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03
Jan
Harrogate's Brady brothers who fought as kids but now play rugby for the same team
As kids, a brotherly relationship can be a love-hate one.
Driven by fierce competitiveness, young brothers often tend to fight and argue.
As they get older, that rivalry doesn’t disappear — it just finds a new medium.
For Jake and Sam Brady, that medium is Harrogate Rugby Club, where competition and camaraderie collide every time they put on the kit.
Jake has not played for the Aces for several years, but returned in the summer as the club’s new director of rugby. Sam has been the first-team captain for years.
Jake told the Stray Ferret what it was like to play with his brother:
It’s good. We’ve done it quite a lot since Sam was a colt. We both played for my dad’s team when I was 19, Sam was 17, and my dad was 40-odd. When Sam finished university, he came and joined me at Harrogate, and he’s been here ever since.
It’s great to come back, and the parents don’t have to split where they go on a Saturday now.
Jake and Sam Brady with their parents.
Sam said the pair are very competitive and regularly try to outperform each other.
A new AI-powered software that the club uses to analyse the team’s performances has become a contest for the two of them to get the highest overall rating each week.
With a slightly smug look on his face, Jake said, “There’s only one winner, isn’t there!”
The two brothers have been competitive for as long as they can remember. As kids, they regularly competed in various backyard games.
Jake said:
It was a classic sibling rivalry. Every time we fought, my mum and dad would say, ‘One day he’s going to be bigger than you,’ and then one day he did get bigger than me. But he’s still not won the fight!
We were always in the garden playing football. Then, when trampolines got popular, we got one of them and it became wrestling and fighting on the trampoline. Then we got boxing gloves, so we were giving each other black eyes and beating each other up.
Jake (right) and Sam on holiday as kids.
That competitive rivalry was put to the ultimate test when the two brothers played against each other last year.
Before returning to Harrogate, Jake was at Leeds Tykes.
Both clubs were in the National League Two North last season, but Harrogate were relegated while Leeds were promoted into the third tier.
Sam revealed what it was like to face his brother:
It’s a bit of a weird one. You have to go into it with the mindset that he’s not your brother and he’s just another player. If you go into it with the mindset that he’s my brother and I don’t want to hurt him, then you’ll probably ease off a little bit.
We had some good little carries into each other, but the Leeds team was the better team on both occasions, so he gets the bragging rights for that.
Sam and Jake Brady after Harrogate played Leeds Tykes last season.
Joining as the new director of rugby, Jake is Sam’s boss this year.
Sam joked that he doesn’t want to be called into his office for a bad performance.
Jake explained what the dynamic is really like:
I’ve always been his boss anyway, ever since he was a kid, so it’s no different!
People expect it to be a strange dynamic that we’re brothers when I’m the director of rugby and he’s the captain. Even our parents were like, ‘Is Sam listening to you?’ But I always knew it would be fine. There haven’t been any issues, we know each other really well, and we’re pretty similar types of people.
Sam added that, while the two of them have different strengths on the pitch, playing around 150 games together means the two brothers know exactly how the other plays. This can be very useful in match situations.
Harrogate currently sit second in the Regional 2 North East as they try to win promotion back to the National League.
And the Brady brothers, with a balance of rivalry and camaraderie, are undoubtedly a big driving force in their push for the prize.
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