LONG READ Joe Heyes: 'When I decided that rugby was my sport it caused a slight tsunami'

It’s the hands that give it away. When Joe Heyes offers a meaty paw, it’s like a bucket closing on a JCB. If he had followed the family tradition, those hands would have been swatting away penalties or falling at the feet of onrushing attackers. After all, his father Darren had been on the books with Nottingham Forest as a player and a coach, and his grandfather George was a back-up to the iconic Gordon Banks at Leicester and played for Swansea City.

Indeed, Heyes Jnr was being eased into goalkeeper gloves as soon as he was born. Football-mad, he was between the sticks from the age of six and corralled into Forest’s academy in his early teens, a career in football seemingly pre-ordained.

Football academies, however, can be harsh and unforgiving places, where changing room ‘banter’ can be cruel and unrelenting. Although Heyes was a sizeable child – “my foot size followed my age until 15”, he had a sensitive disposition and the culture left him battered and bruised. “I found the Academy environment in football very tough. I would say at Forest, I was picked on a bit by players and coaches. That’s sometimes how football can be”, he sighs. “It’s a dog-eat-dog environment where it’s every man for themselves and I hated that. I was always a big lad, 100kgs aged 11, and I got picked on because I didn’t stand up for myself.”

One thing that gave him sanctuary during the cold winter months was watching rugby with his mother Rachel, herself a basketball player good enough to represent her country. “She was Irish and would often have the Six Nations on TV. I’ll admit I’d be rooting for Ireland and I wanted to try it but in football academies you’re not supposed to play any other sport, so I’d sneak away on Wednesday afternoons to play for the school, not telling my Forest Academy I was doing it. I found the closest rugby club to me, Nottingham Moderns, which was two bus rides away, and started as an outside-centre. It was an epiphany, really. From the off, I thought, ‘I love this sport’. I’m so different to the unsure teenager I was. More than anything, rugby gave me resilience.”

While he still follows Nottingham Forest, his days as a keeper were over. His only conundrum was telling his dad. “When I decided that rugby was my sport it caused a slight tsunami but now dad is rugby mad. He’s fallen out of love with the way football is run.”

While the change in sport gave Heyes a sense of belonging, the pressure to achieve didn’t abate. His size and athleticism saw him picked up by Leicester’s academy, but in retrospect Heyes says he wasn’t ready for the professional sporting environment. “I dropped out of the first year because in all honesty, I couldn’t hack it. I did some stupid things and got into a bit of trouble. At the root of it is that I’m an anxious person, it’s just how I’m built, but rugby has given me the confidence and I’ve learnt to live with it. There’s no one reason, probably some things that happened in my childhood. Life circumstances shape you. Everyone will go through their troubles, so I was fortunate enough to get my midlife crisis out of the way by mid-to-late teens. I know the triggers that stress me out, but correspondingly, I now know what helps me and as a result, I know who I am a bit more.”

Away from rugby, I had to prioritise what made me happy, which was my girlfriend, family and my inner circle. I feel like really positive change happened to me.

In rugby, despite loving his environs, Heyes has also had to learn the value of patience. Sitting behind the most capped England men’s forward of all-time in Dan Cole at club and international level was both a blessing and a curse. “I’ve always idolised Coley. When I first started training and playing alongside him, I’d be like, ‘wow, it’s Dan Cole’, but that was the first thing I had to get rid of as I developed. When I got to 20 or 21, I thought, ‘I want to compete against him. I want his shirt’. Over the intervening period, I formed a great relationship with him, especially last year when I started getting starts in front of him. There was a level of understanding, so much so that it was a very respectful handing over of the baton. Tigers is built on tradition and before him, there was Martin Castrogiovanni and Julian White. Even though I had to wait until 25 or 26 to get that jersey consistently, it was probably worth it,” he smiles.

At Test level, Heyes has also had to be patient with Kyle Sinckler and Cole dominating the No 3 shirt over the last five years. He missed out on several squads, but this summer’s tour of USA and Argentina was a coming of age. At the end of the three-Test trip he was voted as player of the summer series by England fans – no mean feat for a tighthead in what was an outstanding tour for Steve Borthwick and his team.  Either Heyes had a large family voting or his ability to lock down an England scrum against a revered Los Pumas pack in hostile circumstances was rightly rewarded. Heyes smiles and says a reckoning came 12 months ago. “Weirdly nothing changed because I got player of the series. I’d fixed myself up the year before, when I thought to myself, ‘I really have to buck my ideas up if I want play for England’. After everything I’d been through, I still fundamentally wanted to play for my country again. That was really important to me. Away from rugby, I had to prioritise what made me happy, which was my girlfriend, family and my inner circle. I feel like really positive change happened to me. I came back in a better frame of mind, which in turn allowed me to play better. That’s the power of the mind, I guess.”

As for his game, he is comfortable where it’s at. While his glorious 40m bullocking run against France in the summer was lauded, Heyes prefers the heavy lifting over adding to a highlights reel. Only Harlequins’ Fin Baxter, among props, has made more tackles in the Gallagher Prem since the start of the 2024-25 season and Heyes has a 92.6% success rate at the scrum. “When you start out you say, ‘I’m going to be a ball-carrier’, or ‘I’m going to be a distributor’ but for me, I adore scrummaging and I love defence. Those are the things I hang my hat on. Anything else is a brilliant extra. If I get my basics right during a game, I go home happy. I’ve compressed my game into what really matters. Before I’d worry about every little thing, but there was too much going on, so I like really simple, concise instructions.”

One area that sees Heyes’ eyes light up is when talking about the scrum. “You’re chucked in at 18 or 19 and it’s a battle to survive. It’s mainly about not going backwards and over time you want to be more aggressive. Even when I was on holiday in the summer with the missus and I thought ‘I miss it, being in that scrum position’. It’s ridiculously addictive and it’s one of the few times where the big lads have their moment. We need more screen time,” he chuckles.

You’ve got to really love the game. That’s what will get you out of bed in the morning. If you don’t enjoy it, it’ll start to feel like a job, which it technically is. You just have to keep going and stay in the fight.

Heyes, it seems, has finally found a level of serenity, cognisant that there must be a level of, almost, obsession to play for your country, but also aware that an off button has to be located and there is more than one way of achieving your goals. “I think that when you’re on a pitch, you do have to fall in line. You have to do the jobs required of you, but off the field, you do have to be yourself. In my house, there’s nothing to remind me of rugby. No medals, no shirts. They’re nowhere to be seen.”

So, what advice would he give to his 18-year-old self and by proxy the droves of aspiring young rugby players? “You’ve got to really love the game. That’s what will get you out of bed in the morning. If you don’t enjoy it, it’ll start to feel like a job, which it technically is. You just have to keep going and stay in the fight. Of course you’ll have some dark days, but you have to keep plugging away. I know a lot of people who weren’t picked up by an academy but were then picked up by a club two or three years later and went on to achieve great things. Will Hurd didn’t get a look in and now he’s playing with Scotland.”

Battling it out with Will Stuart and Asher Opoku-Fordjour ahead of a seismic Autumn campaign, Heyes says the competition will be robust but respectful. “We’re all competing, of course, but we also want the best for each other. It’s a healthy relationship. Even if we’re doing lineout walkthroughs, we’re helping one another – there’s no flatulence powder in their food, or dirty tricks. In fact, it’s important to cultivate those relationships. With Asher out in Argentina, we’d watch scrums together and we bonded.”

Now a powerful, explosive athlete, Heyes, who at 6ft 3ins and a few bags of sugar under 20st, says his S&C is a necessary evil. “Training wise, I love paper, so I’ll write my instructions down by hand. I train early so I can play my own music and train on my own in Tigers’ massive gym and I’ve found it works for me. It’ll be 6am or even earlier. I’ll stick some music on to get me going, then have a sauna and an ice bath and I’m set up for the day.”

I’m a sniffing salt connoisseur. It blows your head off for 30 seconds and you have to find a balance because when I started using them, I was exhausted after half-an-hour. I was too pumped, too emotional.

This weekend, Heyes is hoping to be involved against Australia, before Fiji, New Zealand and Argentina decamp on the Allianz Stadium. The privilege of running out in front of 82,000 fans with a red rose on his chest isn’t something he takes for granted. After a three and a half year hiatus, his first Six Nations game came at home. “I thought, ‘oh my God, this is incredible’. That feeling is all I could think about it. It’s the adrenalin rush pent up from all that waiting. It made my passion to play for my country that much stronger but it’s not just for England as a whole, it’s for Anita (his girlfriend) and mum and dad, who mean so much to me.”

In the changing room, Heyes says preparation is everything. “I’ll have my cans on and I’m a sniffing salt connoisseur. It blows your head off for 30 seconds. You have to find a balance because when I started using them, I was exhausted after half-an-hour. I was too pumped, too emotional. I’ve played nearly 200 matches, so I’ve finally found a sweet spot.”

It was out in Washington DC where rugby fans saw another side of Heyes, who admits he has his quirks. A history boffin, he showed the squad around the political capital of the US, before delving into Latino history in Buenos Aires, La Plata and San Juan. His history tours became unmissable. “I’ve had a long-held interest in history. It goes back to spending far too much time in the toilet reading Horrible Histories. I was just hooked on it. I remember watching Time Team, with the excavations. I love all that. I’m a Wikipedia nause. In Washington, it started with two lads and the word spread and suddenly about 20 lads and the RFU staff are turning up to be shown around.”

Heyes accepts that a camera team following him round wouldn’t have been the norm in bygone generations but is now key to capturing the fly-on-wall expectations in a crowded attention economy. “I think it’s very important we show who we are because all people see is an angry version of ourselves on the field of play for 80 minutes. There’s a lot more layers to a lot of the lads.”

For now, unlike fellow bearded prop Joe Marler, reality TV can wait because Heyes has a singular ambition to add to his tally of 14 caps. “I’ve got one eye on the 2027 World Cup. It is a dream of mine to play in any World Cup in any sport. It’s one of the biggest stages in the world. Looking back, when I was in the training camp for the 2023 World Cup, I probably wasn’t ready and didn’t feel I should have been there. Now it’s different.”

Shot stopper turned hit maker, Heyes has finally found his calling.