It didn’t end the way I would have planned... but that’s the way sport is
ISTARTED to notice that the coaches weren’t talking to me as much as they used to. My last season was a strange one. Certain coaches stopped giving me a heads up if I wasn’t in the team and I felt that wasn’t right.
The coaches thought my legs had gone, which is totally fair enough, but nobody sat me down and spelled the situation out to me.
One man who was fantastic with me at that time was Shaun Edwards, he was brilliant, giving me little bits of advice here and there to keep me going and help me. He could see what was going on.
Rob Howley in particular wasn’t great with me but that’s the way a lot of players got treated towards the end.
It was harsh. Earning a living in professional sport is amazing but it has a brutal side and this was it.
Rhys Webb was coming through and playing some great rugby. It’s never nice to lose your grip on the jersey but I spent 12 years playing for Wales, I’d made peace with what was happening and totally accepted it.
I was 33 at the time. I wasn’t stupid, I knew I wasn’t the player that I once was.
I’d had a long career and you want the next generation to come in and take the jersey forward.
Your body can only go so far. Your mind will try and tell you other things but I pushed myself to the limit.
It wasn’t about that. I found the lack of communication tough to deal with. I felt it could have been handled differently.
In 2015, the coaches picked Wales’ youngest ever squad to play Ireland at home days before they named the World Cup squad.
They knew what they were doing. We hadn’t prepared. We played an Ireland team that had done a lot of tactical work in training, whereas we had done a load of conditioning.
Ireland came to Cardiff and beat us 35-21. It gave the coaches the perfect excuse. That was my last cap.
I was called into the World Cup squad before the tournament began after Rhys suffered that awful injury against Italy in the final warm-up game.
But I didn’t feature in the tournament. That was frustrating.
I was on 99 international caps when you add up my Wales and Lions appearances and that’s the way it finished.
I felt there was a game in that World Cup that I could have been involved in.
I try and spin everything into a positive and I was moving to Sale Sharks after that tournament.
So I just made sure I was doing all the extra training I could, doing all the fitness work because I wanted to go and finish my last season being fully fit and giving it everything.
In order to finish happy, I didn’t want people to be running past me because I was too old.
After that season with Sale, physically and mentally, I was done. When I retired, I’d never been as happy as I was at that moment in my life.
I made my debut for the Llanelli Scarlets in 2001 and retired in 2017. The pressure that I’d been carrying on my shoulders for 16 years had been lifted.
Towards the end, I’d play a game and I wouldn’t be able to walk properly until the Thursday.
I need a hip replacement now. I realised that the game had changed both on and off the field.
In one of my final Wales camps, I was just chatting to a few of the boys and asking what they were getting up to in their down time.
The way things are now, it’s the end of the world for some of the boys if they have a bad meal. It’s crazy and I just thought: ‘This isn’t me anymore’.
It was time for me to go and it was their time to move things on.
I’ve heard and read over the years about some athletes struggling with retirement.
In that sense, I guess I’m one of the lucky ones because I’ve never once watched a game of rugby and missed it.
If anything, I look at it and think: ‘Wow, how did I manage to do that for so long?’.
I look back and think I must have been crazy at times. The sport is brutal and it’s different now compared to when I played.
After the Lions tour in 2009, I had three weeks off over the summer, one week of pre-season and then I played in the first game of the following season.
There’s no way that would happen now.
The week after I retired I got married and then a year later we had a little boy together.
Those things coming in such quick succession after retirement helped > because it gave me perspective.
The biggest challenge with retirement is identifying a new goal. Professional athletes are very target-orientated. They like having something to aim for.
I wanted to be the best in the world, that was always the goal. When that journey was over, what was my next goal?
It’s a delicate balance because you