He started off a long way down the English pyramid, seven divisions beneath the Premiership with hometown Stafford and worked his way up from there.
The first step took him to the dizzy heights of National League One with Stourbridge Lions; the second to the comparatively rarified atmosphere of the Championship at Moseley where he helped the famous old Birmingham club win a Cup final at Twickenham for the only time, beating Neil Back’s Leeds Carnegie to take the National Trophy in 2009.
The graph climbed steeply upwards from there: to the Celtic League and Glasgow Warriors, the ...