Tales from Tour: From South Africa to Fiji for Mark Tyson

Strike centre Mark Tyson has been in good form on BARLA’s tour of Fiji and enjoys representative duty.

The affable Askam centre has played for Cumbria at county level over the last six years.

“I never played Under-19s, that has purely been Open Age,” he said.

“This is my second tour. I went to South Africa in 2015 which was good, like here, there was a great set of lads and I really enjoyed it, but we didn’t get the result in the test match in South Africa.”

Reflecting on a domestic season with the Sandrats, Tyson said: “It was a bit disappointing, really.

“We were really, really good at home but struggled to get a strong team on the field to go away.

“We only ended up picking up two or three away wins all season. We made the play-offs again but were missing players in the semi-final and it wasn’t to be again.”

“It worked out that the season got extended by two weeks. For the semi-final, we were missing five or six lads who were all away at my wedding.”

The newly-wed had originally booked everything after the season was due to finish.

“Originally we would have been alright, but it was one of those things I suppose.”