It could be a scene from The Golden Girls: a gaggle of elderly ladies, just finishing lunch at a Californian ocean-front café, casting curious eyes at the burly man who has just passed by their table, his infant son in arms, ordering a mocha.
“Oh there is that British man with his baby,” one murmurs. “He has the most wonderful manners…”
The man in question does not hear the compliment – or if he does, he is too bashful to respond. Then again, if anyone is entitled to be blissfully oblivious in their new world, it is Chris Robshaw. Almost two years have passed since the former England captain left his home country to start a new life in Major League Rugby with San Diego Legion, and with his topped-up tan and tousled blond hair, he could almost pass for a Californian surfer dude.
This is home now: Carlsbad, an achingly relaxed place around 35 miles up the Pacific coast from San Diego; a family town where Robshaw, his soprano wife Camilla Kerslake and their baby son, Wilding, can enjoy the quiet life.
Robshaw may play for the local rugby team but his celebrity does not register in Carlsbad, particularly when the likes of Rod Laver are also local residents. His accent, not his day job, is the chief point of interest.
The last time I met Robshaw in person was just before he had played his last game for Harlequins, in a hospitality suite at the Stoop in September 2020, where he stared sadly towards the stadium’s towering neighbour Twickenham as he contemplated his career. Back then, his thoughts were dominated by what had gone wrong – in particular, the brutal exit from the 2015 World Cup – rather than his many highs: captaining his country in a famous victory over New Zealand in 2012, for instance, or landing the Premiership title with Quins.
Even his friends in west London admitted Robshaw could be “intense” but here, sitting outside his favourite coffee shop, the tranquility only disturbed by the noise of breakers rolling onto the sand, that life feels a world away.
“I am a lot more chilled now and a lot of that has to do with the environment,” he admits. “I surf with some of the guys from the club. We are encouraged to go in the water as part of our recovery. I am still not very good though… For me it is so different. When I tell my friends at home that I go surfing they say: ‘This isn’t you!’ This has given me a different perspective. I am sure I appear differently, too?”
He does. Physically, he looks – if anything – even younger than when he left London, but it is his demeanour that is so markedly transformed. There is simply no comparison between the man who seemed so guarded in his press conferences as England captain and the honest and eloquent character sitting before me.
