Jamal Ford-Robinson

Moving into a house known as the ‘Crack Den’ isn’t where you’d expect to find an aspiring pro rugby player, but after falling out of favour at Leicester Tigers academy, that’s where Jamal Ford-Robinson found himself, battling for National 1 survival at Cambridge. 

After two years as part of the Leicester Tigers academy, Jamal Ford-Robinson headed back home to Cornwall. Hundreds of hours of training and a failed conversion from prop to hooker later, it had become clear things weren’t working out, and it had taken a toll on the young prop.

“I got myself into a pretty bad headspace,” admits Jamal. “As you can expect, going there at sixteen, the best team in the country, your heart is set on it, and when you realise you’re a much smaller fish in the pond, that affected me quite badly. That led to me leaving halfway through the year.”

Rugby had started early for Jamal. “I’d always played for Penryn, played for school from five years old. It was a very typical story of needing an outlet for not being good at education. I’ve probably got some undiagnosed ADHD going on, I could never really concentrate but I’d always look forward to doing rugby.

“But I’d never watched much rugby growing up,” he adds. “We never had Sky Sports, so I didn’t have a poster of the England team, it was just something I enjoyed playing.”

With Exeter still in the Championship at the time, there was no clear route to top-flight rugby for young Cornish players like himself, his chance with Leicester coming thanks to the diligence of his mum. “Nowadays there’s a definitive pathway, but back then that wasn’t the case. When the junior academies started at sixteen, my mum acted as my agent – she’s not an agent, but she acted as one – and emailed all the directors of academies of the Premiership clubs singing my praises, saying ‘my son’s amazing’. I’m sure they must get hundreds of these emails all the time, but some of them took it seriously.

“I went up to Bristol and had a trial there, and went to Leicester for a week and trained with their academy. At the end of the week, I’d been offered a contract. Leicester were the ones to beat, so I ended up joining them.”

The competition was immense, and as Jamal fell further behind in the pecking order, it was a setback that left its mark. “I didn’t know what I was going through at the time until I looked up what the definition of anxiety was a few years ago and I was like ‘oh, that’s what was happening’,” he says. “I’d wake up in the morning and I’d feel really violently sick. I’d come home a lot of the days and cry myself to sleep. 

“I eventually spoke to someone at the club,” he recalls, “ and said, ‘I’m not good here’, and they got me booked in to see someone. 

“But I remember sitting in the waiting room, and I had this thought to myself: ‘this is my issue, I should be able to sort it.’ Growing up, it had only ever been me and mum, I’d never really had that father figure to talk to, that support network, and that manifested in that situation. I thought that I didn’t need to go see a psychiatrist to fix this for me.

“I concluded that the reason I was feeling like that was because I didn’t know what my future held, because rugby wasn’t working out like I thought. In my head, the way to take control of the situation was to quit, go back to Cornwall and reassess. 

“He called me in, and I said to him, ‘I’m pretty sure I just had an epiphany in the waiting room’. I was set on it – when I get something in my head, I’m doing that.”

So, instead of becoming part of the fabled Leicester front row, Jamal was back home with no club and no job. But, rather than leave rugby behind him, it was then that his determination grew. “It probably wasn’t until when Leicester hadn’t worked out that I was like, ‘I’m gonna go for this’,” he says. “I’m a big fan of motivational videos, I remember watching Arnold Schwarzenegger, and he was talking about how he’s never had a Plan B, because it takes away from Plan A, and that resonated with me. So I was like, ‘I’m making rugby work, no matter what’.”

A few months later, a phone call brought him a rugby lifeline – former Leicester Tiger Craig Newby, who’d just got his first coaching gig at National 1 club Cambridge, wanted Jamal to come and join him. So, at the start of 2013, a 19-year-old Jamal made the daunting move from Penryn to Cambridge, to a house affectionately known as the ‘Crack Den’. There wasn’t actually any cocaine dealt out of his run-down Cambridge home, Jamal insists, but passers-by would certainly have had their suspicions.

Being in National 1, Cambridge was only part-time, meaning he had to pick up jobs alongside his rugby. “I started as a labourer, that was a bit of a wake-up call, I’d never had a manual labour job before,” he laughs. “I was living that world, labouring from nine to five and training in the evening.”

The first season was a tough one for Cambridge, relegated down to National 2, but for Jamal it was the perfect opportunity. “That next year in National 2 was my most beneficial in rugby,” he asserts. “I was twenty at the time, played pretty much every game and went really well, and got called up to England Counties. We went over to Georgia and then played them at home, it was actually at Cambridge. That was basically the kickstart to making my way back up into professional rugby.”

Having taken his talents to Leicester, Cambridge, Bristol, Northampton Saints and now Gloucester throughout his career, that waiting room gamble certainly paid dividends for Jamal, and brought with it quite the journey for the man from olde-worlde Penryn, a small town a few miles north of Falmouth with a population of under ten thousand.  “Mum’s still down there,” he says, “but I’ve never really had an affinity with any place because I’ve always moved around quite a bit. I wouldn’t say there’s a desire to go back and live in Cornwall – there is nostalgia when I go back, but it’s short-lived when you realise there’s nothing going on down there.”

Born in Bristol, Jamal and his mum moved south when he was five after his parents split. Was it a difficult childhood? “It was just me and mum, and mum’s got chronic fatigue syndrome, she finds it hard working a full-time job, so we were always struggling for money. I didn’t feel like it, but I’m sure we were.

“My dad, he’s very proud despite having not a lot to do with my upbringing. He’s a doorman in Bristol, and if anyone ever looked like they played rugby, he’d be like, ‘oh yeah, my son plays rugby’, and he’d Google me and show them. I had it a few times where lads have messaged me when they’ve gone out in Bristol, I’ll get a message at two in the morning saying, ‘I’ve just met your old man’. 

Any siblings? He pauses. “I’ve got probably about ten, maybe more,” he replies, unsure. “I’ve got loads, not that I would necessarily call family, but my dad has a few offspring floating about the UK. I used to be close with one brother, then he got put away. I semi-regularly speak to one other …”

Another pause. “Actually, this is a crazy story,” he says. “Jake Polledri, who used to be at Gloucester, his brother Sam passed away [in 2022]. We were supposed to have a game against Worcester, but it got called off, so we all went down to Clifton Rugby Club where the wake was being held. We see Jake and his family, and after I got home, I see a message on Instagram, and it’s this guy who says, ‘you don’t know who I am, but I think we might be related’. 

“This guy had been at the wake too, I think he was in the same team as Sam, and his mates had been winding him up because they’d seen me and were like, ‘you two kinda look alike’. For whatever reason, this guy had taken it seriously, went home and spoke to his mum and said, ‘do you know anything about dad’s side of the family?’, and she’d said, ‘funny you mention that, he’s just got in contact’. Dad had just been diagnosed with cancer, so I think he’d been phoning around the various mothers to make amends.

“So this guy then rang his dad the next day, spoke to him for the first time ever – they’d never had an interaction before, at least I got him until I was five, he got nothing – and part of that conversation was, ‘you’ve got a brother called Jamal’. 

“So yeh,” he says, “I got a new brother.”

Returning to his rugby story, Jamal recalls his first steps back up the professional ladder from Cambridge. Having taken up the chance to represent Cornwall, Trelawny’s Army making their way to the County Championship final against Lancashire at Twickenham in 2014, Jamal came on midway through the first half, and with his first touch he beat two defenders to power his way over for one of HQ’s tries of the year. While his side fell to defeat, he’d certainly turned a few heads, particularly at Cornish Pirates. 

“After I’d left Leicester, I’d had a chat with Ian Davies [then Pirates head coach] about if there was an opportunity to play, but his thing was to go get some men’s rugby,” recalls Jamal. “So after that year where I’d played lots at Cambridge, I joined Cornish Pirates on a two-year contract. The pay was pretty low, seventeen grand or something like that, but I was full time.”

It was a big step, but he wasn’t there for long – having impressed in his first eight months at Pirates, he was soon on the move again. “Bristol, who were bouncing between the Premiership and the Championship, they came down to the Mennaye and we beat them [45-38, Jamal playing the full eighty minutes]. Not long after that I had a call from them saying they wanted me to join, so they bought me out my contract with Pirates and I joined them with a couple months left in the season.”

The season before, Jamal had been plying his trade in National 2, but now with Bristol he was on the verge of playing Premiership rugby, a playoff with Worcester between them and a return to the top flight. But in the most dramatic Championship final ever played, that dream was snatched away from them – Bristol had led 36-16 in the second leg with ten minutes remaining, but two late tries and a Ryan Lamb conversion in the final minute sent the Warriors through, winning 59-58 on aggregate. 

A full season in the Championship with Bristol followed, Jamal making sixteen appearances and two starts, before their Premiership destiny was fulfilled, beating Doncaster 60-47 on aggregate. 

Jamal was finally a Premiership player, taking himself from the fourth division to the first within three years, and he’d done it the hard way. “I wouldn’t change it, there’s no replacement for just playing rugby,” he says. “At Cambridge, I played thirty-odd games, that was massive for me and what allowed me to go straight into a full-time professional environment. 

“You’re still dealing with some decent individuals, especially as a nineteen-year-old prop against people who’ve been there and done it. I remember against Hartpury, they had Wayne Thompson [the long-time Bristol prop], and I remember getting bent up in all sorts of shapes. We played the return fixture, and I got one up against him, so that showed the development in real time.

“It’s pretty clear the RFU don’t respect the Championship and don’t give it the funding,” he adds, “but from their point of view it doesn’t get the eyeballs to give it the funding. Looking at the finances of anything in rugby is a thankless task – taking that away, it’s an amazing league. It’s a no-brainer that it’s important to have.”

 Coming to the end of his eighth season in the Premiership, including a five-year spell in cherry and white, does he feel he’s fulfilled that promise to make rugby work? “With Pirates being my local club, having grown up in Cornwall, I suppose I didn’t see joining Pirates as me making it,” he says. “When I got picked up by Bristol that was big, but I suppose my goals then changed, and it wasn’t just about being a full-time professional, it was about being in the Premiership. I don’t think that really hit me until I signed for Saints.”

He joined Northampton from Bristol in 2017 and was there for two seasons. Being wanted by a club who had won the competition just three years before was a significant endorsement. “I’d got promoted into the Premiership with Bristol, it wasn’t like I’d signed with a Premiership club. I remember this being a big part of my decision: at Bristol, we’d been disappointed because we’d finished last, got relegated, and at the time Northampton were disappointed because they’d finished seventh and missed out on top-flight Europe. That was another mindset – disappointed because you haven’t made top six, that’s the place I want to be.” 

It being Northampton, there was a bit of justice too. “There was probably always a bit in me that wanted to give a ‘fuck you’ to the guys in charge at Leicester for not taking me on, and it’s poetic that it came at Leicester’s biggest rivals.”

While the unfortunate timing of Jim Mallinder’s Saints exit stunted his progress in the Midlands, at Gloucester he’s found a rugby home since 2019. He’s now made over one hundred appearances for the club, reaching his century in their Challenge Cup knockout win against Castres, and is a fan favourite, although he’s been popular wherever he’s gone.

“I’ve always been quite lucky, wherever I’ve been, whether it’s Bristol or Northampton, I’ve always enjoyed that connection [with fans],” he says. “I see the value in it; people spend their hard-earned money to watch, and the extra bit of interaction, you can see when you do it, they value that. I’ve been here for a number of years and that connection has only grown over time.”

Crucially, Jamal is authentic – he’s a must-follow on social media, and he embraces the role of being a ‘character’, something the sport of rugby doesn’t always readily accept. “I’d be lying to myself if I said I didn’t enjoy it, but it’s also not really something I have to play up to. I like what I like, I share my thoughts on things, and people seem to like that. There are a lot of people like that in rugby, but I think there is a reservation with it – people are scared about how they come across. If you lose that and just be you, we’d see a lot more characters.”

In being all about the individual characters, he thinks wrestling is a good example to take inspiration from – a world he was once close to being a part of himself. “When I was at Cambridge, I went to this pro wrestling event in London, it was the first event they’d run. I got speaking to the guy who ran it, and I said to him I’d always been a fan of wrestling, I’ve always wanted to give it a go, and he asked if I fancied coming.” ‘Krisys’, his new wrestling pseudonym, was born, but lasted for just one match, albeit victorious. “The guy works for the WWE now. He messaged me a few years ago and said to give him a ring if rugby doesn’t work out. I’d probably be too old now, but I would love to do it, it’d be so fun.” 

While Bristol, Northampton and Gloucester fans know the character Jamal is, it was his TikTok escapades in lockdown that brought his charisma to a wider audience. “Initially it was nice to have a break, normally you only get four, five weeks off after a season, so this time you got a decent period of time away. Then it was, what do I do to kill time? So, two things took over my life, one was TikTok and the other was the video game League of Legends.” 

Such was his obsession, he even had a stint as a coach for a professional League of Legends team. “A lot of the team dynamics and communications skills I think are transferable from traditional sport, so that’s why I went in and helped coach. Outside of rugby or the game, there’s a number of things that are important for getting a team to work cohesively. Anything off the field we do here, it can be crossed over – we brought in post-game analysis, something we’re very familiar with here but wasn’t to them, or even nutrition, or how long someone’s sleeping before a game. It’s definitely something I’d love to do again.”

What’s next for Jamal is a question he’s thinking on more and more as he enters the last few years of his career, whether that’s at Gloucester or further afield. “I’m by no means looking for a way out [of Gloucester],” he affirms. “I think it’s just one of those things that goes unsaid but is obvious: I’m thirty, I’ll be 31 going into my next contract, and at a certain point you’ve got to find what’s important. I’ve probably got two contracts left to sign, and I’ve got to get the most out of those financially while I can. I’ve always been, I guess, what you’d call a squad player, so never had those big pay cheques. I’m not set when rugby’s done.

“Even the topic of potentially moving on is taboo, even the suggestion is like you’re frowned upon. You could easily make a clickbait headline that says, ‘Jamal wants out’, when the reality is I love it here, I’d love to stay here, but I’ve also got to look after the future.”

It’s been a challenging season for Gloucester in the Premiership, finishing firmly ninth in the table, and falling short of a Challenge Cup dream that could have redeemed their season, losing 36-22 to the Sharks in the final. Could a move elsewhere help add to Jamal’s trophy cabinet? “Winning the Prem Cup final, that was amazing, and being in with a chance of winning this European cup, that’s been amazing. But at this point, I’m not driven by medals – what I mean is, I wouldn’t jump ship for the sake of winning something, I’d rather win something with a group I care about.”

Story by James Price

Pictures by  Ben McDade

This extract was taken from issue 26 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.