The unseen conflict that played for Wales again and Meant I never
IT is November 29th, 2017 and Welsh rugby legend Jamie Roberts is meant to be preparing for his 98th Test cap in 72 hours’ time as Wales meet South Africa at the Principality Stadium.
However, the game is outside the official international window and Roberts suddenly finds himself at the centre of an extraordinary club versus country conflict between English giants Harlequins and Wales.
The story of the behind the scenes rumpus has never been made public before.
Here, in the first of three days of extracts from his new autobiography ‘Centre Stage’, Roberts recounts the untold tale of the anger he felt and the tears he shed as his stellar Wales career came to a juddering halt.
JAMIE’S TALE
My mood is as dark as the inky black sky, as the road unfurls beneath me. I hurtle eastwards, chewing up the miles between Cardiff and London, feeling like I no longer belong to either.
The car is quiet, the radio silent. There is enough noise inside my head. I loosen the grip on the steering wheel, noticing my knuckles have turned white.
I’ve never been so angry. The needle on the speedometer flickers into the red.
For ten years, I’ve been a gladiator. An international rugby player with a reputation forged through strength, fortitude and physical dominance.
My battles have been fought in stadiums across the globe, under lights, against some of the most feared warriors in my sport.
I bow to no one, and fear nothing. I’ve experienced unadulterated joy and crippling heartache. I’ve broken bones, torn ligaments, lost consciousness and seen stars. I’ve toured the world, climbed podiums and lifted trophies. I’ve shed tears singing my anthem, and felt my heart thudding in my ribcage as, time and again, I pulled those three feathers over my chest. I play for Wales.
I played for Wales.
It was all being ripped away from me. Not because of injury, infirmity or poor form. I was being denied the right to play for my country by petty bureaucrats. Men in suits who had no idea what it meant, what it felt like and why it defined who I was.
They issued an ultimatum: report back to Harlequins for training on Thursday, or don’t bother coming back at all.
It was couched in slightly more diplomatic language, but the crux was clear: play for Wales and you’re sacked.
Imagine being offered the chance to do something you cherish more than anything else, but by accepting it you’ll be holding a flaming torch to the rest: your job, your livelihood,
The place you’ve chosen to settle, the life you’ve carved out for yourself. All up in smoke.
It was an impossible, emotionally overwhelming decision, but one I was forced to make as though I was ticking a box on an application form.
JAMIE’S TALE
Then came the bombshell. My agent called and said we had an issue.
Harlequins had been in touch to say that if I played in that final game, I wouldn’t be a Quins employee by the weekend.
I couldn’t understand it. I’d reported for Wales duty with their approval, and had been gearing up for the final week of the autumn when the ultimatum arrived.
I was to report for training on Thursday morning or they’d tear up my contract. Their position was that the South Africa game fell outside the international window, and they weren’t obliged to release me for it.
This was exactly the situation I’d sought to avoid. I had signed a side letter to my contract on the understanding it gave me full release. What exactly had changed, and why had their tone become so bullish and impersonal?
As far as I could see, they were the ones reneging on the terms of our deal, not me.
A few years earlier, Northampton had released George North in similar circumstances and been fined £60,000 by Premiership Rugby Limited for breaching its policy.
I could only assume Harlequins had now been threatened with a similar sanction. It was precisely because of George’s situation that I had made sure I had the appropriate clause in my contract.
Within that side letter was an explicit guarantee that Harlequins would deal with any potential conflict with PRL, and cover the costs of any fines.
It was a horrible position to be in: forced to make a choice between my Wales career and my life in London. One more shot at international success versus my job.
Playing for Wales had always been my absolute priority, and with that in mind, I assured Warren I’d do everything in my power to play if he wanted me involved. He was straight with me, saying they wanted to give the newlyqualified Hadleigh Parkes an opportunity at 12, but were fully intending to pick me on the bench.
That was the affirmation I needed, and with my hackles well and truly raised, I pledged to fight Harlequins over the issue.
Things escalated pretty quickly, and when they appeared intransigent, we got in touch with Blackrock Solicitors in London for a legal opinion. We were prepared to go to court over this, and wanted to send a message to the Quins board that we weren’t going to roll over the minute they started flexing their muscles.
The offer of an olive branch followed when the Harlequins CEO, David Ellis, proposed a rendezvous on the Wednesday. My agent and I met him at a hotel off the motorway near Swindon, where he looked me in the eye and told me I’d breached a confidentiality clause in our agreement, rendering it void.
I had no idea what he was talking about. The only people that knew about it, other than me and my agent, were the Wales coaches, and that was kind of the point.
They were acting like it was some clandestine, under-the-table deal
Roberts, Wales captain on the 2017 summer tour five months earlier, originally had been left out of Warren Gatland’s autumn squad, but earned a recall when regular centre ally Jonathan Davies was injured. He played in the third November Test versus New Zealand, next up were the Springboks.
when the letter explicitly said that they’d log the issue with PRL and cover any penalty costs that may arise.
We’d always been really discreet about my Wales involvement during ‘out-of-window’ periods, to the extent that the team photographer would ensure I wasn’t in any training photos released to the media.
Ellis said they had evidence I’d told people other than Gatland, but they weren’t willing to say who I was supposed to have told, or how they’d found out.
My hunch is that Premiership Rugby had decided to police the policy more strictly, and had perhaps threatened them with a points deduction as well as a fine. If that was the case, I was simply the fall guy, an unwitting pawn in an elaborate game of rugby politics.
That brought with it a certain guilt complex. If I stuck to my guns and won the legal argument, Quins might lose league points, which could impact on their prospects and therefore the prospects of my colleagues.
They were mid-table at the time, so depending on the penalty, my ‘selfishness’ could contribute to them either being relegated or missing out on a top-four finish and a shot at the title.
They said they were happy to write me a cheque there and then for £130,000 to buy me out of my contract. That was more than double the amount Northampton had been fined over the George North incident, which confirmed my suspicions they were facing a bigger punishment.
I didn’t sleep a wink that night as I wrestled with a maelstrom of conflicting emotions. When the sun eventually came up and the fog of twilight began to dissipate, I thought, It has to be Wales.
My club has always been Wales; it’s the team I’ve played for the longest, the jersey I’ve worn the most. Wales is my country, and that’s where my loyalty should lie.
A text from my agent said that the lawyers from Blackrock had reviewed the paperwork and thought I had a 50–50 chance of winning a tribunal. It was a significant gamble. As the day progressed, the conviction I’d felt in the morning had begun to weaken, and all the same doubts returned to crowd my thoughts.
Going back to the hotel after afternoon training, I bumped into Shaun Edwards, who could sense how conflicted I was. I opened up to him, saying it felt reckless to walk away from my life in London for the sake of one last cap.
Shaun’s never been one for big emotional gestures, but he’s always been good at taking the emotional temperature. After listening patiently, he looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Lad, if you go home now, Gats won’t pick you again.’
He understood my dilemma, but he also understood the way Warren Gat
DON’T MISS TOMORROW: JAMIE’S CANDID VIEWS ON WALES’ CONTROVERSIAL 60-CAP RULE AND REGIONAL RUGBY
land conducted his business.
After dinner, with a sense of resignation, I had a conversation with Warren I never imagined I would. I turned down the chance to play for Wales while suspecting, with Shaun’s words echoing in my mind, that it would be the last time I’d have such an opportunity.
No grand farewell. No final chance to gulp down that intoxicating cocktail of emotions that comes with a match day in Cardiff. I really hoped he could see that my hand had been forced, and that Quins had me over a barrel.
He shook my hand firmly and told me he understood, but on some level I’m sure he thought I was turning my back on Wales.
I walked out of the team room on the verge of breaking down when Leigh Halfpenny intercepted me, and took me to the bar for a coffee.
‘Pence’ listened patiently as I poured my heart out, nodding in all the right places and saying all the right things, but I was inconsolable.
Once I’d drained my mug, I wandered out in a daze, nearly bumping into Alun Wyn Jones, who was coming the other way. He’d witnessed my emotional exchange with Warren Gatland and asked what was happening.
I explained the situation, told him about the choice I’d made and apologised to him. As much as I had to view this decision as an individual one, I couldn’t shake the feeling I was letting my comrades down.
He enveloped me in a big man-hug and wished me all the best.
It was my last interaction with a Welsh colleague in a Wales camp, before I trudged through the car park and clambered into my car.
I cried all the way down the M4 on my journey back to London. Crossing the Severn Bridge seemed symbolic, like an imaginary drawbridge had been pulled up, slamming the door on my Wales career.
I didn’t sleep again that night, and turned up to training looking gaunt and exhausted.
I will never forgive Ellis or the Quins board for railroading me into that decision. I’d signed the contract in good faith, but when push came to shove it wasn’t worth the paper it was written on.
It pains me to this day that I buckled and gave in. To make matters worse, Hadleigh Parkes had an absolute stormer, scoring a brace of tries on his debut, while I watched on helplessly from my distant London flat.
The following March, I sat in (Quins coach) John Kingston’s office listening to him explain the reasons why Quins weren’t going to re-sign me.
They’d signed the All Blacks centre Francis Saili and had little room left in the budget. His exact words were ‘If I told you what we could offer you you’d be insulted, so I’m not going to bother.’
I’d declined a big-money move to
Kobe Steelers in Japan, and turned my back on my country, and for what?
Nothing. If time is a healer, a good deal of water is yet to pass under this bridge. The animosity runs deep to this day.
It was always impossible to make a rational, clear-headed decision in a situation like the one I faced, but I know now that I made the wrong one.
I should have stayed with Wales.