Brive’s Bright SPARK

Shaun Perry was a welder before he came late to professional rugby, but Brive decided he had the tools necessary to make an impact in the Top 14. Alan Good met him in central France to hear his unusual story.

THREE times during a long chat at Le Club XV, the little brasserie attached to CA Brive’s clubhouse, Shaun Perry mentions his wife, Kimberley. On each occasion, the affable English international scrum-half does so with a sense of guilt.

Kimberley must wish she’d never asked Perry if he was perhaps playing within himself after a decade and a half with Dudley Kingswinford RFC (nope, I’d never heard of them either) in the English midlands. Since then, she has belatedly followed her husband to Bristol, across the English channel to Brive in central France and this summer, they’re off back home to Worcester.

Before the madness, the normality; Perry was in his mid-20s, and in his element, working 40-50 hours a week as a welder, and togging out with his mates for a club he loved at the weekends. Then his other half’s suggestion got the cogs turning in his mind.

“I didn’t turn professional until I was 26,” Perry, now 32, explains. “People ask why I didn’t turn professional earlier, and the answer is I don’t know; I was playing for my local team, had been there since I was seven, and I didn’t ever think of moving on. Rugby was a hobby.

“Kimberley asked if I thought I could play at a higher level, so I started ringing around clubs. Coventry offered me a trial, and I got a semi-professional contract for a second year. Then I played against Bristol when they were in Division One, and had the famous argument with Hilly (Bristol coach and former England scrum-half Richard Hill) at the end…”

Hang on, what famous argument? “Oh, I scored a try that was disallowed and he agreed with the referee. He called me over and said something like ‘Oi, son’, to which I replied ‘I don’t know what you’re saying, I’m not your son…’. I didn’t know who he was, my rugby knowledge was fairly limited.”

Hill clearly liked the ballsiness of the Coventry number nine, because a couple of weeks later he recruited him for Bristol, as the newly-promoted side prepared for a tilt at the Premiership in 2005/06. That meant professional rugby for Perry, and amazingly, 14 months later he was marking his first England cap with a try against the All Blacks.

Fairytale stuff so far, but no sooner had Kimberley — who was studying law at the time — belatedly joined him in Bristol than the club were relegated in 2008/09.

In between, his England career had stalled too — he’d thrown an intercept pass to Isaac Boss during Ireland’s famous 43-13 win at Croke Park in 2007, and was dropped by Brian Ashton following England’s 36-0 mauling by South Africa during that autumn’s World Cup.

He missed the 2008 Six Nations with a fractured windpipe, and by the time he was fit again, Martin Johnson was busy putting his faith in scrum-halves such as Danny Care, Paul Hodgson and Ben Youngs.

Perry’s international status had nonetheless won him improved contract terms at Bristol, something of a double-edged sword as he was one of those they needed to cut from the roster upon relegation. He was willing to stay and help them attempt to bounce back but when Brive came “randomly” calling, he couldn’t resist dipping a toe into unknown waters.

“It’s a short career so you have to make as much money as you can, and I did fancy a change,” he says. “It wasn’t easy; in the first season I’d moved over on my own. Like I said, I’d moved my wife to Bristol, she got a job so she couldn’t just leave.

“I did feel for her because I moved over on my own. And now, she’s just moved out here and now we’re moving back (to Worcester)! But you have to take your contracts where you can get them. It was a good option.”

Cue a culture shock on all levels, particularly for a man who had never learned French at school.

“It was either do a language or do art, so the good student I was, I decided to do the one where you could just sit there and draw for half an hour,” Perry recalls. “It was hard at the start but it’s written in our contract that we have to have two French lessons a week, so that helped. The (French) lads help you out as they want to practice their English as much as you want to practice your French.”

“I can easily go a few days in Brive without speaking French. In shops, restaurants, because your accent is different they know you’re English, and they want to talk back to you in English.

“But I can get by, more so in rugby terms; that’s what people want to talk to me about anyway. (On the pitch) there are times when you want to shout at the forwards because they’re being lazy. You do find yourself having to work out “get up off the floor” and translate it. But the boys understand you anyway when you’re swearing at them, no matter what language you speak!

“I do have to really concentrate in team meetings though, because they talk quite quickly, and if you switch off you’ve lost track of what’s going on. I find myself sometimes really staring at Ugo (Mola, head coach). He must be thinking ‘What a weirdo’.”

Despite the language difficulties, Perry was a big hit in his first season at Brive, playing in 31 of 32 games. While everything was coming up roses on the pitch, he admits some of lifestyle changes took some getting used to.

“I’m from the midlands which is always busy, and Bristol was a big city with two unis that’s always buzzing. Then you come to somewhere like Brive and it’s quiet. But it’s nice too. For example, on a Sunday, there’s nothing open. No matter where you go. So it’s nice to just sit back and do nothing.”

When Perry’s England colleague Steve Thompson was at Brive, he used to fill such lazy Sundays with boar hunting. Was Perry ever tempted to join him?

“I’d probably trust him with a rugby ball, but I wouldn’t trust him with a gun!” comes the quickfire reply. “If he’s standing behind me with a big rifle, I wouldn’t be best pleased. You never know what’s going to happen around Steve. I just never found myself in that situation… (he trails off)… in the back of a van… with a gun…”

Unfortunately for Perry, a metaphorical gun was put to his head this season. The arrivals of Toulouse scrum-half Mathieu Bélie and Argentinean Agustin Figeurola have seen him left on the fringes at the Stade Amédée-Domenech.

Given the miserable season Brive have endured, fighting against Top 14 relegation amid coaching departures and rumours of dressing room distress, that might be a blessing in disguise.

Only the Amlin Challenge Cup, where Perry has seen more game-time and may do so again when Munster come to town, has offered the club some respite, and although he doesn’t say as much, you get the impression Perry won’t be departing with too heavy a heart.

“I haven’t really been involved this year. I don’t want to just be out here sitting in the sun and not playing rugby. I want to play — that’s my ambition, that’s what I’m here for,” he says.

“The weather, the culture, is all great, but my main priority is to play and I don’t want to stay at a club I’m not playing for. My contract was up at the end of the season, they didn’t speak to me about renewing it, so I had to look elsewhere.”

Mindful of the fact that his deal with promotion-chasing Worcester — where he’ll link up with former mentor Hill, and former Brive and England half-back partner Andy Goode — could be the last professional one he’ll get, he also admits it’s time to let Kimberley wear the trousers in the Perry household for a while.

“We need to start thinking of her career as well. She’d just finished qualifying as a solicitor and I said ‘Can you come out here’ (to France). I’ve dragged her around Europe for my job!” he laughs.

“Worcester will be a new challenge for me. My last season at Bristol wasn’t my best, so I’ve a few critics I’d like to prove wrong. I want to show I still have the ambition and fight in me.”