Being unwanted on the shelf has to be the worst feeling in rugby. You are as fit as a fiddle, you’re bursting to play… but you don’t have a club. Max Clark is coming out the other side of this traumatic ordeal, having been snapped up on a short-term deal by Newcastle in December with the prospect of a conversation soon about a potentially longer stay in North East England.
Before Steve Diamond threw the 29-year-old his lifeline, there were plenty of dark thoughts questioning what the flip he was doing training like a pro without getting paid. How he fell between the cracks is intriguing. A try-scorer in the 2015 World Rugby U20 Championship final with England, a contract extension was on the table at Bath in 2022.
However, having originally turned down a 2017 call to tour with Wales, he penned a two-year deal at Dragons hoping this would put him back in the Test selection shop window for the land of his birth and the country his mother hails from.
The move bombed. Clark was sent on loan to Cardiff in his second season and then left unemployed. He headed back across the Severn, basing himself at his dad’s place in London while ringing multiple Premiership contacts.
Saracens listened, offering the opportunity to train for free, but it wasn’t until December when the call came from Diamond that has him poised to take on Sale this Sunday in Manchester in the Prem Cup – the midfielder’s fifth appearance in five consecutive weekends with the Falcons.
Max Clark ? @Benstev0
3?? tries in his last 2?? appearances for Bhuna!#TrueNorth pic.twitter.com/1t2aHkrHkb
— Newcastle Falcons (@FalconsRugby) February 3, 2025
It’s a run that vindicates the hardiness he demonstrated when stranded without a wage, a story he told RugbyPass last Tuesday morning with Hank, his eight-year-old dog, for company on the sofa. “He is my emotional support animal,” explained Clark, settling in to chat after doing his gym and some recovery stuff.
“He was my 21st birthday present. I was living with some mates in Bath and my parents surprised me with him. A few months later I asked why of all the things you could get me you got me a dog. It was a bid for some responsibility in my life and he has turned out to be the greatest thing.
“When I was in London I didn’t have him for five months and honestly I could tell. When I moved up to Newcastle I was in a hotel for a week and I’m now sharing with a teammate, Hugh O’Sullivan. One of the first things I said was, ‘Do you mind if we have a dog here?’ He said, ‘Okay’. I booked the next train, met my mum, got him straight up here.”
The reunion was a silver lining after months of sacrifice where Clark toiled in limbo, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. “It’s been quite an up-and-down few seasons. I came through the Bath academy, a very conventional route. I was in there as early as 13, 14, followed that pathway, did all the England age-grade stuff, and was 26 when I left.
“I had that smooth sailing and then made the jump across to Wales for two years into a system that was financially struggling. I never got out of it what I wanted. A contract was on the table at Bath and it was the hardest decision I have made to date. I’d come through the system, knew everything. Very good mates with the kitman, the cleaners, knew most of the fans, all of that.
“Would it have changed my rugby career if I had stayed at Bath? Would I have been happier there? I don’t know. I could have stayed and probably seen out my career there, but I had stuff written down on a piece of paper, pros and cons.
“The decision was to go to Wales and to try and get international honours given I was born in Wales and mum is fully Welsh. The main reason I left is I didn’t want to look back and think there was a shot that I didn’t take. It didn’t work out the way I wanted it to but I definitely don’t regret it.”
What went wrong? “I very much enjoyed the lads over there. Great rugby players but whether my face didn’t fit or however you want to look at it, it was quite up and down. I was in and out of the Dragons team and in my second year went on loan to Cardiff where it was a case of knowing I wasn’t staying. Financial issues. They wanted younger boys that were home-grow to stay, which is completely fair enough. Rugby is a business at the end of the day which lots of players fail to remember.”
His bags packed, Clark left for London to sweat it out. His lengthy wait for a club before Newcastle’s SOS was reflective of an industry still counting the cost of the pandemic and the loss of three Premiership teams. “The rugby market in the UK at the moment isn’t great,” he said.
“The clubs hold the power. I remember when I was coming through my early 20s it was a case of if you were going well you’d have a pick of a few clubs and you could play it off against each other and see what works best for you. Now you are at the beck and call of the clubs. They hold the power and I was left in quite a tricky situation of not having an agent in the summer – he stopped being an agent – and then not having a club.”
A veteran of 92 Bath appearances, Clark backed his experience to force a door ajar. “I was left to my own devices but I have been in the game long enough that I felt comfortable and confident enough that you should be able to sell yourself to someone better than anyone else can.
“I was lucky in that sense that I don’t mind picking up the phone, don’t mind having a few tricky conversations. I collected the numbers of all the Premiership clubs in England, DoRs, head coaches, recruitment managers, whatever, and either gave them a call or sent a long text outlining my situation.
“I also said to the coaches I spoke to, ‘Listen, just give me a black-and-white answer. If it’s a no it’s a no, I am not going to push on it. If there is wriggle room, I am happy to speak with you, meet you, train with you, whatever’. I was lucky and very grateful Saracens came back, so I did a full pre-season and it was awesome. I could quite quickly see why they are so successful.
“They were very welcoming, so it was good to have some purpose. I felt like I was part of a club but at the same time I wasn’t getting paid, I was turning up on my own will to stay fit, stay amongst the team and wait for an opportunity because we all know injuries come thick and fast in rugby, but they weren’t happening at the time when I needed a break.”
Good luck Max Clark after joining Falcons on a short-term deal to help them mitigate their loss of Sammy Arnold after the Hugh Tizard incident. He’s played a few games for Saracens (& Ampthill) this season while ‘on trial’ at the club. This helps Newcastle and him. Clever plan ? https://t.co/xw8FWe9vZ0
— #RugbySaracens (@RugbySaracens) December 19, 2024
A life-coaching course and some mentoring kept him busy away from rugby, but coping with recruitment silence was testing. “I very much stripped it back to what can I do each day that is going to give me a purpose, that was the most important thing. You can go through the motions of turning up for training and get by but I don’t think in the situation I was in that was enough.
“Quite quickly you can get into the habit of, ‘I’ll get in the car, drive up to St Albans, do my gym session, do my training, get in the car, drive home, and get on the hamster wheel’. It was a case of, ‘If I’m training with these world-class players, what can I do each day that when I do get a chance I am a few steps on from when I first joined there?’
“It was very much day to day. There would be some days where I’d be on top of the world and think I might not be getting paid but this is great, I’m still playing, still have mates and I just go for it. And there would be other days where I’d get in a car at 6:30am to drive up and I would be, ‘Why am I doing this?’
“Those were the days where I was like, ‘You might not enjoy it today but when the day comes that it is all good and you have got a contract and are back on the field, these are the ones that are going to make it 10 times more worthwhile because it is not going to get much harder than this’.
“I stuck at it. I got a friendly and a Prem Cup game for Saracens and then it got to the point where I was training amongst world-class players, my confidence was still very much there that I could play at the highest level… but I wasn’t playing. I spoke to a few of the Saracens coaches and said, ‘Is there any chance I could get a game with Ampthill?’
“They were kind enough to take me in for two games, so I played against Coventry and London Scottish away and they were giving me a match fee. It wasn’t what I was used to but I was just so relieved to be back on a pitch and running around. It cemented that I still wanted to do it but it gave me another kick just to say, ‘You are going to keep going at this until something comes’.
“Throughout the season I was still keeping clubs updated. I don’t know if I was annoying coaches but at that point, I didn’t care. I was still banging the drum: ‘I’m still fit, still available, don’t have a club’. So I’d update the Prem clubs regularly and I’d sorted out an agent as well.
“Steve Diamond called; I was needed up at Newcastle. I said, ‘When do you need me? I will be up’. It was a turnaround of two, three days, packing my bags for a few months to come and live in the north of England.” It’s gone well. “I’m having conversations in the coming weeks with Newcastle so I might be less of a nomad for a little bit. We’ll see where that goes.”
Looking back on his club-less journey, Clark’s takeaway should inspire others bereft of a contract but stubborn enough to wait it out. “It was very, very tricky and there were times where I was asked, ‘Have you retired? What’s next?’ That spurred me on. I was like, ‘No, I feel like my best rugby is still yet to come’. I knew I wasn’t throwing in the towel.
“I wouldn’t say self-praise is my strongest point but I have learned I am pretty resilient having been without a job, without getting paid and turning up for four, five months not knowing if something would come, putting in the hours and training as much as I would if I was on a decent contract.
“Resilience is probably the biggest thing that has come out of it and then the other side is now that I’m playing – I’ve had four games in a row now – is just how at ease I feel with it and how confident I am about the situation I’ve been in, it’s not going to get worse than that.
“Every time I go on the pitch now I feel an enjoyment but also I have got a bit of a chip on my shoulder in a very healthy way. I now have a point to prove. Had a great time at Bath, went to Wales and it didn’t work. The whole thing about going to Wales was to take my career to the next step.
A first in Falcons colours for Max Clark ?#TrueNorth pic.twitter.com/lZA8fAJPTr
— Newcastle Falcons (@FalconsRugby) January 27, 2025
“That didn’t happen, and there are lots of people that don’t then come back. Not having any rugby, people quite quickly go, ‘Oh, he’s past it’. But I’m, ‘No, this is the time to show people that I can still play at the top level’. I’m 29, not 39, so there is still quite a bit of mileage left in the legs.”
His temporary lay-off has left him acutely aware of the need to prepare for the rugby afterlife, but he doesn’t hold regrets. “Another thing is to make sure I stay busy as much as possible because rugby has a shelf life. I never went to university. Ever since the age of 15 rugby was all I ever wanted to do and you see yourself as Max the rugby player…
“I was having a conversation this morning about not looking at the decisions you made at certain times and why you made them. Maybe they were the right ones, maybe the wrong ones but at the time you made that decision given the information you had or the situation you were presented with.
“I spent a few years in my mid-20s thinking I should be here, I should do that, I’m jealous of so-and-so and it just works against you. You end up getting grumpy, getting envious and it’s not a healthy headspace. You just have to be comfortable with stuff not always going your way.
“The career is going to end one day and the last thing I want to do is get to the age of 40 and all I can think about my rugby career is I should have played for England or I should have played for Wales, I should have played for this club more. You will not be able to change it and it’s best to let it go.”
