Wharfedale the final frontier as Scarbrough beams back

A couple of years ago, former England winger Dan Scarbrough dropped off the radar.

Happy and content as anyone would be living and playing professional sport in cosmopolitan Paris, this intrepid Yorkshireman was in need of a fresh challenge.

So he found a remote outpost in European rugby and headed there.

Lille was his destination, just a few hours north-east of Paris in the industrial heartland of northern France.

“It was a bit like Star Trek for me,” laughs Scarbrough, who traded life with fashionable Racing Metro for the unheralded upstarts. “I was going where nobody had gone before.

“Nobody really knew there was a team in Lille.

“The summer I arrived, Lille’s football team had just won the French league and it was all football this, football that. The rugby team were almost forgotten. But it was a good opportunity for me.”

Scarbrough played out the final two years of his professional career away from the limelight in Lille, making such an impression that the developing club offered him a two-year deal to coach their backs division.

But at the age of 35, and after five years with his family in France, the time had come to return home to his native Yorkshire.

In the four months he has been back, Scarbrough has gone about making up for lost time.

He has started a new career as a trainee teacher and senior rugby coach at Bradford Grammar School.

He has put the finishing touches to a new family home he started as a project while he was away in France.

Against all that his aching limbs were screaming at him, he has stepped back onto the field of play to help out Wharfedale and his old friend Jon Feeley.

“When I returned to Yorkshire, playing wasn’t really something I considered,” says Bingley-born Scarbrough.

“I’d effectively quit four months ago. But I was starting to get itchy feet and Jon caught me at the right time.

“I thought I was shot physically, but as soon as I got going again I really enjoyed it.

“I’ve only played a couple of times, I can only really play out of term time. But Wharfedale have been great.

“Besides, I owed Jon one because his dad and brother have helped me with our new house.

“We loved France. To learn the language and the culture as a family was very special.

“But it’s nice to be back home now. When you’re away, you appreciate certain things a lot more than you would when you’re in the same place all the time.

“It’s all coming together nicely. The biggest thing for me long-term is to be a teacher.”

Scarbrough has put plans to gain his full teaching qualifications on hold as he attempts to bed into his new roles. The actual coaching of the Bradford Grammar School team is a job he has taken to handsomely, though he is quick to acknowledge the support of the staff he has around him and the enthusiasm of the children under his wing.

Between coaching and playing, though, he has barely had time to sit down and enjoy one of his other great passions – supporting England.

Come Saturday, and the visit of the All Blacks, Scarbrough will be on tenterhooks to see if England can overcome New Zealand again.

Scarbrough says: “The Kiwis won’t have forgotten what England did to them last autumn, they’ll want to come and embarrass England on home soil.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen, to be honest. Physically, I think we’ll match them, it’s just going to be a case of on the day, who shows up.”

The selection battles that are currently raging in the England set-up evoke memories for Scarbrough, who twice in his career found himself fighting for World Cup selection.

In 2003, he was left feeling like he had had a winning lottery ticket ripped from his grasp when, after debuting in a warm-up game in Cardiff, he was overlooked for the squad that won the World Cup.

Four years later, after swapping Leeds for Saracens, he earned his second cap on the summer tour to South Africa but again missed out.

“It was one of those where I’d have been lucky to be involved in 2007, whereas 2003 I’d been involved more in the build-up,” recalls Scarbrough, who understands as well as anyone the personal battle each player will be going through over the next two years as they bid for a place in Stuart Lancaster’s World Cup squad.

“If there’s any advice I can give to the boys now it’s just relax and take your opportunity. It’ll be different for each player, whether they’ve been there for a while or they’ve got just one opportunity – you’ve just got to seize it.

“The players will have one eye on what’s on up ahead, but the idea is to take it game by game, and week by week. Continual improvement is what England was always about in my time, making yourself better, making the team better and just building up without ever taking a step back. That’s how it will be now.

“Development-wise there’s no bigger game than taking on the Kiwis, no bigger atmosphere than standing up against the haka. If ever there’s a test of someone’s mentality going into a game then Saturday is it.”