My Life in Rugby: Nnamdi Ezulike – former Leicester, London Irish, Worcester and England Sevens wing

Rugby was just one of the sports I was interested in and to be honest when I started out at Leicester the idea of getting beat up by Neil Back, Austin Healey and Lewis Moody wasn’t exactly my idea of fun!
But I have Ian ‘Dosser’ Smith to thank for sticking with it and he was probably my biggest influence in rugby.
He seemed to follow me around in the early days as he was my school coach and did some coaching at Loughborough University where I studied politics, and he helped me get into the university as well – and of course, he had done a lot for Leicester.
I went to private school – at St Martin’s, near York – and I played rugby with a lot of sports, like football and athletics, but it never occurred to me when I was young that I could play the game for a living.
But at Loughborough, I came round to the idea. I was with the Leicester development squad when they went professional and they wanted me to sign.
My first proper league game was against Harlequins in 1998. I scored a try  and I even remember the move we did – called tunnel ball.
I did not really like the training as I was quite lazy – playing the game was my fun but they were pretty well-schooled at Leicester and training was hard. Getting beaten up by forwards was not my idea of fun but it was a good grounding for my later days.
We won the title in those two years but in the second  Dave Lougheed took my place. He had been a big money signing and when he started to find form I was marginalised.
I still played a lot of games and they offered me a new contract, but I decided I needed to move on.
I went to London Irish under Dick Best who has a bit of a reputation as a hard taskmaster. I was warned by some of the Leicester guys about going there. He’s an eccentric alright but I did love playing for him.
My career was going  well at London Irish, I was in the tries and was called up for the England A squad to play Italy and I’d been to Beijing with the England Sevens.
But in my second year in 2001 I injured my PCL in pre-season, so I wasn’t included in the squad list for Europe.
Brendan Venter had come in and signed some of his mates and after that I was not really given a chance again – he carried on with the same team win or lose.
My contract wasn’t renewed and I decided to join Worcester who had a bit of money behind them to get promoted from the second division. It was a good set-up and the facilities were outstanding.
I did well, scored a lot of tries, but we did not get promoted that year, losing out to Rotherham.
Before that game I had a really bad injury – a hematoma in my leg. I was  eventually passed fit, but in the match I injured my other leg.
I needed an operation and funnily enough Jonathan Webb, the ex-England full-back, was the surgeon. Worcester paid  my medical costs and helped me get back fit but didn’t offer me a new contract.
Being 27, I felt I should  get a proper job and I’m a foreign exchange broker now.
I was not someone who only thought about playing rugby. I stumbled on it, took my chance and enjoyed it totally.