“So the next season I moved to hooker and an opportunity came up with Saracens as a hooker.
“So I went down there having never played the position before and I learnt everything while I was down there really. It was very tough, I liked it but it was vastly different from tighthead. It suits me a lot better, I should have moved a lot earlier in my career.
“But it was good to be in a squad with some quality hookers there, they helped me get started and really brought my game on.
“And with guys like Cobus Visagie and Cencus Johnston there was no shortage of front-row teachers.
“In terms of the throwing you’ve just got to give it a crack.
“Last year I improved a lot I was doing at least 100 throws a day which equates to between 500 and 1,000 a week.
“Whatever helps you’ve got to do, that’s why Jonny Wilkinson’s one of the best kickers in the world, because of the immense amount of practice. And it’s just the same for hookers with throwing, I still try to throw quite a lot now.
“Maybe not as much but definitely every day, just guys catching up in pods after training, or I’ll get someone up in the aisles of the stand and I’ll throw to them. I’m not doing 100 right now but I’ll at least do between 30 and 50.
“I played Under-21s in Australia and nothing had come up, I was playing club rugby at Eastwood in Sydney at the time and a trial with Northampton came up but the club wouldn’t let me go.
“And then I think a trial with Leicester came up and they wouldn’t let me go to that either. But once the Sydney comp had finished it was a case of getting over here and getting in the shop window and trying to go from there.
“It would have been interesting to see how I would have got on at either Leicester or Northampton, but I was playing tighthead at the time and probably would have had to put on a bit of weight.
“It would have been interesting but I’m glad the way things have panned out I like playing hooker a lot more than I did tighthead.”
NEWCASTLE FALCONS: T Catterick, D Williams, A Tait, G Bobo, U Oduoza, R Miller, H Charlton (capt), L Ovens, A Walker, M Ward, F Levi, M Sorenson, P Browne, M Wilson, A Balding. Replacements: R Vickers, G Shiells, K Brookes, T Swinson, J Afu, C Pilgrim, T Biggs, C Amesbury.
