My Life in Rugby: Darren Molloy – former Wasps, Gloucester and Leinster prop

Once a Wasp, always a Wasp is an oft-used phrase that resonates with me 100 per cent.
From the day I first signed for Wasps in 1991 to the day I finished it felt like a second home. To be able to represent one of the best clubs in Europe over 200 times, in a period when we enjoyed so much success, and with players who you could genuinely call your mates was massive for me.
I joined Wasps after playing most of my early rugby at London Irish and my school’s old team Old Gaytonians. Wasps needed new blood in the front row after Jeff Probyn and Paul Rendall left for Askeans and I was asked to trial. Over the next four years I played mainly second team rugby, and what a formidable team that was with Lawrence Dallaglio, Phil Greening and Will Green packing down alongside me.
By the time we’d all served our apprenticeship we were well and truly ready for the demands of league rugby. We’d formed a bond that only comes with watching each other’s backs from one Saturday to the next.
Lawrence was made captain when Rob Andrew and Dean Ryan left to join Newcastle, and after winning the first professional league title in 1996/97 the trophies kept on coming under Rob Smith and Nigel Melville and then Warren Gatland.
Warren brought fresh and new ideas and came into a team that needed to be rebuilt, with some of the senior players starting to show the tolls of professional rugby.
Unfortunately when he arrived, I had just had a serious ankle operation and came back too early trying to impress the new boss. I injured myself again in a scrum session which resulted in a herniated disc in my back, which eventually caused me to retire.
I think the turning point for us at Wasps was when we put a load of points on Toulouse in the first season of the Heineken Cup. They were one of the aristocrats of European rugby yet we left them living off scraps. It gave us the self-belief that we were the real deal. We won the Tetley’s Bitter Cup back-to-back in 1998 and ’99 and I won the Supporters’ Player of the Year accolade which remains one of the highlights of my career.
To get the vote ahead of Kenny Logan, Simon Shaw and Lawrence meant a hell of a lot.
I represented both Ireland and England at A-team level. I got called up to train for the senior Ireland team ahead of the last-ever 5 Nations Championship but they changed the rules that year and my cap for England A put paid to me playing for anyone else.
I did play in Ireland for half a season, with Leinster right at the tail-end of my career. But with my wife and newly born daughter back home in England – and the injuries I’d had – I decided to call it a day.
Before that, I had a short loan spell at Gloucester where I hooked up again with Nigel Melville. In all honesty it wasn’t the same as playing for Wasps. Don’t get me wrong it was incredible having the support of the Shed behind you, instead of against you, but all of sudden rugby felt much like a job.
I’ve been coaching in Kent ever since. I’m currently assisting Nicky Little at Canterbury, who are in National Two South as well as being director of rugby at Folkestone Academy – a job I love.
Outside of Wasps I made some great friends, too.
One of these, Howard Lamb who played at London Irish, Richmond (and occasionally, when I had a chance to take the field with him, Old Gaytonians), was taken from us far too young this week and he will be sadly missed by us all.