‘I used to laugh when I was playing. Even today I don’t stop laughing. I just laugh, laugh, laugh’
YOU can’t spend too long in the company of Martyn Madden without a smile breaking out across your face.
He is a big man with an even bigger personality... and then there’s that laugh of his.
It’s a high-pitched, Muttley-like cackle which is as infectious as it is unique and it’s still very much his trademark.
Back in his playing days, you would hear it echoing down the corridor outside the changing rooms at the old Stradey Park.
Within minutes of us sitting down for a chat over a coffee, it was booming out again, accompanied by the biggest of smiles.
As a player, it was all about being happy and making others happy as far as the former Llanelli and Wales prop was concerned.
Now, having just turned 48, he is still looking to put smiles on faces and give something back to the game which gave him so much.
Through his company, MJM Commercial & Industrial Cleaning, he is sponsoring a number of rugby teams, as well as backing other sports organisations and after-school clubs.
As he explains, it’s about providing a helping hand, particularly to youngsters, just as he was helped along the way in his early days.
The Martyn Madden story begins in December 1973 when he entered the world at St David’s Hospital, Cardiff.
“I was 8lb 2oz,” he reveals.
“I was a big boy as a baby and I’m still a big boy now!”
Growing up in the Grangetown area of the city, he attended St Patrick’s Primary School and then St Illtyd’s High School in Rumney.
It was at St Patrick’s and with St
Albans RFC minis that he got into the game which was to play such a big part in his life.
“I first picked up a rugby ball when I was seven or eight years old,” he recalls.
“At that time, it wasn’t tag or nothing, it was a bit more contact and I grasped at it because I liked the physicality of it.
“I started to enjoy it. I loved bumping people off and handing them off. It just made me laugh.
“It was between either football or rugby initially.
“I had the skill of a footballer but the body of a rugby player, so I decided to stick to rugby and it just grew for me to where I am today.”
He was to make his name as a tighthead prop, but that wasn’t where he started out.
“I was a No. 10!” he declares.
“I played there for Cardiff Schools U11s in the DC Thomas Cup final. Huw Harries was my scrum-half.
“I was young enough, I was fit enough and I was quick enough. So it worked great.
“But then I started seeing the fish shops and things changed!
“It was the Clark’s pies was the main problem.
“Their shop was at the top of my street in Grangetown, so there was nowhere better to eat a pie.”
With his bulk building, Madden switched to No. 8, playing there in a second DC Thomas Cup final and for East Wales U11s.
He then progressed through Rumney RFC, going on to join Cardiff Youth, where he was moved further forward, up to tight-head at the age of around 17 or 18.
“They saw a potential in me that I could be a player that no-one else could be because I had the ball-handling of a back-row and if I could scrummage as well that was a bonus,” he said.
“What I was good at was the physicality. I could get the hit in the front row.”
Madden started out in senior rugby with Pontypool before joining Penzance and Newlyn down in Cornwall.
“It was a scrummaging city, Penzance, so I had to learn how to do the job,” he says. “When I came back I was halfdecent.”
Madden’s big break in Wales came when Llanelli found themselves short at tight-head so they drafted him in on loan in 1998.
It proved to be a fairytale story for the 24-year-old as he first figured in the Welsh Cup semi-final victory over Newport and then scored the match-winning try against Ebbw Vale in the final at Bristol’s Ashton Gate, running home from 35 metres out to dive in at the corner.
After the game he was stopped by reporters in the car park and asked for his thoughts about his try. “That’s showbiz,” he replied. A star was born.
“That was a changing point in my life, to score that winning try,” he reflects.
“It gave me belief in myself that I had the potential. I got more confidence and I started to grow as a player.”
Handed a full-time contract, he really found himself at home with the Scarlets.
“When I went to West Wales I was the only black player down there at the time, but they took me in with open arms,” he says. “They were so great, so humble, it was just one big family. We all looked after each other.”
At the head of the family was coach Gareth Jenkins.
“Gareth was a huge part of my career,” says Madden. “He was 125% passion, he was Mr Llanelli.
“He saw there was a talent in me that he could harness. He used me and Scott Quinnell as the two big ballcarriers down there.
“Gareth understood me. He knew if I was up or down. He would tell me just to keep doing what I did best and to leave the fridge alone!
“That was the main issue. It was the custard cakes that were the big temptation. I wasn’t the biggest trainer, I admit that. For me, training was boring, I needed something to give me the kick.
“You had to give me music. If there was music in weights training, I would do weights all day long, no problem.”
As for the real characters he encountered down at Stradey, a few names immediately spring to mind.
“The biggest wind-up merchant ever was Ian Boobyer,” he says. “Every day he would have me on something.
“Rupert Moon was a great influence on me. He looked after me when I was a young kid.
“Then another one was Robin McBryde. I shared a room with him for years and years. Gareth Jenkins said he had to have me as a roommate because no-one else would put up with Madden! I learned a lot from Robin. One thing I learned was not to break his sleep. You would know it if you did.
“Another big one was Chris Wyatt, one-man riot. He kept me going and I kept him going. Gareth Jenkins told me I had to make sure he turned up with the right kit and in the right frame of mind. That was my job, to look after him.”
There was, of course, one other big personality in the Llanelli camp: Madden himself.
“I wouldn’t say I was the more talkative one, it was more the laughter with me,” he says, as that contagious cackle rolls out again.
“The character I had, I just believed in being happy. That was one of my things.
“I was a big unit in the Scarlets and if I was down in the dumps people would ask questions why I was upset.
“I had a massive role in terms of team morale.
“I used to laugh when I was playing, I was naturally laughing and that gives you the character I was as a player and as a person.
“Even today now I don’t stop laughing. I just laugh, laugh, laugh. For me, it’s just to enjoy life.
“You don’t know when your lights are going to go out, so you may as well enjoy the best days while you can and enjoy life the best you can.”
Playing with a smile on his face and causing havoc with his mighty carrying, Madden earned a call-up to the Wales squad under Steve Hansen and made his Test debut as a replacement against South Africa in Bloemfontein in June 2002.
“That was fantastic,” he says. “It was a real experience for me, playing up in the north of South Africa, which is a different breed again. There are not many black people up there. It’s more farmers and strong guys.
“It was really, really intense to play up there, but I just took every bit in my stride. I did encounter a few things when I was sat on the bench. There were a few racial comments from the crowd. I think it was them trying to put me off my game, more than anything else, but I didn’t take anything in because I knew I had a job to do.
“Steve Hansen had said to me before the game ‘you have got three million people watching at home, they are the ones to please. The 60,000 in the stadium, you have just got to blank out’. That’s what was in my mind throughout the game.
“My head was telling me I had to make the three million viewers at home happy and not worry about the people in the stadium.
“Steve was right. The only people you’ve got to please are the people that believe in you. He said ‘if I didn’t believe in you, you wouldn’t be on tour’.
“He believed I had the ability to do what I did for the Scarlets at Test level, which was huge.”
There was to be a first start for Wales against Romania at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground in November 2002, followed by three further outings off the bench against Fiji, Ireland and France that season.
But as much as playing for his country meant to Madden, he did find himself somewhat pulled in two different directions.
“It was difficult,” he reveals. “Gareth Jenkins wanted me to be the Ollie le Roux, the big, strong prop that would bust a gut.
“But Steve Hansen wanted me to be the lean prop with the fitness that was needed for the game he wanted to play.
“So there were two different values in two different people and it was very hard for me to get the mix and match.
“One week I was getting myself beefed up to play against a French side like Perpignan or Bourgoin.
“Then six weeks later I am lean and mean on the machine, trying to get my weight down for the Welsh squad.
“There was a two or three stone difference from club to country. I was really fluctuating.
“When I first played for Llanelli I was 19 and a half stone. When I first got capped by Wales, I was around about 18st 2lb.
“Steve Hansen put me on the incinerator, stripped off, mask on, pounding the treadmill. I started to lose more weight again.
“I got down to 17 stone in the end. I was quicker around the park, but my scrummaging was losing out.
“My technique wasn’t there to fall back on, because I had been relying on my weight to balance the scrum. Now I just didn’t have the weight to scrummage.”
His fifth cap, against France in Paris in March 2003, was to prove his last as he missed out on selection for that autumn’s World Cup in Australia. “That was a big disappointment,” he admits. “But the time wasn’t right for me.
“It was just the way it fell because you had the other props coming through – Adam Jones, Gethin Jenkins, Duncan Jones. “You build yourself up for it and then you find yourself with the highs and lows in the game.
“As a player, I don’t think I took the highs and lows very well.
“But when you look back on it, it’s something you learn by. It’s not everything you can get in life.
“All I would say to anyone else who goes through it is to blank it out because another door will always open.”
Madden kept on playing until 2007, taking in spells at Cardiff, Caerphilly and London Welsh, plus a second stint with the Scarlets, for whom he made 160 appearances in all, before hanging up his boots at the age of 33.
It was then time to focus on his business life outside of rugby and for the last 10 years that has been his cleaning company MJM.
With bases in Cardiff, Swansea and Bristol, they employ around 100 staff, focusing on cleaning industrial and commercial premises.
“What I did in rugby, I try to transfer into my work ethic,” he says.
“You’ve got to perform and our aim is consistency.”
Madden is also firmly focused on supporting sport through his company, which provides sponsorship for Tondu RFC and is also involved with Llanelli and Bridgend, plus football teams in Bryntirion and Fairwater, along with the Prince of Wales Boxing Club in Grangetown, where it all began for him. Then there’s the backing they are looking to provide in terms of equipment for afterschool clubs.
“When I was playing sport there were a lot of businessmen who helped me, with boots and little bits and pieces,” says Madden.
“Being a kid, it makes you feel special. They made my face smile, so I am trying to make little kids smile.
“We have got a lot of kids on PlayStations and stuff and starting to lose themselves a bit, so we thought let’s generate a scheme and get the PlayStations into the back bedroom and get the kids on the park.
“We are looking to give back into the community in every area we can.
“We know it’s been a hard time through Covid, so I thought let’s give it back to the kids and put smiles on their faces and find a way forward like I used to on the rugby park.”
Now living in Bridgend and a father to eight-year-old son Marty Jnr, Madden is able to look back on his rugby life with real contentment.
“I loved the game, I wouldn’t change it for the world, I wouldn’t change my position, I wouldn’t change anything I have done,” he said.
“Every day, I look back massively happy at what I’ve achieved.
“Coming from Grangetown, Tiger Bay, Docks, whatever you want to call it, it’s huge for the community to see one of theirs has come through.
“Fortunately, I have done it. I didn’t think I would do it, to be honest, but the luck came with me and when that luck came I grew as a person.”
To this day, he remains involved in rugby, now as a supporter in every sense.
“I still do the away trips with the Scarlets fans because they have been a big part of my life,” he said.
“I am well known in Llanelli and I do get recognised in various places.
“But, like I always say to them, I am chip wrapper now, I am not in the newspapers full-time!”
Well, you are back in the papers now, Martyn, and thanks for putting a smile on yet another person’s face.
I wasn’t the biggest trainer, I admit that. For me, training was boring, I needed something to give me the kick. You had to give me music Martyn Madden