My Life in Rugby: Nigel Redman – former Bath, England and Lions lock

Getting called up to the Lions squad in 1997 and then leading the side in the game against Orange Free  State was unbelievable – but training with the first team squad was even better.
I got called up by the Lions in South Africa when Doddie Weir was injured, having been touring Argentina with England.
I arrived just in time for the Blue Bulls match and then played against Gauteng before being asked to captain against Free State.
Then in the build-up to the second Test Jeremy Davidson and Simon Shaw were both struggling with knocks so I trained with the first team. It was incredible.
The amazing thing was that only a few months earlier I thought my rugby career was over.
I’d had knee surgery and had then got a surprise call-up for the England tour because a few guys were away with the Lions.
We had a great game in Buenos Aires in the first Test, up against a very strong Argentina team, with the likes of Roberto Grau and Federico Mendez. We beat them and then Mike Catt got called up to the Lions to replace Paul Grayson.
I got the call just after to come in for Doddie – they had played three matches up to then.
That was my final year in international rugby,  I’d started back in 1984 when I was only 19.
It was a very quick transition for me, having started playing rugby when I was 15. Before then I used to play football. Unsurprisingly I was a goalkeeper – I was the only person happy to dive full-length on concrete.
I moved to a school in Weston-Super-Mare where they played one half-term of rugby and that’s how I got into it.
It went quite quickly from there. I started training with Bath and pretty quickly got a place in their first team. That year we won the John Player Cup final, beating Bristol in the final.
That autumn I got the call-up to play for South & South West England and we played against Australia, and then Dick Greenwood, who was coach at the time, called me up for England.
The Aussies were brilliant on that tour, they beat everybody and it was a fantastic team we came up against. They had Topo Rodriguez and Simon Poidevin in the pack and Nick Farr-Jones, Mark Ella, Michael Lynagh and David Campese in the backs.
Playing for England I went to two World Cups in 1987 and 1991 and got 20 caps in my 13 years.
One of the things I’m most proud of is appearing in all the ten cup final victories we had at Bath. The wins over Bristol in that first one, and Gloucester in 1990,  stand out because they were derby games.
In 1999 my body had given up on me and that was time to call it a day and I got a job working in the Worcester academy.
I really enjoyed working on the development side of things and then spent ten years with the RFU, including working with Jon Callard and the England U21s and U20s.
We won the first Grand Slam with the U20s with a team that included Alex Goode, Alex Corbisiero and Joe Simpson.
Now I’m back at Worcester and really enjoying it. I played with Richard Hill so I knew him well already. I’ve always been interested in developing players and that’s something I want to keep doing at Worcester.