When I had dreams of being an England player aged 20 I went to France for my degree year, supposedly to teach but ended up working for the Forestry Commission in the Pyrenees. I trained at the local rugby club and it was there they taught me how to pass French style and to run into space. When I started to cut up defences the following year in England and Wales, I didn’t have the heart to say why. The French simply played a different game in those days under the influence of the great Pierre Villepreux and a summer of learning the hard way changed my outlook.