Professional Players You Have Played With/Against

First topic message reminder :

From the ashes of the 606v2 user teams rises a thread to ask the simple question - have you played with or against any players (in any generation) thats worth mentioning here - tell us how the game went as well!

I'll start - played openside against a young Stephen Jones (wales 10 not wanna be reporter), we won the game but i can't remember much more than that!

Played with Iestyn Thomas and Ryan Powell in school.
Ian Gough for Cwmbran and Wales under 21's
Played against Jonah Lomu NZ u21's, Gareth Cooper and Gareth Thomas for Pencoed.

Played with two of Toby Faletau's brothers but never Toby. Trust me to pick the wrong brothers. Josh i always felt could be a good player if he wanted to be though.

I used to play for Pencoed Rhino-dragon, and ive snogged gareth coopers sister

BridgendBoyo wrote:I used to play for Pencoed Rhino-dragon, and ive snogged gareth coopers sister

That's another thread Boyo!

A mate or a mate, err... Don't think I can take this one any further!

AFewTooManyKnocks wrote:Went to Kings High School and played 1sts with Carl Hayman. Josh Kronfeld was one of our coaches. Back in those days you still needed a job as well as playing rugby in NZ. Josh worked as a PE teacher/rugby coach while playing for Otago and NZ.

Played against Richie McCaw (Otago Boys High) on a number of occasions.

Whilst we're name dropping I also played cricket with Nathan and Brendan McCullum. They were also Kings lads.

Mate, where are you from? You posted that gushy 'thank you from an aussie' to the kiwis after the world cup even though most of us didn't really think we were treated so well before and during.

Keith Earls, Luke Fitzgerald, Devin Toner, Conor Murray, Vasily Artymiev and Cian Healy. . . . .however our team used be soundly beaten anytime we played them. Luke Fitzgerald and Vasily Artymiev played on the same team they scored 8 tries between them when we played

Come to think of it...at School i use to play against Phil Belgian and Paul Gustard....

I played against Glen Webb, long story, trained with the Pontypool squad in the Summer of 1991. I have play with Mark Taylor.

No one of note - but I did play against Ceirion Thomas (old Scarlets and Leeds FH), Gavin Quinnell (what a monster but turns like an oil tanker) and Gavin Evans the Blues centre (a tw&t)

Im 22, and played against a fair few of the younger blues(and some dragons) players around the same age as me while I was at high school. Cant remember any in particular cause rugby wasnt my "main" sport back then.

One time that really stood out though was playing against Sam Warburton, im sure his brother played back then aswell. My cousin used to play in the backrow with them at Whitchurch high, he's playing league now, rubbish. Needless to say, Warburton stood out a mile back then, he was a beast.

Not rugby-related, but played against gareth bale in football (high school again), he played left wing, i played right wing, lets just say i ended up being owned so much by the end of the first half i was sent off for something that didnt even come close to resembling a rugby tackle, let alone a football one. he's definitely had the last laugh though.

Played against a 'Rock team (and beat 'em!) that contained Leo Cullen & Bob Casey as 2nd rows, and had Ciaran Scally (retired due to injury) at scrum-half.
Also played against Geordan Murphy when he was at Newbridge. I was the opposite 15 that day. He booted the ball a mile was all I remember. Beat them too !!
Also played against a Marys team incl Denis Hickie. He scored a try in Leinster schools cup against us from 60 yards out. Awesome player even then. (They beat us... boo.)

Like a lot of Irish guys here, if you played schools 1sts rugby, chances are you played against a good few lads now playing for Ireland.
I also played with a lot of lads who were better at that age than many of those guys, just didnt have the size, attitude, hunger etc.

I haven't played against anyone of note (not good enough) but my Brother in law played a trials match for the Midlands, and one of his fellow trialee's was Dean Richards. He remarked how as an excellent centre he was merrily smashing through the opposition when he came upon the figure of Mr Richards, who was unkown nationally, but who had already something of a reputation in the Midlands, and he said that he could visualise an England call up after this showing as he breezed past Deano, when all of a sudden Big Deans arm shot out and literally hurled him back where he had come from and deposited him flat on his backside. Well this happened a few times and as he said, the visualisations of his future England career ended right then!