Bath man refuses to let his success bubble over...

Reporter: Martyn Torr
Date published: 09 September 2014


MARTYN MEETS...rugby star Kyle Eastmond

SOME people just deserve to do well. Not because of innate, natural ability — though this is quite a help — but because they are good people. Kyle Eastmond is certainly among them.

In any list he would be very close to the top; even at number one. But Kyle is well used to being number one.

He has been playing rugby since he was seven and was always destined for the top. And he’s a global superstar, make no mistake.

I spent time with him the week before he flew to New Zealand to represent his country against the world champions on their own turf. Later that week he was to face disappointment in the final of the Amlin Cup, days after his club, Bath, missed out on a top-four place in the premiership play-offs. But Kyle, as Kipling might have said, met the twin impostors of success and failure with equanimity.

He was hurting, emotionally if not physically, after defeat against Harlequins. His side - coached by Springhead’s Mike Ford - had been in the top four all season until that draining defeat.

Yet here Kyle as, drinking coffee with me, chatting with people from the One Future Oldham Sports Awards about his innovative sports foundation and arranging to be at the Queen Elizabeth Hall when the borough’s brightest sporting talents are recognised and rewarded. He’s a 25 year old with his feet firmly planted in reality.

There are no hidden agendas with Kyle. He’s one of us: an Oldham lad proud of his roots and his Oldham family.

He plays for one of the country’s best-known rugby union clubs; he scored a sensational try for England in Argentina last summer and he is destined for stardom in the World Cup here next year. But Kyle Eastmond will always be a lad from St Mary’s, Oldham.

We met up while he had a three-day break from his incredibly demanding rugby career. He spent those days with his mum Geraldine at the family home on the Oldham estate on which he grew up.

No flash hotel for Kyle — he has enough of that travelling for his career.

He did have “some minor issues” with his mum’s cooking — which he loves but which “probably doesn’t fit” the dietary requirements of his honed and toned life as an athlete.

He laughed out loud as he said this: he laughs a lot, especially at the absurdity of his privileged life.

Though you wouldn’t think it was privileged. The area in which we spoke was packed with squash and tennis players, swimmers, runners and people who had been to gym sessions and fitness classes. Not one of them recognised the sporting superstar. Or if they did, they kept it to themselves.

And that’s fine by Kyle, although he does embrace his life as a full-time rugby player.

He recalls the day St Helens RLFC came calling at his mum’s home to sign him up. Kyle was still very young, who had been spotted playing for Oldham’s town team. But he knew what he wanted from life, and that was rugby.

“I kept asking my mum to clean the house — not that it needed it — because I was so keen to impress the St Helens people,” he smiled.

The Saints — one of the biggest clubs in the game — paid his expenses to train with his new club until he was old enough to sign his first professional contract.

As a student at the Radclyffe School in Chadderton, Kyle had excelled at most sports and both Oldham Athletic and Manchester City scouts were impressed enough to take notice. But rugby was Kyle’s first love, probably thanks to his uncle, Emerson Jackman — himself a player of repute — who introduced an impressionable Kyle to the sport at St Anne’s ARLFC in Higginshaw.

He was soon making a name for himself in the academy and reserve sides at Knowsley Road and was on the first-team bench at 17. He made his debut at full-back against Salford when the club’s legendary Paul Wellens was injured.

“It was daunting. After about nine minutes I was gone! I suppose I did OK but it was so quick. It made me realise just how fit I had to become if I was going to make it. Until that game I thought I was a fit lad.”

It goes without saying that Kyle knuckled down and got himself fit with the likes of Paul Sculthorpe, Sean Long and Kieron Cunningham.

And all the while he continued to live in Oldham, looked after by mum and his three elder sisters, Sheree, Melissa and Kaisha. And of course Uncle Emerson, who kept him on the straight and narrow.

By 2009 Kyle had progressed to a regular spot in the first team and played in the Grand Final at Old Trafford, losing to a Leeds Rhinos team led by another Oldham lad, Kevin Sinfield.

Kyle scored all his team’s points in the 16-10 defeat and remembers beating two men before scampering towards the corner for what he hoped was going to be a try that would have kept Saints in the match.

“Then Sinny hit me. Where he came from I don’t know. I don’t know him that well but I have played with him for England and he is everything you want to be as a player.”

That England game was another milestone for young Kyle. He was in the park watching his nephew when the call came from coach Tony Smith: “I honestly thought it was a wind up,” he said.

It wasn’t, and Kyle came off the bench to make his debut against France, setting up a try as England won.

Kyle then played against New Zealand and in the final of the tournament against world champions Australia.

He leaned back and laughed. I got the distinct impression this young lad realised he had arrived at an altogether different level.

“Oh yes, people like Darren Lockyer and Bill Slater made me realise just how far I had to go.”

While Kyle was making headlines in rugby league he was tinkering with the idea of rugby union.

“The Premiership, test matches, massive stages like Twickenham. I want to be the best I can be and I always knew in my mind that one day I wanted a crack at union while I was young enough.”

He turned down offers from Australian clubs — including Parramatta — and joined Bath after seeing out his St Helens contract. It was a huge wrench to leave the club that had been his sporting world since he was seven.

And his new career didn’t get off to the most auspicious of starts, with a hamstring injury hampering his progress for four months. But this is a man made of sterner, Oldham stuff.

Soon he was playing centre for the first team and then came the call from England coach Stuart Lancaster to say they were monitoring his progress - sufficiently to take him on tour to Argentina last summer. He has also been in the Six Nations squad and his goal now is to make the World Cup squad for next year.

Not many would bet against it, even if the competition is ferocious. He’s a lad from St Mary’s, on a mission.