The following reporting comes from the Valley CAS Team - Timmy and Clara - who are ESF high school students assigned to Valley for the season, to further their real-world experiences.

Timmy and Clara interviewed "Foggy" by Zoom and prepared the following account.

Position: Centre
Number: 12/13
Nationality: English-Filipino
Age: 23
Height: 5’10
Weight 98kg

What have you been doing during the lockdown to keep fit, keep connected and engaged?

I’m fortunate I work in Central as a personal trainer, at RAW PT studios and as an employee I’m still able to use the gym facilities to train. I can’t train any of my clients but I train myself, so I'm still carrying on and maintaining my weight routine. The track in Happy Valley is still open so I’ve been using that quite a lot just to get my running meters in every week. It’s hard with rugby—it’s difficult to train on your own: you can do your own solo skills, but the pitch not being open is not ideal, there's no team training. So, It’s about being with the boys and getting some skills and running sessions. Everything’s good on my end, just waiting for the rugby season to be back.

How do you find Hong Kong in terms of the environment for rugby compared to back home?

I moved here from the UK last September, so fairly recently. If we are talking about rugby specifically, it's definitely a step up—back home I was playing for my club Rugby Brighton and we were in nationals 3, so London and Southeast premier, which is 4 leagues below the professional league, so still a decent level but I would say that the level in HK in terms of the premiership is 2 leagues above that. So, it's very competitive and you have a lot of boys in the premiership squad and valley who were contracted with HK 15’s—they are professional, conditioned and senior players and experienced players like Martin Muller, Rob Lennox, Grant Kemp. So it definitely is the right environment for me to push my rugby credentials further and an environment where I can flourish.

How do you find HK overall, what are the best aspects of living in HK or some things not as good as compared to the UK?

When I talk to my friends back home I can't think of anything that is a negative, everything for me is positive. For me being a city boy back in the UK, I think the biggest thing in HK is the convenience for everything—how going far out to New Territories or Tung Chung is not that far in comparison to when I was in university in Brighton to London. It would take me about 1 or 2 hours, where I’ll do my lectures, then coming back, so 4 hours of my day was commuting. As for here, I’m very fortunate I live in central and I work in central so it’s a 5 minute walk; anything else like social events, or going to the rugby club it's a 10 minute taxi. It’s very cheap on the MTR, very convenient. Another thing is that public transport it’s cheap compared to Brighton or London where you pay double, triple that for a bus journey or a train journey. I love the fast lifestyle, so I’ve just been enjoying the lifestyle—work hard during the week and chill out on the weekend, going out with friends. I can't think of anything that's negative about HK.

When did you start playing rugby?

I started playing rugby when I was 6 years old, my father was a keen rugby man—he was a policeman back home—he played at a competitive level, he never had internationals or anything like. Every Saturday we would watch him play any club rugby, he was the driving force behind my rugby alongside my mother. So he took me to my first rugby club when I was 6 with my sister who enjoyed rugby at the time, that’s where I started in a club called Louis rugby club and then apart from 1 year when I was 15 to play soccer/football, rugby has been the main sport I played throughout my life.

Was there any injury that affected you greatly?

Fortunately, I haven't had any long term injury—long term as in being out of rugby for 3 months or more—I haven't had anything significant, just niggly things like shoulder injuries like AC joint injuries or ankle ligaments but that didn't put me on sidelines for too long, it was relatively short term. I had 1-2 head knocks which was 2-3 weeks with the protocols. I Have been lucky enough to not have any long term injuries so I hope that stays the case until I retire in 10, 15 years.

What has been the greatest accomplishment in rugby in terms of a career highlight?

My late fathers dream- watching him play every saturday we would religiously sing the national anthem - so a dream of mine and his was to represent England one day. So back when I was 19 I got picked up, there's a program called England Counties under 20s back home in the UK—essentially it's the top university players in England who aren’t on a professional contract. Through playing for my county—Sussex—I was filtered through the system and ended up getting picked into the top 23 to represent England Counties. We went on a tour to the Netherlands to play against the Dutch national team and we managed to beat them, so that was obviously a boyhood dream—something fulfilled for my father and myself.

Most recently, due to my mother’s Filipino heritage, I represented the Philippines National Team (The Volcanoes) both in the 7s and 15s format. Through the asia series in 2018 we qualified for the Hong Kong sevens in 2019—which is renowned for being the most prestigious 7s event in the world. We were invited to play in the qualifiers, so we played HK, Zimbabwe and Tonga. We played HK on a friday night, they just beat us by 2 tries. Playing varsity rugby at home, I was playing for 500-1000 people but in the HK Sevens I was playing for 18,000-20,000 people, which even to this day, is very surreal.

So did being able to play in the HK Sevens play a part in you deciding to move to HK?

To be honest, my mindset last year was that I would be in the UK the rest of my life. I always thought I'll be in the uk, I always knew and had the urge to go overseas because I didn't want to be in the uk for the rest of my life. I wanted new experiences and go to Asia or southeast Asia or other parts of europe. During the lockdown I signed up for a rugby agency called Inside Running, made little highlight videos of myself playing for the national team and Brighton—didn't think too much of it, then one of the agents got hold of me, Mark Wilson. We had a good chat and he asked me where I would be looking to go and I said that I would be open to any opportunity whether it’s France, America, he mentioned HK, Scotland. It just went from there really, and a few weeks later he called and said there was a potential opportunity for a club called Valley in HK. It went from there I had some good conversations with the club, with Mark Fatialofa and Grant Beuzeval, managed to sort out employment for work. I didn’t think I’d be in HK, it was never really on the cards, it just kind of evolved last year and the opportunity presented itself.

What would your favourite aspect of rugby be?

I suppose the biggest thing is the commadary, just the banter that you have with your friends. I love my individual sports like squash and tennis, but for me being an extrovert I think the people you meet on the rugby field you got the boys like myself and some of my friends who are 20 to 23, as well as some older players like Martin Muller or Rob Lennox—who've been around the block, who are 34. That instant connection, you don't find that in many other sports it's very unique, that's my favourite aspect of rugby: the socials you have off the pitch as well and the brotherhood you build.

In terms of the actual sport I love the and relish the physicality. I just think that 80 minutes of putting your body on the line for your mates to left and to the right, I think that that's such a great feeling. The values being held as well, just down to the core and cross to each level and that's why I’ll always be in this sport. When I retire, I'll eventually go into coaching. If I have children of my own, he or she will hopefully play rugby, I'll try to push them in that direction.

How would you say rugby has made an impact on your personal identity and affected your life in different ways?

I suppose the big thing for me is that it has allowed me to see a lot more of the world. Before covid with the Philippines stuff, and linking back to what I said earlier about being in the UK, I didn’t actually leave the UK until 2018. 2018 was the first time I went outside Europe, I went to the Philippines to meet my grandparents, my family, my mother’s family for the first time. Just from doing the national stuff it's great but it's giving me the chance to travel like Taiwan, HK, Sri Lanka, Korea, - places I'll never have gone to without rugby. It’s giving me a different perspective, cultures, meeting people, the friends that I've made throughout the travels, on the field and off the field has been significant. In terms of personal identity, it’s given me a broader perspective on life, not being no narrow minded—trying to understand different cultures and meet different people, that’s truly molded me. Hopefully, when we can travel again, I’m really keen to get out there and of course go back home to my friends and family.

You've only been here for 3 months 4 months and haven't been able to play rugby that much but what does valley mean to you?

I’m very thankful for the opportunity and for Mark Fatialofa and Grant Beuzeval for seeing potential in m. I'm very fortunate and grateful that they saw something in me. They brought me over to HK, in terms of all the admin, visas, accommodation, they have been great, so I’m so thankful for everything. The boys are the core to the club, everyone was so welcoming during quarantine. The boys were dropping me messages, having zoom calls, boys I’ve never met before but they were hitting me and friends up to keep our morale up. That quarantine process was made a lot easier with the boys checking in. Again, I’m very grateful for everything that Valley has done for me and the boys. Hopefully, when rugby returns, we can show that on the pitch and fulfil what we came here to do.

What is one piece of advice you would give to younger players?

Be a student of the game, and spend time watching rugby. I invest so much time in just actually watching rugby, that was something my father instilled in me at young age as we would religiously be watching rugby.

Jonny Wilkinson was a big inspiration to me when I was growing up. I tried molding my game at the time when I was younger to mimic his moves. So watch as much rugby as possible, pick your favourite player in your position, and see how you can adopt that into your own game. Also, not to be afraid to ask questions, whether you’re at a school level, international level, just ask as many questions as possible to your coaches and other players. Rugby is a sport where you share ideas and speak out to get clarity.

BONUS FUN FACT: our article welcoming Rob to the club was the most popular article on the website in 2020. Fact!