Aly Muldowney

Stafford, Staffordshire. Seemingly unremarkable, with a ‘favourite son’ that penned the seminal works on fishing and another finding fame with Boon and Bob the Builder. It’s had its moments of excitement too, with Viking invasions and civil wars and was branded ‘Little London’ by James I. Now, it has a somewhat lesser-known, but still loved, favourite son back in the fold: Aly Muldowney.

The name will be familiar, but unless he played for your club, you may not quite be able to pin down where you saw ‘Aly Muldowney’ on a team sheet. A bit like finding Staffordshire on a map, you know it’s there and definitely a county, but where exactly is it, and what does it look like? 

And yet, the 6ft 5in lock is easy to pick out in a crowd. His career has taken in several sides that were either challenging or winning titles in their respective leagues, whether it was at Connacht, where he was part of Pat Lam’s side that surprised the rugby world by winning the Pro12, or with Exeter with whom he spent three seasons, helping them build towards becoming England’s top side.  Even his final club Bristol Bears, were on the upsurge, with Lam having signed him again for what turned out to be the briefest of final stops on the professional rugby circuit. Throw in among these clubs, Stourbridge, Moseley, Glasgow and Grenoble, and you have the archetypal picture of a rugby journeyman. And now that journey has gone full circle, returning to play in Midlands 2 West (North) for Stafford RFC. 

“To be honest, I never thought that I would leave Stafford,” admits Aly, as he talks to Rugby Journal in the clubhouse, decorated with no fewer than four of his playing shirts: Glasgow, Exeter, Connacht and Bristol. “I went to uni in Staffs because I had joined the rugby club, just going out with all the rugby lads, working part-time and loving life. I just realised that I had to move to progress. 

“I purposely moved around a lot after that, but that’s one of the reasons I don’t want to coach at a professional level, because you have to move. I don’t want to do that to my family anymore. My home club is Stafford and although I didn’t spend my entire career here, I can come and pay them back. I owe this club a lot and the people here as well.”

The son of an Irish semi-professional footballer, Stafford-born Aly’s first love was Manchester United. In fact, rugby wasn’t even his second sport, with basketball being his focus until his late teens, when he returned to rugby, having played the sport during his school days.

Ironically, it was basketball that brought his professional rugby life to an end. The last two years of Aly’s career were fraught with injury, as his time playing basketball came back to haunt him in the form of ankle pain, making the joints far less flexible than they once were. 

As we talk, Aly quickly looks at his phone, it’s 6.15pm, not too long until senior training now. He takes off his jumper, revealing a Bristol Bears training top, his initials embroidered on the left sleeve and his Connacht tattoo visible on his bicep. 

Bristol, Connacht and Pat Lam were always good to him. He was integral to helping establish the culture and implement the way that the side wanted to play at Ashton Gate with Bristol, but didn’t quite make the appearances he’d have liked. No sooner had he arrived in Bristol, he suffered a neck injury in training that required surgery. The lock says he probably should have called it a day then. 

“I did my neck and I was out four, five months with that,” Aly says, glancing over to his son Arlan, seven, who is outside the large windows that overlook the field from the bar. “I probably should have retired after that. I really should have. I did get back playing, I wasn’t the same player, I was worried about sticking my head into places – I did struggle to be honest. 

“I was just in the gym, warming up, doing a shoulder press, it wasn’t even heavy. I just felt something in my neck and it was like, ‘oh, that was weird’. It carried on being sore, so I went to the physio and they told me to stop doing weights. In training that afternoon, it was hurting when I was reaching for the ball and then that night or the next night, I was up all night with shooting pains up and down my arms and I lost all feeling in my fingers.

“It went on for a while, so they said they were taking me for an MRI, then they said I needed to sit down with them. They showed me the scan and my C5 had been bulging, but my C6 had slipped right in and had gone into my spinal cord. They wanted to test my biceps and I was doing one arm dumbbell bench press and on one arm I got up to 50kg, 55kg and they said to try the other side with 12.5kg. I held it up and my arm just fell to the floor. My triceps had completely switched off.

“The first thing that the surgeon said to me that was at my age, I would want to retire off it. But I had just signed for Bristol, coming from Pro D2, I wanted to prove myself. To prove to Pat that he had made the right decision. In hindsight, I felt guilty that I would have retired not having played for them. It would have looked really bad on a lot of people who had backed me. 

“When I did start playing well again, I did my knee. That was a long fourteen weeks out and I was always back pedalling from there. A bad two years really.”

Twelve first team appearances in two years wasn’t much of a return for Aly, but at the age of 36, with 229 first-class appearances behind him, he’d had a decent professional career. Although finishing as a lock, his road to the top had started in the backs. 

Playing in the Stafford third team as a centre, in the second team a fullback and for the first team a wing, before making a more obvious move to the backrow and second row. 

Stafford were in the lower rungs of the English league ladder at the time and it was playing for the county that he caught the eye of Stourbridge who offered the 21-year-old Aly a chance to play third tier to play in National 2 (now National 1).  He spent two seasons at Stourton Park, commuting from Stafford. During the second season, Aly was at a career crossroads, trying to balance what would be best for his future; professional rugby or working in an office.

“I compared myself to a lot of the locks in the league and I just thought; ‘I am probably one of the best here’, so it was in my mindset that I should try and push,” says Aly. “Stourbridge offered me a massive pay rise to stay there but then Moseley just rang me out of the blue. I was working for a company, just doing temp work and I decided I wanted to move. I had just moved in with Sam [his now wife], I was getting offered other jobs, doing interviews and then Moseley just came and said, ‘jump on with us, it’s full-time’.

“It wasn’t full-time rugby, you still only trained Tuesday and Thursday nights, but you had to go coaching kids in schools. Which I hated. It was just a waste of time. At one school I was teaching a classroom session and I was just like; ‘I am not qualified to be here’. If they wanted us to play a bit of rugby with them, that’s fine. But sometimes you’d get there, and they’d tell you that you were doing cricket and gymnastics.”

In the Championship, competition was fierce. Exeter were mounting their ascent to the top flight and in the 2008/09 season each of the top five would gather over a century of points. Aly’s regular opposition in the row were the likes of Nic Rouse, Tyler Hotson, Tommy Hayes, each of whom would go on to make a number of appearances in the Premiership. Despite Moseley being far from fancied, they secured the EDF National Trophy, beating London Welsh and Exeter before a showpiece final against Leeds at Twickenham. 

“We defied all the odds, we were rank outsiders,” says Aly. “For the quarter-final Ian Smith, the head coach, had gone away on holiday because he didn’t think we would get that far and wasn’t really bothered about it. So, we put out the second team and they actually won at London Welsh.

“We took the semi-final really seriously, won the double header against Exeter and we got five points on them. That got us there safe and in the final where we beat Leeds and beat them convincingly. It was huge for Moseley.”

Not long after that trophy at Twickenham in 2010, Aly got his first taste of top flight rugby. Just eight years after lining up in the backs for Stafford, Aly was picked up by Glasgow Warriors in the Celtic League, in order to play for a team that had just finished third in the league with the ‘Killer Bs’ of John Barclay, Johnnie Beattie and Kelly Brown running riot in the backrow. 

Scotland qualified, Glasgow’s head coach, Sean Lineen, snapped up a then 27-year-old Aly. “I loved it up there,” he says. “But my family, especially my two step-boys (Isaac and Elijah), were really struggling and it was quite hard to see them sad, all the time. We said that we wanted to move. We had been speaking to Exeter the year before, but nothing really materialised, but when I became available Rob Baxter signed me within a few weeks.”

Exeter Chiefs had only been in the Premiership for a season, finishing eighth in their first campaign. The presence of Tommy Hayes and James Hanks meant starts were few and far between, Aly making sixteen in two seasons, 34 more appearances coming from the bench. Still having effective contributions as a replacement, regularly making twelve to fifteen carries a game and having a positive influence, Aly wanted to start more.

“People think it is great being a professional rugby player,” says Aly. “But if you are not playing, it is a dull, dark place to be. Sitting in meetings for hours on end, watching a game that you have already had to watch from the stands once, then going through training as the opposition, getting the team ready. When you are involved every week, life is so much better. You can put up with so much more, there is more of a buzz around the place.

“It got to a point where I was doing well, performing well, starting a lot of games and they offered me a contract at a point when it was the open market and a lot of clubs were interested and throwing around a lot more money than Exeter. If they had upped their offer, I might have stayed. But they didn’t budge, and Connacht’s offer booted them out of the window.

“There were a few Premiership clubs that were close to Exeter, offering some decent cash. When Connacht came in, with my mum and dad being Irish, living in Ireland was a really exciting thought and we figured if we were going to leave Exeter, we might as well have a complete change. So, we moved. And we loved it.”

It is hard to believe that in 2003 Connacht fans in their thousands took to the streets of Dublin to stop their team being dissolved. Despite joking that Galway can be a pretty miserable place, there is clear love for Ireland’s west from Aly. Behind him sits his Connacht holdall, his work lanyard strewn across it and a tweed jacket delicately folded on a separate chair to the side. Arlan briefly runs through to see where at Coopers Park is off limits, “just stick to outside” is dad’s response. 

In Connacht, things didn’t start well. In his first season, Aly was frustrated once more, playing second fiddle to New Zealand import and team captain, Craig Clarke. But after the Kiwi was forced to retire on medical grounds, he was installed in the first choice second-row partnership with Ireland international, Ultan Dillane. Aly was also given more opportunities by Lam, asked to call the lineouts for the first time in his professional career.

“That was probably the biggest difference, having to call the lineout, then playing 80 minutes every week,” he says. “There was a lot more responsibility on you. I didn’t enjoy it at first, but then I loved it. I got pretty obsessed with the lineouts because on the pitch, there is no coach, on the weekend, you are the one that has got to make the decisions.”

Cementing that partnership over the 2014/15 season, the following year Aly and his teammates would bring a first ever title back to Galway. Level on points at the seasons finish with Leinster, Connacht battled to the Grand Final with a win over the previous years’ champions, Glasgow. Playing the final against Leinster in Edinburgh, Aly played the entire 80 minutes, combining with skipper John Muldoon to guide their pack up and down the park.

Aly’s friendship with Muldoon would be renewed at Bristol, the lock teased for always sitting with his former teammate, before making a point of sitting at the opposite side of the room in jest. Their relationship was a strong one from virtually the minute Aly stepped foot in Galway, the pair often in one another’s company. In fact, when the Connacht squad were stranded in Siberia following a Challenge Cup pool game, Aly and the Ireland international were more than happy to make the most of the situation in a scenario that Aly now describes as a great instance of the culture Pat Lam is now trying to develop at Bristol.

“No one moaned, no one was negative, there was nothing else we could do,” Aly says, before a grin crosses his face. “To be honest, when we first knew we weren’t going home that night, we were all dead excited. Me and Muls were sitting in the airport, just having a couple of beers before our flight, because of the time difference we had all been given sleeping pills to have; luckily, we hadn’t had them yet. We were just having a couple of beers, saying how the trip had been amazing and it was a shame we couldn’t have had one night out. 

“Then, someone came in and said the flight was delayed an hour. Great, a couple more beers. Then another hour; a couple more beers. Then the flight was cancelled, Pat said we could go out and enjoy ourselves. Thinking we would be flying back the next morning, we all went out, found this nightclub, had a great night and got back at silly o’clock in the morning. We then had a team meeting that day and we were told that we would be there a couple more days. It just made our trip.”

That Grand Final would also see the tides of change at the Sports Ground. It was known long before the final that Aly and more of the teams’ star players would be leaving for pastures new. Some players simply felt that it was time to leave, while others such as Aly had been told there was no longer a place for them at the Sportsground due to financial constraints. 

Aly was heading south to Grenoble, while Robbie Henshaw would be going to Dublin, AJ MacGinty to Sale Sharks in the Premiership and prop Rodney Ah You to Ulster. “Everyone knew that I had signed for Grenoble, all of us, me, AJ and Robbie, we all knew that was our last game,” Aly says, his voice carrying an air of emotion. 

“I had put it out of my mind, about leaving, for a long while. I didn’t want to think about it in that sense. It was going to happen. It was set in stone. I just wanted to make sure that we did the best that we could for Connacht and bring home the trophy, which we all did. I wanted to do my part for the team. I didn’t want to leave but there was no contract for me. 

“It was unbelievable. We didn’t get back until about three o’clock in the morning or something daft like that. The next day we had the open top bus. There were so many people at the final and we knew the next day was the Edinburgh Marathon, so we didn’t know who would be around. There were thousands of people in Galway. We were out the whole week, had an unbelievable time. Everyone treated us like superstars.”

It was Bernard Jackman that took Aly to Grenoble. After five seasons as the French club’s forwards coach, the Irishman was finally top dog and one of his first moves was to sign the Connacht lock. A phone call offer was followed by a trip to the south-eastern Alpine region of France straight after a Thursday night game at the Dragons, to take a look. Everything about it, felt like the sort of place to see out a career. 

One year after the Pro12 title, Aly and his Grenoble team-mates were relegated, and Jackman was released mid-season amid off-field turmoil. Aly stayed and helped the club gain promotion back to the top flight, but somewhere his mind was on being elsewhere. 

“There was a lot of off the field stuff, the year round,” Aly says. “A lot of bitchiness, backstabbing. There was loads of things that just accumulated to a lot of bad times. But I really enjoyed my first year with Bernard Jackman coaching, I thought he was a he was a great coach. A great guy. He and Mike Prendergast and Aaron Dundan, I really enjoyed my first year, but it was a difficult year as well with things that went off.”

At the wedding of his former Connacht captain, Muldoon, another opportunity presented itself. “Pat [Lam] had tried to sign me the year before, for Bristol, but I had already agreed with Bernard, so I didn’t want to go back on my word. Then, I saw Pat at Muldoon’s wedding that summer in Ireland. He asked if my contract was up and I said that it wasn’t, but I could leave whenever. 

“He said that was okay, because Bristol were in the Championship that year and the budget wasn’t there, but he would come and get me the next year. I didn’t think anything of it. Then the next year came along and he rang me up and offered me a contract. Then we moved to Bristol.”

Aly’s final move has brought him full circle; Stafford to Stafford. In coming back to his hometown, Aly is bucking a trend. Industry has long left – in a place that was once renowned for shoemaking – and, in the past ten years, Staffordshire University has all but left the area. Only the nursing course remaining. For work, Aly is combining the coaching role with working as a community fundraiser at Caudwell Children out of Keele University. 

It’s all good for Aly though, as his club also bucks the trend, people haven’t left, and the coaching staff is made up of old team-mates that he knew when he was last playing at the club. Although Stafford is not the most attractive place for players to move, due to the lack of local businesses, on the field, players generally come from the local area. “The rugby club has gone from strength to strength, they have got an unbelievable facility now and for the level we are at is spectacular,” Aly admits.

 “With the new coaches; Motty (Darren Mottershead), Pete (Walker) and Dean Rodwell, these are all guys I played in the first team with. Hopefully we will progress really well over the next few years. We want to grow as a club, go up just a league or two, not too far that we get into some financial straits. We want to stay as a focal point for the community and attract local people down.

“A load of clubs, like we are finding, are losing a lot of their good players to a club a league above, two leagues above who are offering a few quid a week. These are bad financial times, so people are going to take the money. It is tough and people are just blanket canvassing, trying to get as many players as they can. It is really tough. For me, grassroots rugby should be about playing some good rugby, players coming down to enjoy themselves, becoming better players and looking after your juniors.”

When Aly next represents Stafford, it will have been fifteen years since he left for Stourbridge. It was an unexpected career for a man who first showed up as a nineteen-year-old and stood in the backs before the desire to be on the ball took over. Now 37, Aly has few regrets from his time as a professional and even before then with Stourbridge.

“I’m fairly happy,” Aly says. “You can always look back and start saying that I wished some things had been different or that I had the chance to play international rugby. But, you know, if you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough. I would have loved to have had that opportunity, but it never happened.

“Maybe it could have happened, but I would have been too old, or it would have been too late. I had a great time. I loved moving around, seeing different parts of the world, meeting different people, different cultures. I look back and I am really happy. For now, I’m going to keep playing because there are going to be a few mates playing. So playing this year, taking part in a few socials, enjoying myself and having a bit of fun.”

Story by Joe Harvey

Pictures by Darryl Vides-Kennedy

This extract was taken from issue 11 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.