Who is Tom Voyce? Former England rugby player presumed dead after being ‘swept away’ by Storm Darragh

Former England and Wasps rugby union star Tom Voyce is tragically believed to have died after apparently trying to cross a flood-swollen river in his car during Storm Darragh.

Northumbria Police said the 43-year-old is believed to have gone into the River Aln near Alnwick, Northumberland and while the car has since been recovered, officers did not find Voyce.

Police say he was attempting to cross Abberwick Ford in his car which was then pulled along with the current of the river, which had been running high due to severe weather in Storm Darragh. It is believed he was swept away while attempting to escape and has sadly died, with searches continuing into Wednesday.

The rugby community has rallied around Voyce’s loved ones, with lots of online messages posted expressing sympathy and sadness about the situation.

So who is the popular former winger? Here’s everything you need to know:

Tom Voyce was born on 5 January 1981 in Truro, Cornwall, and grew up playing rugby for Penryn RFC and Truro RFC before leaving Cornwall at the age of 16 to join Bath.

He worked his way through the club’s youth and second teams before making his debut for the first team as a 19-year-old in 2000. Comfortable as either a winger or full back, he played for Bath for three years and scored 15 tries in 55 appearances.

At the same time, he came on to the England radar, first establishing himself in the Under-21 side before making his senior England debut at the age of just 20 on the tour to North America in 2001, coming off the bench during the 48-19 win over USA in San Diego.

Voyce would go on to win nine England caps between 2001 and 2006, scoring three tries, with two of those coming against Samoa during his first Test appearance at Twickenham in 2005.

He started games against New Zealand and Australia on the 2004 summer tour and was selected for every match of the 2006 Six Nations, a mixture of starts and appearances from the bench as the full back jersey vacillaed between him and Josh Lewsey. England won two and lost three games of that Championship as they finished fourth in the table for the second year in a row.

That summer, he was selected for the tour to Australia but England were thumped 34-3 by the Wallabies in the first Test in Sydney and Voyce was heavily criticised for his performance on the wing. It would be his final international appearance, at the age of 25.

“One game seemed to ruin everything I had done,” Voyce later, candidly, admitted in an interview. “I was going through a divorce at the time, which I didn’t make public. I was banging my head against a brick wall trying to figure out what had happened and what I wanted from the sport.”

Things were going much better at club level, however, having moved from Bath to Wasps in 2003 and quickly establishing himself as a first-team regular.

He helped Wasps win the Premiership title at Twickenham in each of his first two seasons with the Adams Park outfit – scoring 15 tries in 34 appearances in the 2003-04 campaign, where they also won the Heineken Cup in a season for the ages.

The following year, he scored a try in the Premiership final as Leicester Tigers were dispatched for Wasps’s third straight title and he also scored the quickest try in Premiership history in November 2004. Having gathered a loose ball from kick-off, Voyce scooted in under the posts in just 9.63 seconds against Harlequins, beating Martin Corry’s previous record by 14 seconds.

Voyce won a second Heineken Cup with Wasps in 2007, as Leicester were beaten 25-9 in an all-English final, and he then claimed a third Premiership title at the end of the 2007-08 campaign.

His six-year stint with Wasps came to an end in 2009 after scoring 43 tries in 124 appearances and he moved back to the south west with Gloucester for a three-season spell that included winning the Anglo-Welsh Cup in 2011.

One final season of professional rugby came with London Welsh in 2012-13 before he retired from the sport at the age of 32.

He began working in banking following his retirement from rugby and now, at the age of just 43, is sadly presumed dead after going missing during Storm Darragh.