Alex Mead isn’t a good rugby player. He’ll tell you that himself. “I’ve never been a good player, but I’ve always loved it.”

At 48, he’s still playing league rugby for Southgate’s first team, and he made his senior debut at hooker a couple of weeks before we recorded, after a whole adult life at scrum-half. He’s the editor of The Rugby Journal, managing director of the sports content agency Sporting Eric, and chairman of Southgate RFC. And he’s got strong views on how we bring kids into the game.

It started with “we need kids like you”

Alex grew up in Brixham. He wasn’t sporty. “Most people who played me at Brixham will say you never were sporty and still aren’t.”

But one moment made him a rugby player for life. “It was one of their mums who literally came up to me and said, ‘We need kids like you.’ I was a fat little eight-year-old and I knew that straight away.”

He played front row until he was about sixteen, then merit table rugby for Brixham, before moving to London. Rugby has been part of his life ever since.

Moving the club out from behind the trees

When Alex moved to Southgate, he found the squash club first. The rugby club was “hidden beneath the trees on the far side of this ground.” He’s been involved for about fifteen years, first as a player, then setting up the mini section when he had his son, and now as chair.

The old ground was beautiful, but nobody could see it. So he moved the club to a public park in Palmers Green, North London. There are posts up on the main pitch, the minis use an old bowling green, and the seniors go to a local pub after games.

“We drive past posts every day and so many people are seeing it.” It doesn’t have the trimmings of a clubhouse, but for visibility it’s been brilliant.

“I think pathways should be banned as a word”

This is the part of the conversation I’ll remember most, because it’s one of my own big bugbears.

Alex lived in Wales in his late twenties. “Virtually every kid I ever met who was twenty-five had been on some kind of academy or part of some setup in Wales, and when they hadn’t made it, they just stopped.”

The reason, he thinks, is simple. “It’s because they’ve got this idea, that’s my rugby journey, that’s over.”

He’s not against training kids or developing their skills. “Of course you should train them, of course you should develop the skills.” His issue is with the word and the message it sends. “I think ‘pathways’ should be banned as a word. You can talk about it behind the scenes, just don’t have it out there in public.”

He thinks good players will get found anyway, because rugby is a small world. And he points to university rugby, which he says is the best it’s ever been, as a place where a young player can make their own decision about how seriously to take the game, without being shepherded into a system and leaving their club behind.

Every kid, including the handful

Alex’s minis section accepts every kid. When another coach told him he had a “no dickheads approach”, Alex couldn’t understand it.

“Really we just want every kid. Where else are we gonna get our flankers from?”

He’s got one age group that he describes as “amazing” and “crazy”: way above their years in tackling and contact, and also a handful. The job, as he sees it, is finding ways to manage that while keeping the enthusiasm.

He’s also worried about smaller clubs. Some big clubs have sixty kids in an age group while the mini section down the road folds, and he’d like to see more thought about how to support the smaller ones.

Why it matters beyond the pitch

For Alex, staying in the game is about much more than rugby. Wherever he’s moved for work, he’s found the same characters at every club, and a place to belong.

“If you’re a single man in your twenties, Saturday night is the one night you don’t want to be on your own. And I think that’s what rugby does.”

Also in this episode

We also talk about his time on Total Rugby, his first ever sushi with Eddie Jones in Tokyo, the stories behind The Rugby Journal’s covers, the Rugby Kitchen of the Year, his Rugger Law Bore question, his best and worst kits, and the Sons of Serevi tattoo he never gets to see.

LINKS

The Rugby Journal: https://www.therugbyjournal.com

Sporting Eric: https://sportingeric.com

Southgate RFC: https://www.southgaterugby.co.uk

Brixham RFC: https://brixhamrfc.co.uk

Rugby Kitchen of the Year: https://www.therugbyjournal.com/rugbykitchenoftheyear

The early day motion for Caernarfon’s rugby kitchen: https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/66495

Rugby Lives podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0b4FRL7IRGY5oQMZ6wRkmq

Rhino Rugby: https://www.rhinorugby.com