'Tuigamala was a physical guy'
A little over 10 years ago, Bath were dominating English Rugby Union and Wigan were legends of Rugby League when the idea of a ‘clash of the codes’ fund raiser cropped up.
We played Wigan at Maine Road, Manchester and the return leg saw us host Wigan at Twickenham.
It was absolutely phenomenal to play in that match and it’s the most nerve-wracking I’ve ever been before any game of rugby I’ve played and I include World Cups for England and even the World Cup final because we were completely going into the unknown against a legendary side.
Wigan had such a fantastic side including players such as Martin Offiah Va’aiga Tuigamala, Chris Radlinski, Andy Farrell and Henry Paul and you just didn’t know what was going to happen apart from the fact that you knew you were going to get your arses kicked! And that’s exactly what happened at Maine Road. They thrashed us 82-6 at League but we beat them 44-19 at Union back at Twickenham.
Physically, those guys like Tuigamala were much bigger than us and we had only just entered the professional era and they knew exactly how to play the game and we didn’t really scrimmage against them. I must admit, Wigan scored some great tries from Tuigamala, Jason Robinson and Kris Radlinski and, to be honest, it was sometimes like chasing your own tail against those guys.
'Physically, those guys were bigger than us'
To be fair, both sides were pretty much in their prime in either code so it was a great match to be involved with and although it was fairly friendly, the hits were pretty big from Andy Farrell, Scott Quinnell and company.
In the Union leg, it wasn’t really properly refereed and we didn’t do any big driving line-outs or scrummage properly. We did a lot of running and off the top line-outs but they did very, very well in both games.
It certainly was an interesting experiment and an experience I’m very pleased to have been involved with against a legendary Wigan team.