Hill Aims for Lions Place By Going Back to School

ONLY the best will do for England’s rugby men.

Sir Clive Woodward made sure of that. The best hotels, best food, best visual awareness guru, you name it.

Naturally, the very best training and medical facilities too.

So it seemed wholly unlikely that World Cup winner Richard Hill, still battling back from a careerthreatening injury and with an eye on more glory with the Lions in the summer, would this week be found doing rehab at a comprehensive school in Essex.

Yet that’s before you see Abbs Cross school in Hornchurch where Hill’s partner Claire Pilling works on the PE staff and where a headmaster with the ambition and drive that Woody himself would surely applaud has realised his own unique and extraordinary sporting vision.

It’s not easy impressing a bloke who’s been at the heart of a Pounds 40million World Cup programme but even Hill has been bowled over by witnessing how head Glenn Mayoh, against all the odds over six years, has managed to get a Pounds 3.5m sports centre, a state- of-the-art complex, built in the grounds.

The reason Hill was here in the school’s magnificent six-lane pool at 7.30am, doing his aqua-jogging exercises as rehab following last year’s knee reconstruction, was not simply because it was a convenient arrangement. "It’s because any professional sportsman, never mind a schoolkid, would appreciate this facility," he said. "This school’s story is remarkable."

It is a story both he and Claire have felt privileged to play a part in.

Their life since they met as students 13 years ago at the West London Institute hasn’t just centred on Hill’s marvellous rugby adventures but equally on her school career.

"Claire’s always been so supportive and important to my career. I’ve always tried to reciprocate," said Hill.

To that end, the Saracens stalwart has become Abbs Cross’s resident celeb, even if he is a rugby star in a football school, doing everything from helping out at sports days, coaching afternoons and addressing Claire’s PGCE students. His specialist subject? "Injuries," he admitted ruefully.

"After the World Cup, it went quite mad here," recalled Claire. "Even I felt like a celebrity when I got back and the kids put up a big display on the notice board saying ‘Welcome back Richard and Claire’."

Hill even arranged for the Webb Ellis trophy to be brought down for a special afternoon.

So was everyone a bit starstruck?

"Don’t know about the kids but I was," joked head Mayoh, a rugby fan who also watched Hill win the Cup in Sydney. The admiration is mutual.

Mayoh is described in the school’s glowing Ofsted report as being an inspirational leader.

When he arrived, sports facilities were modest – a gym, school hall and playing fields – but he believed they could realign their pitches, sell off a strip of land they owned which was surplus to their PE requirements and use the money to fund instead an indoor facility which could be used by the school by day and the community by night.

HOWEVER, the school wasn’t eligible for funding so they were on their own.

Then the local council rejected the idea.

"It would have been easy to give up but for the benefit of the kids in this school, I wasn’t prepared to let that happen," he recalled. Ultimately, after years of battling, the school won on appeal to the Department of the Environment and sold the land for Pounds 3.75m.

The result is this: a sports centre opened last September which houses a sports hall with viewing gallery, a swimming pool, a 50- station fitness centre and a dance and aerobics studio. The school owns and runs it but in the evening, employs a management company to take it over as a commercial venture. The idea is to build up a membership of 1500 with any profits being pumped back into developing more facilities at a school also earning a considerable reputation as an arts college.

Hill gazes at the centre and reminds himself how, as a kid in Salisbury, he had to run for half a mile just to get from his school to a pretty basic pitch. "This is exactly the sort of facility you want at a time when we’re all beginning to appreciate the importance of health-related fitness issues for schoolkids," he said, while throwing his weight behind the Eveing Standard-EDF Energy Sport for Schools initiative.

Mind you, he didn’t expect the school to be aiding his own road back to fitness after the injury which has had some pundits suggesting that, at 31, the flanker may never clamber back to the top. Hill ignores the whispers and is determined to return to action by April. At the start of Six Nations week, he’s been able to chuck away his crutches. "He’ll be back," swore Claire. "No doubt about it."

His position as Abbs Cross’s No1 celebrity could be under threat, though.

The school has been looking for a big name to conduct a belated opening ceremony of the sports centre. So that would be Hill, obviously?

"Oh no," Claire teased him. "The kids would just say ‘God, not him again’."

Of course, they might think rather differently if the old maestro returned in red to help sink the All Blacks . . .