined. I’d pulled it – my first pulled muscle at the age of 28 – doing a DIY training session in my garden – and I went on to pull the same calf muscle twice more and just for good measure, I did the other one twice as well. I had a career’s worth of injuries in one season at Bristol and they understandably released me. But I wouldn’t change that year at all because I learnt so much about the game, leadership and myself in the 12 months I was there.
Bizarrely, I went to Northampton as injury cover when I was still injured myself ! Northampton were fully aware of this but they were happy for me to still go there, so I ended up doing three months of rehab whilst I was at Saints. I wish I could have stayed longer because they were great with me, and I loved it there. When I left, I said to Dows that whilst I never actually played a game I still left feeling very much like a Saint because of the amazing culture he and Sam Vesty had created. I was very happy that they won the Premiership last season because they fully deserved it, even though it was at Bath’s expense!
Moving to Zebre opened my eyes to the fact that you can move away from your comfort zone and achieve things. In hindsight, I wish I had done it earlier in my career. Playing in the URC was great fun, especially with all the travel. My first start for them was a win, against the Dragons, and that was the only win in a season-and-a-half at the club. But playing on hard grounds with the sun on your back was nice and we had a really good attack, although our defence was abysmal. It was great to work with Dave Williams again, he was my first coach in the academy at Bath and he’s another brilliant coach.
I decided to retire from playing with a year on my contract at Zebre still to run and whilst I was looking for a job Dunny (Tom Dunn) rang me up to see if I’d be interested in coaching Chippenham, his local club. I did that for the second half of last season, and whilst I never had any plans to get into coaching, I’m really enjoying that role and the one I have with the Bath academy pathway programme. I’m coaching them again this year as a consultant alongside my full-time job in medical sales, and the plan is to get promoted from Level 6.
– as told to Jon Newcombe
