a bit aloof. But that is what happens sometimes on these sorts of tours; they were just concerned with their own stuff and completely oblivious to how young players like me were feeling. After this experience, and others like it, I always tried to make a big effort to include new or young squad members to help them settle and to feel part of it. Funnily enough, one of the people who seemed most aloof was Jamie Ringer: he came across as a fly boy with highlights, but I later got to know him when we played together at the Dragons and, despite his peroxide streaks, he is a brilliant guy and good company. I just got the wrong impression of him on that trip.
People will tell you that going on tours like that is good experience but, in my opinion, that is only the case if the coaching staff believe you are good enough to be there on merit. I was really fed up after that trip. I have never enjoyed being in a squad when I was not in the team and playing. I would love to go back to Japan now to try and get a better appreciation of the place. One valuable lesson I learnt on that trip was to always try on your kit before you go away. I didn’t and at one of the functions we had to wear our issued chinos and shirts. I unwrapped my chinos and put them on but could barely do them up. I looked like an extra from Saturday Night Fever when we went to visit the UK Ambassador in Japan.
After the frustration of Japan, I came home and proposed to Lucy on our holiday in Cuba and in August 2001 we had an engagement party. Pre-season training had started and I was raring to go. Pontypridd still had some experienced players, like ‘The Chief’, Paul John, Gareth Wyatt and Matthew Lloyd. My challenge was to be as good as them – even if, still, no one was quite sure if I was a back row or second row – so that I continued to play every week. During the season Pontypridd had brought in the Fijian international fly half Nicky Little, Paul was captain and we had what Jonathan Davies in the Daily Mirror described as the ‘best spirit in Wales’. We won our first game against big-spending Bridgend, but then lost six in a row.
The newly appointed Pontypridd director of rugby, Clive Jones, came to watch us play in the European Shield away at Béziers. He observed how things were done and spoke to some of the players. After the game, he tore a strip off pretty much everyone and said that players would be leaving the club, as they weren’t up to it. Everyone was scared it would be them and you couldn’t help feeling pretty paranoid. Edinburgh, away, on 20 October was Richie’s last game in charge. We went home after that game and that was the last we saw of him. He had been a policeman and had gone straight from playing to coaching. He had been there for two and a bit seasons, but the reality was that we were just bobbing along. I was grateful to Richie for giving me my shot in the first team but Pontypridd needed a new coach.
The club’s major sponsor was Buy As You View, who had been involved with the club for a while and had then stepped up their commitment and involvement with the club. Gareth Thomas stayed as chief executive, but the club made a great move when they brought in Clive Jones. He, almost single-handedly, changed everything about the club and created a healthy fear among the players, which put everyone on their toes and brought the best out of us. He reorganised the schools programme and got us out in the community. Most importantly, though, he gave us a dream and a vision for the future. Clive may not have been popular, but he was very effective and was one of the best people I have worked with. It is a real shame that he hasn’t been more involved at the top level of Welsh rugby. He would have got things done and changed many of the aspects that weren’t working as well as they could have been.
He appointed Lyn Howells as head coach and Steve ‘Ritaz’ Richards, from Neath, as fitness coach. Lyn had accumulated a great deal of experience with Wales and Cardiff and was exactly what we needed. He created a really tough environment. Ritaz was brilliant; all of a sudden we had organised training programmes and loads of discipline. I developed a love of training that I hadn’t had previously due to his enthusiastic approach to coaching us. We did loads of running and would train in a host of different venues. The forest above the ground became a favourite venue for intervals, hill runs and time trials. He’d call us in for extra individual training at the club to do sled and speed work. We would all train together at Porth YMCA, which was pretty decrepit, and also box against each other and do circuit training. We climbed Pen-y-fan mountain together and went running on the Merthyr Mawr sand dunes. In one session there we warmed up with a ten-minute run before doing some sand-dune runs. We had two Tongan players, Feoa Vunipola and Ngalu Tau, who were lovely guys and very powerful, but not the best when it came to endurance. At the end of the ten-minute run we were getting ready for the session and noticed that the Tongans were missing. Ritaz had to go and find them.
All of this helped create an amazing team spirit. What changed everything was that ten or twelve of the players, all of whom came from the Pontypridd area and had played for the club for a long time, had a huge passion for the club. We loved Pontypridd and the new coaching team started to bring the best out of us. We developed a good driving line-out, a good scrum, superb defence and had two powerful centres in Sonny Parker and John Bryant, who played some outstanding rugby. The new regime got rid of the dead wood and that sent a message. We were expected to play on and to train on through any minor bumps. The way we prepared was tough and uncompromising and you had to work really hard to survive. It worked for us to great effect.
Around this time, Lucy and I bought our first house – in Church Village – and, shortly afterwards, Lucy fell pregnant. I was twenty-one and Lucy was twenty, so it was a bit sooner than we had planned, but we were both really happy and this period provided some of the happiest times of our lives. Lucy transferred to the University of Glamorgan, from Swansea University, to complete her law degree. I used to train in the morning with Ponty and again in the evening. During the day I used to pop home for a few hours and Lucy and I would spend some time together, sharing in the joy of awaiting the birth of our first child.
A few of the Ponty players got picked for Wales A in the autumn, but I wasn’t one of them. Andy Powell was picked ahead of me, based on his performances for Newport. He struggled when he played for Wales A though, and they didn’t have a great campaign. In the meantime, during the Autumn Internationals at Ponty we had a mini pre-season, which set us up for the rest of the season and the challenges that lay ahead. At Christmas time, we played Newport at home. They were a mature side and taught us a bit of a lesson. The day after the game, Clive Jones called us in and again told us that being bullied like that was unacceptable for Pontypridd RFC. We didn’t like hearing it, but it had the desired effect. After that point it never happened again and we went from strength to strength.
Since the new management had come in I had been playing as a second row and the club signed Glen Remnant, a Kiwi, to play at number eight. He did not make as much of an impact as they had expected him to do and was one of the very few people I have met during my career who I can honestly say I didn’t like. Gareth Wyatt told Lyn Howells at a function that he should pick me at number eight. Lyn listened, picked me in the back row and from Christmas onwards, I played pretty much at number 8 for the rest of the season.
I also got picked for the Wales A squad during the Six Nations and had my first experience with Mike Ruddock, who was coach. I was playing well at the time and Mike called me to explain that I would not start against Ireland in the first game of the campaign. Alix Popham, who had played for Wales A the year before, but who was not playing at Newport at the time, would start instead. Ruddock’s explanation was that he was sticking with the players who had done well for him before. That is certainly how he worked at the Dragons and with Wales. Wales lost 55–22 to Ireland, however. Geraint Lewis and Alix Popham were both dropped from the back row after that match. I think that was Geraint’s last involvement with Wales. He was a really skilful back rower who could pass and kick like an outside half and probably deserved better.
I was selected for the next game against France, but had a bout of flu in the run-up to the match. Colin Charvis and Brett Sinkinson both played and their superb work-rate and intensity really made an impression on me. That was the most I had enjoyed being in a Welsh senior squad up to that point. I was selected at number eight. Pontypridd’s Gareth Wyatt was playing, as was Mefin Davies, who was captain. I took out all the frustration that had built up – over the previous tours, over the flu – in that game. By the end of that season for Wales A, half the pack was from Ponty and half from Neath. All the players were down to earth and humble and I loved every minute of playing