LITMIR.BIZ

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that, I admit, I had not expected. I felt welcome immediately, and all my fears about how I would cope drifted away.

      I never felt out of place at Quins – not at any stage. Obviously I came from a more working-class background than the traditional Harlequin, but there were many other players like me. I was aware that, under normal circumstances, I’d never have come across some of the city slickers, but I thought it was good that rugby was bridging the gap and expanding both my, and their, world.

      I remember when I first got there, some old guy shook my hand with great gusto and asked, ‘What school did you go to?’

      I told him and he looked at me blankly as he repeated, ‘Warren School, Chadwell Heath, huh. Where’s that, then?’

      ‘It’s in Chadwell Heath,’ I replied, adding, ‘It’s a comprehensive.’

      ‘Oh really,’ he said.

      That more or less killed the conversation, one that I must have had around a hundred times in my first few weeks. The people at Quins were accustomed to being able to converse with one another by exchanging school information. The question was asked of newcomers to the club as soon as they’d exchanged weather details. But after a few weeks, they realized that it wasn’t a conversation that got us very far and so they stopped asking.

      I’m reluctant to be very critical of those amateur officials that ran the sport back then, though. Although they could be frustrating at times, and many of them had a narrow outlook on life, they meant well, and they effectively ran the club. I had no problem with them.

      Indeed, the only difficulty I had in those early days was the awful travelling – from one side of London to the other, three times a week. My work was still in east London, so I had to be over there during the day – I didn’t want to move or sacrifice any part of my working life because I had no idea how long I would end up staying at Harlequins. I was worried that one injury or a drop in my standard and I’d be back at Barking. If I’d started working in Twickenham, I’d be in a mess. I was also enjoying working with Dad, and the bunch of lads that I’d got to know. So I made the long journey across London every Monday and Thursday for training, and on Saturdays to play. Even if we were playing away, the bus still went from Harlequins, so I still had to get over to the other side of London.

      I did eventually move a little bit closer – not all the way because I was still concerned about my future with the club – as far as Battersea. This made life easier on several counts, mainly because Paul Ackford used to drop me off at home as he went past my place in Battersea on his way back to Clapham. After a few weeks, it became a ritual. I’d jump in the car with Ackers and he’d tell me some tales about life in the police. He was a police superintendent in those days and I remember him telling stories about disarming bank-robbers – they were all colourful stories and I often wondered whether he made some of them up. If he did, it was good practice – he’s a leading journalist now.

      As I mentioned earlier, I had been interested to see how ‘amateurism’ was interpreted at Harlequins, and many of my rugby mates at Sarries and Barking kept asking whether I used to come back into the changing room to find my boots stuffed full of money. There were so many rumours about Harlequins flouting the amateur regulations – but the answer was ‘no’. Despite Quins’ reputation for throwing money at players, they didn’t break the rules of amateurism – the only thing they did was to offer big City jobs to players. These jobs allowed players the flexibility to get to training sessions but they always had to succeed on their own merits. They weren’t handed a job on a plate – they had to be good enough to achieve the standards required. I appreciate that giving out jobs was not in the strict spirit of amateurism, but it was not contrary to the laws either.

      The idea of a big City job never appealed to me – I’m not a desk job sort of guy. Besides, some of those guys used to work very hard, putting in 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. days, then rushing back down to The Stoop to train in the evening. I never felt it was the best preparation for the game – how can you ask your players to put in a good training session when they’re working such long hours? I’m sure that there were lots of financial perks if you were involved with a big City job, but it never interested me in the slightest.

      Instead, the club tried to help me by getting me work near the ground and through the membership. There was a note put up in the club, and handed out to some of the members, saying that if they wanted any building work done, they should contact me. I got one old woman who was a Harlequins member who wanted me to fix her gate. That was it. It makes me laugh now when people talk about the old shamateur days and how we were all raking in the money. My only experience of shamateur sport was fixing some old dear’s gate, and I was too embarrassed to charge her!

      Colin Herridge, a great friend of mine, was the secretary of Harlequins at the time, and he would try to find me jobs in the Twickenham area on Mondays and Thursdays, so that I wouldn’t have to leave work ridiculously early to get to the club. Colin hated to see me running in to training, already late, and having come from a tough day’s work on site followed by a trek across London. But he appreciated that I couldn’t leave my job early because I was paid by the hour, so if I left early, I got paid less.

      As I became better known as a player, Colin would get me to do personal appearances in local pubs and clubs to help earn me some money so I had enough petrol for the car to get around town. It was an odd time when I first began at Quins in 1990/91. I was just starting to make it in international rugby and my face was in the papers, people were beginning to recognize me and I was being asked to go on television shows – it must have looked as if I was earning a fortune when in fact I was just trying to make ends meet.

      Luckily money and material possessions have never mattered much to me and they didn’t matter at all in the early days when I was young and loving the way my rugby career was going. All I wanted to do was improve on the field and at Harlequins I was in exactly the right place to do that. The guys really looked after me in that first season and they all took a hand in improving my technique immeasurably. I developed more in the first season at Quins than I had at any other time in my career. It was great.

      There would be Brian Moore on one side, advising me on my binding, Paul Ackford working with me on my technique in the line-out and Winter-bottom talking to me about my movement around the park. And, above all that, there was Dick Best.

      Best has become a bit of an enigma – there are a million and one stories about him and how hard he is on players, but no one really knows him very well. I feel I got to know him through my time at Quins, and my time with London Division, and he is the most astute, forward-thinking coach around. Having said that, he has a temper that you wouldn’t believe – he didn’t get the nicknames Sulphuric and Beast for nothing. Having said that, I never got one of the tongue-lashings for which he was famous. I just got cold stares and sarcasm when I upset him – I’m not sure whether that’s worse!

      I first met Dick when I turned up to a London Division U21 training session. I was still at Saracens at the time and arrived with a few of the boys who’d been drinking with me till the early hours of the morning. I was in a terrible state and had slept all the way to the session, which meant that the guy who’d been driving us had got lost and delayed us even further – not exactly what you want to do when trying to impress a new, well-respected coach.

      When we walked in the changing room, Paddy Dunston, one of the guys I was with, went straight up to Dick Best and apologized, whereas I went to get changed. It wasn’t because I was being rude but I just wanted to get ready and get out on the park. Also, there were several guys who I hadn’t seen for ages, so I wanted to catch up with them. By the time I got out onto the pitch, most of the players had had their meeting, warmed up and were about to start training – I was a good hour late. I walked past the training pitch, past Dick, and towards where the players were gathered.

      ‘Last time I saw you, you were pissed in Newcastle,’ I said to one guy, patting him on the back. ‘Ah, and how are you? I hear you’re not with the missus any more. Sorry about that,’ I said to another. It was all just light banter. But the players I was talking to were looking nervously over my shoulder. I couldn’t work out what was wrong. Then I turned round to see a face like thunder.

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