My Life in Rugby: Tom Voyce – former Wasps, Gloucester and England wing

I played a lot of finals at Wasps but the game that I remember most vividly was when we beat Munster away at Lansdowne Road.
It was a Heineken Cup semi-final and Munster just never lost at home in Europe.
I remember we started well but Munster came back and after their second try we were all under the posts.
The atmosphere was incredible – it was so loud that I could barely hear Lawrence Dallaglio but I remember that he said, ‘we’re not going to lose this match’, although in slightly different words.
The response was superb, all the back three scored – I scored the penultimate try – and then we got the ball out to Trevor Leota to score a try in the final minute.
In the final the Toulouse game was just unreal – it was like chasing shadows for most of the game.
They did everything they could to lose it and I remember when Rob Howley got his try he and I just looked at each other. I’d never seen a ball bounce so straight.
It turned out to be his last touch in rugby, I don’t think you can really do much better than that.
We had an incredible amount of success when I was at Wasps. I arrived from Bath where there was a bit of a changing of the guard and Warren Gatland got a great balance of experience and youngsters.
We always felt we could beat absolutely anyone and we loved that feeling of being the underdogs.
Winning the Premiership title in 2005 was special against Leicester because that was a match where no one gave us a chance.
They had thrashed us a couple of weeks earlier but we got out of the blocks really quickly and it was the first final that I scored in.
Lawrence made a huge tackle and the ball just popped out to me and there was no one to stop me running it in. We really took it to them that day and definitely deserved the win.
I’d won my first cap before I got to Wasps, going on a tour of the USA while I was still at Bath in 2001, but then there wasn’t much chance of me adding to those caps though with the guys who went on the Lions tour coming back in.
It was in 2006 that I finally seemed to get my foot in the door during the Six Nations.
Josh Lewsey got injured and I came in and from there I felt like I’d earned my spot.
I got an injury towards the end of the season to my shoulder but worked really hard to get fit for the summer tour. I managed it, and I’d never say I regretted getting another England cap, but that game in Australia basically cost me my career.
It’s frustrating because even though I wasn’t at my best, there was a Tom Varndell pass which didn’t go to hand, and a Pat Sanderson pass which went the other way, and if they had come off I definitely wouldn’t have been cast aside.
I felt hard done-by to be written off because of that one performance, but overall I can’t complain at my career.
After Wasps I wanted a new challenge which was why I headed to Gloucester. It took a while to win over the Kingsholm crowd, but that was one of the challenges. I wanted to prove I could win trophies elsewhere, so the LV= Cup success was great, and the support I received when I left at the end of last season was incredible.
Now I’m still training hard in the hope I might be needed somewhere, either as a medical joker in France or to strengthen a squad in England. It’s not an ideal situation but hopefully something will come up.