‘What gets me is how much – ‘Chico’ Hopkins on living in

“WHO’S that?” bellows the perturbed voice down the telephone line.

The words “reporter” and “interview” don’t always go down too well at this stage, but that’s what we’re after so let’s see explain and see what happens.

“Oh... I thought you were Gareth Edwards,” he says, his voice softening. He pauses for a second. “The t**t!” As first interactions go, it’s an odd one. But that’s Raymond ‘Chico’ Hopkins for you.

He’s not the easiest man to find. Contacts books were raided, phone books scoured and former teammates such as Phil Bennett coldcalled in a bid to find Chico. Eventually, an address and then an up-to-date phone number emerge.

The peculiar introduction is followed by an invite to visit Chico’s home and sets the tone for a fascinating afternoon in an antique-filled terraced house that belonged to his mother in the town of Maesteg.

For hours, he talks, occasionally curtailing the various tangents he’s gone off on long enough for me to get a question in. The language is often not for the faint-hearted or the easily offended either. There appears to be no facade – or filter – with Chico.

His story is a relatively well-known one in Welsh rugby. The scrum-half who spent his career in the shadow of Gareth Edwards – a man many consider to be the greatest Welsh rugby player of all time.

Not that being in the shadow of Edwards seems to sit well with Chico.

The first tale he regales concerns him confronting then-Wales coach Clive Rowlands at a post-match function to enquire why Edwards was starting ahead of him.

The story takes a rather blue turn, with Hopkins suggesting to Rowlands it wasn’t based on talent. The details are outrageously unprintable.

At first, it seems like a bitterness towards Edwards - his scrum-half rival who limited Hopkins to just the one Wales cap back in 1970 and with whom Hopkins’ name will forever be associated.

No doubt Chico has a unique sense of humour, but is it infused with jealousy?

He has just one solitary cap for Wales to his name - a brief, yet brilliant, cameo from the replacements bench against England in 1970 that was only granted to him because of injury to Edwards.

“I was up in the stands with Phil Bennett and I said to him ‘I tell you what Phil, I’ve got a feeling I’m coming on today,’” recalls Hopkins.

“He said ‘don’t be daft, Gareth is never coming off!’

“And then Gareth goes off - probably tripped over the ref or something! We’re down 13-3 at this point.

“I rushed down to the tunnel and Gareth was sat there being looked at by a doctor. I wasn’t hanging around to wait so I headed straight for the pitch.

“There was a fence there so I decided to jump it to get to the pitch. However, that fence got bigger as I got closer to it and I think I had a hernia by the time I’d got down from it!”

As debuts go, it was a dream one. In his own words, “everything went f**king right”. Hopkins inspired a comeback victory, scoring one himself and setting up another for JPR Williams.

His try relied on Dai Morris missing the ball when the blindside flanker had every right to score - with Chico remarking “he must have had his mind on the two o’clock race!”

The assist for JPR had it’s fair share of luck - with a run in no particular direction coming off for Hopkins. “I hadn’t a clue where I was going, but it ended up looking brilliant!”

But then, Hopkins is a firm believer in luck. He puts his Wales call-up and his cap down to luck. So too his two remarkable wins over the All Blacks once for the British and Irish Lions and once for Llanelli.

However, he also believes Edwards had his fair share of luck. The bounce of the ball for his famous try against Scotland in the mud of the Arms Park racetrack. The fact that his try for the Barbarians against All Blacks is known worldwide when it was just “a runaround game and the pass was forward!” If there is an element of envy, it lies with what he perhaps sees as Edwards the myth, not Edwards the man.

“He was a great player, but was he as great as they make out?

“How can you call him the best player of all time? I think we make far too much of people in this country sometimes.

“It all depends what team you were in. I stepped in for Gareth seven times and we won each one comfortably. We didn’t necessarily miss him.

“Back then, everybody could replace everyone else. Phil Bennett proved as good a player as Barry John afterwards so you never know what I could have done.”

“Gerald Davies knows I go on about Gareth a lot and he always says ‘oh leave him alone! Look what you’ve achieved and don’t worry about it!’

“I’ve been lucky. The only bad thing I’ve had was losing my father young.”

Chico would eventually turn away from rugby union to move north, not to get out of the shadow of Edwards, but as a coping mechanism for his father’s death. A mechanism he admits didn’t work and one he deeply regrets.

Hopkins thought rugby league would suit him and he’d be a success. It didn’t turn out that way. He maintains that had he chosen the right club (he joined Swinton), he might have done better. His confidence was gone - the first sign that a player is “f**ked”, as Hopkins eloquently puts it.

Back to that idea of luck. Before Hopkins had switched codes, he had just beaten the All Blacks alongside Bennett for Llanelli. Edwards and Cardiff had lost to them the week after. If ever there was a time for Hopkins to usurp Edwards, that was surely it.

“After that, they were boasting me and Phil up for Wales. But I went to league, not because of Gareth, but because of my dad. That’s what gets me - how much luck Gareth had.”

Whether you consider it luck or not, Edwards held onto his Wales jersey and Hopkins was stranded in a different code.

“I remember being in bed years ago, dreaming I’ve come home from rugby league and everybody is cheering and saying ‘great to have you back Chico’ and ‘we’ll have a great side now.’

“Then I’d wake up and realise I’m playing rugby league and I never really