JAMES Lewis was six-months-old when he went to his first rugby match. “My dad and grandad took me to see Bradford Northern, I was brought up on it,” he says.

He became a promising young rugby player, but a devastating injury set him on a different path. Today James is a successful stage and screen actor, currently putting his rugby skills to use in John Godber’s comedy Up n Under, about an inept pub team.

James started playing rugby aged 12, at Dudley Hill club, and was picked for a summer camp of excellence at Ampleforth. “I played for Bradford Boys and Sedburgh until I was 16 then I went back to Dudley Hill. I was playing well, aiming to play professionally,” he says. But days before scouts were invited to watch him in action, James injured his eye in a game that put him out of rugby for good.

By this time he’d also auditioned for drama school - something he says would never have happened without his rather extraordinary English teacher, Angela Wrathall, at Yorkshire Martyrs Catholic College in Tong. “She made Shakespeare fun,” says James. “We’d all be acting in English lessons and she saw potential in me. She suggested I did GCSE drama, I wasn’t keen but she said it was something active, not just sitting at a desk. When I told my parents they said, ‘No way’. She sat down with them and persuaded them it was worth having a go. I got an A* at GCSE and did A-level drama.”

Angela suggested he try for drama school but James was put off by the £25 audition fee. “She paid for my audition and, with her husband, drove me down to London. It was his 40th birthday and they did that for me. I’ll never forget it,” says James.

“We stayed with my aunt and uncle in their tiny flat in London. The night before the audition Angela made me perform my Blood Brothers piece over and over again.”

The following week James had his rugby injury. “My eye blew up like a balloon, I couldn’t open it for six weeks. I went to school with a black eye and and Mrs Wrathall whispered, ‘You’ve got a place at Italia Conti’. I couldn't believe it, but I had to tell her I couldn’t afford it.”

So Angela Wrathall did another extraordinary thing. She organised a £30,000 fundraising campaign at Yorkshire Martyrs, raising enough to cover James’s Italia Conti fees for the first two terms. “Staff and pupils raise cash to help budding actor” said the T&A report in September, 2001.

“When I went there I fell in love with acting and knew it was what I wanted to do, and when the money started running out me and my dad wrote to charities for help. Then I got a letter from Mrs Wrathall - with a cheque for the last term. I was dumbfounded,” says James. “Without her I wouldn’t be an actor. I’d set my heart on rugby as a boy but even getting to the level I was at, there were no guarantees I’d have made it. I broke my collar bone, nose, fingers, wrists, ribs, dislocated my shoulder. It seemed like fate had other ideas for me.

"I missed the camaraderie of the game though; in a rugby team you respect each other and develop life skills - teamwork, discipline, perseverance. I was telling John Godber recently that I still have dreams about rugby. Last time I played I was 18, now I’m combining my two loves - rugby and acting.”

In Up n Under James plays Frank Rowley, a butcher whose wife and kids have left him. “Rugby is the only thing keeping him going. The play looks at how rugby brings people together. It’s a comedy but there are tender moments.”

James, who grew up in Bankfoot, has been in such TV dramas as Hollyoaks, Doctor Who, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, Scott and Bailey, and The Yorkshire Rapper, a film shortlisted at the Cannes Festival. “Nothing beats the buzz of performing for an audience on stage. It’s like being on the rugby pitch,” he says. "You've got the crowd, which is like an audience, and there's teamwork, and even post-match analysis!"

He has fond memories of Odsal. “I've been back over the years to see matches. It’s a real shame what’s happened there. The Bulls have been the heart of Bradford for a long time. Odsal Stadium is part of the city's sporting heritage, and its identity.

The fans and players don’t deserve this. But they're a good young team and I have faith in John Kear; if anyone can bring them back it’s him.”

* Up n Under is at Hull New Theatre from September 4-14. Call 01482 300306.