Draper directed me to my very first amateur rugby league club in London more than twenty years ago, when he was a development officer for the RL down here.
I'd just moved to the city from Uni, and wanted to play but didn't have a clue where the clubs were (this is pre-internet!). So I rang the RFL and they gave me Draper's number. I phoned him, and he said my nearest club was in Crystal Palace (South London). I was a bit surprised, as I lived in Walthamstow (North-East London), and my "nearest" club was thus a 90-minute each-way tube and train ride away. Bit of a bugger to do training on a work night, but when you're young and stupid...
So I went along and played for what turned out to be the London Crusaders' third team which was playing in the London amateur league. A couple of games in, we had a match against East London, who were based about 20 minutes from where I lived. It turned out that I could have gone there all the time, as they were keen for new players, but Draper had an objective to set up a new Crusaders' reserve team, so was telling any clueless new league player in the capital that it was their nearest club.
I should have spotted then that he had all the silky skills necessary to earn more than half a million a year as CEO of the utterly hopeless LTA !
Still, no hard feelings. I just hope Warrington have negotiated a more sensible pay deal.
