LEE BYRNE: RUGBY STAR’S EXPLOSIVE NEW BOOK

LEE BYRNE has written the rugby book of the year, detailing some of the biggest secrets in the Welsh game. Capped 46 times by Wales, Byrne was the world’s best full-back and a key part of the Warren Gatland side that won the Grand Slam. Here, in part one of our exclusive extracts from ‘The Byrne Identity’, he reveals his dismay at the way Gatland’s No2 Rob Howley treated him as his international career came to an end.

MY phone rang. The words ‘Rob Howley mobile’ flashed up on the screen. It was a Saturday evening in November, 2013.

I was sitting in a bar opposite the Stade Marcel-Michelin in Clermont, enjoying a glass of red wine with Alex Lapandry, my best mate in France.

Earlier that day, we’d beaten Montpellier in the Top 14, and I’d scored two tries. It was my third season in France and I was playing well.

I had a sixth sense about the purpose of the call. There’d been a glut of injuries in the Wales squad, and they were short of full-back cover for the following Friday’s match, an autumn international against Tonga at the Millennium Stadium.

I showed Alex the screen: ‘Byrney, answer it!’ he urged. We’d been friends a while and he knew how desperate I’d been to reclaim my Wales jersey.

I hesitated for a moment... then pressed the decline button.

Why? On the face of it, I should have been delighted to get Howley’s call. I hadn’t started a Wales game since the World Cup match against Fiji more than two years earlier. This game was my chance. Who knows: I might have won Man of the Match and gone on to get another 60 caps?

At the very least I might have had a few more to my tally of 46. And it would have been a chance to prove my doubters wrong, to show that I could still perform on the biggest stage.

This wasn’t the first time I’d heard from Howley that autumn: surprising, because I’d barely spoken with him before then since the World Cup in 2011. But one day, out of the blue, he called me about comments I’d made in The Western Mail.

A journalist had contacted me to ask about Jonathan Davies’ expected move to Clermont the following season. The conversation had lasted about 25 minutes. I waxed lyrical about Clermont: about how much Foxy would enjoy the rugby.

At the very end of our chat, the reporter asked me about my own international future – specifically, whether I thought I had one. Jokingly, I answered: ‘I think they’ve lost my number!’ It was a throwaway comment, forgotten as soon as it was said.

The next day, my phone went – it was Rob. He told me my phone number remark was on the back page of the paper and wanted to know why I’d made it. ‘Rob, ... I talked about Jonathan Davies for 25 minutes and said that at the end. There was nothing in it.’

At no point did he ask me how I was, or how I was getting on at Clermont. Towards the end of the conversation I asked him how he thought I was playing, and what my prospects were of a Wales recall.

He said he’d phone me back to discuss it. The call never came.

You may have inferred from the above that I’m not Howley’s biggest fan. We’d started working together in 2008 when Warren Gatland brought him into the Wales set-up. He’d overseen my best moments in a Wales shirt, and I rated him as an attack coach.

But, in around 2011, cracks started to appear in our relationship. I’d been affected by a knee injury and had

worked my backside off to make the squad for the World Cup.

But when I returned to the training field, I noticed that Howley had a different attitude towards me. I felt he was trying to undermine me, in a subtle yet insidious way.

At the time Leigh Halfpenny – the man who was to take my full-back jersey – was flavour of the month.

‘Great kick, Halfers. Well done, Halfers!’ Howley would yell during training. Fair enough, except when I nailed the same kick there’d be stony silence. ‘Awesome angle, Halfers!’ he’d cry, only to ignore anything decent I did, whilst loudly criticising my mistakes.

These were not isolated incidents, but a recurring theme. The pattern became glaringly obvious to my team-mates, who’d take the mickey out of me about it.

‘Byrney!’ they’d shout at me, in imitation of Howley and his signature bawl. It was funny – but I was starting to get the impression the top brass didn’t want me.

Please don’t think I’m whingeing here. I appreciate that coaches have a job to do. And I also understand that players have their sell-by date.

Naturally, I wouldn’t have enjoyed being phased out of the team however he’d done it. But I’d have had more respect for Howley if, as a senior coach, he’d taken me aside and told me what was happening. That was the way Gatland generally handled things, to be fair. And I didn’t mind being shouted at, either. Shaun Edwards – another Gatland lieutenant – did it the whole time, but I accepted it because his intentions were good. This was different. Far from being a strategy to help me improve, it seemed to me that Howley’s constant sniping was part of a grinding-down process – step by step and day by day – to get me out of the team. I felt like he was trying to break me down mentally, to make me give in so they could justify dropping me.

The snide remarks had started earlier, when he began passing comment about my social life. As we each lived in Bridgend and knew many of the same people, it would often get back to him if I’d been out. ‘Good night last night, Byrney?’ or ‘Out again on the weekend, Byrney?’ he’d say, in front of the other players.

Again, I thought this was unnecessary. I’d always enjoyed a night out when the time was right. It had never been a problem before, but suddenly it seemed as if my social habits were being used as ammunition against me. I wasn’t the only player he’d pick on using these tactics, but few would stand up to him. One exception was Phillsy (Mike Phillips), who once told him where to go. That kind of edge made Mike a great player, but it wasn’t my style. Instead, I just put up with it and simmered. By the 2012 Six Nations, I was no more first choice in the Wales team. But I was still named in the training squad. Each week I’d return from France for training. This was no mean feat: on the Sunday night I’d take a flight from Clermont to Amsterdam then onto Cardiff, before making the return journey in midweek, after the match-day squad had been announced. To make matters worse, the WRU – as part of their cost-cutting measures at the time – were not covering my travel expenses. The players who’d driven from Swansea or Llanelli weren’t happy about this, so imagine how I felt. The to-ing and fro-ing left me about five or six grand out of pocket (I eventually got a small amount back).

At no point did I consider retiring from Wales duty, but it was a fair way to come – at my own expense – to hold tackle bags.

So this was the background to the phone call I received that November night in 2013.

Eased out of the Wales team; subjected, in my view, to bullying treatment; dragged back and forth to Wales with hardly any compensation for my troubles.

For two years, there’d been no communication with the management; but here was a man – a man who I felt had tried to humiliate me in front of my team-mates – ringing up and expecting me to come running because he’d clicked his fingers, to be cannon-fodder for a Friday night game against Tonga.

I excused myself to Alex and left the bar to check my voicemail. Rob’s message was as I’d expected: ‘Byrney, get on the plane. You’re starting against Tonga.’

I took a moment to reflect, then called him back. The call diverted to his voicemail.

‘Forget it, Rob,’ I said. ‘I ain’t coming back.’

I never played for Wales again.