“Has anyone told you where we’re going on Saturday?” Simon Legg, Blackheath rugby club’s loose-head prop, asked his new team-mate at training on Thursday. “It’s the deepest, darkest part of England. No astroturf there, just a muddy field.”
“No cheerleaders either,” added Des Brett, the tight-head. “Only sheep.” Dhani Jones, the latest name to be added to Blackheath’s squad, nodded and tried not to look cold as the wind whipped across the training ground.
There is a big difference between the University of Phoenix Stadium in Arizona, venue for Sunday’s Super Bowl, and Polson Bridge in Cornwall, venue for Saturday’s EDF Energy National Trophy fifth-round match between Launceston and Blackheath. For a start, the American football match will be watched by a crowd of 75,000, while Launceston’s average gate this season is 1,300.
Yet Jones, a linebacker in the NFL for the Cincinnati Bengals, has put aside the glamour of America’s marquee event, which he graced three years ago for his former club, the Philadelphia Eagles, and will instead be warming the bench for Blackheath.
The world’s oldest open rugby club, which is marking its 150th anniversary this year, was approached by Red Line Films, an American TV company that is making a pilot for a Travel Channel show called Dhani Tackles the Globe, in which the 30-year-old American footballer tries new sports.
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“We were keen,” Harvey Biljon, Blackheath’s director of rugby, said, “and then came the twist: he had to play in a competitive fixture.” Blackheath, until a couple of recent defeats, were pushing for promotion from National League Two and weren’t prepared to risk introducing a rookie.
The compromise came in the cup competition, where Blackheath have reached the last 16. “In the league we can only use four replacements, but we can have seven in the cup, so we thought that would give us the best chance of getting him on the field,” Biljon said.
Biljon takes him for a private jog before training begins, passing the ball between them. “Try and spin the ball,” Biljon tells him. “I’m trying, man, I’m trying,” is the response.
It has been a crash course in rugby for Jones. “We sat him down with an Austin Healey DVD and videos of the 2003 and 2007 World Cup finals,” his producer said. “After that it was YouTube mostly.” Jones visited Welford Road to watch Leicester play Newcastle Falcons last weekend and has had just three training sessions with Blackheath to pick up some alien skills, such as handling the ball.
“I could go a whole season without touching the ball in football,” Jones said. Yet his handling seemed confident enough in training and if his positioning sense was weak, that was understandable. Blackheath will play him as a replacement flanker against Launceston and his scrummaging was as good as you would expect in the deep mud, while his lineout lifting seemed impressive.
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“His physicality is obvious,” Biljon said of the 6ft 1in, 17-stone player, “and compared to last week, there has been a massive improvement over three training sessions. There’s not a lot of coaching we can give him on tackling and with ball in hand all we can do is ask him to tuck it up and go forwards.”
What was his first impression of rugby, Jones was asked. “Tell him you thought the coach was a w***er,” Biljon said. Jones laughed. “It was really different,” he said. “I was running around too much, using too much energy. In American football, you have specific jobs to do and then you leave the field; in rugby you have to do offence, defence and special teams’ work the whole time.
“The thing that really grabbed me, though, was how much communication there is in rugby. The players are talking to each other all the time, working together to gain territory. American football is a more individual sport.”
Biljon praised his new player for being prepared to muck in. “He has come over here with a reputation as a superstar in the States, but he has been happy to get dirty with the rest of them, which has been fantastic,” he said. “We’ll start him on the bench and try to give him five or ten minutes’ play. Who knows, he could be our secret weapon.”
Jones was looking forward to his first — and probably last — rugby match in the Cornish mud. “I imagine the opposition will be gunning for me,” he said. “I’m sure there will be some extracurricular action on the field, but afterwards we’ll have a beer together and a laugh.”
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The American will be flying home while the Super Bowl is on — “That’s assuming he survives the post-match drinking,” Biljon said — and thinks that the New York Giants, who were his first team after university, will push the New England Patriots hard before losing.
“The Giants will give them a run for their money,” he said, “but I want the Patriots to win. Tom Brady [their quarterback] was a team-mate of mine from university and I’d like him to have that perfect season.”
As well as returning to training with the Bengals, Jones has a side-business in tailoring to look forward to. A couple of years ago he founded Five Star Bow Ties, which makes top-end ties from his own designs. “It’s a small business but I’m trying to make a go of it,” Jones said. “I hear there’s a rugby club in Paris that play in bow ties [Racing Metro] maybe I can design one for them.”
It seems reminiscent of another Blackheath flanker, Mickey Skinner, who was famous for his flamboyant waistcoats and is putting together a XV to take on Blackheath in July on the original heathland pitch to commemorate the sesquicentenary. Maybe Jones and Skinner should design a full formal outfit for the club’s evening wear?