PHILLIPS: HOW IT ALL WENT SOUR BETWEEN ME AND GATS AFTER SO MUCH SUCCESS

WALES and Lions scrum-half legend Mike Phillips has penned his memoirs, and, as you would expect, he doesn’t pull any punches in a no-holds barred autobiography. Phillips shares many unknown dressing room tales in his new book ‘Half Truths’, detailing the highs and lows of being a top international player.

Here, in the first of three days of must-read extracts, fans’ favourite Phillips candidly reveals how he badly fell out with Warren Gatland, despite the two men achieving so much together in the early days.

This is a story of dressing room honesty from a man right at the centre of everything with Wales and the Lions and who has seen the highs and the lows.

PHILLIPS WAS PART OF THE SUCCESSFUL LIONS CLASS OF 2013 UNDER GATLAND, BUT FELT THE RAPPORT

WITH HIM AND ROB HOWLEY

WAS BEGINNING TO FALTER DURING THAT TRIP TO AUSTRALIA. THINGS THEN STARTED TO COME TO A HEAD DURING THE FOLLOWING

YEAR’S SIX NATIONS, BEFORE

AND AFTER A 26-3 THRASHING IN IRELAND.

AFTER the way Warren Gatland was with me on the Lions tour in 2013, I began to suspect that things might also now be different when he returned as Wales boss. I was right to be suspicious.

The build-up to the Ireland game didn’t exactly go too smoothly for me. A few days before, I was doing bench press in the gym. As I’ve gone to push out a rep, I felt my pectoral muscle pull. After that, I spent a lot of the week training on my own and I would only join up with the boys for the light stuff.

I should have probably put my hand up and said I wasn’t right but I dug in. I didn’t play well, the pack got dominated, it was a wet day, they kicked well and strangled us a bit.

The morning after I got into a bit of a barney with Gethin Jenkins. It all went back to the build-up in the week. On the Thursday, I joined up with the boys for a bit of a team run and it was a poor session. Balls were being dropped, we weren’t slick at all.

Heads were down, it was just one of those days when everyone was five percent off it. Gethin has a bit of a go, trying to spark something: “The standards today have not been good enough. We’ve got a huge game away from home coming up against a top class side. Get your heads on!”

But, to be honest, it felt to me like he was aiming some of it specifically at me. In the back of my mind, I’m thinking: ‘Hang on mate, I’m digging in here.’ I was really trying to push the pain of my pectoral injury to the back of my mind and do my best for the team, so that annoyed me.

In truth, Gethin was well within his rights to have a go and you need the experienced players to do that if sessions are going poorly. I just took it personally because the injury was messing with my head.

Then after the match we were told to drink in the hotel but about 10 of us ventured out into Dublin. That had started to get on my nerves as well, it felt like we were being treated like schoolchildren and by now I was in my 30s.

It felt like there was no respect any more and if you keep people penned in, that’s when it can kick off.

Anyway, the morning after the Ireland game I was a bit worse for wear. I saw Gethin on a laptop in the team room and I said to him: “What are you looking at there Geth, all the penalties you gave away yesterday is it?” Apparently, it was too soon for jokes.

He was not best pleased and got up in my face: “Right. Outside. Now.”

Obviously we didn’t go outside and I didn’t have any dramas with him. He’s an absolute legend, one of Wales’ greatest players and there was no bad blood. Emotions were just running a little bit high after the previous day’s defeat.

The coaches made a bigger deal out of it though. Gats didn’t like it. Keep in mind this was the same guy who let Gav (Henson) leave a World Cup training camp to film his own reality TV show but now he wanted to make a fuss about this?

He was believing his own hype by this point and I think he wanted to show me who was boss. Either way, it didn’t really help my cause going forward. I got quite annoyed, went straight to my room, packed my bag and was going to get my own flight home.

A lot of things were building up, the injury, the yellow card, the performance, the way Gats was now behaving towards me.

I got into a taxi outside the hotel and drove 200 yards down the road before I saw sense and told him to stop. Nobody knows about that... until now. I had a bit of a word with myself and walked back to the hotel before getting straight on the bus.

That would have been the end of my Wales career right there had I gone through with it. I’m glad I saw sense because that’s not the correct way to carry yourself.

When you look back now, that defeat was the start of a bit of a lull for a lot of us. We’d had a really successful period over the last two seasons with a lot of boys going on the 2013 Lions tour. How do you keep that going? It’s tough.

Then coaches start looking for fall guys and I was right in the firing line. It was the start of the end for me.

I’d been in the camp since 2003 and, to be honest, I kind of felt like it was about time someone came through. I’d held the position down for the best part of six years. Rhys (Webb) started the next two games against France and England. I could feel them starting to push me out a little bit.

I didn’t kick off about it because I accepted the situation for what it was. We lost the game at Twickenham and Gethin got yellow-carded for a couple of scrum penalties.

When Gethin went off, he sent the message up to Gats in the coaches box that he didn’t want to go back on because he felt the referee, Romain Poite, had it in for him. In the postmatch debrief, Gats talked up Gethin and spoke about how it was an outstanding decision, with Geth putting the team before himself.

I viewed the situation differently and was surprised to see Gatland not only addressing it positively, but also raising it in front of the team. Again, I never had an issue with Geth. It just so happens that he’s involved a fair bit here. I was looking at this situation thinking to myself that he could do no wrong. Meanwhile, it felt like I couldn’t do anything right in the eyes of the coaches

Deep down, I felt like that 2014 Six Nations could have been a case of me owning the No.9 jersey for the last time, with Rhys coming off the bench. Myself and the coaches could have had mature conversations about it and made a plan but they never spoke to me

I was never made aware of what their intentions were for me and Rhys. I always felt like I had a good relationship with Gats for the majority of my career, even if things were a bit bumpy with Rob Howley. We’d achieved a lot together, I’d worked tirelessly to help the team win trophies and make that era a successful one.

Because of that, I felt like they owed me the decency of just talking me through what was happening.

All they did was give me the silent treatment. I’d seen them do this before. It happened with Martyn Williams, Stephen Jones and Dwayne Peel. Gats was pretty blunt with all of them when it came to the end and we were about to witness the treatment they dished out to Adam Jones.

It doesn’t take much to just pull someone for a quiet conversation but they let me figure it out for myself.

After the Six Nations in 2014, we were all heading out for a few beers and Gats pulled me to the side and basically told me that if there were any shenanigans that night, I was going to be in trouble

Again, I was in my 30s by now. Did he really need to be talking to me like that? He was doing it because me and Gethin had argued but that happens in that environment.

Boys are scrapping in training all the time and it’s quickly forgotten about. Me and Gethin didn’t have any beef. That was unnecessary from Gats and, looking back, was a sign that our relationship had broken down.

PHILLIPS WAS BACK AS FIRST-CHOICE NUMBER NINE FOR THE SUMMER TOUR TO SOUTH AFRICA, WHILE HE HAD EYES ON THE 2015 WORLD CUP AND REACHING A LANDMARK 100TH CAP, BUT THE FRICTION WITH GATLAND AND WALES NUMBER TWO ROB HOWLEY CONTINUED

ONE thing that really annoyed me was the way they treated Adam Jones. For me, he was the best player in our team at times and I don’t think we’d have won the tournaments we did without him. He was vastly underrated.

In that first Test, which was his 100th by the way, they substituted him after 31 minutes with the Springboks leading 21-6. They blamed Adam for two of the tries South Africa had scored but the reality was that very few of us were playing well.

The coaches didn’t need to do that to him, they could have at least let it get to half-time. I was furious about it after everything he’d done for them and his country.

After Adam had gone, I recall being in training and overhearing Gats making a comment about him in front of other players. Gats shouldn’t have been saying stuff in front of other boys like that. Given the way my international career was about to go and the way they were about to treat me, I wish I’d let him know what I thought about it.

By the time the 2015 Six Nations came around, Rhys was their number one choice. He was scoring a lot of tries and looking sharp. Sometimes you just have to see the facts for what they are. As far as I was concerned, the writing was on the wall.

In the game against Scotland, he made a couple of wrong decisions with regard to the game plan. We were playing very structured rugby

– as we did for the majority of Gatland’s reign – and if the scrum-half goes the wrong way once, then it can throw the whole thing off.

Anyway, I came on for the last six minutes to see the game out and we were winning by 10 points until they scored with a minute to go. So I slowed everything right down, just to manage the clock. I took as much time as I could get away with at the base of rucks and we won the game.

In the video review session the following week, Howley didn’t mention a single mistake that Rhys had made, but absolutely hammered me for the way I played in the final six minutes. It was shocking, really, and none of the stuff he said was making any sense.

Looking back, the main reason I didn’t let rip then – and when they treated Adam shoddily the previous summer – is because I knew I was approaching 100 caps.

I know that’s a selfish way of looking at things but I wanted to hit that milestone, so causing trouble at this stage wasn’t in my best interests.

But by now, the only time the coaches really spoke to me was to pick holes in my game. The communication had completely stopped. I didn’t feel like they even wanted me around.

They should have said to me: “Mike, thank you, you’ve been great for us but would you mind now mentoring Webby and Gareth Davies?’ I’d been an international rugby player for 12 years, surely I could have been of use to them in that regard. But they shut me out, which I thought was a poor use of my knowledge.

Me and Howley clashed quite a lot in my career but, in the early days, we would have a bit of fun after our bust-ups. But by the time the training camp for the World Cup came around, the relationship had turned a little bit more sinister.

He’d have a go and there’d be no fun after it.

PHILLIPS WAS ONE OF FOUR SCRUM-HALVES CHOSEN FOR WORLD CUP TRAINING CAMPS BUT WAS ANNOYED AT WHAT WAS SAID AT A ONE-TO-ONE MEETING EARLY ON. HE WAS THEN SELECTED FOR HIS 99TH TEST IN A SHADOW XV IN A WARM-UP CLASH WITH IRELAND WHICH WALES LOST 35-21.

I COULD sense something was up because of the cold shoulder treatment I was getting. All the coaches were in this meeting and Rob hits me with: “We don’t think you’re the same player you were before you went to France, we think your form has gone.”

My response was simple: “How do you work that out? I’ve won a Grand Slam, a Six Nations title and a Lions Test series since I moved to France.”

There was no comeback to that one. I might have won that little tussle but I knew they were about to get rid of me.

Again, looking back, I should have ripped the arsehole out of everyone in the room. But again, I was on 98 Test caps and I kept my cool

If they’d just said: “Look, Mike, clearly you’re old...”

I’d have accepted that. Just say it like it is. Don’t come up with this nonsense about my form going when I’ve just helped you win trophies.

They picked me at scrum-half (against Ireland) and James Hook at 10 but it was an extremely inexperienced side, with six making their debut.

As soon as I saw the team, I knew what they were doing. I went into the game knowing it would be the last time I’d play for Wales. I hoped they might give me a 100th cap but, deep down, I knew.

We’d done almost no preparation on the rugby side of things, so there was never going to be any fluidity in the performance.

They’ll never admit this but my honest opinion is that they set us up to fail.

They needed an excuse to get rid of people like me, Hooky and Richard Hibbard. They wanted to make it easy for themselves and, to be honest, I’d had enough of being in the environment and putting up with the rubbish. There was no respect anymore

WALES WON A RETURN CLASH WITH IRELAND 16-10, BUT PHILLIPS WASN’T INVOLVED AND REVEALS THE EXTRAORDINARY NATURE IN WHICH HE WAS LEFT OUT OF THE WORLD CUP SQUAD JUST 48 HOURS ON. THEN, BECAUSE OF AN INJURY TO WEBB, HE WAS DRAMATICALLY RECALLED BUT WAS SOON TO OFFICIALLY RETIRE FROM THE TEST ARENA

TWO days after that match I received an email telling me that I hadn’t made the squad for the upcoming World Cup.

An email.

After all those games and all those trophies. I wish I was joking. Let’s face it, there is no nice way to be dropped and I probably wouldn’t have been thrilled regardless of how the news was broken to me.

But they’d had plenty of time to pull me to one side and tell me to my face that I wasn’t going to be picked in the squad but no, I had an email

I know I wasn’t the easiest player to deal with sometimes but after everything I’d given to the jersey, I felt like I deserved to have that conversation.

Wales’ most-capped scrum-half and I was never thanked for my services. People may disagree but I felt like it was out of order.

I was back with Racing when Rhys had a horrible injury in the final warm-up game. Even though he was the guy who’d taken my shirt, I felt awful for him. I never had any personal beef with Rhys. Wales needed a replacement. I soon had team manager Alan Phillips on the phone.

It wasn’t a case of ‘Mike we’re calling you up, pack your bags.’ He said, ‘Mike, do you want to come back?’ That told me he knew I’d been treated poorly.

I think they were expecting me to tell them to shove it up their arse. The thought did cross my mind after the way things had gone, especially the email situation. But I would have regretted it had I turned them down. Regardless of what I thought of the coaches, it was still a Wales call-up.

I also looked at the fixture list and saw the game against Uruguay and the short turnaround between the England and Fiji games in the group stages. I thought there was a chance that I’d get on in those games and get my 100th cap.

Before the second group match against England, Tom Jones – the legendary Welsh singer – came into the team hotel to present the players with their jerseys. I wasn’t involved in the matchday 23 but I was still excited to get the opportunity to meet

Tom Jones!

Me and a few of the other boys who were not picked made our way over to the room, only to be confronted by Thumper at the door: “Sorry boys, matchday squad only.” They wouldn’t let us in.

They would spout all this stuff about togetherness in the press when, in reality, this is what was going on.

I was shocked. It felt a bit petty and unnecessary. It also made no sense whatsoever. I was experienced enough by now to just brush it off but I can’t believe the coaches didn’t consider the psychology of it.

The boys did well to get out of the group but I didn’t feature against Uruguay or Fiji. I was good enough for 99 caps but now I can’t get 15 minutes against Uruguay?

I knew I wasn’t the same player and I was ready to go, but that felt personal.

We didn’t win a trophy for six years after the 2013 Six Nations and I just struggled to see where we were going. We’d gone from a team that played wonderful free-flowing rugby in 2011 to a side that couldn’t score against 13 men in the Australia game in 2015.

When the pressure came on, in the big games, Gats would tighten the game plan up a little bit and we’d resort back to relying heavily on a kicking game, despite the fact we had largely the same team that had carved up between 2011 and 2013.

He felt the pressure more than anyone at times. It didn’t help that he was taking a sabbatical every four years to go and do the Lions, either. As soon as they came calling, he was off.

There was no putting Wales first or anything like that. He was gone. I think it lacked respect.

Gats left me a voicemail after it was made official but I’ve not really spoken to most of the coaches since I called it a day. I thought that was a bit of a cop out from Warren. We should have had a conversation. The one guy I have kept in touch with is Shaun Edwards. He always checks in on me and that relationship has continued, but that’s the only one.

Me and Gats were at a hospitality function a few years ago but barely said a word to each other. It was sad because at one point we got on really well. When he first came in, there was no ego with Gats but my honest opinion is that he began to enjoy the fame.

He’s done very well for himself over the years and he deserves credit for that. But at one point I think he said a few things in the press that were a bit unnecessary because he enjoyed making headlines.

I don’t have massive regrets about not reaching 100 caps. It would have been nice but I knew the time was right to walk away. The passion just wasn’t the same.

But the main thing for me was that I’d got everything out of my body, I’d given everything I had to the shirt, proved a lot of people wrong and played some of the best rugby of my career alongside my mates.

That’s what I will remember when I look back on my international career;