Super League: French lessons still serve new Wakefield Trinity signing Eddie Battye well
Prop Battye tells Sky Sports how six months playing in France and growing up on a farm helped shape his rugby league career ahead of his expected Wakefield debut against Huddersfield Giants on Thursday
By Marc Bazeley
Last Updated: 16/09/20 1:13pm
Eddie Battye made his name as a professional rugby league player in Sheffield and later London, but it was a season playing in France which laid the foundations for him to do that.
Then barely into his 20s, the prop made the decision to cross the Channel in search of game time and spent six months playing in Elite One with Villeneuve Leopards.
It could hardly have gone better for him as he returned to Sheffield Eagles able to quickly establish himself as a regular, having been on the fringes of the first team during their 2012 Championship-winning season.
Battye is set to begin the next phase of his career on Thursday afternoon when new club Wakefield Trinity, who he joined on loan last Friday, face Huddersfield Giants in Super League, but those experiences from his time in France continue to serve him well.
"I knew the French league was the opposite in that they played through the winter, and I was in and out of the first team at Sheffield, so I thought 'why not go over there and play for a season?'," Battye told Sky Sports.
"I had nothing to lose, I'd not played many games, so it was just an opportunity to play games and it did me the world of good because I was playing against men.
"There were a lot of overseas players in it when I was there - Toulouse [now back in the Championship] were in it and they had a lot of overseas players - so the standard was pretty good.
I was living on my own for the first time and I did a bit of growing up. I learnt how to handle myself, and I came back and knew I could mix it with men and play to a good standard.
Eddie Battye
"I was living on my own for the first time and I did a bit of growing up. I learnt how to handle myself, and I came back and knew I could mix it with men and play to a good standard."
Being prepared to go the extra mile - or, in that instance, the extra few thousand miles - is something which has always been part of Battye's make-up, thanks in no small part to spending his childhood growing up on his parents' farm near Penistone in South Yorkshire.
The work ethic instilled in Battye by the long days of helping with jobs such as feeding animals, bringing them in from the fields and muck spreading has served him well on the rugby pitch.
He is not above putting himself to work whenever he returns to visit either, as he has been doing recently ahead of his Wakefield bow.
"Obviously it's a busy season with the harvesting and cutting grass and things like that, so they've been busy, and I've been doing a bit," Battye said.
"The work ethic of my parents and family, it's seven days a week, 24 hours a day and they're up at all times of the night working and getting up early in the morning.
"That's all I knew growing up and that's what the norm was for working. You need hard work and that's kind of what my game is built on - hard work and bit of graft."
Battye's introduction to rugby league came aged 14 when childhood friend Sam Swire, the son of former Eagles chairman Ian, persuaded him to go training at Sheffield community club Hillsborough Hawks.
You need hard work and that's kind of what my game is built on - hard work and bit of graft.
Eddie Battye
From there, he joined the scholarship set-up at Doncaster and later joined the Eagles, making his professional debut and, following his stint in France, stayed with them until he was brought to London Broncos by former team-mate and then head coach Andrew Henderson four years ago.
Already something of a cult hero among the Ealing-based club's supporters, Battye quickly became one of the most recognisable members of the Broncos team when they won promotion to Super League for 2019 and it was only a last-day defeat to Wakefield which saw them relegated.
Battye and his team-mates began this year aiming for an instant return to the top flight, but the Championship season was curtailed with just five games played as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Lockdown did allow the 29-year-old to focus on some off-field interests though, with him reading more and completing a final assignment as part of the Sports and Fitness Coaching degree he is studying for with the Open University.
But he made sure he kept in shape too in case the call came and now Wakefield have offered him another chance to experience Super League, Battye is determined to seize it.
"It has been a long time coming for me and that was my first taste of it [last year] at 28 years old," Battye, who is being reunited with former Broncos team-mates Alex Walker and Jay Pitts at Trinity, said.
"Once you've had a taste of it, you want to be in there a lot more often and I've got my chance again, so I'll take it with both hands.
"You're challenging yourself against the best players in the country and, in some cases, the world, so that's where you want to be and challenging yourself every week."
The full interview with Eddie Battye will be available on this week's Golden Point Podcast.