My fortunes changed under Alec’s tutelage
GROWING up watching Wales in the 80s, I really liked Terry Holmes. He wasn’t your typical scrum-half; he was so abrasive and, like me, he came from a working-class background, so I could relate to him. To be coached by him at Cardiff, when we got to the first-ever Heineken Cup final, was just brilliant.
Terry had gone north to Rugby League and then retired by the time I joined the club in the late 80s, but as Cardiff were probably one of the most recognisable clubs in the world at the time, there were still plenty of big names there, whereas I was a nobody who’d never played any agegrade international rugby.
At my first training session, I was throwing the ball into Bob Norster; it was just mind-blowing. I was probably fourth or fifth choice hooker so I decided I needed a point of difference, and that point of difference would be my fitness. I used to go to the Nature Reserve near me, and run up and down the sand dunes, in my dad’s steel toe-capped boots. I could run for miles and never stop. I was so small at that point, around 11-and-a-half stone.
In one of my very first games, in December 1990, I think it was maybe my first start, I got sent off playing against Swansea. Someone had punched a Swansea player and the ref thought it was me. It was a case of mistaken identity and, luckily for me, the TV cameras were there to film it as the Llanelli game they were supposed to be covering was called off due to bad weather. I think I am right in saying I was the first person to get let-off because of TV evidence. At the time, though, I was distraught. I remember going back into the changing rooms and team manager John Scott, the former England and Cardiff No.8, started to console me and as he was talking to me he went to sit down on a wicker basket and it collapsed. Not even that cheered me up. To be honest, the team had done better without me, I was that bad. I think I missed a couple against the head early on and then ran around like a headless chicken.
My fortunes changed at Cardiff when Alec Evans came in as coach from Australia. Alec wanted everybody to meet him individually in the office and I went out of courtesy to tell him I was off to Pontypridd. Before I could do that, he started asking me questions about the other hookers and I didn’t feel it was my position to say too much so I just said we could be a bit tougher and harder as a group. As I started to walk out, he said, ‘Will you stay if I promise you’ll start the first four games?’ That stopped me dead in my tracks. Bear in mind, he’d never seen me play! Years later, I said to him ‘why did you do that?’ and he said all the other hookers came in and slagged each other off but you didn’t say anything bad about them so I thought I’d have you, and that was it.
Alec was a filthy player apparently and I think he liked the fact I never took a backward step either. But when he came in, he insisted I threw with two hands. It was unheard of back then but he’d seen a player do it while he was coaching in Japan and obviously thought it was a good idea. As you can imagine, it was carnage at first despite all the hours I spent practicing the skill. We had three or four locks in and around the Wales squad and they were all dropped by Christmas because we barely won a lineout. I remember Alan Philipps telling me I’d never play for Wales while I threw the ball in with two hands.
I did play for Wales, 35 times. But, who knows, I might never have got a single cap had Alec not been asked to take charge for the 1995 World Cup. My Test debut was against the All Blacks during the tournament and I was directly up against Sean Fitzpatrick. As we ran out of the tunnel, he said to me ‘you’re not ready for this little boy’. I’d read his autobiography just before we’d gone out there and at one lineout, he was jabbering away as he had done all match and I said, ‘Mate, I’ve read your book and it was shit’. As soon as I’ve said it, I’ve thought ‘what have I done’! I then got knocked out by Jamie Joseph’s swinging arm and don’t remember much after that.
Alec asked me to be captain, and I was captain in the first-ever professional international, against South Africa in South Africa, just after the World Cup had finished. It was hard to take it all in. The World Cup trophy was being paraded around the ground, and here I was, doing the coin toss with Francois Pienaar.
To be thrust into this spotlight from nowhere, I had no idea how to deal with it all – the speeches, the Press intrusion and that sort of stuff. My father was working at a place at BOC, just outside Bridgend, and people would leave copies of the Echo there and one of the headlines was ‘Dump the Hump’. I wasn’t ready for it, and I used to come home from games, put the answer machine on, pull the blinds down and stay locked away from the rest of the world for a couple of days.
We weren’t a great team, at all. The whole culture was very divisive – you had a Cardiff group, a Llanelli group and a Swansea one. It was very different to how unified the boys are now when they come into camp. So it always felt a relief to get back to Cardiff because of the support I got from fans and the coaches, and the fact we had a great team that was always challenging for trophies.
The last couple of years under the coaching of Rudi Joubert took my love of the place away, and I was thinking of retiring after 14 years at the club. But Michael Foley phoned me up and asked if I’d like to go to Bath as Mark Regan was on his way. The Sunday before my medical at Bath on the Monday, I played for Cardiff in a semi-final and I injured my shoulder, the one I’d dislocated a few years earlier. I went to Bath knowing if they tested it, I was out. Luckily for me, they mistakenly thought I’d dislocated my other shoulder and they tested that
“I used to come home from games and stay locked away for a couple of days”
“The pressures are definitely more in coaching than playing”
instead. Job done!
We went from fighting for our lives at the bottom to being clear at the top in my first two seasons at Bath (2002-2004). We made good signings like Michael Lipman and Zak Feau’nati and a couple of the Bristol boys came across after they were relegated. All we wanted from the season was respect but we went on a roll and reached the final, losing to Wasps.
What was so good about that team was the culture of the club was so strong. To see that gone is the most disappointing thing looking from the outside. Even the ‘Tafia’ fitted in! Four of us, myself, Duncan Bell, Christian Loader and Geraint Lewis used to commute back and forth from Wales. I would spend the entire car journey getting stuck into Belly; he actually loved it. If you were nice to him, he thought there was something wrong. We kept that Bridge going for at least two years with the amount of money we spent on toll fares.
I was all set to play on for a year longer than I did but I started to suffer from plantar fascia, which meant I’d only last about half an hour in games before I had to hobble off because my foot was so sore. I was 36 at the time and thought, ‘that’s it, me done’.
Bath had lined me up a coaching job but then Andrew Brownsword did a U-turn and said they were after an assistant backs coach and not an assistant forwards coach. So I went to Ospreys instead. Things haven’t worked out too badly for me. I loved my time at the Ospreys and also in Scotland and now I’m forwards coach of the Wales national team.
It’s been an eventful and enjoyable journey but none of it planned. The pressures are definitely more in coaching than playing so you are always striving to get better and moving on to the next challenge, and for us this November that’s the All Blacks, South Africa, Fiji and Australia.