Just being paid to play was a dream
MY LIFEIN RUGBY
THE FORMER CANADA AND CARDIFF FLANKER, WHO COACHED CARDIFF, WALES AND WASPS AND IS NOW GEORGIA’S HEAD OF S&C
THERE’S a popular phrase in rugby ‘be good at the things that don’t require talent.’ I made a living out of that! I was a late-starter when it came to rugby, only becoming involved when I was 16/17. Up to that point I was into judo and wrestling …any grappling sports, having been encouraged to take that path by my father, a drill sergeant in the Mounties. I also played soccer and American Football in High School and it was during the American Football off-season that a friend of mine invited me to rugby training as a way of keeping fit.
I fell in love with rugby straight away. I loved the fact that I could do all the things a Free Safety could do in American Football, but without pads and a helmet on. Obviously, I wasn’t a very good rugby player, hence the no talent comment, but I could carry the ball and hit people and that carried on throughout the whole of my career. The game isn’t like that anymore, there is no such thing as a professional rugby player who is only good at some aspects, you have to be good at all of it.
Hardness is always a conversation that comes up when people talk to me about my career because I had a reputation. The way that we were taught to tackle back then – to lift and tip and dump the man on his back – is completely illegal nowadays, but it was just part of the game. If someone rucked you, you rucked them back. If someone punched you, you punched them back. The thugs and the lowlifes like myself either found a skill set or left the game because it’s a dated model to be a thug. Guys like Dai Bish and me, we thrived on it and we really enjoyed that side of the game. There is no place in the game for any of that ‘violent’ shit anymore.
I was in Buenos Aires with Canada for a World Cup qualifier when Jon Humphreys rang the hotel we were staying at, on behalf of the Cardiff coach Alec Evans, and asked me if I wanted to come for a trial at Cardiff, with the potential to stay on until the end of the season. John Tait, a good friend of mine, had just signed for them for the following season and must’ve recommended me as they were looking for cover for Gwyn Jones, who’d broken his neck in the same dreaded game that Garin Jenkins’ dad had a heart attack.
I was a chef and running a kitchen at the time in Canada. I had a good job. I moved away from home and I was finding my way in the world. But the fact that somebody out there in the world was gonna pay me to play rugby was a dream come true. I thought it would be a for a few months at best but 20-odd years later my family are still living in Wales. On the back of the trial, I signed a two-year contract worth £24,000/ year, which felt like more than I was ever going to earn in my life. To be fair, I’d have played for free kit.
None of us took it for granted, because we didn’t think it would last, and we enjoyed every minute of it. After games we would put on our number ones and twos and head off into town. We had the keys of the town and every bar, restaurant or nightclub owner wanted you in their place because it was good publicity.
“None of us took it for granted because we didn’t think it would last”
It was 1997/98, the ‘Wild West’ era in terms of clubs didn’t really know how to be professional and owners wanted plenty of bang for their buck so we over-trained in some areas and under-trained in others. There was no gym programme, no S&C. Usually there would be one or two players on the team that enjoyed staying fit and would give you something to do programme-wise. So there was a lot of closet trainers because we knew we had to do stuff away from the club to be able to play the game at a high level.
I remember the first day I walked into the changing room Rob Howley was there with his top off, he was ripped and huge, like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I was blown away initially. Nobody knew me. Nobody expected anything from me. I could just go out there and express myself with a group of phenomenal players who, to be honest, made me look good. I wasn’t big on catching and passing, so if I was lucky enough to get the ball in the field, I tended to run with it. When other people had the ball, I tended to hit them and that was that. Playing with those good people, they brought me on and they taught me the game. But I learned on the hoof. I have to say that my teenage son who plays rugby has far more knowledge about the game than I ever had.
By the time I finished playing in 2005 I’d had 10 operations on my knees. But it a tiny broken bone in my foot, the navicular bone, that ended my playing days. That was probably the hardest thing to get my head around. All of these big injuries, I’d managed to come back from and not even think about them. I just couldn’t believe it as the doctor told me that I was going to have to hang my boots up.
After retiring, Dai Young had moved into the head coach job at Cardiff and he got me on board, initially as defence coach and then as an S&C coach. In 2010, Craig White asked me to come into the Wales setup and at the end of the club season, I joined the Wales staff permanently and had the most brilliant four years with them. The 2011 World Cup was a fantastic experience. I’d played at the 1999 World Cup with Canada so it was the second tournament I had been involved with, and to get to the semi-final was amazing. Triple Crowns, Six Nations titles and Grand Slams followed until I left Wales to go to Wasps, where Dai was turning things around after the club had hit rock bottom. When Covid hit, I went back to Wales to join the Dragons in 2020 and here I am now, in Georgia, as part of Richard Cockerill’s coaching team.
I have always had a relationship with Cockers in so much that we played against each other in the 90s and then, as a coach, I probably bumped into him everywhere along the touchline at least once every other season. He is the reason I am here. None of the people I am talking about now will mind this, but I quite enjoy working with old-school coaches: Richard Cockerill, Dean Ryan and Dai Young. They are straight and they are honest and sometimes people struggle with that kind of level of honesty. There is no straighter talker than Dai and he had no problem telling me when I was crap, which was probably most of the time as a new, young coach. But he was right in what he said. You think back to some of the conversations we had and it was the strong framework that I needed to set me up for the future. I have always craved that honesty in the coaches that I work with.
There’s lots going on with the dual role in Georgia. It covers both the national team and the Rugby Europe Super Cup team, Black Lion. I am really fortunate to work with Will Lavis and Davit Nemsadze on the performance side of things. They’re two amazing Georgian guys who both speak fluent English, which obviously helps me a lot. Fourteen of the national team play for Black Lion so the programmes couldn’t be more aligned and to use a phrase from my days as a chef, things are cooking along nicely.
As a place, I couldn’t have been more wrong about Georgia. It’s an amazing country with amazing people. I knew it was going to be an adventure but I didn’t know how big until I got here four months ago. Tbilisi is a really nice, safe city, very different to Kutaisi. And Batumi, on the Black Sea, is different again. Rugby players are rugby players, though, wherever you go and they are no different here. We just need more of them because there are only 9,400 registered players in the country. We are punching above our weight but there’s lots more to do.
