Proud to be a foot soldier among the superstars
I’M from Haywards Heath in Sussex but there was never any doubt in my mind which way my international allegiance lay. My mum’s side of the family all come from Aberdare and given how passionate they were about being Welsh and rugby in general, it inevitably rubbed off on me. I had a chat with a couple of the England coaches prior to my Wales callup in the summer of 2005, but having been picked up by the Welsh Exiles quite young and because of my family connections it wasn’t really a choice.
There’s been only around 1,200 players who’ve had the honour of playing for Wales so it was really proud moment when I ran on against the USA in Hartford, Connecticut, to win my first cap. I started what turned out to be my second and only other cap, against Canada. I remember it was stinking hot that day and we all had ice vests on and I scored a try. Us tight-heads don’t get many so I remember it well. T Rhys Thomas, who I’d played agegrade rugby with, made a break and did most of the work and he gave the ball to me and I just about made it.
That was a really good tour all round. Two of the regions were involved in play-offs for Europe so only half of the squad flew out initially. While we waited for them to join us, we stayed in New York and enjoyed ourselves as tourists for a few days.
I would have loved to have won more caps and I got close a few times, but Wales had a pretty good tight-head, to say the least, in Adam Jones and it wasn’t until 2009/10 that you had two props on the bench. Also, Gethin Jenkins played both sides of the scrum.
Career-wise, playing for my country has to be the ultimate highlight. But playing in big games like the London Double Header at Twickenham and the Basque derby were also very memorable. Those derby games are something to behold. The two stadiums are only about two miles apart and they always sell out. I think I played in seven, all for Biarritz. The hype around the match is such that we used to stay in a hotel out of town the night before the game to get away from it all. Fans would forgive you for other results but not if you lost to Bayonne!
My Wales debut came whilst I was at Saracens, my first professional club. I came through with a lot of good young players like Richard Haughton, Dave Seymour, Adi Winnan, Paul Bailey, Andy Kyriacou, Ben Russell, Ryan Peacey and Ben Skirving. Eventually, we went our separate ways but we all ended up having decent pro careers.
When I made my Premiership debut as a replacement against Northampton in 2002, the first prop I came directly up against was, god rest his soul, Tom Smith, below. In those first few games you are just running on adrenaline and you just try to get through it. I was fortunate enough to play with Simon Raiwalui behind me; he said to me once, ‘just stay straight and I’ll push you’, so that’s what I did.
I reflect on my eight years at Sarries affectionately, it’ll always be one of ‘my clubs’. My time there came to an end when I got injured and they signed Census Johnston. With Census and Cobus Visagie at tight-head and a couple of youngsters beneath, all of a sudden I was surplus to requirements. After Sarries, I had a season at Scarlets and one at Northampton and neither really worked out as well as everyone hoped. The season before I signed, Scarlets had reached the semi-finals of the Heineken Cup but were unable to back it up the following year and Phil Davies got the boot.
Phil had shown interest in me when he was at Leeds but I was happy at Sarries and happy living in London at the time.
Once Phil went, the board decided that anybody he’s signed had to go too, and I joined Northampton, who’d just won promotion back to the Premiership. Sometimes you just don’t fit into the squad, nothing more and nothing less, and that was the case there. They had Euan Murray at tight-head, before Brian Mujati came in, as well as Barry Stewart so there was a lot of quality competition for places and I hardly played.
Having not been offered a new contract, I had one of those horrible summers where no one was answering the phone or returning calls and was left wondering whether I’d be left on the rugby scrapheap. But then, all of a sudden, Hobbo (Jason Hobson) did his Achilles and Wasps asked me to come on trial. We had one of those ‘lovely’ weeks in Spala in Poland doing cryotherapy training. In many ways, it was a baptism of fire and it helped me to bond with the rest of the squad. I think I played 90-odd games in three years at Wasps, quite a lot for a tight-head.
Then it was on to France, and I still live just outside of Biarritz now. It took a long while to convince my first coach at Biarritz that I merited a place in the team. I was one of those fairly placid people before kick-off and would flick the switch as soon as I crossed the whitewash but, in his view, if you weren’t foaming at the mouth and headbutting walls in the changing room before a game, you weren’t really that up for it!
I joined Biarritz literally a month after the club had won the European Challenge Cup. From the perspective of winning trophies, my timing wasn’t the best because I played for Sarries before they got really, really good and then joined Wasps after their glory years had come to an end. But unless you’re a real superstar, a lot of the trophies people win are about being in the right team at the right time. Every team has got to have its foot soldiers, and I was happy to be one of them. At the end of the day, I played for nearly 17 seasons – until my hand stopped working – and was nearly 35 when I had to call it a day so I can’t really grumble too much.
Not many players playing at the moment will be able to say that. I currently work for the French Players’ Union, Provale, in a supporting role equivalent to that of a Player Development Manager in the UK. The current landscape for professional rugby players is changing at a rate of knots and the average length of a player’s career is shortening all the time so, in essence, they are under even more pressure to make hay while the sun shines, whilst ensuring they end up retiring in one piece. Now more than ever it’s crucial players think about and prepare for life after rugby.
“I was placid before kick-off and would flick the switch”