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.