My Life in Rugby: Peter Short – former England Saxons and Exeter lock
Winning away at Leicester in the Heineken Cup quarter-final with Bath in 2006 was an incredible performance and a real highlight for me but we often felt we underachieved.
In my time at Bath we had a strong team and really thought we could pick up some silverware, but in the end we won a Challenge Cup in 2008 and nothing more.
That 2006 game at the Walkers Stadium was a real battle. I came on for James Hudson in the first half and playing alongside Danny Grewcock we certainly had no lineout experts left in the pack as neither of us were. By the end we were down to 13 and hanging on, but we did manage to hold on and knock them out.
But, like with lots of semi-finals when I was at Bath, we couldn’t push on from that.
I knew I was going to take rugby seriously when I was at Loughborough University, I spent a couple of seasons with Moseley, the second of which I spent in the first team.
Buster Smith, Matt’s brother, was coaching Loughborough at the time and also coaching the second team at Leicester.
He told John Wells and Dean Richards about me, they came to watch and from there I got a deal.
They were an interesting coaching pair, John would be looking after us for most of the time during the week, focusing on the details. He was thorough with everything he did.
On matchday Deano would really come into his own, with John taking more of a backseat.
As a youngster I would have loved more game time at Leicester, but they had some incredible quality in that back five.
Pretty much everyone was an international, Ben Kay hadn’t quite broken through, but you had Martin Johnson, Neil Back, Martin Corry, and then from overseas the likes of John Welborn and Fritz Van Heerden. Being able to play in the back row and the second row, I was at least able to get on the bench quite a bit.
In 2003, though, I had the chance to head out to Narbonne and I have no regrets about going.
It was a very different experience, but the South of France, with a big ex-pat community, was great fun.
We had some notable wins over Toulouse, Biarritz and Perpignan.
After two years, though, I was ready to return to England, and it worked out really well for me at Bath. I was able to push on from there and win some England Saxons caps.
I’d already played for the U21s, and any time you get to wear the England shirt if very special. I’d have loved to win a full cap, but I’m still immensely proud of what I achieved.
At the end of last season I was going to move to Stade Français but when that didn’t work out I got a chance at Exeter.
Unfortunately I broke my leg and had to retire which really wasn’t the way I would have liked to finish, but that’s the nature of the beast.
At Exeter I experienced a completely different coaching style. It’s easy to stay at a club and be blasé and think you are doing it the right way. Going to Exeter showed me a different set-up and was a bit of an eye-opener.
I’m becoming director of rugby at Canford School in Dorset. I’ve always wanted to coach so I can’t wait to get involved and pass on some of what I’ve learned.
