My mate Alex Goode is retiring and I might just be sadder than he is

Telegraph

6 days ago

The sun is shining over StoneX Stadium but Saracens need favours – from a trio of testy rivals in Exeter Chiefs, Harlequins and Northampton Saints – to keep their season alive. Barring a victory over Bath as well as a kind combination of results elsewhere on Saturday, they will be saying goodbye to their greatest ever player.
Retiring yet rarely shy, Alex Goode arrives for his farewell interview and immediately lifts his T-shirt. The 37-year-old father-of-two flashes the lime-trimmed one-piece he has donned for his last ever gym session in two decades as a professional rugby player.
'The young boys look at me like I'm a weirdo,' Goode concedes. 'Thinking a bit more deeply about it, I'm happy to have the p--- taken out of me, if it puts people at ease and allows them to be more comfortable.'
This is the same character I have known for around 20 years, since we formed a half-back partnership at Oakham School. To watch Goode then, as it has been throughout his career, was to recognise a supremely talented playmaker who possessed an apparent ability to slow down time. Once, in a tight win over Trent College, he tapped a penalty and jinked through a forest of six or seven defenders to set up a crucial try.
On another occasion, owing to justifiable frustration about my decision-making at scrum-half in a game against a Gresham's side featuring Ben Youngs, Goode was not quite as serene. During a break in play, he grabbed me by the collar and urged me to pass to him more often. It was tough love.
Earlier that year, before a training session prior to my debut for the first XV, Goode had sought me out for a warm-up lap. Coming from a star player in the year above to a nervous newbie, the invitation meant a great deal – it would not have stayed with me otherwise. Goode clearly carried this emotional intelligence with him to Saracens, for whom he will make a 402nd appearance this weekend, and remains easily approachable.
My mum remembers him as one of just two of my mates ever to have brought her flowers. And while he amassed a heaving haul of trophies and accolades, friends would agree that his overall manner has hardly changed.
'I've probably got a little bit less… excitable,' Goode reflects. 'I'd have been buzzing around, annoying everyone, even more in my younger years. But I've always wanted to have time for everyone in the organisation. I'd hope if you asked the physios, the kit men and the interns, they'd say I'd had time for every single person and treat them how I'd like to be treated.
'It works the other way. If I give one of the young guys some stick, that's because I care and I want them to do well by getting the best out of them.'
Richard Hill, the 2003 World Cup winner, was a team-mate in Goode's first game for Saracens some 17 years ago. Such staggering longevity, according to the man himself, can be attributed to his competitive edge and love of winning. Goode is a master in the art of revelry as well. A catalogue of fancy-dress triumphs includes Eddie the Eagle, Bjorn Borg, the Joker and one half of the Wet Bandits from Home Alone.
His victorious, full-kit benders became legendary, and he describes ideal celebrations in detail. Following the final whistle is a golden hour in the changing room as the achievement sinks in. Then comes the real reward.
'You might think that you celebrate more on the night of a win, but you're emotionally drained,' Goode says. 'The next day is just the boys and the coaches and everyone is on it. The best way I can describe it is that everything is funny. You know that team will never be the same again – there will always be one or two people leaving – and you get to celebrate properly. It's just world class. The Sunday after you've won a trophy is the best day of the year... followed by the Monday if you get to it.'
Mark McCall, his long-time boss at Saracens, best encapsulated Goode's attributes almost five years ago in a press release heralding his full-back's contract extension: 'To watch him play is to be reminded of the subtle, skilful and intangible aspects that encapsulate great rugby performances.'
It was stirring to read David Walsh pay tribute in The Sunday Times after Goode helped England to victory over Ireland in 2013: 'If Bobby Moore had played rugby, this is how he would have done it.' Another win in Dublin seven years later, this time over Leinster for Saracens from fly-half, his position at school, featured a phenomenal individual display. I reported for Telegraph Sport on the game in which Goode broke the Saracens appearance record and the one in which he reached 400 matches earlier this month. Various team-mates as well as Ian Smith, the former Leicester flanker and our revered coach at Oakham, were present at StoneX for the latter.
While I have endeavoured to maintain a veneer of impartiality, pride can nudge you off course. A tally of 47 consecutive knockout matches for Saracens in the Premiership and Champions Cup between 2010 and 2024 is ludicrous. There are probably historic social media posts in which I have suggested that Goode should have far more than 21 caps. After all, his very first touch for England in 2012 was a moment of consummate class. Anticipating a diagonal kick from Ruan Pienaar, the Springboks scrum-half, he sprinted across his 22, slid to catch on the full and called for a mark. Goode's own assessment of his Test career is diplomatic and self-aware.
'In my period with England under Stuart Lancaster, between 2012 to 2015, I wasn't as confident as I was in the years after that,' he says. 'I was more confident in 2016-2019.
'We developed as a club and won more, but I'd like to have been more dominant [with England], to do things that suited my strengths more and not just go with the flow. I would have liked to get nearer the ball, do more kicking. I was probably a bit safe.
'It's probably understandable for where I was in my career, but I'd like to have got a shot with Eddie [Jones] to show I was a different player. Willie le Roux never died wondering with those passes and those kicks, which is what made him so good – that confidence.
'I think I had those skills, but I was a bit reserved. That's probably the only thing, but it wasn't in my personality at the time, so I can't really change it.'
Over the autumn series last November, Goode and I co-presented a podcast together. Listening to his insights on those matches as we planned those shows was as humbling as it was fascinating. Within minutes of the final whistle, without the benefit of a rerun to scroll through, Goode could condense and articulate the tactical nuances at play. His fear for the future is that teams 'go down the route of just wanting the best athletes out there'.
'For the era just before me, three of the very best players were Brian O'Driscoll, Dan Carter and Richie McCaw,' Goode says. 'I don't think any of them were particularly good in the gym. Were they absolutely rapid? No. They were very fit, running-wise, which meant they made good decisions often and under fatigue. Fundamentally, they had good rugby brains.
'As the game gets faster, there will be a temptation to make freak athletes more prominent. I still think that having good rugby players that you can make more athletic, within reason, is the most important thing. If you're a good rugby player who makes good decisions consistently, you'll be in the right place.'
Billy and Mako Vunipola are pinpointed as two other highly intuitive operators. Goode has a palpable passion for the cerebral aspects of the game. It is no wonder that Saracens are eager to keep him around as a mentor.
'What I'd like to keep teaching is rugby education,' Goode adds. 'If [players] are not playing lots of rugby, how do you get IQ across to them? Contexts of games, momentum swings and how you change them. If you've gone down to 14 men, how do you defend better? You've got to be thinking all the time. Particularly now, I think it's even more important, because if a team with a load of athletes gets on top, it can feel overwhelming, and you need to have some strategy and some tools there.'
Pre-season fitness testing was a time to shine for Goode, though he also worked hard to improve what could have seemed innate. 'I always try to use the analogy of Paul Scholes or Frank Lampard playing in midfield,' he says. 'Watching clips of them, the amount they turned their heads was extraordinary, how many times they were taking a picture. You could stop the game and they'd be able to tell you where everyone was.
'I've tried to keep taking pictures and I like to think you could blindfold me and I could go: 'Right, there's two in the back-field there, the winger is high [up the field] in a ruck, they're going to drift because their body language is slightly off.' If you've got that information, you can make decisions.
'The subtle, or non-sexy thing is giving yourself the best chance to be in control and make those decisions and pick off those two-on-ones and not get blind-sided because you've taken the picture and you know what's coming.'
Recent months will have been unsettling for Goode and other retiring players around the Premiership, with emotions lurching in different directions. An aching body, as well as the prospect of more time with family, has made the call easier. His wife, Lucy, whacked the nail on the head in her video message prior to Goode's 400th Saracens game: 'You're very special to us; you're very special to a lot of people.'
Bowing out with a warm sense of acceptance is rare, yet Goode has earned it. 'It's a mixture of sadness, pride and happiness at what I've achieved,' he admits. 'But it's happening, and that's OK.'