My Life in Rugby: Tom Rees – former England and Wasps flanker

During my career I had the pleasure of working with some great guys, including Warren Gatland, Brian Ashton and Sir Ian McGeechan, but, on a technical level, I can’t really look beyond Shaun Edwards as being the best coach I ever played under.
Shaun was always trying to think of new and different ways to do things, to bring the best out of you as a player and the team, but he was never one to be married to an idea just because he’d thought of it.
He’d always listen to the players to see whether it was working or not. His blitz defence was obviously a big hit at Wasps, but it took me a while to get used to the idea that the system was not based on smashing the first person in front of you; it was more sophisticated than that. He bawled me out a few times for jumping out of the line.
Also, on another occasion, I can remember Shaun telling me I’d been outclassed by my opposite number, Shane Jennings, after we’d suffered a heavy home defeat to Leicester. That was Shaun all over, he was simply laying down the challenge to me to raise my game.
As a junior player, still on an academy contract, I was also very fortunate to have big characters and wonderful senior players, such as Lawrence Dallaglio, around me when I first broke into the Wasps first team. I’d played a handful of cup games in 2003/04, and missed out on the first Heineken Cup win, but the next season was really my breakthrough year.
By that stage I’d acquired the nickname, “Robot”, after James Haskell had (falsely) claimed I’d appeared as a participant on the TV programme Robot Wars. James had made up the story to give the lads in the dressing room something to go on because, unlike him, I was very quiet.
Johnny O’Connor’s call up to the Ireland squad handed me my big chance and I got a decent run of games that year and scored in our Zurich Premiership semi-final win over Sale. Unfortunately I picked up an injury, which was to prove something of a recurring theme, and I missed the final against Leicester.
It was against Leicester, early on in the 2005/06 season, that my profile shot up almost overnight. Up until then I was still very much the ‘academy kid’ in the senior squad, but two tries and a man-of-the-match performance in a 29-29 home draw against the Tigers, live on TV, meant that I was now being asked for my autograph without people having to ask my name!
By the age of 24 I’d picked up a Premiership, Heineken and Anglo-Welsh Cup winner’s medal – not bad for someone who’d fallen into rugby as a 12-year-old at Basingstoke RFC and then fallen in love with it. In 2007 I was handed the honour of representing my country by Brian Ashton, and went on to appear in every Six Nations games that year.
I also went to the World Cup and started the first two games, scoring my first international try against the USA in what was a below-par start for us. Worse was to come against South Africa a week later and that proved to be my final game of the tournament as a combination of a thigh strain, the blinding form of Lewis Moody and the decision to opt for a bigger back row meant I didn’t get a look in after that.
My next game for England was not until the opening round of the 2008 Six Nations, when we let a half-time lead slip against Wales. That proved to be my last game in the championship as the remainder of my 15 caps came on the summer tour to New Zealand and in the autumn series later that year.
Three shoulder operations and various knee injuries dogged me non-stop over the next two seasons and in 2012 I was finally forced to quit. While I’ll always wonder what might have been had I not retired early, I take immense satisfaction from what I achieved. Some guys play rugby for 15-20 years and never get the chance to do what I managed to do so I can look back with very fond memories.
*As told to Jon Newcombe