I played against my twin brother - and with him

I KNOW there’s the Currys and du Preezs at Sale, but I wouldn’t have thought many twin brothers have played with each other and against each other in professional rugby.

- LEE FORTEY

But that is the case with me and Chris, my younger brother by 15 minutes. We've got an older brother, too, who used to intervene whenever things got out of hand when we were doing tackling practice on each other on the local field in Gloucester and playing mini and junior rugby at Widden Old Boys and then Gordon League.

Chris and I started and ended our senior playing careers at the same clubs - Gloucester and Worcester - but our journeys took different paths in between. I only played a handful of first-team games at Gloucester, whereas Chris spent nine years there. As a young player you want to be playing as much as possible and it was difficult for me to get game time in the first team because you had Trevor Woodman and Tony Windo there, and a good Berry Hill lad called Ade Powell competing for the same spot.

The Gloucester coach at the time, Richard Hill, was honest with me, saying that opportunities might be limited, so I followed Ian Smith - a distant relative of our family - to Birmingham-Moseley. A Welsh coach called Allan Lewis was there, too, and he asked me to go to Newport with him after Moseley had gone into receivership.

As an Englishman playing in Wales I had a target on my back most weeks. But I loved it there. It was the time when they brought over all the South Africans - Gary Teichmann, Adrian Garvey, Franco Smith, Andy Marinos etc. and there was the Canadian Rod Snow to learn off, too. I was still only in my early 20s, so playing with those guys helped massively in my development. I also went on loan to Pontypool, which was great.