Old Hams
Did you use to play for the mighty Hammers? If so we would love to hear from you.
Let us know where you are and what you are up to. Don’t forget to let us have some photos showing how well you have aged. We will publish your news and photos on this page.
Post your submissionJamie Reid
Great to see the club in such great shape. My playing days were around 1980 to far back to remember. The Duke of Cumberland at the time took most of my wages on a Saturday night followed by a curry in Putney. My playing days were cut short with a broken leg somewhere in west London. Many happy times and is great to see the club in such good health.
Jamie Reid (a big fat prop)
Dan Scott
Good to see that the club is in good health and has grown since I left London back in ‘99. After two and a half seasons playing for the club I moved away from London to train as a pilot. Unfortunately the aftermath of 9/11 left me out on a limb and for the past few years I have been biding my time instructing flying in Dundee intermingled with a job in Switzerland where I work with international schools teaching outdoor education.
At last though, I have managed to secure a job with Bmi and start with them in the new year. So listen out to who’s driving your plane next time you fly, as you might want to get off.
It has been to long since I last ventured down to the big smoke and enjoyed a few beers with the old guard. I wish everyone well and all the best to the club in 2007.
Dan Scott
Pete Ward
Just a quick note to wish all hammers a merry Christmas and a happy new year. I am still up here in Edinburgh and have changed jobs recently. I am now working for a charity called Vetaid as its UK finance co-ordinator. Glad to see the club is doing well. Still plying my trade up here for Edinburgh Northern, we are having what can only be described as a difficult year!
Should hopefully be down in the new year at some point and hopefully a guest appearance in the 4s (if possible). Anyway just to reiterate that if any of you guys are in Edinburgh please let me know and we can meet for a beer.
Take care, Pete Ward
Rich Frank
It was a bit of a quick and quiet exit from me at the end of last season, post a concussion break of six weeks I didn’t really manage to get back in to the season.
Well now I find myself in Melbourne picking up where my relationship with a cute auzzie girl ended 11 months previously. After 3 months of sitting on the couch doing pretty much nothing and a quick trip back to the UK, bumping in to Sam and Charlie, I am now starting work for some crowd called Netstar Networks in Melbourne.
No rugby so far, time change is a pain for watching some of the internationals and the Victoria crowd are too in to their AFL to notice RFU. Although there are a couple of teams and leagues down here, I have yet to get down to ‘training’.
Have taken up touch, odd rules, I prefer to call it slap and tickle after getting slapped by this girl the other week for ‘touching’ her too hard.
Anyway if any of the club that know me head down, or travel home to Melbourne, drop me a line at rj_frank@hotmail.com and we will pick up for a beer.
All the best for now.
Rick/ Ricco / The Salmon/ or ‘No 5’ when I was not playing very well.
Mick Sheerin
I’m useless with technology so it was to my amazement that I came across your web site.
My name is Michael Sheerin and I used to play for the mighty Hammers (as a prop) in the eighties and nineties and reached the pinnacle of my career by being awarded the Young Player of the Year.
I played alongside many of the greats - Terry See, Terry Alleyne, Tony Richards, Chris Cuthbertson, Pascal Peters, Del boy, Lyndon and the one and only Bhomdat!
Its great to see the club flourishing - the number of teams put out is a credit and the results are fantastic.
What am I doing these days? - well I now live in Kent (Maidstone), married to Denise for the last 17 years and have two wonderful children (Niall aged 10 and Rebecca aged 7). I’m still employed by the police and am one of many responsible for the forensic examination of Murder scenes in north-east London.
I haven’t played rugby for a few years now but still follow the game avidly and am trying to get my two kids involved - with not much success at the moment.
I’ll have to come down one day and meet everyone again - let me know of any events and you never know, I might clean my boots and gumshield and give playing another go.
Cheers, Mick Sheerin
David Martin
Greetings all,
I bumped into Chris Cuthbertson under strange circumstances last weekend as he was sitting on an appeal committee which concluded in him deducting 2 league points from the side in London 1 for which I am now Chairman. I am now regretting giving Chris so much abuse during the 80’s .. he’s obviously the memory of an elephant!
It was good to see him despite his judgement and he told me of this site. I am now based in Cambridge and have been since I left the club in 1990. I played for Shelford but am too old and fat to do so any more. I am though still involved in rugby as I am now Chairman at Shelford, coach of my son’s U12 squad and a referee. I am also very involved with the rugby charity Wooden Spoon.
I now have four children between 6 and 11 and I still live the life of a sad commuter and still work for JPMorgan.
It was great to hear stories of Terry, Bhomdat (he was too old to play in 1988!), Tony Richards, Lyndon etc and I was delighted to hear that the club is in rude health. That tour to the Algarve still stands out as one of my rugby career highlights! I still keep in touch with Pete Carter who is now in New Zealand and very happy.
I wish the club all continued success.
Take care, David Martin
Will Villiers
Hello, Just thought I would say that I am still in Jersey (worse luck) but think that might change next year.
The reason it will be next year is that Marianne and I are expecting our first child in January (the 17th to be precise) and we will be in Jersey certainly for three months after the child is born.
Many of you know that we have had difficulties getting pregnant and staying so, having gone through 2 miscarriages whilst I was still playing for you guys. I would like to thank those who knew and offered their support through that difficult time.
Hope things are going well for you guys. I have played a few games for the Jersey Rugby Club but frankly I am just not as happy there as I was at HFRFC so when we move back I am defo starting back there.
Pip-pip for now, Will Villiers
Shaun O'Dwyer
Greetings from sunny Sydney. Shaun O’Dwyer here from the distant past - I played for Hammersmith & Fulham in the years 1989-1997. I haven’t looked at the web site for a year or two (changing jobs and losing all my bookmarked web sites didn’t help) but the club seems to be thriving these days. Unbelievable to see us so far up the divisions. Great stuff. It’s hard to recognise it from when I was there except when I click on the committee and suddenly all the old names pop up again!
Hope you are all fit and well…okay, well - I don’t remember “fit” ever coming into it much. It’s great to see names like Chris, Bhomdat, Tony, Lyndon and others left from the old days - it doesn’t look like you’ve been able to dump many committee matters on to the next generation yet!
As some of you know from traveling down under for the 2001 Lions tour we’ve retreated as far south as Sydney to live but never did quite bring ourselves to relocate completely back home to New Zealand - in years like this it’s not a problem giving the Aussies sh*t about rugby but in certain other years I go into complete denial and have to impose a media blackout (what you mean there was a World Cup semi-final between the Aussies & All Blacks here in 2003?? I must have missed that…)
I finally dumped the corporate world about a year ago for the quiet life and now run a campus library at a suburban university here in Sydney - lots of flex time and young students to look at (well, it keeps the blood flowing, doesn’t it?!). My wife, Denise, is well and working at the same university, although not for long as she’s just completed a Masters in Forensic Psychology and will be off curing prisoners or whatever it is that Forensic Psychologists do. I’m pretty sure they must do something other than bleed our bank account dry doing endless study but I haven’t quite figured out what yet.
I actually played rugby again this year after thinking I was retired 6-7 years ago with dodgy hamstrings. A new club, Balmain Rugby Club, started up with a home ground about 5 minutes from my house, so I wandered along preseason for a look and ended up playing all year, captaining the Reserve Grade team for the last half of the season, playing at no 10 of course. I think they only made me captain as they figured I’d talk to the ref all the time anyway so they might as well try to avoid a constant stream of penalties against us (funnily enough if that was the plan it didn’t work). That reminds me of one time when a ref at Hurlingham Park threatened to send me off if I didn’t stop laughing out loud at every decision he made. Ah, the memories… My team talk is very Hammers - “how are we off for numbers?” followed by “for f*cks sake, fellas, fire up!” usually pretty much covers it.
I have to say that since playing again down here I’ve never made so many tackles in my life - in fact, I think I made more tackles this year than in eight seasons in London. That won’t come as a surprise to any of the guys who played in the same teams I did - after all, it isn’t that hard to increase your tackle count from zero. The typically strange way that the Aussies organise things means that only having two sides this year put us in a competition with a lot of clubs with only two teams and a lot of them contain a great many rather large Polynesian gentlemen. They are all HUGE and all like to run over fly halves! I at least try to act like a speed bump to slow them down. Next year we will probably have three sides which means two things - one, we will play larger clubs with more teams of their own which will mean that the games probably get a little bit easier, and two, I can take my 42 year old bones down into the 3rd team!
Do you remember Martin Keywood from the early 90s at Hammers? Well, he played most of the year in my team too, so we’re flying the flag down here. Balmain RC actually reminds me a bit of Hammers in the late 80s - we drink at a local pub, it’s a very international collection of players from all over the world, the boys like a sing along, there aren’t any of those annoying cliques you can get in established clubs, everyone is welcome and finds a role on or off the pitch…
So think imaginatively for the next H&FRFC tour - we can guarantee a warm welcome, a hard pitch, lots of sledging and a decent hangover!
Cheers, Shaun
Paul Holden
I have just come across your web site. I played a few seasons with the mighty Hammers in the early nineties, before moving up to Bedford and from there out to Australia where I know live. I still play rugby, albeit for an over 35’s side called the Unquenchables (www.unquenchables.com), where I have teamed up with another ex Hammer by the name of Jiff Rilley (originally from NZ) who played a couple of seasons in the late 80’s. The Guys I remember are Tony Richards, Benson, Lyndon, Terry and a few more, as time goes by the snake bites have taken hold and you tend to forget the names of everyone you played with!!!!
All the best for the new season, Paul Holden
paul.holden@mail.comWill Villiers
I left Hammer’s under a cloud of controversy, some saying I was leaving for a better team in higher divisions, some saying I couldn’t stand another match with Adam Jones at Fly-half, still more said it was that I refused to be a part of Tony Richards persistent “pick-and-go” strategy however most said it was because I was just too fat and unfit to play inside centre. And they were right.
Back in my sunny home isle of Jersey I have continued the proud tradition of 4th team Hammers by doing little or no training other than the well known “right arm raise and drink” also labelled the clean and jerk. Not the clean after jerk which is entirely a different thing and involves curtains, wetwipes, or possibly a nearby pet. One of the finer points of not playing for the Hammers is that I no longer receive Tin Man awards for attempted dropkicks and suchlike. However the downside is that I can’t sidestep my way to glory – although whether I could ever do that remains questioned.
However all is not as sunny as it seems in Jersey and the Earl may yet return unto the fold, yea verily and thence. Bored of the millionaire playboy lifestyle with the only celebrities and well wishers as company, LJ may yet return lamb-like to the fold of Hammersmith and Fulham’s mightiest rugby players. Or, to put it another way, the bosom of Pete Lacey, and what a bosom it is!
Will Villiers
