The story of his life could begin in his ninth year, on the day his dad Theo disappeared from the family home in north London. Florence, his mum, just said: “Daddy’s gone on a holiday,” and such was the strength of his mum’s character, what she said became reality. His dad’s departure didn’t seem so bad. Perhaps, then, the place to begin is the day he turned up at Lord Wandsworth College, a black, working-class, football-playing 12-year-old in a predominantly white rugby-playing boarding school in Hampshire. How tough was that?
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However, to understand his easy nature, it is his first start for Harlequins, in an under-19s game against London Irish at the Stoop, we need to recall. He had spent the previous evening cleaning and shining his white boots, anticipating the glory that awaited him. Then, the next day, he rifled through his bag in the changing room to discover he had forgotten the boots. Part of him wanted to walk away at that moment, to say to the coach Collin Osborne that it had all been one big mistake, he just wasn’t meant to be a rugby player.
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Better to zap forward two years, to the afternoon he made his first-team debut for Quins. He had just turned 20 and the team were playing at Adams Park against a Wasps team that had won its previous 11 matches. He got two tries in a famous 25-21 Quins victory. But nobody walks unhindered through rugby’s corridors into the England changing room and Monye wasn’t an exception. There were four never-to-be-forgotten days in September of last year.
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Something had gone in his lower back at training and after he was carried to a car, he couldn’t negotiate the stairs to his first-floor apartment in Twickenham. Luckily, his teammate Mark Lambert lived in the apartment directly below and he invited Monye to lie on his lounge floor. See how he felt after an hour or two.
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He lay for four days without moving. His bathroom was a bucket, his dream of one day playing for England became a hope that he might one day be able to walk, and when he spoke to Florence on his mobile phone he tried to sound untroubled. “No, Mum, won’t be playing Saturday, little problem with my back.”
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That was 15 months ago: since then he has become an England player and Quins have become the team of the season so far. To truly know the man we speak of, better to start right here at a small table in a Twickenham coffee shop. Tune in at precisely the moment you mention his spiritual faith. The question is introduced delicately because, for all their physicality, rugby players are not much known for their Bible-thumping. Monye, though, doesn’t see the need for delicacy.
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His Nigerian parents were practising Christians and Sunday school was part of his boyhood. As a kid, he liked the hymn-singing and being able to meet his friends at St Mary’s Church in Islington, but if he’s being honest, he also went to church to please his mum.
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“The time I started to slip away,” he says, “was when I was 18 and started to play for Harlequins. I lived with a couple of other rugby guys, Karl Rudzki and Jim Evans, and they opened my eyes to other things. I enjoyed it. Church on Sunday morning was replaced by a good lie-in and recovery from a hangover. But the years passed and it began to bother people that I would say I was a Christian but I wasn’t living like one.
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“One afternoon I was getting some physio from Rachel at Harlequins. ‘What are you up to this week?’ I said.
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“‘I’ve got Bible class on Wednesday,’ she replied. “‘Ah, you go to church, you seem so normal.’ This happened at a time when I wanted to find things out for myself. Rachel got me some information about the Alpha course. There was one starting at the Holy Trinity Church on Brompton Road the following week and I was there.”
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He went with his friend Damien Boursiquot. They asked a lot of questions, discussed what they heard on the walk home and kept returning. Monye has become a regular at Holy Trinity and now leads Bible classes. He has spoken about his faith to pupils at Eton College. “I look at where I am right now, and I don’t think there’s a coincidence in the fact that since I’ve started to devote myself to my Christian faith, my rugby life has gotten a lot better.
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“I had struggled. I’ll tell you what, it’s too hard to try and do it all by yourself. We’ve just finished another course and there were 500 people there, ordinary people who see the church as a place where they can draw comfort and feel a real sense of community. You come to church, you leave your baggage at the door, and for a couple of hours you give thanks to God. I get as much buzz from being in church as I do scoring a try on a Saturday afternoon.”
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On the pitch Monye, 25, has become a ferocious tackler and it is, presumably, God’s will that he spends most Saturday afternoons cutting in half the poor right-wing on the other side? “Good question,” he says. “I feel as if I have a God-given ability to play rugby and that it would be wrong to waste that talent. I don’t think I make those tackles as often as He and I would like. Afterwards I say sorry to the other guy and ask for forgiveness.”
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His teammates have been respectful about his faith, a number have asked questions and he senses their need to search for answers. They do wonder, though, why he made the decision to go from the life he lived at 21 and 22 to the life he now leads. Danny Care puts on his most serious face and asks if he killed someone in his past life and if he’s now looking for redemption. For the record, Monye would like it noted that he’s never killed anyone.
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A devout Liverpool fan, Care knows Monye is an out-and-out Arsenal fan, and yet one who passes on Wednesday evening Champions League games. “‘Ugo, mate, come round and watch the football. Liverpool are playing, we’ll get a takeaway,’ Danny will say to me. “‘Mate, I’m sorry, I’m off to church this evening.’ And he doesn’t get it. “‘Ah, how can you? Torres is playing.’ “I tell him Jesus is better than Torres. “‘No way,’ he says, ‘Torres is way better than God.’

“So I say, ‘Well, I reckon Jesus could score away from Anfield,’ and that’s it. Argument over.”
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He likes to ring his mum before leaving the changing room on match day. “Sometimes it’s difficult, I mean Dean [Richards, the Harlequins coach] is giving me a look. ‘Who the heck can you be ringing now?’ I find a spot, in the shower or somewhere, Mum and I have a chat about things and we say a quick prayer. It gives me a tremendous confidence. For all the preparation I’ve done Monday to Friday, it doesn’t count for as much as two minutes of prayer. I play with some great players but I don’t trust them as much as the Big Man, and that’s no slight on them.”
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It is appropriate that in the moments before battle he should turn to Florence because it was her drive that has shaped his life. When he was young and Dad had gone away, it was she who said he couldn’t play football until his schoolwork was done and she who then corrected it. Florence had taught herself all the subjects and if she said it was deserving of a C-grade, Ugo knew he would get A or B from the teacher.
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Florence knew Lord Wandsworth College had a foundation that offered bursaries to children from single-parent families and she travelled with him on that first day of the seven years he would spend at the school. He was met by the housemaster, assigned a minder, and immediately involved in a football game. So well had he been prepared that he was there for three hours before he realised he was on his own and at no point did he feel alone.
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Amongst the 200 boys in his house at Lord Wandsworth, he was the only black one. “I stood out like a sore thumb, but at least everyone knew me and it was easy to make friends. There was never any racism and I just loved the school, loved being there.” Along with Jonny Wilkinson, Monye is now listed amongst the school’s most distinguished alumni.
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Rugby became his passion because it was the school’s game and with his sprinter’s speed and his natural athleticism, he was destined to be good. University awaited but first he wanted to see if he could make it in rugby. He was still a schoolboy when Harlequins gave him that chance with the under19s. Emma Booth, a matron at Lord Wandsworth’s, took him to the train station. “Best of luck, hope it goes well,” she said. “Give us a call when you get back.”
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That was the day he forgot his boots and felt as if he’d let Mrs Booth down. Though unimpressed, Harlequins coach Osborne gave him another chance. He survived a tough school at Harlequins. His first year was ruined by injury but illuminated by endless hours of Keith Wood’s company in the gym. After that, he did much of his learning on the international sevens circuit with England and just when he might have made a breakthrough, Harlequins were relegated to National One.
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He stayed at the club and the journeys to Exeter and Otley, Moseley and Sedgley Park, Plymouth and Coventry, helped to forge the new Quins - a club reintroduced to humility and all the stronger for it. Monye began to grow, too, and though his first England cap did not come until the autumn just passed, it was deserved and in the four games he made an impression.
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England’s No 11 jersey may now be his but with players like Bath’s Matt Banahan, London Irish’s Topsy Ojo and his own teammate David Strettle waiting in the wings, Monye will have to continue his progress to nail down his place.

He is big, very, very quick, an excellent tackler and a good defender - but the bit England’s coaches most like about Monye is his mentality, his desire to be the player he can be. You mention that to him, he nods knowingly and he realises the secret to that. First, he had to become the man he wanted to be.
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From the school that brought you Jonny Wilkinson...

Ugo Monye is the third former pupil of Lord Wandsworth College in Hampshire to play rugby for England. The first was Jonny Wilkinson, who made his international debut in 1998, less than a year after leaving the school. One of Wilkinson’s teachers there had been former Wasps scrum-half Steve Bates, who moved to Newcastle in 1995 to join Rob Andrew’s coaching set-up in the new professional era. Bates persuaded Wilkinson to defer his studies at Durham University in 1997 and join the club.
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Peter Richards made his England debut against Australia in June 2006. The scrum-half had formed a half-back partnership with Wilkinson in the Lord Wandsworth side that reached the semi-final of the Daily Mail Under18s Cup. Richards also featured in England’s squad for the 2007 World Cup and has won 13 caps
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At the same school, Monye was immediately singled out for a career in athletics, having clocked 10.6sec for the 100m. His cousin Jude Monye ran for Nigeria in the 400m at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, reaching the quarter-finals. His sister Chinedu, 19, is a former English Schools 200m silver medallist and is aiming to compete at London 2012
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However, he grew up with another England wing, Rory Underwood, as his hero and decided on a career in rugby instead of sprinting. He made his first XV debut for Harlequins in 2002 and has played 93 times for the club, scoring 43 tries. Quins are unbeaten in Heineken Cup games this season
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Monye was called up to the England Saxons squad that retained the Churchill Cup last summer. He then won his first full cap against the Pacific Islanders in November, in which he set up a try for Danny Cipriani, and started in England’s three other autumn internationals, against Australia, South Africa and New Zealand
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Charlie Amesbury is another alumnus of Lord Wandsworth College, who is now playing alongside Monye in the Harlequins side. Amesbury, a full-back or wing, has represented England in the IRB world sevens series, as Monye did before his first cap. The school has developed close ties with Harlequins’ academy.The actor Julian Sands, who appeared in Leaving Las Vegas and The Killing Fields, is also a former pupil of the school
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Monye is a practising Christian and a group leader at the Holy Trinity Church in Brompton, West London. One of his predecessors on the England wing, Jason Robinson, is a born-again Christian. Ireland wing Andrew Trimble is also serious about his faith and studied theology at Belfast Bible College
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The two rugby players most famous for their religious belief are Michael Jones and Eric Liddell. Jones was in the New Zealand team that won the inaugural World Cup in 1987. However, the flanker refused to play against Wales in the semi-final because the match fell on Sunday. Liddell was another to refuse to participate in sport on the Sabbath. The Scotsman said his faith did not allow him to run in the 100m at the 1924 Olympics, though he did win gold in the 400m. Liddell represented his country in the Five Nations in 1922 and 1923