My Life in Rugby: Kurt Johnson – former Coventry and Orrell wing

With my hair dyed pink and the No.14 shaved into the back of my head, people might have wrongly assumed I was full of bravado before I faced Jason Robinson in his first-ever game for Sale. But that wasn’t the case; I was a bag of nerves.
I went to the toilet just before kick-off and funnily enough Jason was in there, too, and we had this little discourse as we washed our hands where I told him what an honour it was to play against such a legend and how anxious I was. He turned around to me and said: “You’re nervous. What about me? Everybody expects me to be good and I haven’t got a clue whether I will be or not.”
We wished each other the best of luck and then went our separate ways. That brief conversation settled me right down and I made it my mission to prevent him from scoring which I did for all bar the final minute of the game. A massive cheer went up when he crossed the line and all I could think about was what the next day’s headlines would be.
Jason and Martin Offiah were two players I really looked up to when I was growing up and playing at Long Close School in Slough. As a winger, I loved the feeling of beating my opposite number and scoring tries. I think my ability to avoid defenders came from my quick instincts – honed not through hours and hours of practice but out of necessity.
With a short-sighted prescription of -7 and no contact lenses up until I was 16, I played the game almost blind during my formative school years. On dark days, I found it really hard to pick the ball up in flight or distinguish who was an opponent or a team-mate until they were up close so, often, I had to decide what to do at the very last minute.
I think the best team I ever played in was the U13s set-up we had at RGS High Wycombe, who count Matt Dawson amongst their alumni. Under the brilliant coaching of Colin Tattersall, we basically went the whole season unbeaten and obliterated every team that we came across. My highlight outside of senior rugby was winning the National Schools Sevens and being named player of the tournament.
Cliff Morgan presented the trophy to us.
I twisted my back whilst playing Sevens in my very last game for school and I thought my rugby days might be behind me before they’d really began after I broke down 15 minutes into my first game for Sheffield University. A friend of mine on the history course kept nagging me to come back and, two years on, I did, captaining the side in my final year.
At that stage, I was also turning out on the odd occasion for Rotherham, the most senior local club. However, I ended up joining Orrell as the fly-half at university played there. For me, my rugby life changed when I scored twice for Orrell against Coventry at Coundon Road. Keith Fairbrother contacted me afterwards and said they wanted me to go down there. That didn’t go down well with Orrell as I was under contract with them at the time and Sammy Southern dropped me for a few games. I still ended up with 17 tries in 18 games in the 1998/99 season including a hat-trick – from only four touches of the ball – against Bristol.
One of the seminal moments of my rugby career came after that game. Bob Dwyer came up to me afterwards and said: “Well played winger, great game.” This was the bloke who had led Australia to the World Cup and, in my opinion, had coached the best winger of all time, David Campese. To hear him say something like that gave me a massive amount of self-belief.
There were 58 players in the Coventry squad in my first season and nine wingers. I thought I’d struggle to get a game let alone finish as joint top try-scorer with 12 including a try on debut against the old enemy Rugby Lions. I went on to score 99 tries for the club. Obviously, I would have liked to have got my century but 99 has a nice ring to it.
One century I did reach was 100 National League tries, becoming the fourth player to achieve the milestone when I ran in a spilt pass from the halfway line moments after coming on as a blood replacement in a game at Bedford in 2007. People say my best try was against the Barbarians, in our 125th anniversary match, but my personal favourite was against Manchester when I beat about six defenders on my way to the line after picking the ball up inside my own 22. They called me “the burglar” after that because I had stolen the win for Coventry.
Being overlooked for the National Divisions Select XV to take on Australia at Welford Road was one of my main disappointments, especially after I’d been voted the second-best player in National One behind Dave Scully and scored twice and made two try-saving tackles in front of the selectors in a win against Otley. That disappointment, however, was offset by playing for Barbados in Rugby World Cup qualifiers against USA and Canada, left. We got thumped in both games but the experience was brilliant and I had the honour of scoring our only points across the two games from a penalty.
My other career highlights would have to be playing for the Baa-baas and making my international Sevens debut against Waisale Serevi.
Rugby took me to all corners of the globe and I feel privileged to have played with so many good players and made so many great friends. Now I’m hoping that my little boy, Kingsley, follows me down the rugby path. He’s showing early promise!