Sam Warburton

Open Side: The Official Autobiography


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the kind of person too. There were plenty of rugby players in the amateur era who behaved professionally, just as there are still some players nowadays who don’t, not properly at any rate.

      As with other aspects of leadership, professionalism begins with the right mindset. You have to set yourself standards, but not limits; you have to hold yourself to minimum requirements rather than maximum ones. For example, Ben hasn’t framed and mounted his Wales Under-16 shirt, as for him it’s not a measure of success but of failure: it’s not how far he got, but how much further he still had to go. If I hadn’t got a Lions shirt, I wouldn’t have put up a Wales one.

      Training was an obvious arena in which I could be professional. I was Mr Preseason: you’d have had to tie me down to stop me training. As Muhammad Ali said: ‘The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses – behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road – long before I dance under those lights.’

      And 100 per cent means just that. Professionalism means paying attention to the small things as well as the big ones. Sometimes the analysts would play us the voice of the referee for our next match as we did scrum-machine work, not just to add some match atmosphere to the session but so we could get used to his intonation and rhythm, how long he paused for when issuing instructions to set the scrum, and so on.

      I hear academy kids asking how to get a Range Rover, how to get an adidas endorsement, that kind of thing. That’s topsy-turvy thinking, and a sign of a mindset and values that are all wrong: putting output above input. The true professional would never ask such questions, as the true professional knows that input comes first both in time and importance. Prepare properly, train properly, play properly, and the remainder will look after itself. I picked my endorsements carefully. I didn’t just sign with any company that turned up with a cheque and a photoshoot. I only signed with companies whose products I believed in and which I used anyway, or would have used, without being paid.

      It’s hard, sometimes, because people think they own you. I was doing a Q&A up in Cwmbran once, and a bloke stood up and said: ‘What are you doing next Monday?’ I said I didn’t know off the top of my head. ‘Well,’ he continued, ‘we’ve got a presentation at our club that day, and I bet you don’t turn up, because you professional rugby players are all too big for your boots and have forgotten the grassroots game where you come from.’

      His tone really took me aback. I explained that I had a certain amount of community work built into my contract, and on top of that I’d go to local clubs, kids’ camps and so on. But I also needed nights at home to rest and do nothing, because that was the professional, disciplined thing to do.

      At the end, I was signing autographs and stuff – I never left any of those events until I’d signed for anyone who asked – when this same bloke came up. ‘Which rugby club are you from?’ I asked him. When he told me, I said: ‘Just so you know, I’m never going to come up there, purely because of the way you spoke to me.’

      A significant aspect of professionalism is honesty: not making excuses, and owning your mistakes. If everyone in a team does that, the environment is healthy and the team has the best chance of improving. Everyone makes mistakes. The only way not to make a mistake is not to try something in the first place. Making a mistake isn’t wrong or unprofessional. What is wrong and unprofessional is trying to sweep that mistake under the carpet, because by pretending it never happened you deny yourself the opportunity to learn from it next time round.

      At one team meeting, the nutritionist said that we had a problem. He’d catered for each person having two bars per day for the duration of the camp, but now there weren’t enough anymore, so someone must have been taking more than their fair share. And he knew who the guilty parties were, as there was a CCTV in the gym and it had all been caught on camera. So if whoever had done it didn’t own up right now, they’d be exposed as liars and not team players. A few of the younger guys in the squad immediately fessed up, to gales of laughter from the senior boys.

      Yes, the young guys had been taking more than their share, but of course there was no CCTV and we could have got more bars delivered at the drop of a hat. The point was to encourage blokes to be honest with each other and with the team as a whole, and it worked. Own up to something before you get called out on it.

      Being professional extends to life outside rugby too; indeed, when you’re in the public eye it extends pretty much to everything you say or do, 24/7. You represent the club you play for, you represent your country, and you represent the hopes of all the supporters who’d give anything to do what you’re doing. These aren’t things to take lightly, and if they involve a certain amount of sacrifice here and there, well, that’s just the way it is, and it’s a small price to pay.

      On another occasion, I was on a stag night and we were in a pub. There was a group of guys there who wanted to chat, and I was being friendly to them, but then it was time for us to leave and to go on to the next venue. One of the men I’d been talking to became aggressive and started manhandling me in an attempt to get me to stay, and I had to grab his hands and yank them off me so I could leave.

      It doesn’t take much for these kinds of situation to spiral out of control, and then suddenly you’re dealing with negative headlines and distractions, which neither the team nor you need.

      Take the case of the England cricketer Ben Stokes, who was charged with affray following a fight outside a Bristol nightclub. He was acquitted, but not before he’d missed an Ashes series and lost a sponsorship deal, and following his acquittal he was fined for bringing the game into disrepute.

      Now I don’t know him from a bar of soap, I’ve got no axe to grind