MY YEAR TO SAVOUR – HADLEIGH PARKES
Hadleigh Parkes came to Wales to play some rugby and explore Europe, but has ended up becoming Warren Gatland’s go-to man.
It’s an extraordinary story and one which New Zealander Parkes finds difficult to believe after warming the hearts of Wales and Scarlets supporters with the quality of his displays.
The Kiwi has been Wales’s Mr Consistency, the glue which holds the back division together as the great Conrad Smith used to do for the All Blacks. In the space of a few months he has become indispensable.
Parkes has had the busiest nine months of his career after qualifying for Wales on residency and making his Test debut against South Africa last December.
The 30-year-old blasted out of the starting blocks quicker than Usain Bolt, with two tries signalling his arrival in style on rugby’s biggest stage.
A try and a man-of-the-match performance followed during the Six Nations and Wales have won six of the eight matches in which he has played for an excellent 75% win ratio.
While the accolades have come on the field, off it he had to rearrange his wedding plans. Parkes had been due to marry his partner Suzanne in New Zealand over Easter.
“We just saw it was a free weekend and thought it would be a good time to go back to New Zealand and get married. It would have been a right balls-up if we had,” he quipped.
The sizzling form of the Scarlets forced a postponement as they upstaged Bath and Toulon in the Champions Cup to reach the quarter-finals.
Their tie with La Rochelle took place on Good Friday and meant the couple’s big date had to be put off until after Wales’s end-of-season clashes with the Springboks and Argentina. But that summer tour didn’t come without cost as Parkes was told by the wedding photographer to put his right hand in his pocket for some of the pictures to hide the splint he was wearing on the middle finger of his right hand.
Parkes sustained a compound fracture early during the opening Test triumph over Argentina and played the remaining 76 minutes with blood oozing from the wound.
“I don’t know how it actually happened other than it was in a tackle. I felt something but just thought it was a bit of a cut,” he explained.
“Something popped but, luckily, I got a bandage on it. It bled quite a lot but wasn’t too painful and I managed to play through.
“We got it X-rayed after the game and it was worse than we first thought.
“You couldn’t actually see the bone but it was an open wound, which they were a little bit worried about it. You could see the bone was pushing everything up. “I saw the guy at the hospital, he put a bit of ‘local’ (anaesthetic) in there to numb it, cleaned it all out and popped it back in, taped it all up and I was ready to go for a week in Buenos Aires.” Parkes had to miss the second Test victory as an experimental Wales squad without a number of its stars returned home unbeaten after earlier disposing of South Africa in Washington.
“The finger is all right. It has healed well, which is good and is as good as it can be. It didn’t need an operation in the end,” he said, feeling the finger as he spoke.
“I visited a couple of specialists in New Zealand and they were happy with what they saw.
“I had a couple of splints I wore. I did have one on, one that looked pretty normal, during the wedding but the photographer did ask for it to be put in my pocket a few times!”
After a pause to consider his 2018 whirlwind, he continued: “I’ve had a very good summer. I got married to Suzanne.
“She’s an Auckland girl and we had two weeks in New Zealand for the wedding, about 10 days’ honeymoon in Borneo and two weeks in Vietnam. We got back here about three weeks ago so it’s been good.
“Borneo and Vietnam are very cool, a bit different. You don’t hear much about Borneo but we climbed a mountain, saw orangutans and spent five nights at a diving resort as well.
“There was some amazing scuba diving and snorkelling, which was great. I do have my scuba ticket but I didn’t do much of that.
“I do like snorkelling as well and we saw everything — turtles, sharks and stuff. It was very enjoyable.”
Asked what his response would have been if a fortune teller had looked into a crystal ball and told him everything that was going to happen after arriving in Wales and making his Scarlets debut in December 2014, Parkes replied: “I would have probably laughed at them!
“To be honest with you. I wouldn’t have thought too much about it. It wasn’t really the reason for coming over ... it was come over and experi-
ence Europe, to travel and to play some rugby.
“But it’s gone extremely well and I have loved every minute of it. I’m extremely proud, privileged and humbled by the opportunities I have been given.
“The Welsh people have also taken me in and it’s been an amazing few years. My wife and I never thought this would happen and to work out this way. For it to have gone that way we have got to be thankful.”
Wales coach Gatland has found a shrewd decision-maker at insidecentre, a calm head who makes the right calls at the right times. Parkes is a typical Kiwi, like Smith, in that he does the basics well and plays heads-up rugby.
But he certainly wasn’t taking anything for granted when it was put to him he is Gatland’s go-to man.
“I don’t know about that. There’s ‘Scotty’ Williams and Owen Watkin, and you have got a couple of young lads (Tyler Morgan and Jack Dixon) at the Dragons, each of whom have been injured the last couple of years,” he stressed.
“If they’re fully fit and are playing well, and the Dragons are doing well, there’s no reason why they can’t get back in there. It’s pretty hotly contested I would say.”
Despite being at pains to play down his importance as a vital cog in the Wales machine, Parkes doesn’t plan on relinquishing the No. 12 jersey.
“It was a really good year and I loved every minute of it. Hopefully, I will be able to do it again this season,” he went on.
“I’m enjoying my rugby and, hopefully, I’ll keep playing well for my club side and, if I get another opportunity to play for Wales, it’ll be great.”
Parkes has yet to play next to his Scarlets teammate Jonathan Davies in midfield for Wales, but the Lions star is on the mend from injury.
“‘Foxy’ (Davies) is training well and is looking good. It would be awesome to get a few games with Foxy but you can’t know what the coaches are thinking,” said Parkes.
The duo’s Scarlets Kiwi coach Wayne Pivac leaves the region at the end of the campaign to succeed Gatland as Wales chief following the World Cup in Japan.
Parkes’s career took him from Auckland via Manawatu, Super Rugby outfits Blues, Hurricanes and Southern Kings, who were booted out of the tournament and are in the Guinness PRO14, before he joined mentor Pivac in West Wales.
“He’s been fantastic for me. He gave me a couple of opportunities in New Zealand and has brought me over here, which has worked out really well,” explained Parkes.
“What he has done with the Scarlets is turn us from a middle of the table team to a top of the table team, a team that can compete against the best in Europe, win the PRO12 and make it to the final of the PRO14 the next year.
“He’s done extremely well. He knows the systems in Wales and how a lot of people work here. He will hopefully do a great job and get a great team in around him and have a good few years there with Wales.”