DUBAI // Google the words “henry paul england sevens” and the first link that comes up is an article headlined: “So, whatever happened to Henry Paul?”
It is an interview in The Guardian published in January, 2006. It turns out, he had not gone far. He had not had much chance to yet.
His rise and fall as a Test match rugby player had been barely a year previously. By the time of the story, he was drifting along in club rugby, with a move back to rugby league, where he made his name, imminent.
In the meantime, he was keeping his hand in playing for England on the World Sevens Series. That is how sevens was seen back then.
This was pre-Olympics, when the series was relatively embryonic, and regarded as a development tool for promising players, or a correctional activity for ones who had fallen out with XVs. Paul was very much in the latter category.
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His mercurial talents had been rewarded by Clive Woodward with an England Test debut in 2002, but he had just had his big blow out, when he was substituted 26 minutes into the 2004 match against Australia.
“England, with Clive and Andy Robinson, didn’t really know where I fitted,” Paul, now a UAE resident, says. “They obviously rated me as a player. They thought I could do something.
“Ahead of my first Test in 2002, when someone says they are going to pick you, you can’t say no. But on reflection, I needed more time to learn certain nuances.”
Sevens provided a cushion for his fall. Twice.
First in 2002, when he was sent away to play in Hong Kong. England won, the first of a hat-trick of titles in the abridged format’s most celebrated arena.
Then, after his 2004 woe, he rejoined England sevens, and became a winner in Dubai. “When they didn’t know what to do with me, I think sevens was a really good outlet for me, and kept my confidence high,” he says of winning the 2002 title in Hong Kong. “We went and won things for England.
“We shocked everyone. No England team had got near the semis before that.”
He might have been an Olympic silver medallist by now, had the sport been accepted into the movement 10 years earlier than it was.
Having said that, if Great Britain had been able to select peak Henry Paul for their Rio Games challenge, their prize might even have been gold.
Paul was a great sevens player, at a time when England were just starting to realise the merits of the format.
“It was a fun time,” he says. “I knew we were a good team on paper, but I didn’t realise we would go on and win [Hong Kong]. We were an unknown, and we were underestimated.
“Reading the papers in Hong Kong, everyone was talking about New Zealand and Fiji, then we went and won it.”
More than a decade on, and he has wandered further afield now. The latest chapter of his story started last summer, when he moved to Dubai to coach rugby, and take charge of Jebel Ali Dragons in the domestic league.
He has been working on making them winners in the Gulf Men’s League at the Dubai Rugby Sevens again, as they look to regain a title Abu Dhabi Harlequins have dominated in recent times.
The Dragons players are able to lean on someone who has been there, done that, and got the winner’s medal.
And that, at the very top level, on a Pitch 1 final in Dubai.
“It was everything you expect from Dubai, bright lights, everything was flash and brand new,” he says of winning the Emirates International Trophy in 2005.
“It was an exciting time.”
[ pradley@thenational.ae ]
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