The Prem season might be a “whirlwind”, but it is nothing compared to the grind Wand experienced with his erstwhile employer. In keeping with 2026 as a year of firsts for Wand, he will marry his fiancée, Miranda, this summer, who has been with him through thick and thin.
It was with Miranda’s father that Wand experienced the graft of sandblasting alongside his part-time job as an up-and-coming 19-year-old for Cambridge. That was in the third tier of English rugby before Coventry, one league higher, came calling, followed by the dizzy highs of Leicester. Wand had to bide his time for the Tigers – this has been his breakout season despite arriving in September 2024 – but he has climbed ladders both inside and out of rugby.
“My fiancée’s dad was a sandblaster, cleaning up brickwork,” Wand says. “We used to do all these commercial jobs, on site, doing factories. You might do steel or wooden beams. I was doing that when I was in Nat One, around four years ago. It’s pretty mental. I remember doing 18-hour shifts, through the night; I’d do a couple of them and then go to training the next day. It seems like such a long time ago now but, when people remind you of it, it wasn’t that long ago.
“It certainly keeps you humble. I suppose it has taught me a few lessons without really thinking about it: graft and hard work. I guess that bled into my rugby a bit.”
There is added sentimentality to Wand’s Leicester story. As a boy, Wand was a Tigers fan. Even when he played for Coventry between 2022 and 2024, Wand would race down the M69 to catch Leicester’s home matches.
“I went to a lot of Tigers games growing up,” he says. “I suppose it was a dream come true; it was definitely weird. When you’re on the outside, though, and you come in, you don’t really think about it too much. It’s just rugby.”