I always wanted to play an exciting form of rugby

THERE were periods of my career where I felt like I was playing well enough to earn a shot with England. However, if you look at the way England’s gone, even with Marcus Smith now, he gets taken off when he is playing fantastic rugby just because he’s more of a flair player and as a result has a stigma attached.

- RYAN LAMB

Then they bring the more conservative, trusted kicker on. Sometimes your face or attitude doesn’t fit in those environments, look at Danny Cipriani.

I did a few things when I went away with England that failed to go in my favour. There was nothing too crazy but being young and naïve I snuck out a few times under curfew and I also got the names of coaches wrong in team meetings.

There was a lot of pressure from the management at Gloucester to win something and as a 20, 21-year-old that was difficult to manage. I thought the criticism I and the younger boys received at the time was harsh. If you look back, there are not many 19-21-year-olds doing what we did. We were a bit naïve at the time in how we didn’t expect the levels of pressure, you’re just playing for enjoyment at that age. Marcus Smith is 25 and they are still saying he’s learning his trade. We should have won something with the squad we had and the rugby we were playing but we needed experience in big games. Having players like captain Peter Buxton and Mike Tindall out in the Premiership final in 2007 really hurt our chances and we ended up falling short in a 44-16 defeat to Leicester. That Leicester side was one of the best the Premiership had seen with the likes of Lewis Moody, Ben Kay and Julian White.

After making my debut for Gloucester against Brive in the 2006 Challenge Cup quarter-finals, only a few weeks later I then started my first professional final aged 18. The club wasn’t going through a very good period at the time and Dean Ryan chucked a load of young boys in like Anthony Allen, Olly Morgan, James Bailey and myself. I remember the final vividly against London Irish, I had to come off around 65 minutes in because I got knocked out. James Forrester scored in extra time which was an amazing end to the game.