Redruth is a brilliant traditional rugby club and instead of Amen Corner and ‘patrons’, we had Hell Fire Corner and some of the best supporters around.
I’d played plenty of rugby up until that point pursuing my dream of becoming a professional but joining Redruth was the line in the sand for me in terms of full-time rugby. That dream first started as a schoolboy watching Gary Armstrong play for Scotland in the then Five Nations. I played for my hometown club Hawick at first and was in the same Scotland U18/19 set-up as people like Greig Laidlaw, John Barclay and Johnnie Beattie. I was also part of the Border Reivers academy until it got axed. When that happened, Edinburgh and Glasgow were full up so I went back to Hawick and it was while I was there that an agent by the name of Martin Longden scouted me and suggested I moved south to play in the Championship.
I originally went to Plymouth Albion to play under Graham Dawe. Graham being Graham said, you’ll come in as third choice and you’ll have to work your way into the side, past Nigel Cane and Ed Lewsey. I went there on trial, played in a couple of warm-up games, and was going to sign but Mount’s Bay, who were flying up the leagues, made me a very good offer and I went there instead. They had some good players: Ricky Pellow, the ex-Bath scrum-half was there, Lee Jarvis, the ex-Wales 10, was there. But unbeknown to me a lot of stuff was going on in the background and the club folded at the end of that season and I left to go to Coventry for a short period before heading back down to Penzance to join the Pirates.
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