Wigan’s Tom Davies: ‘I came to terms with the fact I wasn’t going to make it’

When the superstars of Sydney Roosters take to the field at the DW Stadium on Sunday evening in the 2019 World Club Challenge, the Wigan winger Tom Davies may be forgiven if he takes a moment to look around and pinch himself. He is already a Super League winner at the age of 22 but not so long ago Davies would have been thought more likely to be watching his hometown club from the stands as the Warriors aim to be crowned the best club side in the game.

“I came to terms with the fact that I wasn’t going to make it,” he says. The journey for most talented young players in Wigan is often fairly simple: they are signed for the club’s junior development system at a young age and eventually progress to the first team. Davies’s story could not be more different.

As a teenager the closest he came to a big break was an offer of a scholarship with the local lower-league side Leigh Centurions and they released him.

“Everyone I knew seemed to be getting on Wigan’s scholarship as a kid but I was getting overlooked,” he says. “I never made my school teams or town teams; everyone else just got snapped up and I was left with no deal.”

With no professional contract in sight Davies returned to amateur rugby with Wigan St Patricks. “There was no other choice, really. I had to go and get a proper job,” he says. And what was that job? “Leigh sacked me off from the scholarship so I went back and worked in the pavilion at the stadium there,” he says, with a laugh.

“I was pulling the nets out, sweeping the pavilion and stuff like that. It was good fun but I’m much happier now.”

Davies subsequently walked away from rugby league altogether, beginning a semi-professional career in union with Fylde before a chance call from the father of one of his current teammates at Wigan changed his life.

“It was good. I was playing semi-pro and working on the side. But then George Williams’s dad, who was coaching St Pats at the time, mentioned they were low on numbers for a National Cup game and asked if I’d go back. I did that and within a couple of weeks I was being offered trials at Wigan.

“I went back to Fylde for a week and then played for Wigan’s under-19s the week after. This time four years ago I was going around making sure the pitch was right for when Leigh’s first team were playing; now I’m a Super League winger. It’s mad, really.”

Davies is not just any ordinary Super League winger either and Sunday’s is no ordinary fixture. Wigan host the NRL champions attempting to become the first side to win the World Club Challenge on five occasions.

For Davies it means a likely individual battle against the Tongan international Daniel Tupou – a far cry from his teenage years when a career at the highest level seemed a remote possibility. “It’s going better than I could have ever expected,” he says with a smile. “At the start of last year the goal was just to cement my place in the team, so for me and the lads to finish in the way we did, by winning the Super League title at Old Trafford, you couldn’t have imagined that would happen.

“I was playing full-back initially when I was growing up and it wasn’t until I got a trial at Wigan that they said they had some decent full-backs so the best chance I had was switching to the wing. As it turns out, it’s been a pretty good move, hasn’t it?”

It certainly has. Davies has already been touted as a future England international and by Sunday night he could be a world champion with his hometown club.

“I still go back to my junior clubs and speak to local players who are maybe struggling to get spotted,” he says. “The message I’ve got for them is just to stick at it and keep working hard. Talent eventually gets recognised. The moral of the story is one I can testify to: never give up.”