THE NEW LIFE OF GAVIN HENSON – AND WHY HE BELIEVES DRUG CHEATS SHOULD BE JAILED
DON’T MISS FORMER WALES STAR’S CANDID FIRST POST-RUGBY
LET us begin with the big one.
Of the many subjects Gavin Henson covers during 30 absorbing minutes on a Sunday afternoon in the upstairs of his new pub, his belief that certain Wales internationals took performanceenhancing drugs is one that makes the eyes widen more than most.
For some time it’s been a suspicion many have held. Can the professional game really be beyond reproach when the amateur game is widely accepted to be plagued by such problems?
Getting anyone in rugby’s public eye to talk about it is difficult. But Henson has always been different.
Recent comments from Warren Gatland alluding to an inkling one player may have been taking them during his tenure were swiftly dismissed after the Wales coach “clarified” his thoughts.
Nothing more than dressing room banter was the general gist in the end.
Henson believes his words should have sparked a full-blown investigation.
“I’ve been in an environment where the drug testers come in and there’s one or two boys who run out. That’s happened at professional level,” he reveals. “How it is acceptable, I don’t know, but as a player you can’t do anything about it.
“Yeh, of course it made me angry. Boys are cheating and those kind of things give you such an advantage. There are boys who have had careers on the back of taking stuff that has cost other players international places, or even club team places, which is really lucrative.
“For me, I feel the rule that should be in place is if you get caught taking drugs it should be a jail sentence, because you are stealing a living. You are taking money from someone else. One or two boys were quite open and honest about it but there’s no proof.
“There was always changing room talk but unless you are a doctor or something you can’t prove it.
“For a coach to say what Gatland did, I felt like there should be an investigation, but there we go.”
It’s a headline-grabbing statement from a player who was always obsessively meticulous about everything he did on the pitch despite some of the chaotic drama that clouded him off it.
Henson is 38 now, and very much at the start of a new beginning. He looks as sharp as ever, although the chiselled features are covered by a thick, slightly greying beard these days.
Two hours before our meeting, he could be found doing what he now does every Sunday at 11am - playing football on the sloping windswept pitch of St Brides Major Pavilion, just outside Bridgend.
This is where he spent hours as a young man, practising the kicking that would propel him to rugby superstardom. It is now the home of Super Fox United, the team he set up with childhood best friend Jamie Griffiths that is becoming big news in the village.
The number on his back is, of course, 12, but his role now is as a driving box-to-box central midfielder rather than a cultured inside centre.
“It’s probably not been his best game today, to be honest,” says comanager Jamie as a dramatic 3-3 draw comes to its conclusion, but he still glides across the turf in that Henson way and he naturally finds a second or two more on the ball than most around him.
After Henson sweeps the changing rooms clean, it’s all back to The Fox, the new pub he and wife Katie have spent 10 months renovating, which is now open for business.
“I’m just really passionate about the village,” Henson explains.
“We managed to put a team together of all the old boys. When I was in school they would all be playing football and I was always watching with a jealous eye, thinking ‘I’d love to play’ but I stuck to my rugby. You had to choose at that age so I pined for it a bit. I think I’m trying to recapture my youth. Maybe we all are.
“The pub has always been run down and never run right. It coincided well with me finishing playing
rugby. It’s something for me to do and not have that thought of ‘Oh God, what am I going to do with my life now’.”
Henson worked for weeks and months on end as a labourer as the site was completely gutted and transformed. In between he got married in September, but there hasn’t yet been the time for a honeymoon with wife Katie, who is spending this particular Sunday helping pull pints behind the bar of her bustling pub that is packed to the rafters.
This very different new life comes exactly 15 years after the game that catapulted him to god-like status in Wales for a little while.
It’s hard to think of a more defining Welsh rugby moment in recent decades than that 2005 performance against England. Those tackles, that kick. The sheer confidence of it all was a sight to behold in a 23-yearold. It changed his life.
“That game made my career in one way or another, really. I arrived on the international scene that day.
“I remember I was in really good form. I’d been playing well for two years before that and I felt overdue a chance at the Six Nations.
“I don’t think I ever reached those heights again with that performance. Probably due to the injuries but also
there is something about a Wales v England game that brings something special out of you. At the time I didn’t have an ounce of self doubt in me. I watch the kick now and I think ‘Oh God, I hope I got it!’
“But at the time, because of the hours you put in, I never had negative thoughts so there was never any nerves. I didn’t really take in the scale of it at the time.”
Henson remembers the night that followed with a fond smile.
“You couldn’t grab a drink, people were pulling you everywhere. We were like movie stars,” he recalls.
Wales, of course, would go on to win a first Grand Slam in 27 years and Henson’s time as a mere rugby player was over. With glory comes adulation, but such status is not without its troubles.
In the close-knit environment of a rugby team, sometimes a maverick is not always what the group wants in their midst.
Less than a year after that Grand Slam day, the coach who had taken Henson under his wing and delivered what had seemed impossible was gone.
The circumstances surrounding Mike Ruddock’s shock Wales exit in 2006 will forever be debated, but it’s clear a senior player group, named by Adam Jones as Gareth Thomas, Martyn Williams, Stephen Jones and Brent Cockbain, had issues.
Henson also found himself at the centre of a storm after publishing a book, My Grand Slam Year. Some of his more critical words upset members of the squad.
“I’d had another injury after the Lions tour and had to take six or seven months off so I don’t know exactly what went on in camp but by the time I’d come back in, the ‘best coach ever’ Ruddock had gone!
“He obviously had a lot of belief in me, would tell me to play what I saw in front of me and he was great to play for. I lost that when he went so it was a very different environment.
“Senior player groups are such a dangerous thing. People get player power and it’s carnage in a squad.”
Does he feel some of those players didn’t like him because he was different from the rest?
“Yeh, completely. Through my early years, I was never, I don’t know, is ‘accepted’ the right word?
“I look at it now. If I was in a team and a youngster came through with the potential I had, crikey, I’d have my arm around him and make sure he was the best he could be.
“It was a tough environment and I suppose that acceptance wasn’t quite there. People would always try and second guess me and always think I was a bit different.
“That senior player power can be quite poisonous to have in a group. They are always held up that little bit higher and it creates a divide.
“I just wanted to be me. On that training or rugby field there is no more of a team player than me. But with the way I would look, or whatever, or when I would speak to the press, I’d probably say things that stirred up some of the other players, but I was just having fun basically.”
Sometimes, the fun would go too far. Few players have found themselves in more scrapes than Henson over the years.
There’s a slightly embarrassed smile as he tries to recall the details of that infamous night during the 2009 Six Nations, when he, Lee Byrne and Andy Powell were among a group who hit Cardiff city centre following victory over England.
Henson found himself standing on the pool table of the Queen’s Vaults pub at one point, police were called and a security firm banned him from various establishments in the days that followed. The details are sketchy so many years on.
“Something went on in a pub, the police got called and we’re all outside when the riot van turns up. We’re all calming down and Andy Powell was there and the police just handcuffed him and put him in the van.
“We were like, ‘Oh God, this is serious.’ So I was trying to calm it down and say we were just having fun and would go home. Next thing I know the riot van starts rocking. Powell is running from side to side in there
‘You couldn’t grab a drink, people were pulling you everywhere. We were like movie stars...’
and the police are like ‘what the hell is going on!.’ It was like there was an animal in there. “And then they opened it up, let him out, uncuffed him and told us to get on our way. We carried the night on then. We had some fun nights. With rugby boys in the city centre it’s always going to get boisterous.”
While the tales can now be told with a sprinkle of humour with the passing of time, this was the period when Henson’s life was heading into difficulty. Five months later he walked away from the game that had been his everything.
“I was in such a bad place mentally and physically. I was shot.
“Having back-to-back similar injuries, going through the same rehab. At that time, the physios weren’t as good as they are now. You sort of have doubt in that then. And then there was the off-field stuff, being in a relationship, having kids, that not working out. It all came at the same time which was tough to deal with.”
That 2009 Six Nations is when the personal cracks had begun to appear, Henson realises now, despite the respect he had for Warren Gatland and his coaching team.
“Our relationship didn’t break down as such, but I suppose it coincided with why I took a break from rugby in 2009. I had disagreements on how we were playing at the time.
“It kind of happened with the game against Italy. I got so annoyed about the tactics all week. I was going to the coaches, not in front of the group, just the coaches, saying we needed to do things differently, but we didn’t. I didn’t want losing to Italy to be on my CV and I was so annoyed after that game [Wales won 20-15 courtesy of a late Tom Shanklin try].
“We had Ireland the following week and, again, the tactics were wrong.
“There was also a player who annoyed me that week. I’m not sure I should say who. It was Lee Byrne. Going into that game, although he’s a friend, I’ve always said to him I haven’t forgiven him for it. He was injured going into that game and I knew he was injured. I said ‘mate, if you are injured you do not play.’ But he was like ‘No, I’m alright, it’ll be alright.’ I knew he wasn’t.
“Twenty minutes in, he goes off. That just ruined the team because it took me out of the 12 position and moved me to fullback where I can’t have an influence then.
“There’s a couple of factors there and that coincided with me getting an injury the following week. Gatland and Rob Howley told me they would have picked me for the Lions but it didn’t matter by that point. That was it then, I just needed time out.”
Henson did eventually return to the game in late 2010, very nearly forcing his way into the Wales squad for the 2011 World Cup before injury disaster struck in a warm-up game against England.
“Maybe that [not making a World Cup] might be the one regret I have, but I don’t really have control over that. 2003 really hurt. I felt that was when I was playing my best rugby and it really hurt when Steve Hansen didn’t take me. I’ll always hold that against him,” he says with a rueful smile. “And then 2011, to get injured in that final warm-up game when it was so close. That was probably the darkest time. It took a while to get over that.
“Maybe I became a bit destructive and I was looking to feel sorry for myself. Playing for Wales meant everything to me.”
He would never get to play on the biggest stage of all and, nine months ago, one of the most iconic careers Welsh rugby has known quietly came to an end.
Released by the Dragons after an injury-plagued final season, Henson’s time effectively fizzled out. It was a strange end for a player many believe was the most gifted of his generation, and he will forever live with the fact his remarkable talent was, in the end, left unfulfilled.
“I can always look at myself in the third person and go ‘F*** yeh, I didn’t reach my potential,’” he admits. “I had all the skills but it’s tough. There’s a lot of off the field things you have to deal with. It hasn’t been easy for me.
“I suppose I’m quite a contradiction. People think I court the limelight and it’s all about me but deep down I’m not really like that so I’d rather just sneak out of the back door and go away for a bit.
For the record, he believes overloading is an issue that runs to the highest level of rugby.
“They just treat the boys as pieces of meat, you know. ‘If you’re going to break down then we’ll just pull the other guy in,’” he says.
There are other candid opinions throughout the course of the afternoon. Straight answers are all Henson really knows.
He’s a huge fan of new Wales centre Nick Tompkins, but the idea of players playing for England at under-20 level and switching to Wales at senior level is something that makes him grimace. “Fair enough at under-16s,” he says. “But when you’re under-20s you’re an adult so to put that England jersey on doesn’t sit well with me.”
As for the residency rule, don’t get him started.
A final question brings an answer that perhaps sums up how Henson lived his sporting life and why he didn’t always fit in.
Who is his best friend in rugby? The pause is long, an awkward chuckle ensues.
“I don’t have one,” he concludes. “I just always kept my school mates. It was always like a job, although it was my favourite job and what I loved to do, but I liked to come away from it.” Downstairs his pub rocks with locals who’ve come to support his new business and the friends he’s held close since he was a schoolboy living in the house directly opposite the community hub he now runs. Establishing his football team has helped save the sports pavilion that might otherwise have been lost to the village due to lack of use. Ploughing his earnings into a derelict pub has given the people he’s known all his life a focal point once more. After years of travelling the world and standing in the full glare of the public spotlight, Henson has returned home to the place that always made him happiest.
To use his own word, he’ll forever be a contradiction to many – a man of unnerving confidence who obsessed about so much and cared very little for what others thought of him. But there’s also a natural shyness, a genuine humility the guys who now share a pitch with him have always known. On the field and off, there was never really anyone else quite like Gavin Henson.