Ruaridh McConnochie’s first season playing professional XVs was a whirlwind by any stretch of the imagination. Twelve months ago he was finishing his sevens career at the World Cup in San Francisco and now he has been part of England’s training camp in Treviso and closing in on a place on the plane to Japan.
It is a remarkable rise for the versatile back and all the more so when you consider that life off the field has been anything but straightforward. Thankfully, McConnochie was able to post in April that his partner, Vicki, was free from cancer after 18 months. “It happens,” he says. “It’s life. She was great through it and she’s great now, she has been given the all clear. How you deal with it is all personal. It’s different for different people. We have a great a support network around us and we’re looking forward to the future.”
He speaks with great honesty about how quickly his rise has come, how unlikely it has been and how rapidly it could disappear. “Maybe I haven’t stopped and had a think about what has happened,” the 27-year-old says. “I’ve just tried to roll with it and enjoy it because it is such a short career. A few years back I was just a fan of the game so to be able to do this as a job is incredible. Make the most of it before I have to get a real job in the real world.”
McConnochie’s route to the senior England set-up is refreshingly unconventional. As a teenager he had come to accept that professional rugby was not for him, having been passed over at academy level. He went on a gap year to New Zealand, primarily as a teaching assistant but kept his eye in with a local club, Rangataua, before going to the University of Gloucestershire. From there, with the help of Phil Llewellyn, a university coach and former GB sevens international, he joined Nuneaton, then moved to the England sevens set-up in the spring of 2015. A feeling that he would always regret not giving XVs another crack would not stop nagging at him and with the help of Dan Cooper, who had been the England and GB sevens analyst, he moved to Bath last summer.
“[Bath] showed faith in me and offered me a contract and it was up to me to try and prove that I deserved it,” he says. “I knew I wanted to try and prove it but I knew it might not happen all at once. Having been out of the XVs game for three years and never been in it at that standard, I knew it could take a whole season, it could take two seasons, it might not work at all.
“I remember talking to people around August last year and just thinking that I wanted to learn the game as much as possible. I’d been coming in at the end of their pre‑season, [the plan was to] pick up as much as I could during the season and then attack this pre-season and force through there. It didn’t happen that way and here we are but I wouldn’t have thought this would happen in a million years.”
McConnochie’s chance with Bath came earlier than expected due to injuries and international call-ups last autumn and England began to show an interest towards the end of the season. Jones has been on the lookout for a World Cup bolter, citing the impact Nehe Milner-Skudder had for New Zealand in 2015, and on naming McConnochie in his squad this month he said: “He picked himself. He’s played brilliantly for Bath. Then we delved in a bit about his background, his character, had a few meetings with him and he’s a good character, good team man, ideal guy to fit in as a utility back for the World Cup. He is a handy player.”
High praise indeed, but McConnochie was not convinced at first when Jones tried to get in touch. “I had a few chats with Bath coaches just saying England were asking questions about me, asking about my background,” he says. “Then on a Sunday I got a missed call from Eddie, I didn’t know who it was, and a text message as well. I was, ‘hang on, I’m not sure about this’. You never know with some of the boys but I checked it with one of the guys’ phones. I rang him back and he said that he had been impressed with me this year and he wanted to get me involved in camp. I was a bit shocked really. Then I didn’t hear anything until I started getting a few emails through and then it was 100% true, Eddie wasn’t making it up.”
Clearly he is flourishing but after three years with England sevens, and with the Olympic rings tattooed on his right arm and a silver medal, won at Rio 2016, to show for it, McConnochie is convinced that young players would benefit from spending time on the circuit.
“Growing up I was a massive Olympics fan. I remember the 2000 Games in Sydney, getting up at 4am and watching it with my brothers,” he says. “I used to be massively into athletics so being in an Olympic Village with all these athletes that I have watched over the years, it was incredible.
“In terms of skills, more young people should be doing it. Maybe after that U20 age group because it would benefit them so much, putting their skills under pressure, as well as being in a world-class environment under massive fatigue. I know it helped my game massively, whether it be aerially or running to beat people one on one and backing yourself.
“My pathway was completely different, I wasn’t involved with any club and there is a lot of untapped talent in the uni game and guys that maybe slipped through the net at a young age and never got that chance, coming to 21, 22 years old, they can be massively beneficial for the sevens game and hopefully they can use it as a stepping stone going on to XVs.”
