My Life in Rugby: Rob Vickerman – former England Sevens captain, Newcastle and Yorkshire Carnegie centre

I appreciate that having read this feature a fair few times over the years  it usually starts with a remarkable memory of a significant victory, impactful story or, perhaps, dare I say it, of a career ending injury. I will avoid all the above.
The last two weeks have given me plenty of chance for reflection, allowing me to think about why I wanted to play rugby. I realised that becoming a professional did not really change that, even if my underlying motivation was perhaps harder to keep at the forefront of my mind when the doubts of injury, selection, form or even boredom kicked in.
I believe I do what I do – or did, even – to create and share memories with those around me. The people I trained with, learned from, grew alongside and admired. It was always deeper than just “win everything”.
Winning is a ‘NEED’ in sport, with a result to be won in every game and a trophy played for at the end of the season. Jobs are lost and lives are significantly changed without wins. But it is the environment that is the ‘WANT’.
If a team can hone in on playing for each other and combine that with technical and tactical excellence, honed by repetition and understanding, then the results, and, more importantly, the environment, will be startling.
Take, for example, the two significant performances and tournament wins I experienced as an England Sevens player in both New Zealand (Feb 2009) and Twickenham (May 2009). The statistics surrounding the performances haven’t stuck.
I couldn’t tell you how many tackles were made or missed, or how many try scoring passes were created or fumbled. What I can tell you, in almost HD description, is that when we won the tournaments – and frankly did so often playing poorly – we won owing to an unequivocal desire to play for each other and create those memories.
Both times we had a build-up solely focused on ‘us’ in our group of 19 people on tour. Both times we went three scores down in the final and both times won in extra time.
Winning undoubtedly helps bind the memories into a different part of the brain, but that wasn’t in my mind, aged six, running around the pitch. I did it for the enjoyment, the freedom, and the experiences, and they are what stick in my mind from the 2008/9 season with England Sevens.
Throughout this pursuit for enjoyment and memories in 15s rugby I got to play with and against some of the players I truly admired in the game. The players that I watched, opened-mouthed, now stood against me and alongside me.
I’ll never forget Jonah Lomu (then of Cardiff) bearing down on me having just seen no-one to my outside as I had the ball with him approaching. The slow motion Sky cameras depicted perfectly justified fear.
To have had these memories nearly taken away from me from not just one ACL rupture but two (the second 20 minutes into my comeback game), most definitely made me keep a wholly humbled perspective throughout the rest of my career, and no doubt has helped me adjust to my recent retirement.
Sevens, however, was the environment I thrived in, and made the most memories. The world travel and exotic, often marquee, locations make the tour seem somewhat of a glamour circuit, but it would be truer to describe it as a ‘travelling circus.’
I have enough replicated hotel keys to form an impressive collage, but it must be said these would be locations I wouldn’t be able to visit in a normal capacity, yet alone with so many great friends and with the amount of down time we had. I just wish more of it was without the jet lag!
From here on in I have to now prove what I used to claim: I never feared the thought of not playing. I am taking my vast and very practical life experiences gained in sport, through learning theory and experiencing a corporate environment over the last 18 months to now champion lessons in leadership, motivation, engagement and elite behaviours as a consultant.
I’ll continue to seek creating memories and enjoyment but know I’ll likely never find myself in such a purposeful, constantly challenging, and fun environment as I knew as a rugby player.
*As told to Jon Newcombe