Ben Shepard

The host of Good Morning Britain was there when Mendez was the ‘victim’ at Twickenham, he appeared in Living with the Lions, he dressed as a Spice Girl to earn rugby beer money, he played football with Keith Wood, and his first and only true rugby love was Woodford Rugby Club. 

Rugby was a massive, massive part of my life growing up. It was really the driving force for me, as it was the only sport I really played until I was about eleven. I went to state primary and junior school in the 1980s and that was when there was no extracurricular activity, the NUT went on strike, so we had no sport whatsoever, but I got rugby from my local club. 

My rugby club was Woodford. My dad had played there, my brother Toby had gone through there from the age of four too. So, on a Saturday, we'd be down there for my dad's matches, my mum would be making the teas, and then everyone would be in the bar all day. I'd be chasing frogs and stuff around the back of the rugby club with all other kids...

I started playing when I was about four. There was this amazing guy called Harold Colley, who was the headmaster of a prep school around the corner, and set up the mini section at Woodford and it was just the most extraordinary world. I've got friends from back then that I'm still friends with to this day, you know, aged 47 from when we started playing rugby at four and five.  

Rugby was the highlight of my week, every week. My whole week built towards going to rugby on Sunday morning, running around, playing rugby, then having sweets afterwards. Come home, Sunday lunch, then the week would start again – waiting for the weekend that would start on Saturday with my dad playing. It would be nothing higher than the fourths or fifths. Dad was a winger, he claimed he was very fast, but all I’ve heard is that he was slow and had bad hands!

I can’t remember watching my dad play. But I remember sitting in the old stand at the clubhouse and thinking ‘one day, when I’m really, really old, I want to come here and watch games’. That place – Highams, Woodford’s ground – is still so emotive for me, I've got so many memories from being a part of that club. I don't get there as often anymore, but it still feels such a rich part of who I am is that club and my rugby life there.

I played scrumhalf for most of my minis and youth team. My dad ended up being a coach of our team for a long time as well. One of my most memorable moments, to this day, was when I was fourteen. At the time, me and my dad weren’t getting on brilliant because I was an idiot teenager that thought he knew everything and he was trying to sort of distil discipline in me, which was very difficult.

Anyway, one game, we were losing halftime and my dad came on the pitch and he just went absolutely ballistic. He was saying ‘this is effing rubbish’ and everyone was there going, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah’. But I couldn’t get over the fact that my dad had sworn. Everyone else was like reeling from the bollocking but I was thinking ‘my dad's never sworn in my entire life, and he just swore’.

I toured with my university rugby club, University of Birmingham. And that's where rugby sort of really came to life in terms of the social side. We went on some incredible tours including the ‘97 Lions tour [to South Africa]. We were following them [the British & Irish Lions] around and we were playing games against local sides. We were there for those first two Tests, so being there the day we beat the South Africans was incredible. 

We all got to feature in the Living with the Lions video. There's an amazing moment on the video after the Emerging Springbok game where, when the game finishes, there’s a big group of people singing various songs. And that's my university rugby club because we stayed there just singing songs, Wonderwall and all that. It was just brilliant, I've got a bright pink hat on.

For the second Test in Durban, I was dressed as a Spice Girl. I went with my best mate Sam, who is still my best mate today, and I went dressed in a Union Jack dress and boots. We were students so we had no money but we’d gone to one of the local pubs with a load of face paints and were painting people’s faces for beer. I just remember the atmosphere before the game, just being there and being a part of it, and being part of this procession going down the road towards the ground. Then to see them play so well... ...it was sensational.  It was our third year, so it was our last chance to say goodbye and then go off and get proper jobs.

Our big university nemesis was Loughborough. And one year we’d had a good cup run, we’d beaten them once already that season, and had to play them in the semi-finals. This was in the days before mobile phones – during the Easter holidays – and they brought the game forward and we couldn’t get in touch with everyone to tell them. I remember coming home and listening to the answering machine at home with a message on it from the captain saying they’d brought the game forward. I missed the match, and, to this day, I’m still furious about it. We had a scratch team and got turned over because they did some jiggery-pokery with the fixtures. I’m still bitter about that. 

I had been playing fly-half at university. But when I came to Woodford, we had this brilliant fly-half called Andy Weeks, he played fly-half forever and was just brilliant. You know, just an absolute legend. So I moved the ball back and actually probably fitted fullback better and loved it, so I slowly moved further on the pitch as I've got slower and less capable. 

I made it into the Eastern Counties side. I was playing in the county championship when that was a big thing, and I got to play the Belgian national side, so I feel like I’ve sort of played an international. I came home with five stitches in my eye too, not because of the game, but because my very energetic room-mate Dave Rowsell. He was a hooker and got carried away in the hotel room afterwards and threw me into the minibar, so I came with battle scars, just not from the match.

We were Rugby World’s Team of the Year. We’d been relegated the year before, but we didn’t go down because the league had been restructured, and we went the following season unbeaten.  We played Ipswich for the last game of the season, it was at home, packed crowd at Woodford, which was amazing. And we ran this move off the back of one of the scrums and it came off, and it was such a thrill to see the move work brilliantly, the timing of it was amazing. I ran the move and it was a blindside break around the scrum and scored the try – those moments, where all the discipline and hard work that you've put in pays off, that’s the adrenaline rush you don't often get when you’re involved in other sports.

My sister Alex started playing when she went to university. And within a couple of months she got into the Emerging England side, and was way better than both me and my brother, much to our annoyance. She was playing for Saracens in the late-90s but sadly she did her ACL and her career stopped very quickly. 

I’ve got some amazing memories of being at Twickenham. My parents would go to the Varsity Match every year, before the stands were developed, and we’d go with them. I’ve got so many memories of being there in the West Car Park with them when I was a kid. I was always blown away by the whole experience. Even to this day, I get the same buzz walking up to the stadium, it’s just magical.

I was at Twickenham when Mendez floored Paul Ackford. I think it was the first game I’d been to, and it was England v Argentina, and I vividly remember [Federico] Mendez being on the floor and you could see he was getting shooed by Paul Ackford. I remember saying to my dad, ‘look, look, he’s getting stamped on’. We were in the South Stand and then you followed what happened next, seeing Mendez get up and walk around and then jumping to punch Ackford and knock him out. Ackford was about 6ft 8in. I remember it all so clearly, it was absolutely mad.

I was a huge Neil Back fan. I was always a fan of players that just wear their hearts on their sleeves, so I loved Neil Back. And Lewis Moody too, I saw him at a Bremont event I was hosting, he left everything out on the pitch when he played. Dan Carter I loved too, I had a proper fanboy moment when I was having a drink with him at Soccer Aid. And then I remember watching Serge Blanco, part of this French team that played with such flair, and he always seemed to find space and was always so fast. Jason Robinson too, watching Jason Robinson do what he does. John Bentley, of course, Martin Johnson, Jonny and Will Greenwood – he just had this grace about the way he ran.  

I went to the 2007 World Cup final in Paris. None of us thought we had a chance of getting there, but when we got to the final I rang my brother saying, ‘we’ve got to take dad’. I wasn’t expecting us to win, because we’d not played brilliantly to get there. But then on the night, South Africa weren’t great, and we could have won. And, you know, was it a try? That was one of those really heart-breaking moments where I hadn't set my expectations particularly high, and I wanted to be there with my dad and my brother, but there was such a disappointment of not actually winning.  

I realised I needed to stop in the early 2000s. I’d just got a job and started working in television, I was 26, and we were filming the opening titles on the Monday – it was a show called Bedrock. But I’d played a league game on the Saturday, and it was against Colchester who were heavy local rivals, and I got shoed by somebody under a high ball and had to have five stitches in my eyelid again. When I went to do the filming on the Monday, I had a huge black eye and five stitches in my eye. The show was going to run for a couple of years, and these opening titles would run for that time. The make-up artist was brilliant, so wouldn’t be able to tell, but it did make me think ‘okay, this is getting trickier now’.

I miss the physicality of rugby. I've never been able to replicate that you know. I always enjoyed that side of the game, hard but fair, some of my friends would disagree. Obviously people talk about it all the time, but the camaraderie and the team spirit of it – I knew that the people alongside me would throw themselves down for the cause which might just be playing a local side in a derby, but it was so important to us. And then I miss the friendship and the enjoyment of those lifelong relationships. I miss the discipline too. You know, like when you’re training hard for something and those moments where it comes off.

Keith Wood’s house used to back on to ours. His kids were the same age as ours, and I’ve actually played football with Keith, he’s a very good footballer. Annoyingly. I took him to play this charity football match, and he scored a hat trick. There were all these ex-West Ham players there and you then had Keith smashing the ball in everywhere. Keith was someone who played in the front row, but could play in the backrow and liked the idea of being a halfback as well. 

I was lucky enough to host the tenth anniversary of the Rugby World Cup win with Martin Bayfield.  The entire squad was there, I mean that was amazing.  I remember sitting backstage with Martin in this tiny little dressing room and the actual Rugby World Cup was just sitting on the table there – just there, the actual Rugby World Cup. 

There’s such a huge difference between rugby and football. Can you imagine the football World Cup just sitting there without tonnes of security around it? I love that about rugby. I know it's changed, but even so. I’ve met a lot of those guys from that squad, Lawrence [Dallaglio] is a good friend, and they’re just so personable. I think the rugby players are really accessible and interested, they've always got plenty to say and they've got plenty to ask too.

I haven’t officially retired though. I used to love going back and playing in the sevens. But whereas with my football, I did my ACL recently, so that could be a dramatic moment where I say, ‘right I’m not going to play football anymore’, with rugby I never had that. So you never know, I could make some comeback. They do walking rugby now...