Leicester Tigers prop, England front row stalwart, and a World Cup winning forwards coach
RugbyGraham Rowntree made his living in the place where rugby gets decided. Three feet of churned up turf, eight shoulders and not much room for anyone who blinked first.
Born in Stockton-on-Tees in 1971, Rowntree spent almost his entire playing career at Leicester Tigers, making more than 300 appearances and helping the club to a run of four consecutive Premiership titles and back to back Heineken Cups in 2001 and 2002. For England he won 54 caps between 1995 and 2006, forming one of the most durable front rows of the professional era. He was part of the squad for the 2003 Rugby World Cup win in Australia, though injury cost him his place in the matchday shirt for the final.
His real influence arrived in coaching. As England forwards coach he was central to the 2011 World Cup campaign and later joined the British and Irish Lions coaching staff for the 2013 tour of Australia and the 2017 tour of New Zealand, winning one and drawing the other. He moved to Munster in 2019 and took over as head coach in 2022, leading the province to a historic United Rugby Championship title in 2023.
Rowntree is the coach senior players trust most, a genuine forwards man who speaks the language of the scrum fluently and delivers it in the flat northern vowels of a man who has never forgotten where he came from. His knowledge of set piece detail is encyclopaedic and his stories of the Tigers dressing room are legendary.
At Steam Wine Bar he brings the view from the engine room, from Leicester through England, the Lions and Munster, told with the dry humour of a man who has spent thirty years in the hardest part of the hardest game.
Two decades of world class speakers in the basement at EC3. Want to book Graham Rowntree or someone like them? Tell us what you need and we will come back with a plan.
Start an enquiry