Teimana Harrison on the gaming community

For our long-read piece Gaming: a modern addiction, we asked Northampton back-rower Teimana Harrison to talk about his positive experiences with gaming. He told us the below:

“I’ve been gaming for about ten years. I started when I first came over to the UK. Coincidentally, Dylan Hartley gave me my first gaming console, which was an Xbox 360. My journey sort of started from there and it’s slowly progressed.

“I don’t take it too seriously. I’m on most evenings but I wouldn’t get upset if I miss an evening. And I don’t train to get better. For me, it’s a good escape. It’s where I forget all about rugby, I forget about what’s going on, I can immerse myself in something different. I play a lot of Call of Duty and I’lI never find myself in that sort of situation in real life. It’s a little escape into a virtual reality. I’m into drifting as well and I have a game called Assetto Corsa, which is essentially a driving game, very realistic. I can go on and I can practise little bits and pieces of my drifting. 

“I’ve met a couple of really good mates off there. Ellis Genge is someone I met online before I met him in person. Jamal Ford-Robinson I also met online before I met him in person. We built a good friendship and then ended up meeting in the rugby world after that. It is awesome. It is an awesome place for community. And when we had the Covid-19 lockdown it had become a cool place to meet up with your mates.”

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