My Life in Rugby: Andy Titterrell – former Lions, England, Sale, Gloucester and Leeds hooker
It was a generation that grew at the club, I’d been there since 2001. Mark Cueto, Charlie Hodgson, Richard Wigglesworth, Chris Jones and Magnus Lund all came through at a similar time.
It was pouring with rain at Twickenham and we proved we could beat teams in any conditions.
It showed how far we had come when we put 40 points on Leicester in wet weather and relied on our driving, scrummaging and lineout game.
Under Philippe Saint-André and Kingsley Jones we had become a real force, with some of the big guys who Philippe brought in like Sebastien Chabal.
I was involved in pretty much every match that year, and in 2005 I got the surprise call-up to the Lions as well.
A lot has been said about that tour but for anyone who was not there they can’t really say what was going on.
For those of us in the midweek team it was a fantastic seven or eight weeks, working with people like Sir Ian McGeechan and Gareth Jenkins.
Geech was great with us, he and Gareth came up with a game plan and really knew how to connect with the players.
Of course it would have been great to go on a winning Lions tour but you have to remember that was an incredible New Zealand team.
I was meant to be getting married that summer so had to make a few last minute changes but it was a fantastic experience.
When it came to England I didn’t get a huge number of caps because I had a very good player in Steve Thompson ahead of me.
I stayed with Sale for a couple more years after the Lions tour but the opportunity to move to Gloucester came along and I felt it was the right time for a move.
Unfortunately it didn’t work out and after two years they released me.
I found that hard, it was the first time that I saw rugby as a business as well a sport. I made a lot of good friends down there, though, Gareth Delve is godfather to my son.
I didn’t know if I would come back to professional rugby but then the opportunity came up at Leeds and I came in for a crazy end of season.
We managed to produce an incredible turnaround to stay up having looked dead and buried.
Unfortunately we couldn’t build on it and went down the following year – I really think that if we had survived another season we would have been able to cement our place.
Instead dropping down to the Championship was tough, it took me a while to get used to playing with a load of young guys.
I realised the game has changed a lot, when I was an academy player I worked very hard and looked up to the senior guys to learn from them.
At Leeds we had people like Chris Walker, Jacob Rowan and Joe Ford who were happy to put in the effort but there weren’t enough of them.
After that Leeds decided not to keep me on so I’m looking for a club but also doing some conditioning coach with the North Wales Crusaders Rugby League.
