League legend looks back on personal highs and lows

NO-one is more surprised that he has written a book than Keith Senior himself.

“When I left school if anyone had told me I’d end up penning my autobiography I would have laughed at them. I didn’t even read books, never mind write them.”

But then Senior has astonished himself on many levels. For a start there aren’t many players who successfully made the crossover from the old winter-based semi-professional game to the modern full-time Super League era.

Seventeen years on, Senior was still at the top of his game, having played more than 500 times for two clubs, Sheffield Eagles and Leeds Rhinos, when his worst ever injury struck a few months ago. Five minutes from the end of his 365th game for Rhinos, against Harlequins in the Challenge Cup fifth round at Headingley on May 20, he went into a tackle and heard his right knee go pop. The leg went numb, but he insisted on hobbling off the pitch rather than being stretchered.

His anterior cruciate ligament had torn, but the surgery needed to repair the rupture was less grave than the severe infection that followed. There are still months of rehab ahead for the 35-year-old former England and Great Britain international.

Senior’s never-say-die attitude means he’s putting in four-to-five hours of physio/rehab and gym sessions a day, in the hope that he will recover fully and play top-flight rugby league for a while longer before finally hanging up his boots and moving into the coaching side of the sport he still loves.

Both physically and psychologically it’s been a testing time. That black day in May came soon after another dark episode, when he was told that his contract was being terminated, despite the fact that he was still Leeds’s number one centre. He was told that the club felt it was time to bring in younger players and find the next Keith Senior.

He vented his feelings at the time, but has since calmed down and says he can understand the club’s decision.

“Well, at the end of the day we are just pieces of meat, aren’t we? You have to take the challenges that life throws at you and do your best to deal with them,” says Keith. “But the facts are that I’m 35, I’m out of contract and I’ve had major knee reconstruction. Yes, it can get you down at times, but you have to get stuck into rehab and remain confident. I know I will play at the top again, and have offers on the table. I will have to prove my fitness before I take any of them, but I can do it.”

Ironically, he says he’s spending more time at his old club now than when he was actually a lynchpin of the team. He uses the club’s gym most days, and still enjoys the “craic” with his former team mates.

He may not have earned the millions a year paid to top football stars – a Super League player will average £100,000 a year, he says in his book The Bald Truth – but the life Keith Senior lives today is very much removed from the working-class estates of Huddersfield where he grew up.

He says the 15-year-old who was once nicked for shoplifting and slung in a cell stinking of urine for eight hours was straightened out thanks to the discipline of Thai boxing, which channelled his energy.

Leaving school to train as an HGV mechanic on £29.50 a week, he played rugby union in his spare time before changing allegiance to League and progressing quickly to Sheffield. Thanks to the earning power of Super League, his own canniness with money (he sells used shorts, shirts, boots and loser’s medals to collectors on eBay) and the calming influence of his partner Victoria Greetham, he enjoys a comfortable home life that revolves around country pursuits.

The couple live in a smart country house in ten acres of grounds, with a stable block and training ring for the horses he and Victoria keep. Each day starts with mucking out and grooming.

Senior cuts a dandyish figure in the tweeds and leather boots of the latter-day country squire. He quickly got over the shyess of starting riding lessons with a bunch of schoolgirls. His natural balance and leg strength gave him a head start as an adult learner, and he’s found great fulfilment at this second sport, he says. He seems to have taken to it as to the manner born.

“I hunt and do show jumping and cross country, and get far more nervous in a ring with 20 people watching than at Old Trafford with a crowd of 70,000. Horse riding circles are not places where you meet many rugby players,” says Keith.

“I occasionally feel a bit of a fish out of water, but am not embarrassed about where I come from or that I’ve earned the money to live in a lovely house and have a nice life. I’m very thankful; without rugby I’d probably still be a mechanic.”

Senior says he decided that writing about himself would not be worth the paper it was printed on unless he was brutally honest. He does appear to give an unsparing account of the highs and lows of the game, his opinions of fellow players, coaches, the administration of Rugby League, relationships and his own shortcomings.

At times it’s rather sad – for example, he has an 11-year-old daughter from his first serious relationship, which broke up not long after the child was born. He has had no contact with the girl for a long time, but he hopes one day she’ll decide to find him.

He went straight from that break-up into another serious relationship, with his ex-wife Beverley. It ended when Keith became smitten by Victoria, a former model. Even then things weren’t plain sailing. While away on a rugby tour of Australia, he slept with another woman, and it took fury, estrangement and a course of counselling to put things back on track.

“I admit I haven’t been good to the women in my life. As a teenager I wasn’t good-looking and I was spotty. When I went into rugby league I filled out and as I got older I went from never having a girlfriend to finding it all too easy. Now I don’t put myself in those situations. We lead a quiet life, and I drink maybe three or four times a year.

“When I look back I feel bad for the pain I caused my family as well as Vic. It was hard being told by people I cared about that they were disappointed in me. Sometimes you need a kick up the arse to realise your mistakes.”

The Bald Truth – Keith Senior My Life in the World’s Hardest Sport is published by Great Northern Books £16.99. To order from the Yorkshire Post bookshop call 0800 0153232 or visit www.yorkshire postbookshop.co.uk Postage costs £2.75.