Mum crying but you still never imagine that your parents will split. It’s a terrible shock when it actually happens.
When they separated, Mum and Dad decided that Mum should move out, leaving Dad, my grandparents, me, Mark and Helen on the farm. Once Mum had settled somewhere new, we went to live with her. Mum and Dad tried a couple of times to get back together, but it didn’t work out, so we moved back and forth between Mum’s new house and the farm.
I found the whole divorce thing hard. I was old enough to know that things were changing and life was about to become more confusing than ever. I can remember overhearing my parents saying, ‘He’s too young to understand,’ when talking about the divorce. That’s something that still frustrates me to this day. Of course I wasn’t too young. I was aware that all these things were happening around me, but no one would explain them to me.
I’m not blaming anyone. I think Mum and Dad didn’t want to burden me with all the details because they thought I was too young, and that I would adjust better if I wasn’t weighed down with too much information. In reality, though, I think it would have been better if I had been talked to properly and told what was happening. I think you have to know all the details in order to be able to deal with the things that happen to you, even when you’re very young.
It was difficult when the split first happened, but we soon settled into a routine. There is no doubt that my parents splitting up had an effect on me. If you come from a broken home I think it makes you tougher and less trusting of people. It makes you harder, and I know I’ve carried that with me. It’s not a bad thing, necessarily; it’s just a fact of life.
When I wasn’t at the farm, I was at school. One of the clearest memories I have of my junior school is that it was much bigger than infants school; in fact I remember it being huge. I was daunted by the enormous size of it, and thought I’d never be able to find my way around. I recently went back there for the school’s centenary and it made me laugh how tiny everything was. The classrooms were so small and the chairs so little, but when I was young it seemed like a really big place. I was never very confident when it came to school work, and though I tried my hardest when I was younger (the same can’t be said of me when I was older) I did find it tough going. I guess I never really saw the point of school. I never imagined myself doing anything but farming at the end of it all, so what was the point? It always seemed to me that being on the farm was the best place in the world to be.
When I was 11 I moved to Budehaven School where I continued my dislike of school work. We were living back at the farm with Dad at this stage, and a bus would come to collect us every morning at the end of the lane to take us there. I used to get up at around 8.15 a.m. and didn’t have to help too much on the farm before school, but there were always little things to do. My greatest memory of that time is the battle to get someone to drive me and my brother to the end of the lane so we could get the bus. The lane was around half a mile long and on cold winter days, or rainy days, we would be eager to persuade someone to give us a lift. Obviously, everyone else in the family was knee deep in chores at that time in the morning, and they were reluctant to break away from them to take us to the bus stop.
When I got to school, I spent most of the days looking out of the window during lessons. I loved the friends I’d made, and if it hadn’t been for them I doubt my parents would have got me anywhere near the school at all. I’m not saying it was all bad. I remember that I enjoyed subjects like history, but I was never very good at spelling so my confidence was dented from the start. It’s hard if you have no confidence in yourself. I’d sit at the back of the room and not focus on what was happening in front of me. I guess I just wasn’t ever a great scholar (and that’s an understatement). There was nothing wrong with the school, or the teachers, it was just me. At that age I simply wasn’t interested. It was only PE lessons and break-time that held any interest for me at all.
Thanks to my PE teacher, school didn’t turn out to be a complete waste of time.
My PE teacher at Budehaven School was a great man called Mr Opie. I should tell you a few things about this guy because it was thanks to him that my rugby career started in the first place. He was everything a kid could ever want in a school teacher - encouraging, enthusiastic and passionate about sport. He was very keen that we should try out all sports and not just decide that we were footballers or rugby players and stick to that. I am really pleased about this now, because although I’ve made rugby my life, I’m also a huge cricket fan (if not a great player) and have a rounded view of sport.
There’s no question, though, that Mr Opie had a particular fondness for rugby. I think he could see that with a little guidance and encouragement I had the makings of a decent player, and he was very keen for me to go down to Bude, the local rugby club, to have a go at playing the game in a more competitive environment. One of the saddest things for me was that Mr Opie died before I was capped for England, so he never saw just how far I went in my rugby career. I’ve raised a glass to the guy on many occasions in thanks for everything he did for me and for other kids in the school.
When Mr Opie suggested going down to Bude to play the game, I admit that I was very open to the idea. My brother Mark had gone down there a few years before me, and he seemed to be having a great time. I didn’t hear much about the rugby he was playing but had heard all about the good friends, brilliant away trips and the thrill of matches. So when I was 13 I made my first visit to the club, and I was hooked from the start. I loved it.
There were no mini or youth sides back then, so by the time I was 15 I was playing in the Colts. I don’t think they would allow you to do that now because there are sides for all age groups up to Colts level, but back then I guess the philosophy was the same as Dad’s on the farm - if you’re big enough and tough enough, you’re old enough. Anyway, it suited me. At Bude they upheld the great traditions of the sport, and I’m glad, looking back, that I began my rugby career there.
Many of those traditions, of course, involved embarrassing the players as much as humanly possible. There was a game played there where you had to run round the field naked and the last one back got chucked in the river. The worst one, though, was the naked run through Bude … if you did something wrong on the minibus you’d be chucked out and have to run home without any clothes on. It’s great, isn’t it? Wherever you play rugby in the world they’re always up to things like that. Long may it continue!
I loved rugby down at Bude because it was such a huge escape from normal life. You could dive around tackling people legally, you were completely let loose and could do whatever you wanted to stop people with the ball. I am reasonably quiet - always have been - and I don’t tend to get angry or raise my voice, no matter what happens, but on the rugby pitch I got a new lease of life. It was an opportunity to be completely free and to make things happen - no shackles or ties, you weren’t told which bits of the field you could stand in, and which bits you couldn’t.
I played alongside Mark in the Bude Colts side, which was great. Mum and my grandparents would come down to watch us. Mark was hooker and I was prop, and we made a formidable front row. I imagined that we’d always play together but that wasn’t to be because I moved on from Bude after just a couple of years, and Mark stayed there. I guess Mark lacked the discipline to dramatically improve his game where rugby was concerned. That’s not a criticism at all, I just think that he probably didn’t want it enough to work that much harder to improve, and combined with injuries it never worked out for him. It’s funny what makes a top-class player, and what the differences are between those who get to the top and those who don’t. Temperament might have something to do with it. For reasons that are difficult to explain, I was the one willing to work
