Jo and Tony Yapp

The Pony Club is an unusual place to find elite half-backs, but if you were a rugby scout in the Midlands around the mid-1990s watching a spot of tetrathlon, you could have snapped up two: brother and sister Tony and Jo Yapp.

The tetrathlon isn’t a typical breeding ground for rugby players. Organised by the Pony Club, it was invented in the 1960s to keep boys interested in riding. Naturally, from an era where Bonanza was the show to watch for every cowboy-loving kid, adding shooting to horse riding was bound to have an appeal. Combine that with swimming and running for a four-discipline competition – it’s the Olympic modern pentathlon, but without the fencing – and you can see the appeal it would have had.

For brother and sister Tony and Jo Yapp, who had their parents’ farm as a training ground, it was the sport they were most likely to succeed in. That they ended up becoming successful half-backs – Tony at ten, and Jo at nine – and perhaps one of the first sets of siblings to both play full-time rugby, isn’t something either of them even dreamt of. “That was our main thing, we grew up riding horses and we were lucky that we had the farm and had parents that would take us everywhere to compete,” says Tony, when we meet them at Worcester Warrior’s Sixways, where Jo is director of rugby for the women’s side. “We both came very late to rugby and I only started it as a way to keep fit in the winter so I was ready to compete again in the summer.”

Even when he signed his first full-time contract with Bedford Blues, aged nineteen, Tony was so passionate about tetrathlon, he even contemplated balancing the two. “I was still riding when I was at Bedford, and there was a tetrathlon event at Northampton that coincided with a pre-season game,” explains Tony. “So, my plan was to do the swim on the Friday, then be one of the first to do the ride on the Saturday morning, head to Leeds to play the game for Bedford, then head back ready to finish with the 3k run.

“I had it all mapped out for weeks, but in the days building up, I just realised I couldn’t do it anymore, at that’s when rugby took over.”

Jo had very much been an all-rounder: even more of an all-rounder than someone who can swim, shoot, run and ride. She also added sports such as hockey to the mix, and just thought, aged thirteen, she’d give rugby a go. “I do remember you and Dad wondering why I wanted to play,” says Jo, addressing Tony, “because I wasn’t very big.”

“Unlike now, when you’re a giant,” responds Tony.

Size never mattered. “She just was very natural,” says Tony. “She was a naturally good runner, she picked up the game and the understanding of the game very quickly. 

“And I think in the ladies game at the time, that sort of elusiveness she had was massively important. It just made you stand out if you had the ability to beat someone and run off down the field. 

“I think Jo having played hockey and having done a lot of cross country running and that sort of thing, just sort of made her stand out with the way she used to beat people on the field.”

Only two years separate them, Tony is 43, Jo 41, so their rugby careers run parallel. 

While Jo’s began at Ludlow, Tony’s began at school and then with local club Cleobury Mortimer. “They were the nearest club and they didn’t have juniors, so when I was fifteen I was playing senior rugby, it was before the days of specific rules about this kind of thing,” he says. “Some sides said they wouldn’t play against a fifteen-year-old, but the club would always say ‘if he doesn’t play, we don’t’. 

“I remember one of old guys coming over to me and saying, ‘you want to stick at rugby, because one day, very soon, this game is going to go professional and you’ll make a living out of it’. I was like, ‘yeah, whatever’ and then within two years I pretty much decided to go full time.”

With Worcester the big local club – playing in the fourth tier at the time – the promise shown by Tony had people nudging him in their direction and, once he made the decision, he soon found himself winning regional honours. 

It was at an age-grade Midlands training session at Northampton that he came into contact with Glen Ella. “He’d been coaching us, and I remember after the session, I was sat in the car and plucking up the courage to go and ask him about playing in Australia. I was planning to head there in a few months, and eventually I got out of the car to let him know and ask if he had any recommendations.

“He said ‘yeah, definitely, you need to come and play for Randwick’. I’d never heard of them, but he then reeled off everyone who was with them: David Campese, George Gregan, David Knox, Owen Finegan, Warwick Waugh – it just sounded amazing and he said, ‘look, here’s my number, give me a call when you get there’.”

Tony did just that, much to the surprise of the hostel he was staying at. “Glen was a bit of a legend, and when he phoned me back it was at this backpackers’ and the guy who answered was like, ‘mate, Glen Ella’s on the phone for you’ – he was going out of his mind because of who was on the phone.”

Ella took Tony on a tour of the city, before heading to the Coogee Oval, home of the famous Galloping Greens. “Watching them was like watching the Harlem Globetrotters,” he says. “I wanted to get a jersey straight away, but they told me you had to win a Grand Final to get one.”

And so, as part of the under-21 side, he did just that, before returning with a glowing letter of recommendation from the then coach, Alan Gaffney, which he promptly sent to Bedford coach Paul Turner. “I went down for a trial and on the back of that I was just hoping I might get some games, but they sent me a contract in the post which allowed me to be full-time, which was so crazy. 

“I think it was for £20k or something, but at that time I’d have taken a place for free, I just wanted to be part of it, I was so happy to be there.”

A life on the farm hadn’t quite prepared Tony for a changing room full of rugby stars. “If I’m brutally honest it’s quite intimidating because, in the modern day you get to know international players through their social media accounts, so you get a feel for what they’re like.

“But I went from playing for Worcester in whatever league they were in to sharing a changing room with Martin Offiah, Mike Rayer, Rudolf Straeuli, who’d just won the World Cup with South Africa, Junior Paramore, Rory Underwood. These were guys I’d been watching on the TV for the last ten years, and all of a sudden I’m walking into their change room saying ‘oh, nice to meet you’ – oh my, it was just surreal.” 

His two years with the club were eventful, as they won promotion in the first season, before facing a play-off against Rotherham to stay up the next year. That game put Tony in one of the most pressured situations of his career. “I’d taken over the kicking from Mike Rayer as he was injured I think,” recalls Tony, “and it’s a big opportunity for a kicker when you’re in a game and if you don’t get your kicks then your team will get relegated from the Premiership.”

He’d already had to overcome the fact it was his job to tell a team of internationals what to do, the season before. “Paul Turner was a ten, but he was very bossy as a player. He was an unbelievable player, but he knows what he wants and he tells people and I was sort of probably the other way. I remember Junior Paramore saying to me in a game, ‘what do you want us to do?’ and I was thinking, ‘you’ve played in a World Cup for Samoa, you don’t want me telling you what to do’. But Paul always said, ‘these guys need to be led, you need to tell them what to do, they’re great players but they’re used to being told what you want’.”

The mentoring of player-coach Turner, who had been replaced by Straeuli by the time of the play-off, paid dividends, as they managed to stay up, albeit by scoring the same number of points as Rotherham in the two-legged play-off. “I remember we lost away something like 19-11 – it was on the scoreboard at Goldington Road all week – and then we ended up drawing 38-38. It was surreal, because the scores were tied, the whistle went and everyone was silent as nobody knew what happened next. Was it extra time, sudden death, kicks, what? Then the referee was on his headset, and you heard him say, ‘yeah, yeah, so you can confirm that Bedford stay up?’.”

Jo had wasted no time getting in the deep end of rugby either. Invited to trials with England Students, she arrived at a session where everyone seemed to know everyone, and nobody had heard of Ludlow College. “But they asked me to go on a development tour to Poland and Germany, and after that I got called into the main squad and ran out here against Ireland for my first cap,” explains Jo. “They knew this was my home club, so they sent me out of the tunnel first. I
scored too and then got selected for the 1998 Rugby World Cup.”

Still a teenager, with the tournament in May, she still had exams to study for.

“A lot of them, like Giselle Mather, Paula George, Nicky Crawford were teachers so I wouldn’t be allowed to not get my head down and study,” she says. 

“I do feel like I was really fortunate with the group of players that we had in England that time,” she continues. “Despite the fact that they didn’t get the support they get now, they were still extremely professional in the way they approached it and the way they trained and the way they played. 

“They had to be so motivated to be able to do that; these girls had jobs and were balancing and still able to perform, they were was amazing.”

Jo was the youngest of the group by some way, “I was nineteen and I think the next one up was 26, so it was an experienced squad that had been through a lot.

“I remember losing that World Cup semi-final to New Zealand [11-44] and sitting in the changing rooms and seeing everyone heartbroken and in tears.

“I didn’t feel like they did,” she admits, “because I hadn’t recognised what the people in that room had sacrificed for so long to be there, whereas I’d gone from playing senior rugby to being in a World Cup within six months. 

There had been so much blood, sweat and tears for them, but for me, I was like ‘but we’ve got another game, we’re playing for third place’.”

It still proved to be a turning point for Jo though. “Seeing their response and how it affected such a motivated group of people did make me want to put this right, to making it happen in 2002.”

The Black Ferns have forever been a thorn in England’s side, but for Jo they never held the same fear. “There was always this stigma around the Black Ferns; we put them on a pedestal,” she says. “But I went down to play for a season [in New Zealand], and I played and trained with them at club level and you realise they didn’t do anything that different to us. It was interesting to see what they were doing in training, but they’re just people like us, they’re just players that work like us, and that helped me to think ‘well, we can compete with this, we don’t need to keep putting them up there’. Physically and mentally, it helped me just to see them on a regular basis.”

When she returned to the England fold, the side continued to progress in the World Cup build-up culminating in a two-Test series in New Zealand in 2001. They lost the first Test 15-10 in Rotorua before shocking their hosts in the second. “I think when you play them in a one-off game, you’re kind of in a bit of shock,” she says. “But when you have a second game, you can think, ‘okay, well we played well, but if we just tweak that, then we can take them on’. And we genuinely believed at that point that we could win.”

Which they duly did, a 22-17 first-ever Test win over the Black Ferns. Although, it was a feat they couldn’t repeat at the World Cup the following year, when they lost 19-9 to their southern hemisphere foes in the final.

That same year, Tony had joined the club which would define his professional career, becoming the first full-time player at Exeter Chiefs, under Ian Bremner. “I think I was the only professional player for my first year,” explains Tony, “and it wasn’t till a few years later, when we moved to Sandy Park, that we brought in other players to turn the squad professional.

“We were playing against the likes of Worcester and Rotherham, who had squads of professional players so it was always quite tough.

“Rob Baxter was in the second row, Richie Baxter was at eight, the likes of Haydn Thomas and James Hanks were coming through from the university, and we’d be training two or three nights a week with maybe a morning gym session before 6am so people could get away in time for work.

“I’d spend my days doing kicking practice, heading into schools for coaching or sat in the office with Ian Bremner planning how we were going to play on the weekend.”

As the side became contenders, challenging professional sides and with Tony racking up the points, Exeter were already showing traits that would serve them well in later years. “I always felt that we punched above our weight,” he says, “which is quite a nice thing to feel rather than not meeting your full potential. I think the fact we were part time, made us very close as a group.

“We’d have some great bus trips and I think that’s one of the things that Robbie [Baxter]’s kept on today: Exeter, you train hard, you play hard, but you enjoy each other’s company as well and I think that’s sort of set him in good stead.

“We very often beat these professional clubs and we got by on the fact that we had big hard men and were able to sort of physically put it about a bit.”

In seven seasons, Tony racked up 1,800 points, then a club record before the arrival of Gareth Steenson, who would finish his Exeter days with 2,630. Tony then moved on to Launceston, and coaching at Blundells’ School in Tiverton, before joining Taunton first as a player in 2010, then as player-coach, a role he still has now. “I’m still technically registered,” he says, “so I could play if need be.”

One of the last times he did actually play, was to hit a milestone. “Someone had told me I was on 2,999 points,” explains Tony. “And we went away to Shelford, and someone got injured or something, so I was on the bench and came on with about twenty minutes to go.

“But Gary Kingdom was kicking well, and I thought ‘shall I just take one?’, but I couldn’t do that for the good of the team, I needed to let him to take the kicks, so the game finished and I was still on 2,999.

“Then we played Bournemouth at home for the last game of the season, I was on the bench and had to come on with half an hour to go. There was a touchline conversion I took and hit the post. Then, with five minutes to go, we get an interception and we run it under the posts. 

“Now, I’ve never really had any doubts over kicking, certainly from in front of the posts; I can’t remember ever missing from bang in front. But I just started thinking what a nightmare moment it would be to miss it – end of the season,in front of everyone – and have to come back next season still on 2,999. 

“But, fortunately, it was fine, 3,001 now.”

By this time, Jo had hung up her boots. A third World Cup, this one as captain, had been her last in fifteens and, frustratingly, had been ended by the Black Ferns once again, this time 25-17. The new crop of England players coming through – Nolli Waterman, Heather Fisher, Rachael Burford – had been able to balance both sevens and fifteens, but Jo, together with Sue Day, had opted to focus on just the sevens, with the 2009 World Cup in Dubai the goal.

“I’d played all the games in the build-up but got injured in the first game in Dubai,” explains Jo. “I went for a scan that night, hoping they’d just tell me I could inject something to get back, but they didn’t say anything.

“It wasn’t about the pain, I can run through pain, it was the fact I couldn’t physically sprint, I couldn’t fire. Only when I came back did I find out I’d ruptured my iliopsoas muscle, but before then I thought it was in my head – I thought it was mental, so I was like ‘what’s wrong with me?’.

“I couldn’t play though, and that was heartbreaking, my dad and husband had come out to watch me in what was my last tournament and I’d played five minutes.”

On her return, being in Worcester didn’t help. “I knew I’d find it really hard to stay living in Worcester and not play rugby,” she says. “All my social life was rugby, and we wanted to start a family so I just needed to have a clean break.

“It was actually a really tough time, it wasn’t how I wanted to finish.”

The move to Exeter, living in the same city as Tony, proved to be her making as a coach, as she took on a director of rugby role with Exeter University. But, perhaps inevitably, Worcester would eventually come calling again. She returned, first as skills coach last year, but then took up the full-time role of director of rugby. Initially unsure of giving up her life in Exeter and the work-life balance, she eventually relented. “I said, ‘okay, but for us to be successful, we need this, this and this – because if I’m going to do something, I want to commit to it’.” 

The owner agreed and after going through the Premier 15s tender process – Worcester had just finished bottom, so were far from certain of their place in the elite – Jo was able to begin a transformation of the club she loves. “For me the drive here was an emotional one,” she says, “because I could see this team was struggling, and, having seen them so successful, it was really hard.

“And it was hard for them because when the Premier 15s first came in, they lost a lot of players because there was a bit of money around and they were left with a really young squad who were struggling.

“It was really tough to see them in that position at the bottom and so I’ve tried to come back to what was important at Worcester, the roots. So for the first few sessions I brought in some of the players that first started at Worcester to come in and talk to them about what it meant to play for Worcester.

“I don’t want it to be just ‘I’m just going to play for an AP [Allianz Premier 15s] rugby club’, I want it to mean something to play for the club, to play for Worcester.”

Tony has also added to his coaching commitments with his role with the fast-growing School of Kicking, alongside Dave Alred. Did they think they might both end up as coaches? “I thought I’d be a farrier, shoeing horses,” admits Tony, “that was the job I thought I’d be doing, because rugby has just happened.

“I do love it though, I like that I still get that emotional side of rugby, the winning and losing; you still get the nerves and excitement of a coach, and I like the fact as a coach, I can walk normally down the stairs on a Sunday morning after a game.”

“It’s funny really,” adds Jo, “I was talking about this the other day and how in our careers, you were professional for a long time, I wasn’t but I was playing for England, and then I was a teacher and you were at the school, but we’ve both ended up at almost the same place and both as full-time coaches. We’ve just taken very different paths to get here.”

And by here, she means it literally too, as tonight’s guest coach for Jo’s Worcester Warriors sessions is none other than Tony Yapp; the one that got away from the equine hoof care business.

Story by  Alex Mead

Pictures by Rory Langdon-Down

This extract was taken from issue 14 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.