I could taste brain fluid in my throat. It was nearly curtains

A fractured skull against Australia could have turned out a lot worse had I taken another hit

Wales have gone through so many close battles with Australia over the past decade, only to end up on the losing side. During my Test career with Wales I faced Australia eight times, and in that period I won only once. Also, my involvement in that Test match lasted only 17 minutes.

That year, 2008, was my first in Test rugby. I had first been capped in the Six Nations, then went to South Africa on tour in the summer before Australia came to Cardiff in the autumn. I suffered a serious head knock in the second minute, sustaining a fracture to my skull.

To this day, I still blame Rob Howley for it! He had a planned move off scrum free-kicks. It was at the time when you would get loads of them and, lo and behold, our first scrum, we win an attacking free-kick.

Andy Powell remembered the move, thank God, and hit Gareth Cooper with a pass. I ran a designed decoy line, with the plan being to hopefully suck in a few defenders, create some width, with Stephen Jones fading behind me to feed our options out wide, Tom Shanklin, Shane Williams and Lee Byrne.

Cooper finds me with the pass and within seconds I am on the deck. Stirling Mortlock is running full pelt to try to make an interception. I am running at full pelt on a decoy line. Two 110kg blokes violently colliding with a clash of heads. The contact was in the middle of my forehead, just above my eyes, which had clashed with the part of the skull behind his ear, which is actually the hardest part of the skull.

It really hurt. I was not knocked out, but I knew it was a big collision. The referee had stopped play straight away. You could hear it on the replay, the sound of thousands of people groaning while watching it back.

I looked over and Mortlock was being carried off, his legs wobbling, and I thought: “I’m all right.” My head hurt, but Prof John Williams had come on to the pitch, checked my field of vision, asked me all of the necessary questions and I answered them.

I thought I should battle on, I did not want to get off the field. I had just turned 22, and wanted to brave it out.

I played a part in the first try scored by Shane Williams, making a line break and being tackled by Drew Mitchell. But soon after I was stood under the posts, waiting for a scrum deep in our 22. I was aware that the physio and the doctor had been tracking me up and down the touchline. As I stood there, my nose started running with blood. And I thought to myself: “I haven’t hit my nose.”

That year, studying medicine at Cardiff, I had done enough head and neck anatomy to know that something was not right. I then felt a stream of salt water, spraying down the back of my throat, while my nose was still bleeding. Which was weird. I put my finger on my tongue, tasted it, realised it was salty and knew it was brain fluid, cerebrospinal fluid.

When I reflect on that moment, if I had taken another nasty knock to the head, who knows what would have happened? If there is ever an example of why the concussion protocols are crucial now, it is that. Another blow there and it might have been curtains.

I was very lucky that I was a medical student at the time. I might have just ignored it, thought it was innocuous and carried on. Fortunately, I had the knowledge that I had likely fractured my skull.

I looked at the doctor, gave him the thumbs down, and off I went. I was in hospital, had a CT scan that identified a fracture to the base of the skull, and then watched the match on the nurse’s BBC Sport page, refreshing the score, and found out we won. It was unreal.

Other matches against Australia were excruciating, but for other reasons. The worst was Kurtley Beale’s last-minute try in Cardiff in 2012. That was a game we had in the bag. Australia had a five-metre scrum in the last minute of the game in their own 22. We let them make ground on the far side of the pitch. They played a backs move, we were too passive as they zigzagged across the pitch. They picked up a line break and that was it, Beale scored in the corner. That is one of the most brutal defeats I have experienced.

I do not remember 2016 too fondly, either. We were beaten 32-8. I had a poor game and was then dropped. Part of me felt I was made a scapegoat. I was the defensive captain and we were poor in that regard. When it comes to this fixture, people refer to Australia’s record over Wales in recent years and whether that plays a psychological role. I do not buy into that. Contrary to the idea that Australia have an advantage, do Wales not then also have an advantage, given they won the last fixture between the two sides?

Whenever you play Australia, there is a massive emphasis on the first three phases. The Wallabies are smart operators off those initial plays, and I enjoyed watching Wales in those moments against Georgia. They were efficient and clinical, and had zip in their attack.

Those first three phases, and who can cause the other team more problems, will be crucial in deciding both tomorrow’s game and the pool.