It’s now three-and-a-half years since James Simpson-Daniel was forced to retire too soon from rugby because of a serious ankle injury.

And while these days he is no longer running rings around opponents at Kingsholm – the place that became his second home for 13 years – in some ways not much has changed in his life.

That’s because he’s now working in the world of big business in London and, although physically he is no longer putting his body on the line for the team, anyone who has worked in finance knows just how competitive an environment it is.

“Yes, there are similarities,” said Simpson-Daniel, now 35. “If you do well, you are rewarded. If you’re under-performing you’re out the door.

“It was the same in rugby, if you didn’t perform you weren’t in the team.”

So how is it going in the business world?

“Touch wood, it’s going well,” said Simpson-Daniel.

No surprise there, then, because Simpson-Daniel, one of Gloucester’s finest ever rugby players, is one of those impressive, highly articulate sorts who seems to adapt to any given situation.

On the field, he had dancing feet with pace to match, could pick a pass that was beyond most players and could see a gap in the opposition’s defence almost before it was there. And when he pinned his ears back, boy could he finish.

Off the field, he enjoys working for a couple of national radio stations talking about all things rugby, has been a pundit on TV and also had part ownership of 2013 Welsh Grand National winner Monbeg Dude, with fellow ex-international rugby players Mike Tindall and Nicky Robinson.

Simpson-Daniel has always led a full-on lifestyle, and nothing has changed now that he’s swapped boots and a gumshield for a collar and tie, working as a foreign exchange risk manager for Afex, a global payment and risk management specialist.
These days he deals with some big clients and some even bigger sums of money.

The job is based in the heart of London and he’s been there for eight months, after working in PR for bespoke betting firm Fitzdares for a year and a half.

He enjoyed working at the bookmakers, spending much of his time rubbing shoulders with the great and the good of the racing world up and down the country.
But when Afex came calling it was too good an opportunity for the upwardly mobile Simpson-Daniel to turn down.

Mind you, it sounds pretty hard work.

“I’m based in The Strand and I need to be at my desk at 7am because the markets have been going all night,” said Simpson-Daniel, who lives with his wife Lucy and two children in Prestbury.

“It’s quite full on and it’s not the sort of job I can imagine doing at 60 because of burn-out.”

While burn-out is a pressing concern in all walks of life, it’s a particular issue in rugby today, of course, although it was not such a big talking point when Simpson-Daniel started out on his professional rugby journey in 2001.

Born in Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham, he learned his rugby at Sedbergh School in Cumbria where he was a boarder.

It was the same school that spawned the likes of Will Carling and Will Greenwood, so Simpson-Daniel was following in some pretty impressive footsteps.

Not that Simpson-Daniel considered himself to be anything special on the rugby field when he was in his mid-teens.

“I was okay,” he said modestly. “I was in the 1st XV in my lower sixth year and I was just an average player. In those days I was playing fly-half.

“In my final year I bulked up a bit and played a bit better but I wasn’t a great player. I was always quite small but it turned out that was the best thing that could have happened to me, because I learned that I had to use my skill if I wanted to compete with the bigger players.”

And somebody must have liked what they’d seen in the young Simpson-Daniel because he was selected to play for North of England Schools against Midlands Schools, a match that also featured future England scrum-half Harry Ellis.

“I had a pretty solid game,” recalled Simpson-Daniel of the match that provided him with the springboard to jump into the full-time game at just 18.

“There were a lot of scouts at the game and I was very lucky because eight of them wanted to talk to me.”

His school commitments meant that he had time only to visit four clubs – Leicester, Worcester, Gloucester and Bath.

“I went to Leicester and Worcester first then on down to Bath,” recalls Simpson-Daniel. “I’d always thought it would be a choice between Leicester and Bath.

“They were the two big clubs at the time and to be honest I’d never even heard of Gloucester! If you’d given me a map I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where Gloucester was.”

To his surprise, Bath wasn’t what he’d expected.

“I remember going into this room and Jonathan Callard and Andy Robinson were sat behind a desk,” he said. “I was the other side and it felt like I was at school being interrogated.

“I didn’t feel any warmth.”

And while the temperature may have been on the cool side at the Rec, the climate was much improved when he arrived at Kingsholm.

“John Fidler was there and he walked me round the Shed,” said Simpson-Daniel. “He asked me if I’d ever heard of the Shed and I had to say ‘no’.

“He then put an arm round my old man and said, ‘We’ll look after your boy for you’.

“When we left, my dad said, ‘I’ll tell you which club I’d like you to go to’. I thought he was going to say Bath but at the same time we both said ‘Gloucester’.”

And that was how Simpson-Daniel became a Gloucester rugby player all those years ago, although in those pre-sat nav days he had to learn pretty quickly how to get to and from the city.

“I signed the contract when I was 17 and still at school,” said Simpson-Daniel, “but once I went back to school everything was focused on Gloucester.

“While everyone else was doing their homework I was outside doing sprints.”

So how did he do in his A-levels?

“Terribly,” he laughed, “I was never any good academically.”

And as soon as he’d put away his pencil and ruler for the last time as a schoolboy, he was off to Gloucester – he initially lived on Kingsholm Road – where it soon became apparent that he wasn’t a fly-half.

“My kicking game wasn’t good enough,” he said.

That may have been true, but from day one he was training with the first-team squad, and putting in the hard yards that would see him develop into one of Gloucester’s finest ever wings, win trophies for his adopted club and play for England 10 times, although he would have won many more caps but for a series of desperately untimely injuries.

He was learning all the time too.

“I was on the bench for pretty much the first four months of my first season at Gloucester,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I was on a basic contract, but if we won away we’d get a £1,000 bonus and if we won at home we got a £500 bonus.”

Fortunately for Simpson-Daniel, Gloucester had a decent side in those days so although he wasn’t seeing any action he was still picking up the win bonuses.

“I remember travelling up to places like Newcastle and not getting on the pitch,” he said. “At the time Phil Vickery, Trevor Woodman, Andy Gomarsall, Henry Paul – he came a bit later – Terry Fanolua and Junior Paramore were all playing.

“There were people like Andy Deacon and Mark Cornwell as well. They were all experienced players and I was the only young player involved.

“When we went on away trips they’d say, ‘Where’s the kid?’ and I’d end up making them teas and coffees for however long the bus journey lasted.

“If there was one thing I learned from school it was to respect your elders and if you didn’t, you didn’t make it as a rugby player.”

Simpson-Daniel’s wait to show the fans the skills that were to light up stadiums up and down the country for years to come was soon to be over.

“I went on as a replacement at Northampton for the last 15 minutes,” he said. “We’d got loads of injuries but I did okay.”

The following week – at home to Rotherham – he did even better.

“I came on on the wing,” recalls Simpson-Daniel, “and the first time I got the ball I was smashed in the face by their big islander.

“Blood was pouring out of my mouth but when I looked up the whole Gloucester pack was laying into their player who had injured me.

“It was their way of looking after me and it showed me that I’d be accepted.”

Moments later it wasn’t just his team-mates who had taken the young Simpson-Daniel into their hearts and souls.

“It was my next touch of the ball and I just ran 40 yards down the wing to score,” he said. “The Shed went wild and it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.”

Gloucester won that game comfortably – in fact in those days they won rather a lot of games, particularly at Kingsholm.

They finished top of the table three times in the noughties, although they were never crowned champions because of their incredibly frustrating failure to reproduce their best form in the play-offs.

“When we lost those play-offs it was as if we’d finished bottom of the league,” admitted Simpson-Daniel. “But we were a very, very good team and other teams were terrified to come to Kingsholm.

“We had a very big pack. They were massive and apart from Vicks and Trevor they didn’t get the national recognition they deserved because they worked so well as a unit.

“In the backs they were all local lads with the exception of Terry Fanolua and me and we had a lot of success.”

Indeed they did. They won the Powergen Cup in 2003 when it was a competition that still mattered – Simpson-Daniel scored two tries in the Twickenham final win over Northampton – and three years later won the European Challenge Cup.

Individual honours also came Simpson-Daniel’s way, most notably in 2007-08 when he was named the Premiership’s player of the season.

It’s a pretty impressive CV, of course, particularly when it’s widely considered – outside Gloucestershire at least – that he spent much of his time on the treatment table.

“I played a lot of games,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I’m not a stats man but I played more than 270 games which averaged out at more than 20 games a year.

“Yes, I did have three months out with shoulder and ankle injuries but that meant I missed eight games while I was recovering.

“It was just the timing of the injuries when it came to England that was so shocking.”

England, of course, is very much a case of what might have been for Simpson-Daniel. On the one hand it’s fair to say that he at least experienced the thrill of wearing an England shirt – not many can lay claim to that – but it’s equally fair to say that a player of his outstanding talent should have won at least six, seven or eight times the 10 caps he won.

“Honestly, I’d have loved to have got 30 caps,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I just wish I’d had a run of games, played in a couple of Six Nations campaigns. I’d play a game and then be out because of an injury and it was very difficult.”

It certainly was very difficult. He missed out on three World Cups – all played when he was in his 20s – including the ground-breaking World Cup win Down Under in 2003.

“I remember watching the World Cup final at my in-laws,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I was cheering on England and there was elation when they won, but almost immediately I had this feeling of devastation because I knew how close I’d come to being out there with them. That was tough.”

What was just as tough for Simpson-Daniel to take was the fact that so many of the unfortunate injuries he picked up on England duty were just that – unfortunate.

“Yes, they were such random injuries,” he said. “I remember starting at outside centre against Samoa, Tins [Mike Tindall] was at 12 and Andy Robinson was the coach. Just before half-time I got a bang on the hip point and it completely seized up.

“I managed to get to half-time but as soon as I stopped moving it locked up so that was obviously game over. Two days later it was back to normal.

“Then there was the tour to Australia. I’d already had a bang on the head when I got hit on the quad. I remember it just swelled up and I could barely walk. I was taken to hospital and I was on morphine for four days. My tour was over before it had begun. It was just really random.”

Simpson-Daniel had already announced himself to the English rugby public at large some years before on that never to be forgotten May day at Twickenham in 2002 when, playing for England in a non-cap international against an all-star Barbarians XV, he danced around the great Jonah Lomu to score a scintillating try.

He was still a few days short of his 20th birthday and although it’s a try that has gone down in English rugby folklore, the ever modest Simpson-Daniel insists it’s not all down to him.

“I always say that one of the reasons that try is remembered by so many people is because it was against Jonah Lomu,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I’m obviously very proud of that try but the whole rugby world was watching because it was Jonah Lomu.”

Indeed they were and though it is close on 16 years ago, Simpson-Daniel can recall the try as though it were yesterday.

“It came from a scrum and I was first receiver,” he said. “I was going to do a simple switch with Phil Christophers but I remember looking up and thinking Jonah was quite deep.

“I thought, ‘Shall I dummy Percy Montgomery and just go for it?’ And when the ball came to me I didn’t have a chance to think about what if it all goes wrong, it was just instinct and fortunately it came off.

“But Lomu was very close to getting one of those bear-like hands on me and if he had I’d have ended up in row Z. Such are the fine margins between success and failure.”

And while Simpson-Daniel credits Lomu for helping to catapult him onto the national stage, it’s also fair to say that Lomu’s impact on the game from the mid-1990s held the Gloucester flier back when it came to international rugby.

“Jonah made such an impression,” said Simpson-Daniel. “He was enormous and had these tree trunk legs. He could score tries for fun and he really did change the game. Countries moved away from playing smaller players to playing bigger players. Players had to be big.”

Simpson-Daniel admits that he’d have loved to have played for current England coach Eddie Jones, who, in addition to his many entertaining one-liners, has a remarkably flexible rugby brain that allows him to think outside the box.

The only straight lines in Jones’ thinking are the ones marking the pitch, and it’s not hard to imagine him embracing the one-off talent that was Simpson-Daniel.

Sadly, for Simpson-Daniel, that was not possible, but after his heroics against Lomu in May, he was soon lining up against the great All Black again. This time it was for real because it was Simpson-Daniel’s full England against the touring New Zealanders in November 2002.

So how did he get on this time?

“Jonah scored a try,” he chuckled, “so you could say round two went to him. But England won the game and I helped set up one of the tries. Jonny [Wilkinson] and I worked a move down the blindside for Lewis Moody to score.”

So did Simpson-Daniel get close to Lomu during the game?

“I did miss him once but I did tackle him once as well, sort of,” he said. “He was slightly off balance and I half tripped, half tackled him but I certainly count it as a tackle!”

Tackling was never Simpson-Daniel’s strength of course, but he’d certainly done enough in Clive Woodward’s eyes to warrant another cap against the touring Australians the following week.

And once again he didn’t disappoint a packed Twickenham.

“I had a blinder,” he said. “It was my best game for England. I played a part in two Ben Cohen tries and had a really good game.”

And while everything seemed rosy for the young Simpson-Daniel, the England curse that was to dog him throughout his career was just about to bite.

“I felt ill on the Tuesday before the Australia game,” said Simpson-Daniel. “I managed to train on the Thursday but after the game they tested me and discovered I had glandular fever. That wiped me out for quite a while.”

He still had his moments for England of course – a try against Italy in the 2003 Six Nations being one of the better moments – but although he was to continue to receive plenty of call-ups over the years, he said ruefully that he “became quite good at holding tackle bags”.

But while his England career never really took off despite that promising start, he was always the go-to man as far as the Gloucester fans were concerned.

Simpson-Daniel is rightly proud of his Gloucester record – he played 276 games and scored 600 points – but admits he once came quite close to cutting his ties with a club he still loves to this day.

“Castres offered me a contract when I was 27 or 28,” he said. “It was a very big contract. I went out there to have a look and they couldn’t have done enough for me.

“But there was something that wouldn’t let me go, wouldn’t let me leave Gloucester.”

And it’s clear what Gloucester mean to Simpson-Daniel when you ask him what gives him greatest pride when he looks back on his career.

“I’m proud to have been a one-club player,” he said. “It’s one of my biggest achievements. I’m very proud to have played for Gloucester.”

And what about his career highlights?

“That first try for Gloucester against Rotherham,” he said. “Not the try itself, it was the crowd’s reaction.

“And in the same game seeing all the forwards lay into their player who nearly knocked my head off. I’ll never forget that.

“Scoring a hat-trick of tries against Bath was pretty special and winning the Hong Kong Sevens was incredible as well.

“I was a professional for 13 years, I got capped and played all over the world. I had a great time.”

And any regrets?

“I regret not playing more games for England,” he said, “but I also regret not being able to retire on my own terms.

“When I signed my last contract, I was offered a three-year deal but I only wanted two years because I wanted to finish at the top.

“If I’d have played those last two years I’d have gone above 300 for Gloucester.”

Simpson-Daniel admits that being forced to take early retirement hit him hard.

“It was like a bereavement,” he said. “It was almost like losing a member of the family. I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’d lost all the routine. Playing sport for a living gives you a structure and suddenly I went from all that to zero.

“It took about three months until I had my first tear. I was in a daze.

“I spoke to people like Trevor Woodman and Alex Brown who had also been forced to retire early.

“They said they’d had the same feelings and that it was perfectly normal. It’s a bit like when you’re grieving.”

Happily, all is good with Simpson-Daniel these days.

“Like any ex-player I’d love to be out there and having another go,” he said. “And I still think if only I’d passed the ball instead of taking that tackle that ended my career... But I’m not in a deep dark hole or anything like that.”

And he still keeps in touch with all things rugby through his radio work.

“I do get my rugby hit that way,” he said. “That’s my little dose of it. The radio commentators are very good, they paint pictures.”

But while he enjoys his work as a pundit, he says he finds it harder just to watch a game – even though he’ll be at Kingsholm for the games against Wasps on Saturday and Harlequins later in the season.

“It’s the trickiest thing when you’re out of the environment because I’m still very passionate about Gloucester,” Simpson-Daniel said.

“It’s still raw because I was out there playing until quite recently. And it was particularly difficult because up until this season we’ve been struggling. Watching the way Gloucester were playing was horrible but I didn’t want to be one of those grumpy old rugby players.

“It was the same for people like Andy Hazell and Tins.

“But this season has been so much more refreshing. Johan Ackermann is doing a fantastic job and putting in a new pitch is a statement of intent of the brand of rugby the club want to play.

“Everything is so much better and players are being picked on form. Look at Jake Polledri, he’s been outstanding. If you’re playing well you hold the jersey and as a player that’s all you want.”

He’s a good talker is Simpson-Daniel, talks sense as well.

But while rugby is the number one sport in his life, even the oval ball game will have to play second fiddle in his life for four days in March.

That’s because Simpson-Daniel is a huge racing fan and he’s already counting down the days to Tuesday 13th March, which is the start of this year’s Cheltenham Festival.

He’ll be working for three of the days but on the fourth he’ll be a fan, enjoying every twist and turn that the greatest show in jump racing has to offer.

Simpson-Daniel knows better than most the ups and downs of the sport, of course, after Monbeg Dude’s heroics in the recent past.

“He was a huge part of our lives for five years,” said Simpson-Daniel. “He ran some extraordinary races and when I was struggling with injuries he was extremely uplifting.

“He was an incredible horse. He won the Welsh National, won twice at Cheltenham, came third at the Grand National – they were among my top 10 sporting moments.

“It was the most remarkable story, he was such a brave battling horse. I used to jump every fence with him when he was racing, it was an incredible experience.”

Monbeg Dude was retired in 2016 after winning four of his 24 races and bringing in £260,000 in prize money, so does Simpson-Daniel have any thoughts of getting another horse?

“How do you follow Monbeg Dude?” he asked. “We only paid £12,000 for him. You could never repeat that.”

He’s almost certainly right, of course, but there again, that’s no real surprise because Simpson-Daniel was a class act on the rugby field and is a class act off it in many different fields.