Roger Pullan
At my junior club in Leeds, in the 1990s, two players' dads coached my team to four county cups in a row. Last week, back in England, one of those coaches died
Writing the acknowledgements for my book, I realized that to name all the people I met playing rugby and still wanted to thank would simply prove too unwieldy. So I named just two: Roger Pullan and Mick Howard, two dads who coached my junior team at Moortown RUFC in Leeds, England, in the mid-1990s.
Our pack was strong and mobile, our backs were superb. Roger and Mick’s sons, Matt and Jonny, played scrum-half and inside-centre. In four years, we didn’t lose a game.
Eventually, tensions between me and another kid helped push me to quit the club. Even by the standards of most 17-year-old boys, I was gauche and graceless. To my lasting regret, in leaving Moortown I upset many there I respected, Roger and Mick among them. But I will never forget them, for their kindness as well as their coaching.
Last weekend, sitting in departures at Logan airport in Boston, after a family memorial service, heading back to DC, I heard Roger had died.
I knew he’d been ill. Back in 2021, to mark his 80th birthday, his sons organized messages from his old friends in the game. That turned my mind back to all the training nights at Moortown, all the fitness work and passing drills and the games of touch when Roger ran and jinked like he did the day in 1979 when he faced Alex “Grizz” Wyllie and Sid Going, great All Blacks gone now too.
Roger was a great coach. Kind, but not soft. Tough, but not harsh. Inventive, but pragmatic. He coached us to do the basics well, then lace the backs’ work on top. And when he saw a player in need of particular attention, he set out to give it.
Roger saw, correctly, that if I was going to be any sort of second-row forward, I would have to toughen up. One night, when I was 16 or so, he decided to try to quicken the process. The passage that follows is from the unfinished, Clive James-esque, unreliable rugby memoir I’ve mentioned before:
By midwinter, the whole club was training on a churned-up swamp at the bottom of the first-team pitch, because that was as far as the floodlights reached.
One night, down there in front of the clubhouse, Roger Pullan used small plastic cones to mark out a channel, 10 meters wide and 20 meters long. He told me to stand in the channel. Then he sent the rest of the team down it, one by one. It was a simple proposition. Each player had to get to the other end. I had to stop them.
They worked in relay. The two props, Darren Casper and Jonny Kite. Ian Pratt, the hooker. Chris Houlding, second row. Matt Cain, the No8. Matthew Barron and Simon Worville, the flankers. Matthew Pullan, Roger’s son at scrum-half. Andy Nelson, the fly-half, slight and elusive. Jonny Howard, the inside centre, hard-running, packing a hand-off. On through the backs and the subs and back to Casper and Kitey and through the cycle again.
Some tackles I made. Some tackles I missed. The runners came on, boots slapping and sucking mud, breath like smoke in the air. With every hit, my heavy cotton shirt grew heavier. With every fall, my tracksuit slicked with grit-flecked filth. I warmed up, grew red in the face, cursed runners who cursed me. I made tackles. I chewed dirt. I missed tackles. I chewed dirt. I tried letting the player slip half-past then taking him down from the side. Roger told me to stop messing about. Kitey smacked me back on my arse. Casper went down with a splat. I got up, set myself for the next hit and the next and the next. I got on with it. I had to. Finally, the thing was called to a halt.
I never did toughen up. Not really. But through that session and others, on all aspects of the game, Roger Pullan showed me I did have it in me to be a decent lock forward, if I would just apply myself to the task.
One sunny day, not long ago, I found myself counseling my oldest daughter about a new ballet teacher who was asking a lot of her class. Walking up Amsterdam Avenue in Manhattan, I found myself talking about rugby coaches I’d had in Leeds, Durham and London. Mostly, I talked about Roger. I told my daughter he was demanding, but fair. That he knew what he was talking about. That he wanted me and my team to succeed. That we did. That his success after Moortown, with the Leeds academy, showed how good a coach he was. That it seemed to me her new ballet teacher was the same sort of guy. Turned out, he was. Ballet, rugby. Same thing. As my best man said, back when, what is rugby if not interpretive dance, with nosebleeds?
Of course, there was much more to Roger, and to the way he and Mick steered their sons and their team. The following bit of the memoir describes a quieter moment:
It was Easter, the four-day weekend, and we’d gone on tour to North Yorkshire. After a game at Scarborough, on the trip back to Leeds, I sat at the front of the bus. Roger Pullan sat across the aisle from me. Another parent manned an informal tuck shop. Players filled their pockets with sweets and cans of pop. I stayed sitting. Roger looked across.
“Spent up?”
I nodded.
He offered a 50p piece.
“Get yourself a Mars Bar, lad,” he said, and winked.
Indelible moment. His black shell suit, the one with the green, white and purple flashes. The cut of his grey hair. The wink. Simple kindness, to a kid, from so tough a coach.
There is footage of our team online. My own dad, gone too, can be seen.
Rest in peace, Roger.
Wow, what a piece of writing Martin. Thank you! ❤️
Great article, for a great man.
My overriding memory of Roger will be a combination of the first two photos… him wearing that black/multi-coloured shell suit doing an out the back of the hand pass whilst playing touch and pass.