TESCO TROLLEY CAP BACK IN...’

Jonathan writing him a moving letter, expressing how proud he was and referencing Andrew’s mother Elaine, who died in 2005, aged just 43.

“I sat on the edge of my bed and opened it up and started reading it and I was like, ‘S**t, I’ve got to get out of here’. So I locked myself in the toilet then. I needed to be alone for that moment.

“It was quite touching. My old man has been my biggest fan. He had put a lot of effort into getting me to where I was, spending hours driving me back and forth to training. So it was a nice moment for him as well. The words he used were, ‘Just be yourself’ more or less and I always have.”

As Coombs recalls, the day became increasingly surreal from that point on.

“I remember being on the bus on the way in and I was actually giggling looking out of the window thinking I can’t believe I am sat here surrounded by these world-class players,” he said.

“In 2005, for the Grand Slam, I was stood on Westgate Street with a big flag around my shoulders, Welsh shirt on and paint on my face. I had always been a massive rugby fan. I remember thinking to myself, ‘I was out there back then and now I’ve been given the opportunity to do this’.

“When I took to the field that day, I made sure I gave my all and I was lucky to come out of it with a good performance.”

Coombs’ impressive display of ball-carrying and all-round industry saw him retain his starting spot for Paris and he was to figure in all but one of Wales’ matches during that Six Nations campaign, sharing in the 30-3 title-clinching victory over England.

“It’s not often in international rugby you get to be that far ahead. It was very special to be a part of it.”

Coombs went on to win 10 caps in all, making his final appearance against England at Twickenham in March 2014.

Just under a year later, in April 2015, Coombs suffered the knee injury which was to end his career, while playing against Cardiff Blues at Rodney Parade.

“I took the ball at a lineout and, as I came down, I was tackled by a couple of their players,” he said. “It was a case of them hitting me one way and my team hitting me another and my knee more or less bent in half.

“I looked down and I could just see my knee sideways. Then you start screaming. I was in serious pain.”

What followed was to be all the more painful.

“I had a wound which wouldn’t heal for months. It later transpired there was an infection deep in the joint and they had to strip out all the artificial ligaments they had put in. I was left with nothing in there.

“I was walking round Tesco shopping and my knee would come out. I would be buckled over a trolley trying to put my own kneecap back in.

“At the same time, my wife, Helen, was pregnant with our second child. When she gave birth, in September 2015, it was the week I’d had my knee stripped out.

“She had fractured her back doing a charity run a year or two before that and she re-fractured it giving birth. The first two or three weeks, I couldn’t walk, my wife was in bed laid up and we had a newborn baby crying in the Moses basket.

“I am lying there thinking my career is over and it was just such a difficult time, a very traumatic period.”

Things came to a head at the Christmas derby at home to the Blues that December.

“I had been trying to reach the Dragons’ medical director for some time, via emails, voice mails, text messages, with nothing coming back,” he recalls. “I collared him in the medical room at Rodney Parade and I literally broke down. I’m not afraid to say it, I was crying, saying, ‘You’ve got to help me’.

He finally got to see a surgeon in Bristol and, then, in June 2016, came the devastating news that his playing days were over. There then followed a much-publicised dispute with the Dragons over his care.

“I am disappointed more than anything,” he says. “I definitely feel let down by what happened. I don’t think they dealt with the injury well enough. The final straw was when they cancelled my insurance without me knowing. That really did affect me.

“It was pretty traumatic. I was going through enough with the birth of my daughter and the trouble my wife was going through.

“I wasn’t a father for the first two years of my daughter being born. I completely shut down as a person.

“When it finally came to retirement, it was like losing a family member. Rugby had been there all my life. When it was gone, you just couldn’t get it back. It was exactly like I was grieving.”

Coombs has overcome that period, but his knee continues to plague him.

“The toughest thing is carrying the injury day to day,” he says. “The easiest term I can use is my knee is like a drawer that has come off the runners. It’s clunky, it’s painful, it’s all over the shop.

“The functionality of the knee is useless. If I go for a jog, I can’t run then for three weeks. The life I live with it now is quite difficult. I have got chronic pain.

“I have been pretty successful since I came out of rugby. My business [Coombs Contractors] has done incredibly well. If I could just get this knee better, I could move on with my life, but it’s like wearing a ball and chain.

“It just taunts me because I carry it all the time. Everywhere I go, I carry the pain. Every single day is hard work. I’ve got a loss of sensation in my leg, with numbness running down to my foot constantly.

“I have developed serious anxiety since the injury because of things like going to watch sporting events or going to the cinema or flying. If my wife gets tickets for a show, I am always thinking, ‘ Where we are sat, am I on an end, is my leg able to hang out?’

“If somebody else books me a flight, I get really anxious because I know I’m going to be in pain and discomfort. So it’s had a massive effect on everything in life, really.”

As such, it’s been a welcome lift for the now 35-year-old Coombs to see the display cabinet go up in his hallway.

“My jerseys have been in the attic since I retired, so it’s a really nice feeling having them up on the wall. That’s the happy side of it,” he said.

“The knee has taken such a toll for the last five years. At least now, when I walk in the house, I can think of the good times as well.

“I am very grateful for what rugby has given me. I am just gutted that it ended the way it did.”