HE’S RETIRED ONCE, BUT FISH HAPPY TO BE ON CARDIFF MENU
Dan set to answer fresh call to Arms for beloved club
AS hard as he tries, Dan Fish just can’t seem to retire from professional rugby. Within a week of announcing he was calling it a day back in October, he was responding to an emergency SOS from Cardiff Rugby to line up against the Dragons.
Now, with the region deeply depleted due to the absence of their South Africa touring party, he is set to pull the jersey on once more in next week’s Euro showdown at home to Toulouse.
But it’s a call to Arms he is more than happy to answer, given how much it has meant to him to represent his home-town team more than 100 times over the past decade.
Fish is the ultimate Cardiff-born and Cardiff-bred player, with his accent telling the unmistakable tale of his roots in the city.
Hailing from Tremorfa, he began his rugby journey with St Albans RFC at the age of five or six, staying with the club all the way through to youth team level before joining Glamorgan Wanderers.
Initially an outside-half, he then switched to full-back, with his first senior start for the Wanderers coming against the Cardiff Premiership side, when a certain Sam Warburton was a team-mate.
“I remember Warby turned up in his Mercedes and I was driving around in my T-reg Corsa with no policy and no electric windows,” he says.
“It felt like I played a game before I got there, driving that from Tremorfa.”
Within six months Fish was playing for Wales U20s, going on to figure in the Junior World Championship in Argentina in the summer of 2010.
On his return from that trip, he was handed a development contract by Cardiff Blues and after just a couple of months he was making his Magners League debut, starting at 15 against Aironi in Viadana.
“I wasn’t two or three years in the Academy, I was a late developer,” says the former St Illtyd’s High School pupil.
“Then, all of a sudden, things happened pretty quickly for me.”
Over the years Fish was to go on to establish himself as a firm fans’ favourite with his attacking enterprise, footballing skills and speed over the ground, along with his wholehearted commitment.
“Whenever you put that jersey on, it’s got to mean something to you,” he says.
“Hopefully, the supporters have seen the effort I have put in to try and do my best for the club.
“The chant of ‘Feed the Fish’ has seemed to stick.
“It’s massive for me to hear the people cheering that.”
Fish also endeared himself to everyone at the Arms Park with his chirpy personality.
“I am not the quietest around the place,” he admits.
“I was a bit of a clown in the dressing room. If you couldn’t see me, you could definitely hear me!
“We used to have a lot of little pranks going on and stuff.
“You are together pretty much all day, every day of the week.
“So, if you didn’t get on with people, if you didn’t talk to people, it would be a long old week in the changing room.
“We had a good balance. We knew when we could have a laugh and a giggle and when it was time to switch on.
“Obviously when we stepped on to the field we had to go out and deliver a job.
“Sometimes you would go a bit too far and then get snapped back into line by senior players.
“At the start, it was a learning curve for me. It would take a shouting off a Paul Tito or a Gethin Jenkins to knock you back into line.
“Them doing that put me in good stead knowing when to cross the line and when not to cross it.
“The stuff I took from them helped me throughout my career.”
Fish continued: “On the field then, the more talking I would do, the more organising I would do, the better it would be for me.
“Being at the back, I could see everything in front of me.
“By talking to players in front of me and to the side of me, by helping them, it would make my job easier because the less work I would have to do if they were doing their job.
“That’s what I try and encourage young boys now. There should never be a time in a game where you are quiet.
“No matter what, you should be able to put your head up and open your mouth. The moment people start being quiet, a bit of indecision happens and that’s when anything can happen.
“I would try and be loud, not wanting to be heard all the time, but just trying to help the boys around me.”
For Fish, who shares the nickname Beaver with his good mate Lewis Jones due to a spot of banter involving Kiwi World Cup winner Stephen Donald, there are some games he looks back on with particular fondness out of his tally of 115 regional appearances.
“Obviously, there was my debut out in Aironi, you are always going to remember your first game,” he said.
“Scoring a winning try against Leinster at the Cardiff City Stadium was a special moment.
“And my 100th game out here, captain against Uruguay, that was a big one.
“But I have enjoyed every single one of them.
“Every time you put the jersey on, every time you run out in front of the fans here, it means so much.
“Living in Cardiff, you don’t want to be walking round the streets and have people saying ‘Look, there he is, he let us down at the weekend’.
“It’s the city I live in, so it’s always massive for me every time I put the jersey on. You would go out there willing to lose everything to win a game of rugby.
“Being a Cardiff boy, to play one game for Cardiff was a dream come true.
“But to represent the region over 100 times, I am gobsmacked now when I look back on it. It’s not something that’s easily done.
“It must mean people have seen something in you. To be able to do it for my home town is a big honour and a good achievement for me and my family.”
In May 2014, Fish was called up to start at full-back for the Possibles against the Probables at the Liberty Stadium ahead of Wales’ tour of South Africa.
It was due reward for his consistent excellence and a proud moment for him to be involved at representative level again.
But while there have been plenty of highs, there have also been lows, especially on the fitness front.
It was in November 2016 that he suffered the most serious injury of his career and one which he feared would spell the end of his playing days.
Facing Connacht out in Galway, he ruptured the three tendons in his hamstring when he was “wiped out” jackalling for the ball.
“Dillon Lewis and Garyn Smith carried me off the field,” he recalls.
“I was in agony, I can’t describe the pain.
“I couldn’t get into the shower, so I flew home stinking of mud that night.
“The boys had to carry me from the ground to the bus and I was in a wheelchair in the airport.”
Surgery followed, as did a very challenging period in his life.
“They were the darkest days,” he recalls.
“For eight weeks I had my leg stuck at 90 degrees with a knee brace on.
“Then, for another six weeks, they took the brace to 45 degrees.
“I was stuck on a sofa, leg up in the air, I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even shower.
“The things my now wife Cerys did for me then, without her I don’t know where I would have been.
“The club were outstanding too. They really looked after me.
“But it was a tough period.
“I didn’t know if I could ever play again really.”
Eventually, after a year out, Fish made his regional return as a replacement wing away to Newcastle, only for disaster to strike again.
“I went up for a kick-off, jumped up, slapped the ball back and as I landed then I looked down and I had snapped my wrist,” he said.
“I was thinking ‘This can’t be happening’. That was another four or five months out.
“I was thinking ‘is this ever going to be?’. They were dark times.
“Without the help of Cerys and my family, you don’t know how you get through them.
“They pick you up, drop you here there and everywhere.”
With that support, Fish did emerge from a nightmarish 18 months and has cherished every outing since then.
“At the time of the hamstring injury, I thought ‘Right, that’s me done, I’m never going to play rugby again’,” he says.
“I thought those days are gone, I am not going to have that chance again.
“So every time I was able to step foot on a rugby field, put a jersey on, it meant even more to me because of where I’d been.
“Everything after the injury, you cherish even more because you are thinking this ain’t going to happen again.
“To come out the back end of that and to be get back on the field and play with my mates has just been fantastic.”
As well as relishing his rugby all the more in recent years, Fish has also sa
voured his move into coaching.
It all began when former Cardiff RFC director of rugby Martyn Fowler asked him if he was interested in getting involved with the rugby programme at Cardiff & Vale College.
Fish came on board and also went on to work alongside Fowler at Glamorgan Wanderers.
Now he is a Cardiff Rugby Academy coach and attack coach for Cardiff RFC, where he is also a key member of the Premiership playing squad.
“I really love it,” says the 30-year-old.
“If you had said to me six years ago that I was going to be coaching Cardiff Blues Academy, I would have laughed.
“I would have been thinking ‘No, that’s not me’.
“But I have thoroughly enjoyed it.
“It’s all thanks to Martyn at the college with Kay Martin’s backing.”
In his player-coach role at Cardiff RFC, Fish has been primarily figuring at fly-half, opening up his box of tricks and showing off his astute rugby brain.
“They have brought in this new 50-22 rule which I have taken quite a liking too,” he says.
“I am still playing quite a bit and thoroughly enjoying it playing with these young boys
“I have still got that drive. Every time I step on to the rugby field I want to win that match.”
With his focus having switched to coaching and guiding the club side, the Lakeside-based Fish, father to 17-month-old son Parker, decided it was time to bring down the curtain on his professional playing career.
He made the announcement at half-time during the Arms Park clash with the Sharks in mid-October, with life president Peter Thomas making a presentation to him on the pitch.
But little did he know what lay around the corner.
“The club gave me a really nice framed picture, I said thank you to the crowd and that’s me done,” he said.
“Then I had a phone call on Monday from Gruff Rees, my Academy manager.
“He said ‘Dan, the seniors might need you this week’.
“My first thought was do they need me to run messages on or something like that.
“He said ‘No, they might need you to play’.
“I was, like ‘Uhh?’
“Gruff explained they had a possible Covid situation.
“So I said ‘Oh dear me’.” Fly-half Jason Tovey was indeed ruled out due to Covid protocols, while Rhys Priestland, Josh Adams, Ben Thomas and Owen Lane were all away on Wales duty, with Luke Scully and Aled Summerhill also unavailable.
So out the call went to the ultra-versatile Fish for the derby clash with the Dragons.
“Next morning, the team was emailed out and my phone starts going nuts, with all the boys messaging me,” he recalls.
“So I think ‘What’s going on here?’. I look at the team and number 22, Dan Fish.
“The boys were going ‘You are taking the mick, making us go out celebrating, buying you drinks and look at this!’
“It was a bit of a funny moment, retired one week, back playing the next.”
Little more than half an hour into the game, he was pressed into service as a replacement for injured wing Jason Harries, receiving a big ovation as he entered the fray.
“That’s just the relationship I have built up with the fans,” he says. They appreciate me and I appreciate them very much.
“I am not a big social media person, but the messages I had on the retirement and then the support I had when I was called back in, they meant a lot.
“When I came on the pitch, the cheer I had is just sums it up. It does make you feel ten foot tall. You know they have got your back.”
Now, with his 31st birthday coming up later this month, he is odds on to receive the call again for the Champions Cup opener against Toulouse, with the 29 players who travelled out to South Africa being unavailable as they will be in quarantine.
“Like I have always said, if they ever ring me to say ‘We need you’, I am never going to turn that down,” he said.
“If the club are in a state of emergency and they do need me, I will always stick my hand up to help them.”
So Toulouse it is, then? “You never know,” replies Fish, the man with the Arms Park in his blood.