Rugby Lives Christian Day

Rectory Field, Blackheath FC (1883-2016)

Max Malins

Bristol Bears

He’s played against the likes of Martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson, cooked in front of 10 million viewers in a MasterChef final, but it is the future of player welfare that now has his undivided attention. This is Christian Day’s Rugby Life. 

I played at a club called Fylde RFC from the age of seven, it's where Bill Beaumont played. It’s quite a famous club. I was there until I was thirteen and then schoolboy rugby took over. I played every position there was to begin with, I was a lot quicker when I was younger. I even played prop for a little bit.

I was always a good all-round sportsman. I got it from my parents, they were both very sporty. At school I played cricket, golf, did a bit of shooting. I was northwest discus thrower as well, but rugby was my one true love.

I played 350 odd games in my professional career. 226 games in the premiership. I was 19 when I made my first team debut for Sale against Newcastle when Jonny Wilkinson was at the height of his fame. I was completely out of my depth, but I think I actually did alright on the day. I have won a few trophies over the years, a Premiership title with Sale and with Saints – quite a few European trophies as well.

Physicality never bothered me, I’m a big guy. I played against that Leicester Tigers pack at the start of my career, with Rowntree, Martin Johnson, Ben Kay – that was probably one of the toughest teams I played against, but I was never physically intimidated.

I had a lot of respect for some players. It was more about the quality of players that you would come up against. People like George Kruis for example, he was just a really good rugby player but really smart as well. He worked hard, played similar to me, we always enjoyed playing against each other, and I played with him a little bit when I was around the England squad.

We once had to wait for Chris Mayor to leg it back down the tunnel and put his match shirt on. He ran out on to the pitch in just his bib. It was when I was playing for Sale, we used to live together at the time. Philippe Saint Andre was the coach at the time, and he didn’t take kindly to that kind of thing.

I ended up on MasterChef by a complete spur of the moment. It was a mad experience; I had never done anything on TV like that. They make it as tough as possible: throw you in a room, don’t tell you where anything is, and you just have to work it out and go for it. They just want things to go wrong, they don’t want to see people cook stuff, they want disaster.

You’re not allowed to tell anyone you’re on the show. My family were getting suspicious of where I kept disappearing. Then the show aired during lockdown, it was the biggest TV audience it had ever had, one of the episodes had nearly 10 million views, so people probably know me better from MasterChef than they do from playing rugby!

When I was in the academy at Sale, they sent us to work in a hotel, that’s where I learned to cook. We had this mad French chef who let us loose in the kitchen for about five weeks and we had to cook for the first team. That’s where I learned all the basics. Then someone bought me a Jamie Oliver cookbook. I met him recently and got him to sign it.

I landed my first job with the Rugby Players Association the year I retired. I was heavily involved as a player representative for six or seven years and then voted in as chairman for three years. I wanted to stay involved with rugby and had always been fascinated with the stuff that happens off the field. For me, it’s all about trying to engage more with the players and bring in their expertise.

I was recently elected to General Secretary which is the top role in the organisation. That happened three weeks ago. It’s all about improving the position of players and making rugby in this country as good as it can be.

A lot has been thrown at rugby union in the last few years, let’s be perfectly honest. There has been a lot of bad news, but hopefully now we are turning the corner. We’ve got a lot of big agreements that are due for renewal in the next eighteen months.

Athlete representation is crucial. Some players need help, some players fall on hard times or experience difficulties. That’s where an organisation like ours or a trade union will provide the help that players need. From the players’ perspective, we’re there to drive things forward in terms of the standards, staying up to date with welfare considerations, making sure players remain engaged with the decisions that are made around that.

I’ve been doing a bit of commentating in the last eighteen months. I really enjoy it. I like talking about the sport and the opportunity to promote it. The World Cup is on the horizon in September, and I think that is going to break some boundaries, I’m looking forward to seeing it play out.

I’m hoping to get a nice holiday this year. I haven’t had much time off with the new job, so to have a bit of family time in the sunshine will be nice.

By Tyrone Bulger

Weekend’s Predictions

Rectory Field, Blackheath, Blackheath RFC, 1883-2016

The tale of Blackheath FC is as almost as old as of the that of rugby itself. Of eleven teams that met in 1863 to codify the game of ‘football’, they are the only one still in existence. Touted as the oldest independent club having had no attachment to a military establishment, hospital or school, their tagline is ‘where club rugby started’. With that moniker comes a ground with as much history as Twickenham, Murrayfield, or any other international stadium. This is the story of Rectory Field.

Located to the east of Greenwich Park, the rugged fields were first used by Blackheath FC in 1871, who used a space opposite the Prince of Wales pub which was used as a changing facility and clubhouse for many years. The club had been formed of old boys from Blackheath Proprietary School, who had been playing football to the Rugby School rules since 1856. Initially, they played as the Old Blackheathens, but due to lack of numbers, they soon opened their membership to the public, an unprecedented move at the time. As they came up against various institutions with closed membership, they became known as ‘the Club’, which is still used by Blackheath’s supporters to this day.

Following the first meeting of the Rugby Football Union in 1871, the popularity of the sport began to grow, and matches would attract crowds in their hundreds and thousands. Blackheath were involved in organising the first ever international match, when the leading 20 Scottish clubs issued a challenge for a 20-a-side game versus England. It was the club who proudly accepted, and Frederick Stokes, a Blackheath club member, became the first official captain of the English national team.

The initial grounds used by Blackheath were vacated after a match with Richmond in 1877 was abandoned due to a pitch invasion. They moved from one part of the heath to another. A pitch that became known as Richardson’s Field was their temporary home and would also host the first match between England and Wales.

Blackheath only stayed at Richardson’s Field until 1882, at which point it was purchased for commercial use. East of the field was a five-acre plot that would eventually become Rectory Field. The club first played there in 1883, against Guy’s Hospital, another significant name in the formative years of the sport. 

A year after their first match at the ground, they were joined by Mordern Cricket Club. In 1885, the Blackheath Cricket, Football and Lawn Tennis Company was inaugurated, and Rectory Field’s multipurpose existence was brought into life. The first premier cricket game at the ground was played between Kent and Surrey in 1887. Kent would become regulars there up until 1971.

The field hosted its first international match at the beginning of 1886, the same year the main pavilion was built, when England and Wales met there as part of the Home Nations Championship, a thrilling encounter no doubt which finished 1-1 with England scoring two tries - a try only granting the opportunity to score a single point by kicking the ball through the posts in those days. Between then and the eventual establishment of England’s national ground at Twickenham in 1910, all the home nations played there as well as Australia and the New Zealand Maoris, and a touring side from Frankfurt visited in 1894.

All sport was stopped for the First World War, and sadly fifty of Blackheath’s club members lost their lives. Rugby resumed in 1919, a year in which the Club won 23 out of 25 matches and had eight individuals playing for the various home nations.

In 1921, the company that had been founded by the various sporting bodies using Rectory Field were able to purchase the land and the acres adjacent to it. At this point, the stand which had suffered fire damage during the WW1 was rebuilt to accommodate up to 6,000 spectators. The decade was also graced with visits from touring international sides such as USA, who visited in 1924 as a warmup to the Olympic Games held in Paris that year, but that game was played at Old Merchant Taylor’s School rather than Rectory Field. Two years later, Blackheath came up against the formidable Maori All Blacks who won by a narrow margin, the final score being 9-5.

An unlikely merge with Richmond came after the Second World War, as Rectory Field had been left unavailable by the damage done during those years. The ground had been commandeered as an anti-aircraft site to defend the city. Doubts crept in as to whether the ground would ever be fit for use again, but with assistance from the RFU, the fields were returned to a respectable condition and the Club made their way back to Rectory Field in 1946, joined by London Irish who would also play there until 1958.

During the decades that preceded the move to professionalism, the Club were up there as one of the best. They had the highest number of internationally capped players in the amateur era. In the 1995/96 season, the game made its transition to a new era, of which John Gallagher, a man born to Irish parents who had moved to New Zealand and won the World Cup with the All Blacks in 1987, was the first club captain.

The next venture for Blackheath came in the spring of 1998, when they announced a joining of forces with the Auckland Blues to produce a club that would operate all months of the year. It was but a pipedream however, as other clubs in the English Premiership voiced their concerns about the move. The New Zealand business consortium supporting it backed out, leaving Blackheath in a precarious financial position. They failed to meet the minimum funding required to qualify for the Premiership in 1999, which put an end to any hopes held of competing in the premier division of the English game.

By this point, the Club had split into two branches: the professional setup of the 1st XV and Blackheath FC. The decision was made that they needed to reunite so they could continue playing at the highest level possible within their financial means. By 2007, more than 20 teams were represented by Blackheath FC and the Rectory Field grounds were not big enough for everyone. To accommodate, they acquired the ground at Well Hall, Eltham, on a 25-year lease, and by 2016 Blackheath had entirely moved out of their original ground.

Rectory Field is still a thriving hub for Blackheath Sports Club where rugby, cricket, tennis and squash are all played on a weekly basis, with Askean RFC, who play in the Kent 4 league, having called it home since 2021. As the sporting life of the ground lives on, so do the memories of it as one of the most important places in the development of rugby.

By Tyrone Bulger

From the Archives – Max Malins

With Max Malins back in the England squad and scoring tries, take a look back at our interview with him from issue 18.

From the Archives – Bristol Bears

A waterlogged training ground around the back of the old stand used to force Bristol to train on the car park. Struggling to stay in the top division, they forever lived in the shadow of their neighbours. But now, the biggest shadow is cast by them, from an £11.5m high-performance centre.