Rhode to Glory? Marcus Rhodes on his move to Coventry, Champ ambitions and his Premiership dream
Marcus Rhodes was BUCS Super Rugby's Player of the Season in 2025/26
©Coventry Rugby Club
“When someone says you are going to get a crack at your dream again, it is significant and it did mean a lot.”
Marcus Rhodes has worked to get to this stage. Once on the books at London Irish, his journey through university rugby at Durham has led him back to a professional environment.
Now with a contract at Coventry, one of the biggest clubs in England’s second tier, he is aiming to make a telling impact and achieve his dream of being a Prem Rugby player.
From Surrey, the 24-year-old started his rugby journey at Wellington College in Berkshire before being picked up by Irish in 2017, where he spent five years.
"It was a brilliant place, culturally similar to Coventry, I guess, in terms of building that attacking brand and identity," Rhodes reflects.
"Going through it from a young age and then getting those first senior academy contracts was just brilliant. Being around mates you had grown up with and had been on that journey with.
"You had access to some of the best coaches in the world - James Lightfoot Brown, who’s running Gloucester’s attack, Jonathan Fisher coaching Australia and Les Kiss who’s now obviously taken over as Head Coach of Australia."
Leaving the club in 2022, Rhodes changed direction and went to Durham University to study history, where he also became an ever-present for their BUCS Super Rugby team. He made 77 appearances in the competition, all of which were starts.
That's every single game across his four years with the Palatinates.
I asked Rhodes what the key was to maintaining such consistency in terms of availability and performance.
"First of all, you’ve got to really love what you’re doing. We all know rugby is attritional and hard," he tells TRU.
"You have to be willing to sacrifice some of the social life. The typical university lifestyle isn’t going to happen if you’re willing to put that much into your rugby.
"We also had brilliant coaching, physios and S&C - the kind of stuff that people don’t know about and goes under wraps."
Despite missing out on the biggest prizes in BUCS, the league title and BUCS Milk Championship, Rhodes certainly had some memorable moments in Palatinate purple.
He captained Durham in a special game against the Barbarians in May 2025, and in the December of that year, he put in a man-of-the-match performance against Cardiff University in a special alumni event.
But that’s not his favourite. His favourite tells you what university rugby is all about.
"If there was one game I could go back and do it all again, it would be Exeter away at Sandy Park in my third year," Rhodes says, recalling a 38-28 victory.
"We’d had a pretty bad start to the season, and there wasn’t a great deal of confidence going into it.
"One of our coaches, Theo Smerdon, who I lived with, had to retire medically from the game. I remember him drawing on some of his experiences and saying, ‘Look lads. You don’t understand how cool it is that you get to do this with your mates’.
"Everything in that week in terms of the disappointment at the start of the season, those emotional messages and that perfect storm, we raced out in front, they came back into it but we managed to fight it off and win pretty comfortably in the end.
“In front of that many people in a big stadium and an away day - it’s every reason why all of us get into the sport in the first place."
Finishing his time at Durham the following season, Rhodes rounded things off with the BUCS Super Rugby Player of the Season award - a fitting end to his university career.
Now with a history degree and master’s in finance under his belt, he heads into Champ Rugby with Coventry.
"Obviously there’s massive excitement," Rhodes tells TRU. "Anytime you get that opportunity and someone says you’re going to get a chance to have a crack at your dream is pretty significant and it does mean a lot”.
Rhodes reveals there was disappointment in not securing a move to the Premiership after trialling at Saracens in the summer of 2025, but admits that has now been put to one side.
"It’s not a knock on the Championship. It’s hard going into it and Coventry is obviously one of the top sides. Game time will be hard and there’s a lot of top players here, but the ultimate aim for me is to be a Premieship player.
"But once it was all finalised [with Coventry], there was just massive excitement and being able to have that conversation with Mum and Dad was special.
"What Mum and Dad have sacrificed to get me any support I’ve ever needed, to be as good as I can be, is not lost on me. I wouldn’t be where I am without that."
A step up to professional rugby is a challenge for any player coming out of university, but it’s one that Rhodes, who stands at 6’4 and 117kg, is ready for.
"Physically, gaining better access to S&C helps, but ultimately you learn by doing it," he says. "It’s not like I haven’t had to deal with pace and physicality before, it’s just that the physicality has increased and ultimately that’s an area of the game that I love."
"Being able to still deliver and take that to a new level in men’s rugby is an exciting challenge."
Rhodes is one of 10 new signings for Coventry, who certainly have their own ambitions.
As one of the few professional sides in the league, they look well placed to compete for this year’s title - which could allow them to enter the Prem should they meet the RFU’s minimum operating standards.
For Coventry, experienced Champ players in Rhys Tait, Matthew McNabb and Bruce Houston have joined, and all the change seems to be of a positive nature.
"I can’t give enough credit to Alex Rae, our DOR, and the senior boys because it’s been the easiest transition in the world," Rhodes says.
"Within a few weeks everyone was so close. Ultimately as a professional team, you spend more hours together and it means a lot being around a group that is good at rugby but also good as blokes as well.”
Coffee chats, recovery sessions, wrestling, boxing, water parks and, of course, gruelling training sessions have been the order of the summer as Coventry’s new-look squad gels ahead of the new campaign.
In pre-season, Cov recorded a 47-35 win against RGC and a 52-12 loss to the Ospreys, and Rhodes says the side has taken “good learnings” from those fixtures.
Coventry’s ambitions seem clear after last season’s semi-final heartbreak to Bedford. They want to go two steps further and win the Champ.
"As a team, we’re all aware of it. We want to have that extra step and win the thing," Rhodes admits.
"It is a cliché, but it does start with every training session being good. Ultimately, you don’t get 26 weeks down the line unless you make sure every day matters and that’s a big push for us."
Up first for the East Midlands side is a tough away day against newly promoted Rotherham Titans on Saturday afternoon, where Rhodes will face former teammate and good friend Louis Inman.
"It’ll be weird. Louis is one of my best mates. We are very close and have been checking in on each other to see how it’s all going!
"There’s also Mitchell Lacey-Babalola, one of Rotherham’s centres who was at Durham the year before I left. It’ll be strange playing against those boys, but it’s exciting we’re all at this level and kicking on with our rugby."
For Rhodes, it’s a big season to prove his mettle at this level and push towards that dream of becoming a Premiership player.
With the season approaching, the big number 8 laid out his plan to get there.
"It’s similar to what I did with BUCS. That’s the blueprint. It’s just a harder level of doing it. It’s about being really good day-to-day to get a start, play consistently and then dominate consistently.
"Hopefully we win some stuff and eventually, however long it takes, I get a crack at the Prem."
