My Life in Rugby: Nic Rouse – former London Irish, Sale and Nottingham lock

I was 27 by the time I made my Premiership debut, in a one-off game on loan for injury-hit London Irish against Leicester, but everything I experienced up until that point – good and bad – helped shape me as a player. Thankfully that wasn’t my one and only taste of top flight rugby with spells at Sale and again at Irish to follow a few years down the line.
I’d always hoped to play Premiership rugby for Bath, the club I’d supported as a kid, but those dreams ended when I got a letter from Jack Rowell telling me I wasn’t being kept on. It was disappointing that nobody felt fit to tell me in person, and the way the whole thing was handled stuck with me for some time and affected my form whilst on loan at Caerphilly.
Consequently, I was overlooked for the European Shield final against Castres despite playing all the previous rounds. Even so, I enjoyed my time in the Celtic League.
After leaving Bath I struggled to find a club. Eventually I ended up at Manchester and a season battling against relegation in National One and taking on more responsibility made me mature as a player.
Then I was off to Plymouth, on less than minimum wage. I broke my ankle in my first start and missed four months of the season. But after that things went well and we challenged for the title. I even managed to get myself a better deal at the end of the season.
Our boss Graham Dawe was brilliant at all the tight stuff but he’d have a go at me for carrying the ball and I felt stifled so when the chance to join Nottingham arose I jumped at it. Glenn Delaney had recruited a good team on a shoestring and we were all roughly the same age. We worked hard and played hard and had some great battles with Exeter. I turned them down twice to stay at Nottingham.
My body shape – I never had what you would call a rig – probably put off Premiership clubs even though I’d been named in back-to-back Champion-ship Dream XVs. So, it was somewhat out of the blue when Sale’s Mike Brewer came in for me.
I played 14 games in the Premiership that season and even my physique change a little bit! I’d talked with Mike about a new two-year deal but he was gone by Christmas and I followed him out of the door at the end of the season and re-joined Nottingham.
I was named in the Dream XV again in my first season back but the harmony we’d previously enjoyed had been disrupted by the arrival of new players from outside. When Martin Haag arrived, he let the players drive the standards and the culture and a tight group became even tighter after we lost our team-mate, Mitch Todd, in a car accident.
Like Glenn, Haagy did a great job in difficult circumstances and we made the play-offs in his first season.
No-one wanted to leave Nottingham but the club were late in offering new deals and Matt Parr and I hooked up with Glenn again at London Irish. I was named Players’ Player of the Year in the first of my three seasons. Also, I’ve never had better scrambled eggs than those at Hazelwood! The following year didn’t go so well and I hardly played until Christmas.
My last Premiership game turned out to be in April 2015, at home to Sale, when Vadim Cobilas’ head hit my shoulder and did untold damage. I had three operations on it yet managed to get back for one more game the following season – in Europe against Edinburgh.
I came through it okay but I then dislocated it again in training and that was it, career over.
Nowadays I’m doing some coaching with London Irish’s academy, Harrow U14s and at a Prep School in Richmond.
*As told to Jon Newcombe