the club a little too much and I used to like a pint and a cigarette after a match. I remember one committee member saying to me, ‘You’ll have to cut back on that Guinness if you’re ever going to make anything of yourself.’ He probably had a point, and lucky I did cut back on it a bit.
When I first joined Redruth I was in the Colts but I didn’t spend long there, and in November 1994 I played my first game for the first team, running out against Leeds at loosehead prop in National Division Four.
We lost that match 16-10, which was disappointing, but everyone told me I’d done well so that made up for it a little. I was playing out of position (loosehead instead of my usual tighthead) which didn’t help, but I’ve gone through my career happy to play on both sides of the scrum, so it was probably useful practice at an early age. It was a great experience and my first away trip. One of the things I remember about the game was the physical-ity of it all. I remember this guy stamping on my head. It seemed to me that the opposition stamped and fought all the way through the match. I’d never known anything like it. It was like a big fight out there.
But my overriding memory is not of them stamping and fighting but of the Redruth guys coming to my rescue. I saw the way they piled in to save me, and got a real insight into what rugby is all about. I realised then that on the rugby field you’re not alone. We were all there for each other. I remember that lesson today. To play an individual sport at the highest levels may give you a real buzz, but to me nothing beats a team sport like rugby in which you’re all in it together. If things are going badly for you, someone will step in and help you; if things are going badly for someone else, you’ll hurl yourself in to help them.
The funniest memory I have of that day is of walking back into the Leeds clubhouse, and seeing some old guy sitting at the bar. He had his pint in one hand and had already ordered another pint next to it as I walked in. He handed it to me as soon as I reached the bar, and said, ‘There you go, mate. Well done. Good match today.’ I looked at him, looked at the pint and shook his hand. Again it was a lesson in what rugby is all about. It made me laugh at the time that this team had just kicked the shit out of me and were now offering to socialise with me, and buy me a drink. I was 17 years old and I smiled to myself. Another little lesson in what it takes to be a great rugby player.
I stayed at Redruth for the rest of the season, playing the next eight or nine games on the trot, then came an offer that I really couldn’t refuse. Gloucester Rugby Club were on the phone; they wanted me to come and join them. I never planned to leave Redruth, as I’d never planned to leave Bude before them, but sometimes life comes along and throws an offer at you that’s too good to turn down. Gloucester were a big-time rugby club. It would be mad not to give it a go…
To the outside world, it looked as if life was really coming together for me. I was a big, tough 19-year-old with the rugby world at my feet, and I’d been offered a chance to play at Gloucester. This was the big time. I packed my car with all my possessions, waved goodbye to everyone and everything that had ever meant anything to me, and headed north. I was going to play first-class rugby. I was off to the city. My big moment in life had arrived.
But Christ almighty I was terrified. Absolutely bloody terrified. Gloucester? That was a big f-ing scary place. I was this kid from a dairy farm in Cornwall. What the hell was I doing going to the big city? I didn’t like big cities. I liked farms and cows. It was all wrong.
And yet, I went - driven by some need to fulfil the potential that others saw in me, and to be the great player that so many people were telling me I was destined to become. By the time I arrived in Gloucester, in the summer of 1995, I was hoping that it couldn’t possibly be as bad as I feared it would be. I’d been building it up into something terrible. It wasn’t. It was a lot bloody worse!
I hated it. I loathed it. As soon as I arrived I thought, This is the biggest mistake of my life. What the hell am I doing here? Why did I come? I was desperate to be back down in Cornwall with the people I loved, playing rugby for a club that I knew, having beers with my mates and enjoying life. Redruth was a great club. What was I doing here? Why had I done this?
The answer was Phil Greening. I had met Phil through the England schools set-up and the two of us got on straight away. He is such a great guy - very funny and doesn’t take himself too seriously - we had a lot in common and we became good friends. Because I was coming up from Cornwall for schoolboy trials, coaching sessions and matches, it was always a long trek to wherever we were going, so I would often travel to Gloucester and stop off there to break the journey, staying with Phil’s parents overnight, going out with Phil, then travelling on the next day with him. It meant the two of us becoming close friends, and me getting to know him and his parents very well.
His parents invited me up to Gloucester for the last game of the 1994-5 season because it was to be Mike Teague’s last game and Phil’s first game for the club. Teague had been one of my heroes growing up - a big, uncompromising player whom everyone hated playing against. He was a tough West Countryman. I identified with him. I liked the idea of heading up to Gloucester to watch Teague and cheer him along in his final game, while being there to support Phil in his first game, so off I went for the weekend.
My memories of the game aren’t so good now and I’m struggling to remember whether Phil played well or badly (I’m assuming he did quite well since he went on to have a bloody good career there). I know it was a match against Harlequins and that Harlequins were fighting off relegation so it was a big game for them (they eventually won and stayed up), and every game’s a big game for Gloucester, so it was a massive occasion.
What I remember most of all was that around 9,000 fans turned up to watch the game. I couldn’t believe it. At Redruth we only had a couple of hundred for most games, and maybe 1,000 at the most. Here there was a big crowd cheering, stamping, singing and shouting during the game, and all staying behind to socialise afterwards. It was loud, colourful, bright and bloody wonderful, and all very different from anything I’d experienced before. I remember the adrenaline rush whenever a Gloucester player got the ball, and the whole stadium would rise in excitement and anticipation. I was hooked.
John Fidler was the manager of Gloucester at the time and I remember chatting to him in the bar afterwards. He asked me all about my rugby career, and where I thought my future lay, and I talked to him about Redruth and what a great club it was, and how much I was enjoying my rugby down there. Then he asked me what I wanted to drink.
‘Cider, please,’ I replied.
‘I see. You’ll fit in well here,’ he said with a smile. So they obviously knew then that they wanted me to join the club, though I didn’t know that at the time.
One of the ciders had the trademark GL on the bottle. I remember asking what the GL stood for, and John said, ‘The GL stands for Gloucester lager, son.’ He clearly said it as a joke, but I admit that for years I thought that stuff was called Gloucester lager! By the end of the evening I was completely bladdered on this newly discovered lager and enjoying a good night with the Gloucester boys.
It was soon after that game that I had a call from John, saying that Gloucester were very interested in me coming to play for them. I wasn’t at all sure whether it was what I wanted to do and the prospect of moving away from home was quite worrying, but I did know Phil well, and I knew that it was a great club, so I sat down with Mum and talked the whole thing through. Then she said something that made me think it might not be so bad after all.
‘If you don’t like it, you can
