Isle of Man

On an island famous for speed, the seeds are being sown for a new national rugby side. Helping them grow are Portuguese, Kiwis, Namibians and, for one weekend only, Bryan Habana.

Gordon Bennett. He had a hand in starting it all. And, more than one hundred years later, his name is undoubtedly spoken by those who witness it. 

The American playboy millionaire James Gordon Bennett Jr, whose name became the literal byword for incredulity, had a passion for all things fast. Yet even he, in modern times, may have been taken aback by the Isle of Man TT.

Bennett, who once had an engagement to a socialite abruptly ended after deciding to douse the future in-laws’ fireplace with his own urine, had a passion for all things fast. He launched assorted racing series – across land, sea and air – all over the world, and they included the first automobile race on the Isle of Man. 

The Gordon Bennett Eliminating trials were centred around ‘touring automobiles’, and had been set for the UK but, with speed restrictions capped at 20mph, it was moved to the Isle of Man where motorists could really put the pedal to the metal. That first race, in 1904, was won by Clifford Earp in Napier at a scorching average speed of 35mph. A year later, bikes were added – average winning speed  30.04mph – and, two years further on, the inaugural Isle of Man TT saw 25 riders, across two categories, attempt ten laps of a 15-mile course. The fastest average speed was just over 38mph.

Today, the average speed of the race is 131mph, with even the sidecars managing 118mph. The record average speed is a blistering 135.342mph, while the speedometer has been pushed to a barely believable 206mph on more than one occasion. Gordon Bennett.

Bryan Habana knows a thing or two about speed, having raced all kinds of men, machine and mammals in the past, but today the South African’s life flashed before him. 

Moments before, the Rugby World Cup winner had been trundling through the island’s capital, Douglas, on the back of a trike – as in the motorised, turbo, 1.6litre, 115bhp kind. He was being told of the island’s history by his driver Paul as he went. 

He’d have been told all sorts of interesting things about this 30mile by 10mile slither of an island in the middle of the Irish sea, halfway between north west England and Ireland. Little snippets about this self-governing land of 84,000 would definitely have included a fair bit history. Like how it was once home to Irish missionaries, was later invaded by the Vikings and came under the rule of the King of Norway, who sold it to Scotland, before inevitably becoming English, and then British [but not part of the United Kingdom, just a crown dependent]. He’d have also heard that their parliament is the oldest in the world – 1,000 years – and that once a year its two branches [the House of Keys and Legislative Council] all meet on a mound bound with soil from all 17 parishes, for an open-air session.

Other things Paul probably told his 124-cap passenger: they have their own language [Manx, a Gaelic variant, spoken by few], their three-booted emblem comes with the phrase, ‘Whithersoever you throw it, it will stand’; and, as Bryan likes a bit of golf, he could have dropped into conversation that despite having only eight golf courses, four of them were the work of two of the greatest golf architects of all time, Old Tom Morris [St Andrews] and Alister MacKenzie [Augusta].

Bryan would definitely have been impressed. 

And then, while taking in the history and natural, Scottish-links-style beauty – he may not have noticed they’d left the safety of the Douglas roads, and were now on the public roads that form part of the Isle of Man TT circuit, where there are no speed limits.

Seemingly stuck behind a lorry with a bend fast approaching, Paul darts out and floors it past not only the lorry, but two other cars as well. With what doesn’t seem like enough road, and with cars on opposite side and that bend getting ever closer, Paul expertly slips back into his lane, takes the bend and disappears into the distance. Once again, Gordon Bennett.

We catch up with Bryan at the Creg-ny-Baa pub, quiet today except for a handful of touring bikers, but home to thousands of spectators on race days. “That was pretty intense,” says Bryan, whose arms had shot into the air when Paul made his move. “I think we got to just over 90 miles per hour, and it was pretty scary to be honest. 

“I think the biggest thing, is that you’re on a public road with all the cars coming and going – and there was a place where we overtook with a corner coming up and Paul was pretty strategic with how he did it – it was pretty impressive. I’m not a massive adrenaline junkie, but that got the adrenaline going.”

Just over a year after leaving his final club Toulon, Bryan has kept himself busy. We’re told by the organisers of his visit – Manx outfit N7 Sporting Events whose co-founder is a family friend of Bryan – that he had one weekend free in his diary and this was it. He’s spending three days doing talks, dinners and coaching sessions among the island’s rugby population. He’s a day in when he hits the road with Paul. “First of all,” begins Bryan on the topic of the island, “it’s the calmness and serenity of the island. You come with knowledge of the financial benefits [a tax haven, most businesses pay 0% income tax or just 10% if you make £500,000 or more], but the people here are incredibly friendly, they’ve been so hospitable, and it’s pretty scenic. 

“I got here and phoned my wife yesterday and said, ‘I’ve got a feeling we could be moving to Isle of Man given the lifestyle it offers’. There’s a lot of assimilation with the countryside and living outside the cities of South Africa – it’s lush, its green, and pretty cool.

“I’ve heard of it before as there’s a mutual family friend who lives here, but not had the understanding until you get here and realise how small it is – it’s 30 miles by 10 and it’s difficult to conceptualise that in a country as big as South Africa where that’s the same size as half a town. The financial benefits and everything that goes with that is well-known globally – I think Cristiano Ronaldo has a business of sorts over here, not sure how often he’s been here though.”

Bryan continues his tour of the Isle of Man TT course, while we head north to find some local rugby.

The Isle of Man is shaped like a slender leaf, with a handful of rocks posing as islands or islets around it. Only one of the small outlying chunks of land, the 618-acre Calf of Man, is inhabited. Just half a mile off the south coast it has a population of two.

You fly into the south of the island at Castletown, then it’s a 20-minute drive to the capital Douglas [population 28,000, give or take] almost halfway up the east coast. Taking the mountain roads 30 minutes north, you find the most northerly major town, Ramsay [population almost 8,000].

En route, we stop at the Guthrie’s Memorial, built to honour the life of six-time Isle of Man TT racer Jimmy Guthrie, who died in the 1937 German Grand Prix, aged 40. It’s also the site of one of the most famous views on the island. From here you can see the very tip of the island and, as it’s a clear day, Scotland just to the north. “Is that Ireland to the left?” we ask a couple sat on a nearby bench. “No, that’s the hookie part of Scotland, Galloway. People often make that mistake.”

The man takes the opportunity to chat, as everyone does on the island, they really are exceptionally friendly. For some, we’re told, it’s the TT every day. As he talks, another bike shoots past at 100mph in one direction. Going the other way, uphill, is a couple of pensioners on a tandem. “You see bikes fly through trying to outdo each other,” says the man, referring to the former, “and then you see blue lights flashing.” People are twice as likely to be killed or injured on Manx roads as they are on UK roads.

We carry on down the hill to Ramsay RFC, one of three sides on the island that compete in the English leagues, in Lancashire/Cheshire Division One [level seven]. It’s the second team that are in action today against the Southern Nomads from Port Erin, a town almost at the most southerly tip of the island. 

Dave Christian is Ramsay’s treasurer, but also the competition secretary for rugby on the island. “If you take out the teams in the English leagues, we’ve got seven teams left,” he says. 

Those seven teams are the second fifteens of Douglas, Ramsay and Vagabonds, plus two from Southern Nomads, Western Vikings (from Peel, on the west coast) and Castletown. 

“We play home and away in a first-past-the-post, and then we have an assortment of competitions with tweaks made to each one to make it unique.”

Rugby has a long history on the island. “Like all of rugby, you had fee-paying schools for the rich and famous, who grew up to be controllers of factories and business, and rugby clubs developed for those guys to play with and against old school mates,” says Dave. “We had factories, mines and mills here and everyone who owned a business wanted a team. That was the basis of the early games, Douglas was one of those original clubs in the 1880s. “There was one in Laxey where there was a mine for lead and zinc, one in Foxdale where they were looking for silver – there were about five sides that played regularly until the First World War, but then it died a death.

“Douglas rebirthed itself in the 1950s, and along came a couple of others,” continues Dave, “including the Ronaldsway Aircraft Company that made Martin Baker ejector seats. They were a big business concern and had sport and social facilities, including playing fields, and so they a started a side. That was the stage when the sport started to widen itself out to comprehensive schools as well as fee payers, and others start to pay an interest from the great unwashed.”

Clubs formed, folded, merged and muddled over the next few decades before it founded a more solid footing in the 1980s, including the formation of Ramsay. “Two former players from Douglas were teaching at the local school and introduced rugby to the curriculum,” explains Dave, “when that first tranche of players left school they had no outlet, so here we are.” 

Other important developments, says Dave, saw Ronaldways Aircraft Company shut down and morph into Castletown, Vagabonds forming in Douglas in the 1960s. “Anybody in the Douglas area had to go to Douglas which had its roots in the fee-paying Kings William College, Hogwarts they call it,” says Dave. “And so the lads from the local comp were not getting a look in and so a builder and a plumber set up a rugby club.”

Bryan with the Isle of Man under-18s

In the early 1980s, Douglas and Vagabonds dominated island rugby, and became too powerful for the others so would instead look for competition from touring sides or across the Irish Sea.

When the Courage Leagues began, Vagabonds joined first, shortly followed by Douglas, and then Ramsay in 2008. “The RFU are currently funding a grant towards travel cost, but in the early days some of the teams wouldn’t turn up, while Douglas and Vagabonds had to cover all their own travel expenses.

“The funding comes from the RFU development fund, but it has been cut and we have to chip in something like £6,500. I think it’s up to £8,500 this year.

“We’re extremely grateful of the RFU funding, and, yes we’ll moan and bitch about budget cuts, but we get a fantastic level of support. It’s down to us to make sure that for all nineteen seats on the plane [to England] we get nineteen players, which is sometimes a struggle when you have a match day that starts with a 7am flight and they don’t get back until 10pm.” 

Although not a fixture of island rugby anymore, there was once a national side. “They used to do an annual tour in the 1980s,” explains Dave. “Douglas and Vagabonds dominated then so it was made up of players from those two sides. They’d play somewhere decent, and it was a step-up from the standard on the island, but when the funding stopped, the players weren’t prepared to dip into their own pocket.”

The national side was revived in the late 90s when the governor of Jersey set a challenge against the Isle of Man for an annual rugby match. It lasted for three seasons. “This was before the Jersey Reds became the force they are now, they were just a club side. And, as two financial centres, some of the players knew each other,” says Dave. “Jersey won all three, they were not quite Championship then but they were moving in the right direction.”

After that, it was the time for a more youthful Isle of Man team. “In 2011, the Isle of Man hosted the Commonwealth Youth Games, which was something of a coup at the time,” says Dave. “Rugby sevens was a sport, and Australia, England, New Zealand, Scotland and Canada all had sides, and as host we got to put a side out. We played England and they had Anthony Watson and Luke Cowan-Dickie in the team. We had a good run against Sri Lanka, but got battered against Canada.” 

Unlike both Douglas and Vagabonds, Ramsay doesn’t have a professional coach. “Our coach is a farmer from Lhen, which is a remote piece of farmland on north west coast,” says Dave. “He’s our coach and chairman, and has three sons all in the first team.”

Billy Neill is certainly the most hands-on chairman/coach you’ve ever seen, as he barks instructions from the sideline of the second team game. “I’ve been chairman for 13 years,” he says, “I’m only staying on because one of my best mates was chair before and I want to beat him.”

He joined the club almost 40 years ago, just after it had been formed, aged 17. “Isle of Man rugby has had high points and low points,” he says. “About 25 years ago we had six clubs and you played each other every week, and that all changed when we all got accepted into the leagues.

“At one stage all three clubs were in the same league, which meant clubs from across had to make three trips, and they weren’t keen on that. Now Douglas are three or four leagues above us and Vagabonds are one below us.”

Now, clubs often see the Isle of Man fixture as a good excuse for some bonding. “Teams get their flight over here paid for [by the RFU],” says Billy. “And now they often use it as a tour, stay for weekend and bring 30 with them, lads and dads.”

And it’s a good destination to visit too. “It’s the best place in the world,” says Billy. “I think it’s the friendliness of the people. In some ways everyone knows one another because we’re all probably related to one another – and that can be a negative – but there’s always someone who’ll come and give you a hand, and there’s no violence or crime. 

“And it’s beautiful,” he says, pointing to the club’s mountain backdrop, “look at that.”

Just outside of Douglas, Bryan Habana shares stories with a hotel banqueting hall full of local rugby folk. He answers every question thrown at him, regaling his whole life story, right from being named after the two Manchester United legends, Bryan Robson and Gary Bailey, onwards. 

Vagabonds Namibian coach Ryan de le Harpe

There’s the inspiration behind his rugby life, “seeing Joel Stransky drop that goal in front of 65,000, seeing growing men cry in a country that needed it – I’d never played before, but I took it up the following year in high school. I was in the under-14s ‘G’ side at scrum-half – I couldn’t pass off my left hand”.

There was also the realisation he needed to work to be faster. “I only lost one race at primary school, then at high school I came seventh – I wasn’t the dominate force I thought I was at 12”.

He also gave his ultimate XV, which includes, understandably, an awful lot of South Africans, plus Carl Hayman, Richie McCaw, Jonny Wilkinson, Ma’a Nonu and Fijian wing Rupeni Caucaunibuca.

Highlights are numerous: 2007 Bulls, 2014 Toulon, 2007 Springboks, 2009 British & Irish Lions 2nd Test, but none in isolation. His dive in the 2014 Heineken Cup finals against Saracens was his “biggest disappointment for disrespecting the game of rugby”.

His audience comes from all corners of the island, including nearby Douglas, home to the oldest rugby club. “We were founded in 1873,” says Paul Snellgrove, the club’s president, “and we had a player on the first-ever Lions tour.”

That player was Arthur Paul Penketh, who grew up on the island, but was born in Ireland – giving that maiden British & Irish Lions tour in 1888 its only Irish connection. The son of an army officer, Penketh was captain of Douglas for three years and, in the season preceding the tour, he’d led his side to 13 wins and a single draw. Including – according to a report in the Otago Witness – ‘some against first-class English teams’.

These days, the club face the likes of Firwood Waterloo, Penrith and Vale of Lune, in the hugely competitive North One West [level six]. “The most important thing for us,” says Paul, “is the TT campsite which has given us funds to extend the clubhouse, extend the bar, and employ a full-time player-coach, who is also CEO of the club’s limited company.”

Every year, for the duration of the race, the club’s field and meadow is transformed into a campsite. “We’ve done it since 2007,” says Paul, “and we are talking hundreds of thousands of people this year.”

The ambition doesn’t stop with the coach and clubhouse, they’re also looking at match-quality floodlights and perfecting the rugby pitch. “We’ve had someone come up from Twickenham to look at the pitch, take soil samples, and they’ve said the best place is over there,” says Paul, pointing to a position where the current pitch isn’t. “But it would cost about £150,000 to £200,000.”

Outside of the clubhouse, sits one of the club’s old boys, 69-year-old Martin. “We’ve played a lot of good sides,” he says. “We played in the Cheshire Cup against Sale – Steve Smith and four or five England guys played – we lost 60-6. At least I think we scored some points, we had one player who was 6ft 3in, whereas they were all 6ft 3in.

“Without sounding snobby Douglas was always a lot of lawyers, accountants, retailers,” continues Martin. “When we built clubhouse it was Vagabonds that built it, because they were the builders, plumbers and electricians. 

“I played for the Isle of Man side too,” he continues, “we played Cheshire and I remember being introduced to the Isle of Man Governor. Did we win that? I can’t remember.”

His drinking partner gets involved, although not with the match result. “We’re lucky with the companies that are based here, like Quilter, it helps us to get professional coaches,” he says. “One of our coaches is an ex-All Black – Mark ‘Sharky’ Robinson, he works for a gaming company. He married one of our best-ever fly-halves’ daughter.”

Vagabonds Ladies

“I retired in 2010, took a sabbatical, moved to South Africa for a job, and happened to meet a beautiful Manx lady when I was back in London on a business trip,” explains Mark, the former Wasps, Northampton and All Blacks No.9, now coach with Douglas. He now works for an e-gaming firm on the island. “She moved to South Africa with me, fell pregnant, but it was too hectic there, so we decided to move somewhere safer.

“I’d been here a few times to meet her family and my first impression was that it was a small version of New Zealand, I didn’t think I’d live here but, lo and behold, here I am and I really enjoy it.”

After extolling every virtue of the island, one aspect stands out, just how nice the people are. “Ah mate,” he begins, “I’ve been waiting for someone to be pissed off, angry or just be an arse or bump me out of the way, but honestly, it’s so weird, nobody has. Everyone smiles and waves, and it’s so safe, I’ve seen people hand in wallets full of cash, there’s Facebook groups just about people helping strangers, it’s awesome. It actually restores your faith in humanity.” 

The other Kiwi at the club, is Carl Murray, born in New Zealand, but spent ten years in Portugal playing for the national side at sevens and fifteens, before taking up the job as player-coach/CEO of Douglas.  “I had a kid, life got serious, and after doing a business degree, this job popped up,” he explains. “I’m CEO of the club, so I run the campsite, the club, player-coach. I didn’t know if I wanted to be in business or coaching after rugby, so I’m doing a bit of everything – I’ve been here for four years.

“The campsite is massive,” he continues, “we have 15-17,000 over a three-week period, 1,600 people a night during the busy period. That’s how we can do what we do, travel every second week, have the grandstand, and these facilities.”

As the highest ranked Isle of Man side, does he think they can go any further? “The aim at the moment, and we’re in a rebuilding phase, is to work with the juniors and keep the seniors at a decent level,” he says. “We’re one off the national leagues and I think that would be our plateau. But we want to keep it as Manx as possible, and if we did go up, we’d have to recruit, so we need to work on the depth coming through.” 

The final stop, for us and Bryan, is Vagabonds. Home to the only women’s side on the island, two men’s sides and a junior section. Their full-time coach is former Namibian international scrum-half Ryan de la Harpe who, coincidentally, shared a pitch with Bryan during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, a game in which the South Africa set a new try-scoring record in an 87-0 annihilation. “I also played against him when I was at Free State under-19s,” Ryan tells us, “and he was a scrum-half then.”

His brother Darryl, a centre, also played in that game, and together with third brother, Sergio, they almost beat the Barretts of New Zealand to making history. “Unfortunately Sergio got injured,” explains Ryan, who also played for Moseley and Sale, “otherwise we’d have been the first three brothers to represent a country at a world cup.”

A statue of a character from the novel Peveril of the Peak, set in Peel

Ryan’s last club had been Fylde, under Brian Ashton. While in Lancashire on the coaching circuit, he’d met Chris Brannigan, who would become RFU’s development officer for the Isle of Man, and ask him about the Vagabonds role. “I think when I was about 12 or 13 I watched TT on TV, and said, ‘I’d like to go there one day’, but I never thought I’d come to the Isle of Man to actually live. When the opportunity came, I did think ‘this is a bit crazy’.”

While the Isle of Man hadn’t been part of his plan, English rugby certainly had. “I remember when South Africa came over to play England for the first time outside of the country,” says Ryan, who grew up in Windhoek, but moved to South Africa for Currie Cup rugby. “That England side had Rob Andrew, Rory Underwood, Tony Underwood, all those guys and I was so fascinated by England. I’d never seen grass so ridiculously green, and to hear the crowd singing, I just thought, ‘wow, I want to go there’ and I always held on to that. The main thing for me coming to England was to play at Twickenham.”

Playing his club rugby in Lancashire, meant he was handed that opportunity. “Mark Nelson invited me to play for Lancashire, and I ended up playing seven times for them at Twickenham, going there year after year was fantastic.”

Also the first Namibian to represent the Barbarians, Ryan arrived at Vagabonds with good pedigree, and has been involved in the latest incarnation of a national side on the island – an under-18s sevens side made up of players from across the Isle of Man. “We took them to Rosslyn Park Sevens last year, and they’d never really played sevens, but they managed to get to day two, and over 100 schools drop out on day one. 

“When I came over on that first day [to visit Vagabonds], I said to Chris, ‘there’s so much potential, look at Jersey, they’ve got a Championship side and there’s so many clubs on this island. 

“I can see the island rugby growing in the next ten years, but we need to make sure we get the infrastructure right, make the local rugby more attractive, get a big sponsor and make sure every club has got everything they need from the grassroots up.” 

Chris Brannigan, who has been overseeing Bryan’s training session with the under-18s at Vagabonds, has big ideas too. “For the 2011 Commonwealth Youth Games side we had the likes of South Africa and Australia over here, but it didn’t do anything else for the game here,” says Chris. “But now we have an exciting opportunity to build with this representative side. And it might be audacious but I think the aim has to be to get a team to full Commonwealth Games standard.

“There used to only be around 300 youth,” he says, “now that number is closer to 700 and all the teams, except for one, now have minis to juniors.”

Youth development might be the base of any potential national side, but also key is unity. “Three of the men’s teams play in English leagues, so there’s a bit of fear factor in coming together, and trying to protect their league position as an individual club,” says Chris. “But we’re not trying to take away club identity, it’s more about having an overall goal to represent your island at the highest possible level, we just need to see where that level is.” 

Meanwhile, Bryan finishes his training session and heads in our direction. “It’s been great seeing what they’re doing to promote rugby here,” he says, “there’s so many people wanting to make a difference.

“They’re at the very, very initial stage of implementation of a developing country, but what they’re trying to put in place shows the intent of wanting to put the right structures in place, not to become a force in world rugby, but just so that Isle of Man rugby can get recognised. “Seeing the skill on show here [with the sevens’ team], you understand what can be possible, there’s some lads with a bit of pace too.

“It’s not just here either, we had a clinic before this session and there was a huge amount of young people, boys and girls, wanting to put faith in Isle of Man rugby.”  

In perhaps one of the quirkier rugby visits Bryan will make, highlights beyond the rugby also stood out for the South African. “You don’t really understand geographically where the Isle of Man is placed,” he says, “so it was very cool to have that bike tour and be shown the ‘seven’ kingdoms. It was a sunny day, so you could see Scotland, Ireland, England and a little bit of Wales.”

Or at least five of them. The ‘seven’ kingdoms that Manx legend says can be can be seen from its highest point, Snaefell (a mountain just over 2,000ft), are completed with Mann (another name for the Isle of Man), plus Neptune and, rather optimistically, heaven.

He might not have seen Neptune, but Bryan has seen a lot of this planet since retiring eighteen months ago. “I’ve been doing so many things, as you try and discover where you fit in life after rugby,” he says. “I’ve probably taken 100 flights, 60-odd of them international in the last year. I’ve been away more than I’d have liked. 

“My one-year-old Gabriel is oblivious to it, but my five-year-old son Timothy doesn’t understand why I was there all the time for four years of his life – only going away for 24 or 48 hours – and now I’m away all the time, I’ll be working in Japan for all of the world cup. 

“That’s something I need to consider when looking at next year, because that side of things has been a little bit skewed in life after rugby, I want to be home a lot more.”

We touch upon his actual retirement, which came after an injury-hit period at Toulon.

“There isn’t one game [that made me make the decision],” he says. “Other than a very limited number of people who did get to retire on own their own terms – Wilkinson, Carter, McCaw, Os du Randt – very few get to do that. 

“Due to selection and injury, I didn’t get to play one more game. I got injured in 2017 and it kept going on, I couldn’t get back onto the field, it was frustrating. You try and measure it, ‘is it worth pushing? Is it worth having one last season?’, but when you have a small family to consider, you have to just take what you’ve been able to experience.

“Retiring was the hardest decision I’ve had to make,” he continues. “You only fully understand what a bubble professional sport is once its burst. I’ve spoken to a lot of other professional sports people about it, and they all say life is never the same, so you just have to count yourself lucky that you were able to do what you did for a long time at the highest level.”

Words by: Alex Mead

Pictures by: Han Lee De Boer

This extract was taken from issue 8 of Rugby.
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