Biggar desperate to play major role in revival of Northampton
‘Every weekend in this league is an occasion and you have to step up and perform. I wanted to be part of it’
“I had pledged to come and I was never going to turn my back on that arrangement,” said Biggar, who finally moved into his new home in mid-june with his wife, Alex, and nine-month-old son, James, after initially renting it out for six months.
“That’s not the type of person I am. If I commit, I commit. I’d weighed up lots of things about leaving Wales and those reasons were as valid as they were when I first decided on them. I wanted to test myself, to take myself out of my comfort zone, to have new experiences, of how other coaches operate, of different training programmes, of a new league, of strange voices, unfamiliar outlooks, all these things and many more.
“For me, it was always going to be easy to switch once I’d made my mind up. I know rugby and I knew that they would be 40 blokes I could muck in with and get to know. It was more that I had to persuade my wife, which I did, and then make sure that the family was settled, which it is. It’s been brilliant.”
There is an ease and relish about Biggar that is hard to square with the stroppy, revved-up player on the field, gesticulating, emoting, arguing, making a pest of himself. He should make no apology for that persona – well, perhaps occasionally when he does overstep the mark – for it is his drive, his spikiness, his edge, his relentlessness that defines him. He is a scrapper at heart albeit measured in deploying his skills as the on-field organiser.
Biggar, 28, has had his critics in Wales down the years who yearn for anyone who wears the red No10 jersey to be a blend of Barry John, George Best and Rudolf Nureyev. But Biggar has weathered it all, winning 62 caps and showing enough pluck and gumption in a Lions shirt on the tour to New Zealand last year to make him a highly-valued member of the squad, even if he did not manage a Test spot behind Johnny Sexton and Owen Farrell.
Biggar is well aware that he has put his international prospects in some doubt by leaving Wales. True, he has escaped the strictures that have affected his friend and former Ospreys team-mate, Toulon’s Rhys Webb, who has fallen foul of the edict that no player with fewer than 60 caps, will be considered for selection.
Nonetheless, head coach Warren