Jake McLoughlin found love in England, brought love home to his family’s cattle farm, located between Somerton and Manilla, and will soon leave home in pursuit of love.
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Love’s name is Francesca. Francesca Hague-Blundy, an English rose.
The couple met when the Kootingal-Moonbi back-rower played league in England for the St Albans Centurions. He moved to St Albans, located on the outskirts of London, after playing in West Lions’ grand final loss to North Tamworth in 2015.
His then Wests coach, Shane Rampling, had been a player-coach at St Albans and organised McLoughlin’s life-altering stint.
After the season with the Centurions ended, the 24-year-old played for Old Albanian, a rugby union feeder club for Saracens, before returning to Australia with Hague-Blundy and playing with Manilla last year.
He wants to win the premiership this season to, in part, atone for the 2015 grand final loss – playing in a Roosters side remarkably similar to the 2015 Lions lineup – and then return to England.
“I’ll probably end up trying to live there, I think. Get a partner visa,” he said. “She [Francesca] has a fashion degree. She found it a bit difficult [living here]. I live on a farm out of town, so I think it was tough [for her].
“But it was good for her. It was something different. She played league tag last year for Manilla, and she really enjoyed it. She started off at Kooty [playing league tag this season]. She had plans to stay, but she got homesick and left.”
He added: “It was good [living in England]. Very different to what I’m used to. But I enjoyed it. It’s good to get around and see what the world’s like. You can’t just live here for ever. That’s the plan [to live in England] … I am a country boy, but I’ll see how I go.”
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The undefeated, table-topping Roosters host Boggabri on Sunday. McLoughlin has started every game this season. And he wants another premiership, to go with the two he won at Wests, real bad.
He was on the bench for both those grand final wins against North Tamworth in 2012 and 2013. He started in Wests’ 2015 loss to Norths, in which three Wests players were sent off. One of them, Kyle Cochrane, has packed down with McLoughlin in the second-rower at Kooty this season.
McLoughlin said there were a host of Kooty players who featured in the Lions’ 2015 grand final side, including Phil Beaton, Matt Lillicrap, Cameron McDonald, Shane Salvador, Sam Taylor and Chris Vidler. “It feels like we’ve played together our whole life, which most of us have,” he said.
He added: “When we won those other ones [grand finals] at Wests, I was only young. I was 18 or 19 … It would be good to be a key player in a grand final.”
Roosters coach Geoff Sharpe used his West Tamworth background to lure the former Lions crew to Kootingal after he was appointed for this season. He rates McLoughlin highly. McLoughlin will play centre on Saturday in the absence of Mitch Dening, another former Lion, who will miss the next two rounds due to holidays.
Sharpe said McLoughlin played “big minutes”, ran “great lines” and had been a “rock” on the left edge. “It’s great to have a versatile back-rower who can cover centre,” he added.
