Row Anyway.

"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."

— Kierkegaard

Three weeks ago I was playing rugby in France. Then Amsterdam. Then Lithuania.

If you'd told me that at the start of the year I'd have laughed. Not because I don't believe things can happen fast, but because none of it was planned. There was no campaign, no agent call, no door I'd been standing outside of. It came from a single training session with a coach I met once, stayed in genuine contact with, and never expected to hear from in that particular way.

Stuart Aimer. I trained with him once. We stayed in touch the way you do when someone impresses you and you mean it when you say keep in touch. He put my name forward to the France squad's coach. My SAS coach, the one who named me captain in South Africa, vouched for me to that same coach, who happened to be a close friend of his. I hadn't manufactured any of that. I'd just shown up properly in every room I entered and then got on with the next thing.

Looking backwards, it makes complete sense. Lived forwards, it felt like it came from nowhere.

That's the thing about Kierkegaard's line. It sounds philosophical until it happens to you. Then it just sounds true.

France is where the first surprise hit.

The coach added me to the squad group chat. I scrolled through the names to get a feel for who I'd be playing with. Then I stopped. One of them was one of my best friends from South Africa, the man who I'd trained alongside every day for five months at the SAS camp, who I'd captained, who I'd lived a genuinely different life with for a period of time, and who I hadn't seen in nearly two years.

I'd messaged him days earlier, completely separately, sending him a reel about the "great separation". That stretch of adult life where the people who meant something to a particular chapter of your life drift geographically, and staying connected takes actual effort. We'd been talking about that. And then his name was in the same group chat as mine.

I don't have a neat explanation for moments like that. I'm not going to try and dress it up as something cosmic. What I will say is that it felt significant in the way that things only feel significant when you've been honest and disciplined enough in your own life to have earned a moment that reminds you it's all connected.

The reunion was exactly what a reunion between two people who went through something real together should be. No performance, no awkwardness. Just immediately back to the standard we both hold ourselves to. Competing hard. Playing well. Laughing properly.

Across France, Amsterdam, and Lithuania I met people I will not forget.

That sounds simple when you write it. It doesn't capture what it actually means to walk into a team of strangers, earn your place in 48 hours, and leave three days later feeling like you've known half of them for years. That's a specific kind of human experience. You only get it by putting yourself somewhere unfamiliar and not retreating to safety when it feels uncomfortable.

I've done that enough times now that I recognise the feeling; Milan, South Africa, Rotherham, and now this. Every time, the room that felt foreign on day one felt like mine by the end of the week. Not because I forced it. Because I was honest about who I was and what I was there to do.

The teammates across these three tournaments gave me something I'll carry forward. I won't list them all here because that's not the point. The point is that being part of something temporary and taking it seriously, committing to it fully even when it's brief, produces something that lasts longer than the tournament itself.

The hoodie I built SNOW around carries a quote on its back:

"God will steer the boat, but you must row."

I chose it because it says something I genuinely believe: direction will become clear, but the effort is yours to supply regardless. You don't get to wait for clarity before you commit. You row. The steering happens as a result of the motion, not before it.

Kierkegaard says life can only be understood backwards. The hoodie says you have to row forwards anyway.

Those two things are not in contradiction. They are the same instruction from different angles.

The France call-up makes sense now. South Africa made sense of Rotherham. Rotherham made sense of the night shifts. The injury made sense of SNOW. None of it was legible while I was living it.

That's not a reason to wait for it to make sense before you move.

That's a reason to row harder.

The last few weeks have been some of the best of my life. Three countries, three tournaments, one reunion I didn't see coming, and more teammates worth knowing than I can count.

I don't think that happened by accident. But I also couldn't have planned it.

That's the point.