“You’re a long time retired”, or so the saying goes.

Apparently former Liverpool and Leeds footballer James Milner is credited with that quote, but it’s too obvious a statement to have been first said by him. It feels like something he would have read on Facebook and repeated in an interview.

It’s true, though: the longevity of retirement, in a sporting sense certainly, is vast. Most people that play competitive sport on a weekend, professional or amateur, will spend the majority of their lives not doing it. It means making that decision to hang up the boots for good is far from straightforward.

Sometimes the decision is made for you. The body gives out long before the mind. The hips, the knees, the shoulders cannot keep up with the demands, so you call time as a measure of self-preservation.

Other times, for grass-roots players, it’s your own decision. Life commitments supersede your ability to dedicate the time to playing every weekend. A job that’s too demanding, relocating to a new area or the arrival of kids.

Or, like me, you simply lose the hunger. I started playing rugby aged nine, inspired by England’s World Cup-winning class of 2003, and never looked back. I played pretty much twice a week, every week, for the next 12 years. I was obsessed with the sport. I could name the entire 2008 Toulouse squad if you’d have asked. I bet you’d forgotten about Romain Millo-Chluski but I tell you what, I haven’t.

As a junior, I bounced around clubs in Kent looking for a good level before eventually settling at Blackheath, where my sheer commitment allowed me to play at a level that was probably too good for me.

I was good but I was never good enough. A mouthy hooker who took pride in his set-piece, had decent hands and would never, ever not be there is how I’d have described myself. You could rely on me.

And I was relied upon until the age of 21 when after playing my first year of senior rugby, I experienced a change. Rugby was no longer the priority. I was studying at university, I had a part-time job and a relationship. Rugby could no longer be my priority and because of that, I didn’t want to play at all. Aged 21, I made the decision to ‘retire from rugby’.

Ten years passed in which time I took up running, cycling and eventually football. Not once did I ever consider that I would play a game of rugby again. Even when I took on the gig at Rugby World last year, I had no interest in resetting the gumshield and getting back out there.

Why I decided to play rugby again

It was deputy editor Josh Graham who planted the seed. When I told him that I was playing Saturday league football, he quickly let it be known that the editor of Rugby World could not be caught dead playing that other game.

At first I brushed it off as banter but the more I thought about it, the more I realised he was right. How could I possibly sit here and tell readers that more needed to be done to protect and grow the amateur game while simultaneously I spent every Saturday kicking a football around?

It was time to come out of rugby retirement. The town of Swanley rests upon the M25 ring road and is one of many similar towns too far out to be considered London but too close in to be accepted by the county of Kent.

If you’ve heard of Swanley, I’d wager on it being because of our M25 turn-off. It’s one of the first places Just Stop Oil glued themselves to the road back in 2022 and where Kenneth Noy, of Brink’s-Mat robbery notoriety, committed murder in a road rage incident in 1996.

It’s also the proposed site of a new stadium for the now-defunct former champions of Europe, Wasps. The fact I’m reduced to talking to you about Swanley’s motorway turn-off probably goes some way into telling you about the town itself. I’ve lived here and in the area all my life – there’s not much going for us.

What there is, though, is a great grass-roots rugby club.

Who I decided to play rugby for again

Founded in 2017, Swanley RFC didn’t exist the last time I played a game of rugby. They were created short of a decade ago as a community club with the help of the local council. They have a men’s first XV that plays in Kent Metropolitan league (which I’m reliably informed is the heady heights of Tier 12) and a junior section that offers rugby to local kids every Sunday for free.

They also had a women’s team, the Black Swans, until they upped and left to join a club down the road a year or so ago. Unlike almost all other rugby clubs who have their own home ground and facilities, Swanley play their games on the council-run, communal Recreation Ground. It’s flanked by a McDonald’s, an Aldi and a primary school and is the site of the town’s annual Guy Fawkes celebrations, which means every game after 5 November involves a full sweep of the pitch for discarded sparklers, McDonald’s wrappers and vapes.

The changing rooms and pre-match bar are part of something called the Alexandra Suite, which doubles as a council chambers, wedding venue and a place that hosts those ‘Back to the 70s’ disco nights where you get chicken in a basket.

Sometimes we have to leave the bar early on a weekend because they are setting up for a Christening. It’s hardly the All Blacks but it’s a club bursting with character and which, crucially, is opposite my house.

The perfect place to make my comeback.

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Returning to the fold

When I turned up to pre-season training for the first time on a balmy Tuesday evening last July, I was nervous. I wasn’t so much worried about the physical side of things – I’m fitter than I was ten years ago. No, the doubts were all in my head.

I was worried about being good enough, about being judged because of my job in rugby and about being accepted by a new group of people. But then I realised – this is rugby. The sport that is for all shapes and sizes.

Why was I worried? When I first got there, I was warmly welcomed by head coach George Morris and club treasurer John Ettridge. I gave them my details, trotted into the changing rooms and chucked on a pair of £50 Mizuno boots that I’d bought off Lovell Rugby that week.

I said hello to the lads and they said hello back and asked if I’d played before, to which I said “a bit”. Then we went out and trained and did so every Tuesday and Thursday until the start of the season. Tour de France winner Greg LeMond once said, “Sometimes you’re the hammer, sometimes you’re the nail.” I think at pre-season training, we are all the piece of MDF wood being smashed by the hammer and the nail.

It’s never pleasant, regardless of how good you are, but a necessary evil should you have any hope of being able to last a season on the pitch. Perversely, I’ve always quite liked pre-season fitness training but that could be due to the fact it doesn’t involve any tackling.

A few weeks in, the cat was let out of the bag about what my job was and why I was playing. The response was “that’s class” and we moved on. It was great. To the lads, I’m just someone who wants to spend my Saturdays playing rugby. We’re a team of electricians, teachers, timber merchants and one rugby magazine editor. We’re the antithesis of all those misguided clichés you hear about privileged upbringings from those who have never stepped into a clubhouse. It’s a club of people from all walks of life who give up their time to pick up a ball on Saturday and play a bit of rugby.

Getting back on the pitch

All those doubts I’d arrived with a few weeks before had faded away. Training was one thing, actually playing a game again was another. My first game back in a decade was the opening day of the season and an away trip to Guy’s, Kings and St Thomas’ RFC. An amalgamation of three London hospitals that guarantee an opposition of young, fit doctors who can provide world-class care should anyone suffer an in-match injury.

This particular day they only had 12 players, so had borrowed four handy ringers from a local club with healthier resources. We turned up with a bare 15 – an indictment of where grass-roots rugby is right now.

It was warm, the ground was hard. I also started the game at fly-half. Somehow during all those summer sessions, I had managed to charm, negotiate and bribe the powers-that-be into believing I would be best moving from my old position of hooker to ten (the jury is still out on this decision). As the game went on, I began to realise a lot had changed but much had also remained the same since I’d last played.

The best and worst things about playing rugby

Tackling is still, absolutely, the worst part of the game and I struggle to comprehend those that enjoy it. I’d sooner watch a two-hour Conor Murray box-kicking compilation than put my head in the spokes. And it remains the case that nothing can beat the euphoria of making a clean line break or throwing a crisp pass.

What makes it all the more sweeter these days, though, is the invention of VEO, a live-streaming platform that works by tracking the ball and allows you to watch your games back, making us amateurs all but professional players. A few games later, I made a line break and I’m not kidding you when I say I showed it to everybody at a 30th birthday celebration I went to later that evening.

I even forced the barman to watch it. But then there’s the other side of VEO: seeing just how slow and average you are compared to each and every pro that plays rugby. That whipped miss-pass you thought was Quade Cooper-esque dribbling itself five yards along the line or that sidestep that was probably more Anne Robinson than it was Jason Robinson. It’s humbling.

But it must be said that the general level is higher these days. The Kent Met league is hardly the halcyon days of Super Rugby but most teams we play, ourselves included, are playing structured rugby. Territory first with strike plays and intricate patterns that vary depending on what part of the pitch you’re playing on. Far removed from the days of giving it to the big bloke to smash a hole and the quick bloke to run around everyone.

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And yet with all this improvement, I also felt more acutely than ever how far away us humble amateurs are from the heady heights acheived by professionals. Overlaps butchered, passes put to floor with no pressure and falling off more tackles than a tree shedding its leaves in winter. To think I thought I could potentially make it is laughable. After 80 minutes against the hospital boys, the game ended 19-all.

We had finished with 12 players on the pitch due to injuries and yellow cards, yet had somehow managed to hold on for a result which felt akin to a win. At points during the game I felt like I was trying to suck oxygen through a straw from outer space, while at other points I wondered if it was possible for a hamstring to actually snap in two. But I got through. Sitting in the changing room after the game, I had an overwhelming fuzziness come over me.

It was the hunger that had left me all those years ago. Going hammer and tong against 15 blokes who were trying to make me a patient of theirs later that day. Some of whom themselves were already held together with Gaffer tape and Lucozade Sport. I felt like that teenager again who would be sitting on the sofa on early Saturday morning, eating cereal and taking notes on Keven Mealamu playing for the Auckland Blues.

I wanted to play rugby again.

So far I’ve put six games on the clock, playing the full 80 minutes in each. Slowly, the rust has dissipated and I’ve found myself refinding the flow of it all. Play Saturday, find yourself sofa-bound from stiffness on a Sunday, feel a bit less like the Tinman on the Monday, so attempt a run or a gym session, head to training on Tuesday, ache again on the Wednesday, start being able to move normally on the Thursday, feel normal again by the Friday, play Saturday, repeat.

The toll of it all is not getting easier, I’m just learning the cadence of it all. Don’t book anything active on a Sunday, in short.

Why is grass-roots rugby struggling?

Since being back playing, I’ve put a lot of thought into why rugby clubs are struggling at the moment. Statistics show that fewer people play rugby today (around 223,000 in England) than did in 2016 (260,000). Swanley is only a one-team club yet often struggles to put out a XV at the weekend.

Anecdotally, it seems that most teams we play at the weekend struggle with numbers too. Even the bigger clubs like Blackheath, an institution steeped in history with resources and contacts, are often only able to get one grass-roots side out on a weekend.

Compare that to the Saturday football league I came from and there were a few clubs in South London putting out nine sides a weekend with ease. That’s more than 120 adults playing team sport a week for one club in a league system. Rugby is nowhere near that. And yes, rugby will never be as big as football but I don’t think things need to be as tough as they currently are. I also think we have not been honest with ourselves as to why we are in this situation.

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I think it’s partially a mixture of Covid steering us towards more social habits of solitude, and the increased wariness of the strain rugby can put on your body, but mainly the unavoidable admittance that rugby is not as popular as it was ten, 20, 30 years ago.

That for too long rugby failed to adapt and has lost ground to other sports that are profiting with increased participants and viewers among younger audiences thanks to their willingness to adopt new ways of selling the sport and those within it.

And I think rather than starting to provide ways to reverse the rot that rugby has seen in recent times, too many in positions that can make a difference are still talking about the fact the sport is in reverse, almost burying their heads in the sand rather than tackling the issue head on.

I appreciate that I’m one of those in a position to make a difference and I guess that’s why I started playing rugby again. To practise what I’m preaching. To show that rugby is the best sport there is and that it can be for anyone, whether you’ve never picked up a ball before or whether it’s been years since you slipped a pair of boots on. It’s never too late to play the game.

After all, as James Milner said, you’re a long time retired.

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