My Life in Rugby: Lee Mears – former Bath, England & Lions hooker

In 2009 waiting for the Lions announcement all I could think was I wish they’d name their teams like everyone else.
The squad went from 15 to 1, except they did all the props together, which meant the hookers were the very last people named. I was the second to last with only Matthew Rees after me.
We were down at the club with the boys and it was a very special moment. All the more so because it was in South Africa, where I went on one of my first tours, and where I went on my honeymoon, so it’s a country I loved.
Looking back now I remember almost every moment and I still keep in touch with a lot of the guys. I got a message from Matt Stevens recently and all the boys from 2009 said hello which was a nice touch.
The disappointment is that we didn’t manage to win the series because it was so close. I played the first Test and a couple of moments could have made all the difference, and then in the second there was obviously the penalty against Ronan O’Gara, it was agonising to watch.
But it was still an incredible experience and probably my favourite memory in the game.
I’d come through the ranks at Bath and one of my first tours was to Australia with England schoolboys.
We had David Flatman and Andrew Sheridan in the front row, as well as Steve Borthwick and Alex Sanderson in the pack.
In the backs you had Iain Balshaw, Mike Tindall, Simon Danielli, Jamie Noon, Tom May and Jonny Wilkinson. It was something like 13 future internationals in the squad so we beat everybody.
I was at Colston’s at the time, being taught by Andy Robinson and then I moved to Bath where we had an incredible number of top class hookers.
I was fighting for game time with Federico Mendez, Mark Regan, Andy Long and Neil McCarthy.  It was in about 2004 that I managed to become a more regular fixture in the first team.
From there I was called up to the Saxons and then the full England squad, and I made my debut against Samoa at Twickenham in 2005.
I’d sat on the bench against Australia and New Zealand without coming on so I was desperate to make my debut, but it was a pretty fiery game. Lewis Moody got sent off, as did Alesana Tuilagi for them, and it was one of those where it was probably good to be one of the shorter players on the pitch because you could avoid the high tackles!
I got my first start in 2006 in the Six Nations against Ireland and was then part of the squad in the 2007 World Cup. It was case of backs against the wall but Brian Ashton  brought us together well.
Four years on we were much better prepared, but we just made a few mistakes and it cost us.
At Bath we probably didn’t have the success that we should have, but we went on a run of six seasons where we made a final or semi-final in Europe or domestically, and we finally got a trophy in the Challenge Cup against Worcester.
Unfortunately I had to retire this year, something came up in a routine MRI. With my young family I couldn’t take any chances, so now I’m working on my own stuff, with a coffee shop in Bath, some coaching and a few other things.