centre for a course that was notoriously hard. Gethin was there and so was the hooker Matthew Rees, but I had flu. I felt rotten, but made myself go. I did everything, but particularly remember that in one of the last games I let out all the frustration that had built up at my being ill. I was in the centre of everything, tackling non-stop and had a brilliant game. One of the coaches on the course was the Pontypridd winger Geraint Lewis. After that game, Geraint came up to me and asked my name and I was really chuffed. Amazingly, within three or four years I would be playing alongside him for Pontypridd’s senior team. Another coach on that course was Gareth Thomas, who was doing some community work for Bridgend RFC. After matches against the other county XVs in South Wales, the boys were narrowed down to sixty players each from East and West Wales for summer camps.
The Wales Under-16 course, at the National Sports Centre in Sophia Gardens in Cardiff, was another chance to try and impress. When we got there, I was pleased with the running I’d done with my dad as a young boy because this course was all about fitness. He used to take me on five-mile runs around Penycoedcae. I had seen him doing these during his training for the New York Marathon and wanted to emulate him. He completed the marathon in just under four hours. Dad tells everyone that you haven’t really run a marathon unless it is under four hours – I wonder if that is selective. I have a sneaking suspicion that if he had ran it in four hours and nine minutes that Dad would say: ‘You haven’t really run a marathon unless you do it under four hours ten!’
All the shuttle runs and tests at the Sophia Gardens course were a massive shock for everyone. It was really demanding and very intense. I think it was a shock to everyone. At the end of the course the head coach Roger Goode took me to one side and told me I was the best player there. It was another David Evans-type moment. I’ve always felt that when someone believes in you, it makes you play better. Having Roger Goode believe in me was a huge boost.
After that course, the squad was whittled down yet again and we played trial games once a month building up towards two end-of-season Under-16 schoolboy internationals against Portugal and England. Players dropped by the wayside, including Gethin and Matthew Rees, although Dwayne Peel, who I would later play with at senior level, did make the final XV.
During the trials, I had been getting letters from the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU) about training weekends and trials. It was really exciting opening the letter and seeing those three feathers, but when I got the letter telling me that I had made the team for the first match in Lisbon, I was at home alone. I was about to go to school and Mum and Dad were at work. No one had a mobile and I had to wait all day until they got home before I could tell them. I’d done it. I was going to play for Wales.
Lisbon: By 1996, Wales had already played Portugal a few times at schools level and we knew that we would be in for a tough game. The Portuguese players were good tacklers and they tried to attack when they had the ball, although our pack was generally too strong for them. Even though I was only sixteen, I weighed over 14 stone. I was also 6ft 4in tall – and not even the heaviest from the Ponty schools team. Owain Ford, who was the loose-head prop, was 15 stone 3 pounds. I was number eight and Dwayne Peel was at scrum half and the score was 23–5 until, at the very end, a Portuguese centre intercepted and ran the length of the pitch to score. I had played really well and it was great that Mum and Dad were there, too. One newspaper described me as ‘majestic.’ It was just brilliant to be a Welsh International, to have the cap and jersey. I loved looking in the paper to see if I was mentioned.
On 5 April 1997, the final schools game against England was at the Brewery Field in Bridgend. As always, this was a big one. There were four players from Beddau: me, Jason Simpson, Nathan Hopkins and Scott Yoxall who was coming back from a broken wrist to get a well-deserved cap. England had a big pack, but we coped really well. We got our own long-distance try this time, Geraint Cooke from Tonyrefail scoring an amazing effort from 70 yards beating about five players. I played the whole game and we won by virtually the same score as Lisbon – 23–11 – and outscored England by four tries to one. It was a brilliant way to finish the season. It felt like the journey towards achieving my ultimate goal of playing for Wales was underway.
My brother David had left school, done an apprenticeship and ended up working at the same factory as our dad; when I got to sixteen my aim was to fulfil my ambitions in rugby. I never fully comprehended the importance of that time: that you make decisions that will affect the rest of your life. By 1996, rugby was starting to morph into a professional sport, but my dream hadn’t changed because of that – I had always wanted to play for Pontypridd and Wales.
I could have left school in June 1997 with ten GCSEs. My mother helped me with some of the subjects, she was amazing, and I worked hard to make sure I got as many GCSEs as possible. I could have got a job and carried on playing through the Wales youth team, but my perception was that Wales Schools, which was for players still involved in education, was better. So I stayed on to do A-levels and decided to do Maths, Economics and Physical Education.
Some English clubs, including Saracens, were sniffing around the Wales Schools set-up. There were plenty of other English clubs, too. A few contemporaries went to Bath RFC and did their A-levels at Colstons School. To keep the best young players in Wales, the WRU started offering bursaries and I was awarded £1,000 a term to cover costs after I had started my A-levels. I was offered a place at Christ College in Brecon, but I wasn’t sure that it would be the best move for me in rugby terms. I believed that pushing to get into the senior team with Pontypridd via the youth team was the best option.
Playing for Beddau at Under-16 level, everyone was saying the step-up to Under-19 level was huge. I had a chance to move to a bigger club. There was a chance to go to Pontypridd or Cardiff. Cardiff sent a letter with the crest on the envelope and an invite down to the Arms Park. I went with my father to watch a game from a hospitality box and there were half a dozen boys, four of them from Beddau: Scot Yoxall, Nathan Hopkins, Jason Simpson and me. Jason signed and, looking back at the difference between the set-ups, I should probably have gone there too.
At Pontypridd, I just had an informal meeting with Jack Bayliss, the team manager. Rhys Williams, who was in charge of the Pontypridd Schools XV, arranged the meeting and, compared to Cardiff’s approach, it wasn’t at all impressive. Cardiff had told us all they wanted to be the Manchester United of rugby and were signing lots of players. I tried to use my head and not be swayed by my heart. Staying with Beddau Youth was the easiest option but in the end I chose Pontypridd. Pontypridd had a better track record with youngsters coming through the youth team ranks. Some people in Beddau told me there was no point even going to Pontypridd for a trial, as I wouldn’t play any rugby. It was a bit of jealousy and narrow-minded thinking from a selection of naysayers but it served as motivation for me: I knew I was good enough. I have always been ambitious and believed in my ability. Going to the trial felt like a massive opportunity, I gave it my all and was selected.
Back then, there was no sense of serving an apprenticeship in professional rugby. It may have been professional in terms of being paid at senior level, but the set-up was still evolving. Now it has evolved there are academies and the players get great advice, but back then it was a very uncertain time. As I was doing my A-levels and getting a bursary I was fortunate, and the only real change when I joined Pontypridd after my GCSEs was that I trained there every Tuesday and Thursday with Gary Lucas and Mike Oliver instead of going to Beddau. The coaches weren’t professional, they had other jobs, and there wasn’t much conditioning at all, but they were great guys. To me it seemed as though there were really poor links between the seniors and the youth team at Pontypridd. We didn’t get any feedback from the senior coaches, although I think they were aware of us even if it didn’t always seem like it.
What I didn’t realise when I joined Pontypridd was that I would need to sing. Everyone had to learn a song. Gareth Turner, who played centre and was a great character, pretended to be Tina Turner and sang ‘Simply the Best’. We didn’t have a lot of music in my house,