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Young athletes are often told to “add legs to their table”. When the leg that was their sporting career is taken away, the table will remain stable if it is held up by other interests and identities. George Griffin, who is coming towards the end of his rugby career, has many legs on his table.
He is a father of two from Oxfordshire who writes children’s books and a towering forward who has spent the last decade hurling his 110 kilos into Super League’s coalface. He is also a qualified electrician and personal trainer. Oh, and he is opening his own gym later this year.
This month has brought good news for Griffin: he has returned to action for Castleford Tigers after a long injury layoff and he has been commissioned to write a follow-up to his debut children’s book, Harvey Hippo Finds His Talent. Such positivity was long overdue. Winter at Castleford was bleak, the Tigers starting the season with six straight defeats, including a series of hammerings, not helped by spending the first two months of the season bereft of many senior players.
Griffin had played one pre-season friendly when an ongoing groin pain turned out to require a quadruple hernia operation. “I’ve never been at a club hit by so many injuries in pivotal positions all at once,” he says. “We couldn’t afford any more so we didn’t even have any contact sessions in training – so my first tackle in 12 weeks was against St Helens. I was only meant to play 30 minutes but ended up doing 65 in the back row. My lungs were burning.”
It was always going to be tough for rookie Super League coach Craig Lingard, who was given the task of repeating his admirable work at Batley by getting an under-resourced underdog team to repeatedly punch above their weight. Lingard brought in a raft of unproven players in the hope he would uncover some rough diamonds. With so many senior players missing, that was not working. So new owner Martin Jepson agreed to sign Hull full-back Tex Hoy, and loan in Sam Eseh from Wigan, and Corey Hall and Louis Senior from Hull KR.
“The average age has dropped about 10 years,” says Griffin, who turns 32 next month. “I’m now the third or fourth oldest in the squad. The younger players have lifted us: we needed that youth, that boost of energy. People wrote us off this season but we never did. We just needed continuity. It’s a learning curve for the club and, realistically, we just need to compete in every game and more wins will come.”
That may well be on Friday when they take on a desperate Hull FC side. Victory for Cas would take them five points clear of the Airlie Birds approaching the halfway mark of the season.
George was introduced to rugby league by his big brother Darrell. The family were running a pub in the Cotswolds village of Aston when Darrell – a teenage union player talented enough to sign with Harlequins – started playing league for local side Oxford Cavaliers. He soon signed a professional contract with Wakefield Trinity. “We came up to watch Darrell a lot, and mum and dad wanted to get out of the pub business, so eventually we made the move up to Alverthorpe in Wakefield. We’ve never looked back. We’ve all made a life for ourselves here.”
By the time Darrell earned his fifth and final England cap in New Zealand in 2010, George had secured a place in Wakefield’s academy. After an “awesome” year in Canberra playing for Queanbeyan Kangaroos, George signed for Hull KR. His professional career was up and running.
Now in his fifth season at Cas, he will clock up his 250th appearance next month, nearly all of which have been in the top flight. There has been a Griffin brother in Super League since 2003 – Darrell, George and middle brother Josh have represented eight top-flight clubs between them.
Last year George noticed former USA winger Bureta Faraimo doing some impressive doodling during Tigers team meetings. “I said to our welfare manager ‘keep it quiet but I’ve written a children’s book and need an illustrator’. He said we had a talented artist in the squad. Bureta jumped at the chance to do the illustrations on his iPad. It’s way beyond what I could have hoped for.”
Griffin’s career as an author began when he started reading to his daughter every night. “One day I just came down and told my partner I was going to write a children’s book. My thought processes are very spur of the moment. I had a plan of how to write it – rhymes about sport – and ideas just fell out of my head on to the page. There’s a saying that really resonates with me: ‘You can’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree because in the water it’s the master.’ I decided to build it around that. There are a few messages in there but it’s basically: play to your strengths and see where it can take you.”
The story of Harvey Hippo will resonate with anyone who has ever been involved in a group of odds and sods who have come together to have fun, knowing there is a role for everyone in life, as in sport: fast, slow, the tactical thinker and the fearless doer.
His kids love the book. Nellie, his three-year-old, has read it “a thousand times” and one-year-old Willow is “always picking it up – she doesn’t understand it’s by me”. Griffin says reading his book at a local school assembly was the most nervous he has ever been, quite something given he has played at Wembley in a Challenge Cup final.
His new book comes out in October. “The next one is about a teacher, Miss Giraffe. I wanted to write one about mentor figures as a tribute to those people who took their time helping get me where I am today, and to tell children to listen to others and take advice.”
Griffin will not struggle to fill his time when his playing career ends. “All rugby players have different interests,” he says. “I know one who paints, another who loves classical music. There’s a stereotype that’s not always true. Yes, we bash people about at rugby but we go home and cuddle our kids and act like a dinosaur.”
One last thing
AS Carcassonne are expected to be among the applicants to fill the spare place in League 1 when submissions close on 31 May. How many IMG points they would get would be intriguing, but on the field Carcassonne should cope in the Championship. Having already banked the Lord Derby Cup, the Canaries could seal the French league and cup double on Sunday when they take on Albi Tigers at Le Printemps du XIII – the French federation’s finals weekend – in Narbonne.
Underdogs Albi will need maverick Tony Gigot to be at his majestic Lance Todd-winning best to beat a Carcassonne side conducted by former Super League regulars Lucas Albert and Morgan Escare and seal a first championship since 1977.
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