I’d lost the plot and was doing all-nighters before mates told me: Sort yourself out
Ali shows maturity and earns himself new Warriors deal
ALI PRICE has revealed he “lost the plot” for a time during lockdown last year and was living by night – until his team-mates had a word and managed to snap him out of it.
The 28-year-old scrum-half is in the best form of his career right now. He has 46 Scotland caps to his name, he played in all three Lions Tests in the summer, and yesterday Glasgow announced that he has just signed a new contract for an unspecified period.
And Price reckons the extra maturity he is showing on and off the pitch is mainly down to how he reacted after that tough time in the spring of 2020 when sport was suspended.
He said: “I got a bit lost at the start of the first lockdown. Everyone was just stuck in their places. At the time I lived by myself and I struggled with not knowing what was going on or when we’d be back doing anything.
“I lost the plot for 10 days, two weeks. I ended up being pretty much nocturnal – I was just staying up all night and sleeping during the day.
“I was playing the PlayStation with some of the boys actually and it’s the thing that sticks in my mind because from then on I had a change of mindset.
“I’d had four or five beers, it was like four in the afternoon, and a couple of the lads were like, ‘What are you doing? Why? Sort yourself out.’
“At that point I was like, ‘Right, OK, what am I doing?’ I set my alarm for nine o’clock the next morning to go out for a run and from then I got the running bug and sorted myself out.
“It was like a switch had been flicked. From that moment, when we started to get back into rugby I was obviously in good shape and was able to fulfil my role as a nine and enjoy my job and being back around the boys.
“I met my girlfriend and she moved in and things are good. I don’t really know if that one moment way back is what triggered it all – there’s been a number of steps that have helped me grow up off the field and helped me on the field too.”
Price took one of those steps after the 2018 Six Nations, when he reported back to the Warriors camp “overweight and sluggish” according to then head coach Dave Rennie. He learned from that experience and reckons he is now good at bouncing back. “I don’t know what it is within me,” he added. “But when I’ve realised that something is starting to slip – or has slipped – I’ve been quite good at selfcorrecting and getting myself back on the horse. “I don’t know what I put it down to. There’s thankfully something within me that if I’m driven enough to say ‘Right, I’m going to focus on this’, then I can.”