Mark Atkinson

He was let go by both Sale and Wasps, and then found himself in the basement of the English second tier, but Mark Atkinson found the road to redemption at Goldington Road, known for having a Lazarus-like impact on lost rugby souls.

Just over ten years ago, Mark Atkinson was sat in a changing room in Esher, Surrey, looking at the players alongside him. His team sat at the bottom of the Championship table, a team he’d found after tumbling out of two Premiership clubs. He was experiencing what many would refer to as an epiphany, when it dawned on him that maybe he had been doing things wrong. “My spells at Sale and Wasps had gone very badly,” begins the Gloucester centre. “I mean, I didn’t know that when I was experiencing them but as I sat there in that changing room at Molesey Road, I was putting things together. 

“If I was being truthful,” he concedes, “I hadn’t done what I should have, what I could have; I’d done what I thought was the right thing to do, but I’d missed huge opportunities; I’d let a few people down. I thought of my parents who had travelled around the country, following my career as well as they could, and I looked at the players in the same shirt as I was in; the way they were approaching playing rugby. The way it was everything to them but really the way they were balancing other jobs, working hard away from professional rugby, training just Tuesday and Thursday nights, and then filling the rest of their working week with things that weren’t rugby. That scared me. I feared what would happen next unless I changed. I was still just about young enough to do something about it. So, I did.”

Mark’s Merseyside accent still crackles along the Gloucestershire pavements. Born in Knowsley and having been brought up in Cheshire, his north-western roots make him naturally amenable and talkative. He isn’t keen on talking about himself, mind. Our discussion is littered with self-deprecation. His humility is also struggling with walking the streets of Gloucester and having his photo taken. The Cherry and Whites centre is never too far from taking the mickey out of himself, so being the centre of a camera’s attention in such a public way is uncomfortable.

To know Mark, you have to know how good he is with other people: for him, making other people happy is the noblest art. From an early age, social communication has been something he’s loved and excelled at. School was a joy: St Ambrose in Altrincham, a Christian Brothers’ Roman Catholic boys’ grammar school (the same school that, amongst others, Raffi Quirke attended) endured his formative years. He could have done better at school, he admits, but he was a bit too busy having a good time. Rugby was his sport from the age of twelve, when he chose to follow the oval ball rather than the round one, and he was playing first XV rugby by year eleven: Sale’s Academy was easily interested. “I remember being asked to play in an inter-squad game at Edgeley Park,” explains Mark. “I wasn’t much older than seventeen, I don’t think, and I was full of confidence. I came on at fullback and a passage of play allowed me to make a monstrous hit on Ben Foden. And if you know me, you’ll realise that many things would have to go right for this to happen. But anyway, I remember laying out Fodes and the crowd going wild. It wasn’t a particularly big crowd, maybe a thousand, more than I’d ever played in front of and I heard their reaction. I remember thinking there and then that I wanted more. I thought I’d made it and I just needed to carry on doing things like that.”

So he tried. Being a young professional rugby player is fun. He made friends with everyone. He was enticed out on socials; encouraged to party, to enjoy Manchester and the spoils of being paid to play sport. It was an environment he relished. But his rugby suffered. His fitness wasn’t full; his skills lacked the finesse of someone going the extra mile. He was tired, often out late the night before;  something was missing out on the field. The opportunities diminished. Tough conversations with the coaching staff loomed and before he really had time to consider it all, he was let go. But another top club came knocking.

“Wasps was the same,” continues Mark. “I’d gotten a second chance and I didn’t take it.” He speaks with the wince of a man relaying how things have slipped through his grasp. “Senior players were doing things that looked good fun and I thought that is what I should do,” he says. “Those who’d established themselves, acting in a certain way and stupidly I followed them.”

History repeated itself. He didn’t push himself in training, comfort was the enemy of progress. He played second-team games, fixtures on back fields, with distant changing rooms. Once again, he was passed over. The Championship beckoned. But it wasn’t with any of the top sides. Crucially, however, Mark and Esher would play some of those top sides. Maybe, if he got his mindset right, he could make an impression. Back in the Esher changing room, Mark made a vow to himself and set about rewriting the stars. He had also met a girl, about whom he was very serious. She deserved better than windswept, rain-soaked away games at the bottom of the nation’s second tier. Her brother was Wasps and England star Dominic Waldouck for goodness sake. He needed a way back. 

November 2011, Goldington Road. A tall, rangy fly half bursts through the Bedford defensive line before offloading adeptly out the back of his hand. The Blues snuff out the subsequent attack but the legendary Championship coach Mike Rayer has had his curiosity piqued. The next season Mark would be calling Goldington Road home. “I’d seen him in a Wasps A game and I wondered what he might be able to do for us,” says Rayer. “I loved the way he took it to the line and his offload ability was evident even then. In the Esher game, I got stuck into our boys at halftime (even though we were 30 points up) about nailing their ten because he was taking the piss out of our defence!

“It’s difficult not to warm to Mark; he has a great personality and sense of humour. That was also something that I knew would work incredibly well with what we were trying to create.”

Mark’s plan was coming together. “It’s difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t seen it what Bedford is like; how (Mike) Rayer does what he does,” explains Mark. “The team ethos is incredible, a mixture of tough experienced enforcers and young talent. You had the likes of Paul Tupai, Sacha Harding, Darren Fox and Ian Vass. Then you had players like Luke Baldwin, James Short and Ben Ransom as well. Josh Bassett was on one wing too! And then to play with someone like Jake Sharp: he remains the most skilful and inventive player I’ve ever shared a changing room with.

“And off the pitch, it was so much fun, everyone was so tight,” continues Mark. “Toops (Paul Tupai) and Vassy (Ian Vass) made sure of that. I still do things on team socials that were first given to me by those two. I hope that they continue to get passed down. Bedford was so much fun. I still try and travel back when I can.”

In his second year with the Championship side, Gloucester had centre issues and asked if they could get the Blues centre halfway through the season. Bedford made them wait. It was an agonising period for Mark who was so desperate to enter the fray once more. “I was frustrated at the time,” he recalls. “I know, looking back, they had every right to do what they did. But it annoyed the hell out of me. I felt they were standing in my way. You don’t see things right when you’re in among it. It was the right decision to hang on to me; they had done a lot for me.”

With Bedford’s help, Mark was making good on his promise to himself; to work harder on his game. The Blues had a dual registration deal with Sarries that was allowing some now-household names to get some game time. Mark managed to talk his way into heading in the opposite direction. “That second year, I spoke to Mike about me training full time and Bedford couldn’t really provide the resources,” he says. “So he spoke to Mark McCall and they agreed that I train with Sarries each week.

“So this is why you will never find me saying anything against them (Saracens). I know the fallout from the salary cap situation gives them a lot of trouble but I can only say wonderful things. They took me in like I was one of their own. And for a season I was inside their camp. It’s an extraordinary ethos. I have some very fond memories of that club.”

And with that, he also improved as a player. He saw how the likes of Owen Farrell and Maro Itoje went about their business. He witnessed a true commitment to a cause. And realised that if he did get the chance at the top flight again, things would have to be different.

Gloucester agreed terms with Bedford, after being rebuffed mid-season, and Mark joined David Humphreys’ men for the start of 2014/15. “Technically, I was signed by Nigel Davies but never played for him,” he says. “‘Humph and Laurie Fisher took over as I arrived. I remember being sat across the table from Laurie, wondering who on earth he was: one of the great characters of the game. But that move was a dream come true. I found myself alongside James Hook and Richard Hibbard – blokes I’d been watching on TV winning Grand Slams. It was extraordinary and I wasn’t going to let this one go. I worked very hard.”

Gloucester became successful in the Challenge Cup, making three finals in four years. But it is a passage of time that is laced with some regret for our man. “That first season we won against Edinburgh at the Stoop,” he begins. “I’d played a bit in the campaign but got injured for the final. I was never going to wear that medal in quite the same way. The next two finals I was involved in a lot more; played in both finals. So I guess that was hardest.

“We took my mum to Murrayfield (Challenge Cup final 2016/17). It wasn’t long before we lost her and that was a very special moment for me. For her to see the whole thing: me involved, the occasion was huge, and although we lost, I knew she’d enjoyed herself. I remember thinking about how she’d been with me every step of the way, up and down: at Sale, Wasps, Esher and now at Gloucester in a European Final. She’d always watch. I was very grateful she got to see that.”

And then Johan Ackermann arrived. “My time at Gloucester has spanned three eras, hasn’t it?” says Mark. “It feels a lot longer than it’s been! And in that time, another Challenge Cup final, losing by one point to Cardiff in Bilbao. A heartbreaking loss in the final minutes: this was the cruellest the sport has ever been to me. It’s given me so much but those two finals were tough to take.”

Bruised yet brave, he emerged and began to consolidate his position in the hearts of the Shed. An idiosyncratic crowd as famous as the Cherry and Whites themselves. “When I try to describe what Gloucester is like to people back home, I will often use Liverpool as a comparison. The reds who go along to Anfield and stand in the Kop, are exactly the same sort of people who occupy the Shed. Uncomplicated, honest and incredibly loyal. We just sold out seats on an aeroplane to join us in La Rochelle at £500 a pop, within minutes. And this isn’t an affluent area. But people will do anything for this club. It’s the same in Liverpool. You can’t go a hundred yards in this city without someone nodding or saying hello. This fanbase is extraordinary.”

Smiling again, Mark is back inside the memory banks, reliving conversations with David Humphreys, as the Irish director of rugby parted ways with Gloucester in 2020. “He phoned me before he spoke to the squad, which I am still grateful for to this day,” says Mark. “He thanked me for all I’d done, especially as he kept on letting my best friends go – Jacob Rowan, Billy Burns, Callum Braley. Even then, as we talked about his departure, we laughed and joked. I stay in touch with him; he showed a great deal of belief in me and got me playing my best rugby.”

In 2019 and 2020 Mark’s stock soared. He became the perfect foil for the likes of Danny Cipriani and his all-round game had most pundits talking. He could offer physicality but also distribution, and if that wasn’t enough, his game awareness saw him putting the ball on the end of his boot occasionally; he was almost impossible to defend. Gloucester benefitted, scoring ‘worldies’ almost weekly and securing a top-four spot for the first time in many years. He was an obvious solution to Eddie Jones and England’s issues at inside centre but it wasn’t until a year later that he finally got his chance. “I wish I’d been picked earlier,” he admits. “I got my cap in 2021 but I wasn’t in the best of form. I’d felt so good the year before and if I’d been given a chance then, maybe things would have gone differently. But I still got a chance, I am ever so grateful to Eddie Jones. Maybe it sounds like I’m not when I talk about getting picked earlier, but I am. He picked me and gave me an England number. Not many people get one.”

The call-up has fired a new belief into Mark. Many would think at nearly 33 and having represented his country, his work was done. The reply is a defiant one. “I remember talking to Willi Heinz about this,” he explains. “He’d had later career success and really mastered getting the most out of his performances as a more senior player. I used to think that this period of my life would be about squeezing as much out of my career as I could: getting another contract to extend the wage. But I have changed so much in the last couple of years. I’m four months into a nine-month injury and all I can think about is getting back and winning stuff. The culture in the club, with George (Skivington) and Dom (Waldouck), has become about winning trophies. It’s what they did at Wasps so well, they were part of a winning mentality and this has changed the way I think about things.”

Mark’s absence is keenly felt at Kingsholm. When people approach him on the street, the first question is, predictably, about when he is going to be back. There is no obvious limp to his walk and to talk to him, you wouldn’t know about the damage to three ligaments he sustained back in October against Bath. “Normal life is fine,” says Mark. ‘It’s strong and yet it still hurts. I’m four to five months in and even though it’ll look like there’s no issue, it’s painful every day. This injury used to retire people, but all I can think of is coming back to win something. Previously, I would have said that I was coming back for a new deal, to just play a part. But this new side of me is coming through. It’s good.”

And you can sense that. Family life has given him new purpose and the sense of unfinished business is palpable. We stand in the Kingsholm car park, him, at 6’5”, looming over me, but, in turn, behind him, the stadium looming over us both. Nothing, it seems, is bigger than rugby in this city. Detractors are evident, you don’t have to go far online to find people’s derisory comments about Gloucester’s inability to travel the distance. But what they are unaware of is where Mark Atkinson has been and where he still has left to go. The journey has changed the traveller, but the show goes on. And after spending time in his company, you would bet on this man doing everything he can to make one final stop. 

Story by Sam Roberts

Pictures by Francesca Jones

This extract was taken from issue 21 of Rugby.
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