Almost 45 years in adult rugby as a player, captain, coach, head coach and these days a director of rugby, but Paul Morris is still enjoying the game as much as ever.

The 61-year-old has been director of rugby at National League 1 Cinderford for the past eight years, having been in charge of their United side for four years before that and remains fully committed to driving the club forward.

They are now in their seventh season back in the third tier of English rugby and are well established among the top 30 or so clubs in the country.

“Rugby still interests me, I’m addicted to competition,” said Morris, a former scrum-half who played for Old Patesians for some 20-plus years.

“I do worry about staying on too long but I feel my rugby ethics, honed at Old Patesians 45 years ago, are still in tune with today’s game.

“We worked all week and then played rugby on a Saturday afternoon.”

And those basic principles have certainly stood Morris, a former head coach at Cheltenham North and Coney Hill, in very good stead as he has climbed up the divisions, initially as a player, and over the past two decades as a coach and a director of rugby.

“I’m very comfortable at the level we’re playing at with Cinderford,” he said. “I enjoy what I do. 

“The director of rugby role is whatever you want to make of it.

“I don’t play, I don’t coach. I don’t interfere with the coaching – we’ve got some very talented coaches – but I do all the selecting.

“I pick the 1^st XV and the United sides. I think I do it well and I think I do it fairly. I run both sides but I won’t deal with agents; for me, it’s all about management.”

And he’s happy with the players he’s assembled at the club.

“They’re good people,” he continued. “We had a transition of players in the summer, we lost a few players who had contributed an awful lot to the club. We were an ageing side but the new players are doing well.”

Cinderford are currently eighth in the 14-strong division and looking upwards after winning 24-7 at Richmond on Saturday. They host Birmingham Moseley at the weekend.

“I like the fact that we went to Richmond last Saturday and that we’re playing Moseley this weekend,” said Morris, who lives in Dursley.

“I remember watching Moseley in two John Player Cup finals – one in the 70s and one in the 80s – and I like the fact that they’re coming to Cinderford.”

Richmond and Moseley are big rugby names, of course, and they are two of the reasons why National League 1 is such a compelling division.

“It’s the best league in the country,” added Morris. “It’s full of well-supported, proper rugby clubs.

“Anyone can beat anyone home and away, and anyone can lose to anyone home and away.

“The runaway leaders were recently beaten by the bottom club while we beat the team who were second after shipping 100 points in our previous two games.”

That win was at home to Plymouth Albion – they won 20-12 – and Morris readily admits that the league is getting tougher each season.

He also readily admits that he won’t be looking for another job in rugby after Cinderford.

“This will 100 per cent be my last job,” he said. “If Cinderford decide they want to move on or I decide it’s the right time to leave that will be fine, I will never fall out with Cinderford.

“They will be my rugby club for life, I will still come and watch them play.”