‘You’ve just got to keep doing it’
In an exceptional playing career, Allan Bateman won caps for Wales and the British Lions. Now aged 54, the evergreen star tells Simon Thomas how he keeps playing
WHEN you ask Allan Bateman how he is still playing rugby at 54, he proceeds to outline a training regime which would have plenty of people in their 20s wincing.
The former Wales and Lions centre is, by any stretch of the imagination, something of a phenomenon.
He was still turning out for Heol y Cyw RFC when he was 48 and continues to play four or five times a year in events for good causes.
His most recent outing was on Saturday when he played in the Paul James Testimonial match at the Gnoll ground where he first made his name some 30 years ago.
He was the oldest player on duty, but there was no suggestion of him taking it easy or having just a brief run out.
Despite the heat, he played virtually the entire match for the Classic Lions, more than holding his own with players 15 or even 20 years younger than him.
He looked as fit as a fiddle and the old stooping running style was still there for all to see. I’m the same age as Bateman and just getting up and down the steps to the press box was enough exertion for me!
So how on Earth does he do it? How does he keep so fit?
The answer was as straightforward as it was eye-opening.
“I run,” he declares. “I run and run and run and run. I run four or five times a week, anything from a quick three miles to a nice 10-mile run on the beach.
“I run from Merthyr Mawr car park around the estuary, down past Newton over to Porthcawl, touch the wall at Porthcawl beach and run back.
“It’s all worthwhile when I can play in games like this. This is why I keep doing it, just to keep on playing.
“I love rugby. It was great to me through both codes. So if I can put something back, I am happy to do it.
“I still play four or five times a year. “Because I keep doing it, it just keeps me going. If I took a break for five or six months, it would be so difficult to get back in. You’ve got to keep doing it.”
The passing years do inevitably impact on the dual code international to some degree, as he confirmed, reflecting on Saturday’s game.
“I can see that gap and all of a sudden it’s closed up and I haven’t gone through it,” he admits. “And every break in play, I was stiffening up more and more. But it was just great to be out there on such a brilliant occasion.
“Fair play to Paul, he’s a popular player and that was shown by the number of boys that turned up, which is great.
“The crowd like to watch a big game of rugby with some ex-stars playing and the weather brought them all out as well.”
To play at the Gnoll again was very special for Bateman, because it’s where his career really took off after he joined Neath from Maesteg.
It was just under 30 years ago, on the same pitch, that he made the searing break against the All Blacks which set up Alan Edmunds for a famous try. Within a matter of months, he was making his Wales debut.
“That was sort of the thing that put me in the spotlight, that one event,” he recalls.
“I was bubbling under, but you get that one opportunity and sometimes it pays off big-time. This ground brings back so many fond memories.
“The people of Neath are brilliant. “I owe a lot to the people of Neath, who really launched me on my career.”
After winning four Wales caps in 1990, Bateman headed north, signing for Warrington and going on to represent Great Britain, as well as having a successful spell in Australia with Cronulla Sharks.
Then, in 1996, he returned to Union with Richmond and went on to play 31 more times for Wales, going on the 1997 Lions tour of South Africa, playing in the final Test.
As he moved into his mid-40s, there was no suggestion of him hanging up his boots. In 2008, he attended Heol y Cyw’s presentation night and declared he’d play for them the following season. They thought he was joking. He wasn’t. He wore their jersey for the next five years.
The grassroots scene is very important to Bateman and he feels it’s losing out somewhat in the modern era.
“Welsh rugby is phenomenal at the top level, with the national team,” he said.
“But it seems like they are cutting the grassroots out and if you haven’t got that flow of people coming through, it’s not good.
“Players tend to be picked up so young now, so early that they go straight from school to an Academy and they don’t go through the club system.
“I came through a system. I went Maesteg, Neath and all the way round and came back and played for both clubs again at the end of my career. Players are not going to have that attachment to a club at the end of their career now.”
Bateman, who has lived in St Brides Major for a number of years, now works as an IT specialist.
As ever, when you speak to him, the conversation ends with the same question – how much longer does he see himself playing?
“I have got a couple of years left in me, yet,” he replies.