July 2017. When I ran out at Eden Park for the third Test against the All Blacks, I was convinced this was my last match ever, at any level. Looking back, I was only ever at 70 per cent in that series.
But of course I still have a contract with the WRU and the Blues, and now I’m back from New Zealand and away from all the insane pressure of the Lions goldfish bowl, I start to think that maybe I was too hasty. There are still plenty of things left in the game for me. And I’m only 28. That’s way too young to retire.
The physios give me a scan.
‘Your body’s in pieces,’ they say. ‘Pretty much everywhere we look there’s a problem.’ Few of the problems are that big in themselves, but as with the way I felt after the 2015 quarter-final against South Africa, it’s the accumulation of them all that really gets you down.
‘Is there a technical term for all this?’ I ask.
‘Yes.’
‘What is it?’
‘The technical term is: “You’re screwed.”’
I drop all my Lions kit off at the Tenovus Cancer Care charity shop in Rhiwbina. It raises £3,000 in two hours, which in terms of what they need is a drop in the ocean, but which is at least better than nothing and also helps to raise their profile a tiny bit and get them in the news.
A couple of people go on social media to accuse me of ‘an act of self-promotion’. Sometimes you feel as though you just can’t win.
August. The usual lay-off period after a season is four weeks. I’m so exhausted and beaten up by the end of the Lions tour that these four weeks go in a flash. Normally, by the end of this period, I’m gasping to get going again. Not now. I’m still in physical pain, and mentally I’m nowhere near the right place to put my nose back to the grindstone. I ring Derwyn and tell him I need another four weeks. He says he’ll sort it with the WRU and the Blues.
I go for a run. Actually, it’s not so much a run as a trot. And it’s awful. I feel old, slow and shit. For the first time ever, I don’t want to do pre-season training; me of all people, who’s always been Mr Preseason. At this rate I won’t be up to speed in time for the autumn internationals in November. Maybe I should just sack off them completely and aim for the start of the Six Nations another two or three months down the line.
What’s really strange, though, is the change in my mindset. Even during the worst of my injuries, I’ve always tried to keep being positive. Sure, there’ve been plenty of times I’ve hated the stress – hence all the mid-match retirements in my head! – but I’ve never been so … apathetic, I guess. I’m loving not having to train, and the thought of playing doesn’t excite or scare me, it just makes me feel down. When you’re used to either absolutely loving or absolutely hating your sport, and sometimes going from one to the other in the blink of an eye, not really caring is a very unusual and very difficult thing to deal with.
I’m not depressed, but I’m definitely mentally affected by it all. This uncertainty is so not me. I’ve always been used to being decisive and positive, but right now I feel neither. And at the heart of it is the same feeling I had during the calls for me to be dropped during the 2012–13 season; if you define yourself as being an athlete, and all of a sudden you’re not that athlete anymore, then who are you?
Rach and I have been together a decade. She’s never seen me like this, and she doesn’t really know what to do. How could she? I don’t even know what to do. I do know that if this goes on much longer it will start to put a strain on our relationship. My mindset will change, I’m sure of it. It will change. It has to.
September. I come back to training with the Blues. After eight weeks off, I’ll need at least three weeks before I touch a ball again – up until then it’s just physical preparation – and another week beyond that before I’m ready to play again, but suddenly Ellis Jenkins is injured and we may need me to cover for him in a fortnight’s time.
This is not what I need. I need to be taking it slowly, to be focusing on my body so I can get my mind back to where I need it to be. But I also know how patient the Blues have been with me over the years, and I want to help them any way I can.
I do some gentle pad drills. I jog into a tackle pad, shoulder first, at 50 per cent effort, tops. I bend down to place the ball … and feel my neck go again. A stinger, just like I’ve had so often before, but from the gentlest of contacts. I stop the session immediately.
Injury #23.
On the video (all training is filmed), it looks so innocuous. Inside, though, my mind’s churning. This is ridiculous, how often this is happening.
Nick Williams has a calf problem and is out of the next match against Leinster. We might need you on the bench as cover, the coaches tell me. The physios are having none of it. You can’t play, they tell me. You categorically cannot play.
I’m grateful to them, because something is very wrong here. I can’t sit in the car for more than 15 minutes or so before I get a burning sensation between my shoulder blades that is so bad I need to pull over and flex my neck. Of all the parts of your body to mess with, the neck is not one. Things have never been this bad before. Right now I can hardly live a normal life, let alone play rugby.
My head’s not right because my body’s not right. They’re not separate things. They’re interlinked. My head’s right when I’m playing well. I play well when I’m physically fit. If I’m not physically fit, my head won’t be right. A simple circle of never-ending cause and effect.
The solution is simple. Get my body right and the rest will follow. Getting my body right will require a change of approach. It’ll need surgery.
I talk to Gats, and I talk to the WRU. I need two operations, one on my neck and the other on my knee, and between the two of them they’ll keep me out for the season. A complete break from the game until the end of the season. I offer to go unpaid, which makes Derwyn put his head in his hands. A player unilaterally volunteering to forgo his salary: it’s every agent’s worst nightmare. No, the WRU say, there’s no question of you being unpaid. But I think they appreciate the gesture anyway.
I go in for the neck op. They’re going to shave the bottom of one vertebra and the top of another just to help that gap where the nerve comes up, because it’s when the nerve is compressed that I get the stingers.
They ask me to sign a disclaimer form – it says that, since they’re operating so close to the spinal cord, I accept there’s a 1 in 1,000 chance of paralysis. I know it’s a very remote chance, that these numbers always seem theoretical and that all surgery carries some kind of risk, but it does make it seem just that little bit more real. I think of Owen, in a wheelchair for life. He’s doing great now – fundraising for others who’ve suffered sporting injuries, and he’s in a relationship with his carer – but the spectre of what he’s been through is never far away at times like this.
Normally I look forward to operations, if only for the feeling of dozing off under anaesthetic and then for the morphine afterwards: that sensation of being on Cloud Nine and not giving a toss. But today I’m really nervous. Before I go into theatre, I post a photo with Anna on Instagram. It’s the first time I’ve ever been nervous for an op, because it’s the first one I’ve had since becoming a dad.
It’s not just about me anymore. It’s about Anna and any brothers and sisters who come along. I see the ex-pros walking around with these big, swollen knees and they can’t do anything. I don’t want that to be me. I want to go down to west Wales in 10 or 15 years’ time and be an active dad. I want to be an active granddad in 30 years’ time.
The first thing I see when I walk in is this massive head clamp.
‘What the hell is that?’ I say, trying to make a joke of it.
‘Well,’ the surgeon says, ‘after we put you under we turn you 180 degrees onto your front, and then we put that clamp on so that your head can’t move, not even a millimetre.’
‘OK,’ I say. ‘In that case you’d better put me under right now, because I’m about 20 seconds from freaking out and legging it into the streets of Cardiff wearing nothing but this paper gown.’
I remember the breathing techniques Andy used to teach me before matches – green energy in, red energy out – and I use them now while waiting for the anaesthetic to kick in.
Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a hospital bed in floods of tears.
‘How are you feeling?’ the nurse asks.
‘My neck is absolute agony and I feel really sick.’
‘That’s to be expected. That’s what operations are like.’
Well, I think, this is my seventh, and none of the others have been remotely like this. If someone told me that I’d feel like this for the rest of my life, I’d rather die, I honestly would, and I’m someone who’s always been afraid of death. It’s like that line about seasickness going through two stages: when you think you’re going to die, and when you’re afraid that you won’t.
‘Can I have a bowl, please?’ I ask.
They bring one. I projectile vomit twice in ten minutes.
‘F*** rugby,’ I say, loud and angry, when I’m sure my stomach’s empty and all I have left is dry retching.
November. Walking the dog in Rhiwbina. A couple of builders working on a house down the road see me, give the thumbs-up and shout, ‘Living the dream, Sam!’ I laugh and wave at them, but inside I’m thinking, If only you knew. If only you knew that in a few minutes’ time I’ll turn the corner and walk past the local rugby club, and I’ll watch them playing and see the enjoyment they take from the game, and I’ll try to remember when I last felt something that pure and uncomplicated about the sport that’s defined me for so long.
December. Now the operation on my knee. It’s got 1.5 cm of lateral movement, which is ridiculous. The ligament’s basically just hanging off. If you push my kneecap, it glides. Even with all the strapping I put on it, I’m only one serious collision away from blowing it properly; one big tackle, one big hit while jackalling. At my age, that’s a year out of the game. In this case, prevention is definitely better than cure.
I go under the knife. The surgeon puts a synthetic medial ligament in, nice and tight and as good as new.
My body’s patched up now. No more excuses.
January 2018. New Year, and new me – or rather old me, young and hungry and competitive. It’s like a switch has been flicked. I’m lifting as much in the gym as I ever have, and I’m feeling great. My body’s getting better, and as it does I can feel my mind following suit: body leading the mind, as it does so often in this most brutal of sports.
I hear the whispers on the grapevine: Warby’s done, he’s gone, he’s never going to be the same player again. And when I hear them, I feel the old response bubbling up in me: You’re wrong, and I’m going to prove it to you.
I set out some personal goals I still want to achieve. I want to win the Six Nations player-of-the-tournament award, and be nominated for World Player of the Year, neither of which I’ve ever managed and both of which I feel I should have achieved. I want to captain Wales to the 2019 World Cup, which would be my third as skipper.
March. I give an interview to The Times, and my positivity’s reflected in the quote. ‘I will play again. I can say that 100 per cent.’ I’m watching games. I’m visualising myself playing those games. I want to be back out there.
The Blues ring me. We know you’re on sabbatical, they say, but our injury list is mounting. If we need you to cover – and we’ll only ask you in case of dire emergency – could you do it?
I go for a run. It’s only 3 km, but I have to stop three times. My knees are agony; they feel like bone is rubbing directly on bone, with all the cartilage having been worn away.
I ask Rach whether she feels pain like this. Of course I don’t, she says.
I phone Ben and tell him what’s happened. You’re stupid, he says. You’re in rehab for your knee. You can’t just run on it without any prep; you have to build yourself back up into it.
That’s true, I know it is. But what’s also true is that a normal 29-year-old man can put on his trainers and go for a run – a very short run – without having to think about it.
My body leads my mind. And if my body’s not up to it, my mind won’t be either. This doesn’t break me, but it definitely bumps me. Deep inside my head, a little voice says two words.
Strike one.
April. I begin training with Foxy, Rhys and Scott Baldwin. It’s a nice little training group, and I’m soon in good shape, good enough to think I’d be ready to play tomorrow. But deep down, I know I’m kidding myself. The training is just conditioning, with straight-line running and no actual rugby, and even then I have some pain in my neck when doing overhead presses in the gym and in my knees when I run. I could deal with muscle soreness, but this is different. This is pain deep within the joints.
May. At the end of the training block, Prav gives me an advanced knee rehab session. He has me bounding left and right, changing direction again and again.
‘Be more explosive!’ he says.
I try, but I can’t move any quicker.
‘Snappier! I want to see you snappier!’
The pain comes jabbing through both knees like white-hot needles. I have to stop. That was agony, and yet I know what he was asking me to do wasn’t – shouldn’t have been – anything out of the ordinary.
Strike two.
Monday, 9 July. I start pre-season with the Blues. My knees can just about stand up to it as long as the physios give me pain-killing jabs directly into them. I kid myself that this is normal, that they’ll somehow get better in time. As long as I can still function on them, that’s OK, right?
Tuesday, 10 July. We’re in a huddle after finishing our Blues training session. Some of the senior players and coaches are talking. I’m not really listening. I’m a bystander, looking at the grass, and I’m thinking This is it. That session was so hard, what with all the changing of direction. My knees are so sore. Imagine two people now flying into the side of those knees. I can’t do it. It’s 14 months to the World Cup. I’m never going to make that.
I pick up Anna from nursery. Back home, in the garden, she asks me to go on the trampoline with her. Bouncing with Daddy: it’s one of her favourite things. I crawl onto the trampoline. She thinks I’m playing around, being silly. I’m not. My knees won’t let me do anything else.
‘Stand up, Daddy,’ she says.
I try. I can’t do it. I’m on all fours trying to push myself upright, and it’s just too painful. I can’t even kid myself it’s DOMS (delayed onset muscle soreness), as I’ve had that for 15 years and I know exactly what it feels like. This isn’t it. This is very far from it.
‘Daddy.’ Anna’s voice is more impatient now. ‘Stand up, Daddy.’
I grit my teeth and make a huge effort.
‘For God’s sake!’ I shout, not because Anna’s asking me to stand up but because my knees are so painful. My voice is loud and deep and angry, and it scares Anna so much she bursts into tears. I’m on my feet now, but with the shifting surface of the trampoline below me my balance is all over the place, and it honestly feels as though my knees are going to dislocate if I stand here a moment longer, let alone if I try to bounce.
Strike three.
I sink to my knees again, cuddle Anna and tell her I’m sorry. Then I take her inside. I crawl off the trampoline and gingerly walk across the garden through the back door while she walks alongside me. Normally I’d grab her and take her upstairs with her laughing and me tickling her, but now I have to get her to go ahead of me while I go up the stairs on all fours.
While Anna plays, I sit and think, just turning it all over in my head.
I don’t want to be that player who’s just hanging on, holding a pad. If I can’t get to the heights I want to, the heights I’m used to, there’s no point in keeping on; and I can’t get back to that level, I know I can’t. My body just can’t cope with the volume of running any more. They might say I only have to train twice a week and ice my knees for three hours a night, but that in itself would be the end. I’m not Ledley King, who was so good that he could turn up every Saturday without training and still play top-quality football. I’m not blessed with flair, and you can’t play rugby without the training anyway, it’s not that kind of game. If I’m not physical then that’s a lot of my game gone. All in or all out. That’s how I’ve always played. No half measures. Go hard or go home.
Rach comes home. I tell her what’s happened, and that I’ve had enough. She’s surprised, both because I’ve seemed so much better these past few months, and also because she’s heard it all before.
‘I love this sport,’ I say, ‘but I hate how it makes me feel sometimes. And I know you’ve heard me say that time and time again. Everyone hears that, but no one listens. No one properly listens.’
She looks at me, and she knows. She doesn’t try to talk me out of it. She knows as well as I do.
I’m done.
I send Derwyn a text message.
Hey mate,
Just wanted to give you a heads up. I’m not calling because I won’t really be able to speak and I’ve got a little emotional talking to Rach about it.
I’ve been back two days, and all the same feelings I had last year are straight back again. It’s confirmed to me I really don’t want to continue as a player. I genuinely was looking forward to coming back and playing, but after doing some rugby, and contact preparation etc the thought of playing really doesn’t appeal and I guess the only way I can say it is I can’t keep doing this to my body and I have no motivation to train. I’ve been the best pro at the ground the last two days’ training and for my whole career and I love getting myself in shape, but the thought of playing and future injury worries me. I’m trying to play with Anna since I got home and I’m struggling to even be on the trampoline and pick her up. My knee is f*****, my back is f***** and I’ve had a tits full.
I’m going to sleep on it, and I’m finding it hard to talk to Rach, because it’s almost that realisation, and it’s so hard to speak about it because I feel I’m letting so many people down. I’ll give you a bell tomorrow but just wanted to plant the seed.
Cheers mate.
Wednesday, 11 June. I’ve slept on it, and my mind’s still as resolute as it was yesterday. I ring Derwyn and tell him.
We work out a plan: who do we need to speak to? As few people as possible, at this stage. We don’t want the information coming out piecemeal before we’ve had the chance to sit down with the people who really need to know and explained the decision to them.
My family apart, all of whom are totally supportive – ‘I knew the night you rang from Wellington that it was over,’ Mum says, ‘there was just something in your voice. You spoke too strongly, too passionately’ – the first names on that list are obviously the WRU and the Blues, both of whom I’m contracted to.
And, even though right now he’s at home in New Zealand with his family, I have to tell Gats, because he’s put so much faith in me for pretty much my entire career. I ring him. He tells me I’ve done the right thing: family comes first, just like he’s always said.
Friday, 13 July. I go to see the WRU at the Principality. It’s the hardest meeting I’ve ever done. I can’t shake the feeling of deep, deep guilt. They’ve been so good to me: arranging my operations with top consultants, taking me up and down to London, paying me as usual and never once pressuring me to come back.
And in return, I’ve told them I’m quitting. I’m afraid they’ll think of me as some journeyman chancer who never had the slightest intention of coming back, but just took the money and had a laugh. It couldn’t be further from the truth, of course, but maybe that’s what I’d think if I were them, and I wouldn’t blame them for a moment.
I start to explain myself. It’s taking every ounce of energy I have not to break down right here in the meeting room.
‘Sam, let me stop you there.’ It’s Julie Paterson, head of operations. ‘The only reason I wanted you to come in here today was to look you in the eye and see that you really mean it. And you do, that’s as clear as day. That’s all I wanted to know. You’ve got nothing to apologise for. Absolutely nothing.’
She stands up, comes round the table and gives me a hug.
Through the windows I can see the pitch and the stands behind: the best stadium in the world, the place where I’ve had some of the best memories of my life. I’m turning my back on all that. I’ll never again run out through the flames and the dry ice, never again see the three tiers banking up to the heavens all around me, never again stand on the pitch with ‘Land of My Fathers’ crashing all around me.
It breaks my heart, but I know it’s the right thing to do.
Tuesday, 17 July. We decide to make the announcement at midday tomorrow.
I ring my two best mates in rugby, Lyds and George, and tell them. I also tell the medical teams at the WRU and the Blues, because without them I’d have been doing this five years ago.
I tell the Blues I’m not coming in tomorrow. Personal reasons, I say, and leave it at that. Less is more.
Wednesday, 18 July. I’m at Heathrow, on the way to a family wedding in Italy.
It goes on Instagram at midday: a picture of me walking out at the Millennium, together with a message I wrote myself.
Unfortunately, after a long period of rest and rehabilitation the decision to retire from rugby has been made with my health and wellbeing as a priority as my body is unable to give me back what I had hoped for on my return to training.
I cannot thank the Welsh Rugby Union and Cardiff Blues enough, who have gone beyond the call of duty in providing the support I received to help me get back on the field, for which I will be forever grateful.
Since I first played aged 10 at Llanishen Fach Primary School, then Whitchurch High School and Rhiwbina Juniors RFC, I always dreamed of playing for my hometown club the Cardiff Blues, Wales and the British and Irish Lions. To look back on my career, I’m extremely proud of what I managed to achieve. There are so many people who helped me along the way from schoolteachers, coaches, friends and family. I thank you so much for supporting my dreams and aspirations. I hope they too can take some pride from my career.
I would like to make special mention of Warren Gatland. Without the faith he had in me and his unwavering support I would never have had the career I was able to pursue.
Countless people work behind the scenes in professional rugby but I would like to thank the fantastic medical teams at both WRU and Cardiff Blues who have looked after me throughout my career.
To my amazing wife Rachel and my close family and friends who have endured the emotional rollercoaster of playing professional rugby, I am so lucky to have such a fantastic support network and loving family to help me get through all the testing times.
Lastly, to all the many fans, with whom I’ve shared some fantastic memories, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for all your support. From providing a random hug in a supermarket, or simply offering words of support and encouragement, to hearing a cheer after my name was announced at the national stadium, you are what makes playing professional rugby so special and such a privilege. It’s been an absolute pleasure to represent you all and an honour I’ll sorely miss.
As one chapter finishes, another begins, which I’ll enter with the same level of passion and determination as the last. Thanks.
The flight is at 1 pm. I’m going through security when all of a sudden my phone starts going mental. Some of the other passengers in the queue obviously see it come up on their news feeds when they’re looking at their phones, and they’re looking at me like they can’t quite believe it. There’s a massive TV screen in the departure lounge and suddenly I’m on it. I knew it was going to be news, but I had no idea it was going to be this much news. I feel a little like I’ve died!
Rach takes Anna into the children’s soft-play section. They won’t let me in as I’m wearing flip-flops, and you need to be wearing socks. So while they’re in there I scroll through the stuff on my phone. There are hundreds of messages and notifications, so much so that my Twitter feed can’t load them all up. I’ve had big news days – announced as Lions captain, important World Cup wins, Grand Slams – but this is another level.
The messages I do get to read are so heartfelt and complimentary that I can’t believe it. In the nicest possible way I had no idea that people, not necessarily players but fans, had that much of a nice opinion of me, thought that much of me. I really had no idea. It’s so unexpected and touching that I feel myself getting emotional and starting to tear up, so I put the phone away before I give some paper a headline tomorrow. WARBURTON, BROKEN BY RETIREMENT, HAS EMOTIONAL MELTDOWN IN DEPARTURE LOUNGE.
And that’s it. No more Sam Warburton, rugby player. Just Sam Kennedy-Warburton: father, husband, son, brother.
It’s weird. It’s good. Rugby’s what I did. It was never who I was.
March 2019. I’ve been retired nine months now, and I can honestly say I’ve loved every minute of it. I heard somewhere that two-thirds of rugby players get depressed when they finish playing. Sometimes I felt depressed when I was playing! It might sound ungrateful, given all the things that rugby gave me, but it’s true. Not clinically depressed, perhaps, but certainly ground down at times.
Retirement feels really good. I know it is the best thing for my body and for me. Every day that’s passed, I’ve woken up and known I’ve made the right decision. Even when Wales were going for the Grand Slam earlier this year, I never wanted to be out there with them. I wondered if I would, wondered if at the moment of their supreme triumph I’d feel a sense of bitterness and jealousy, but I genuinely didn’t. I was just delighted, absolutely delighted, for them all.
I haven’t had an ounce of regret. It feels like a massive weight off my shoulders. I can carry Anna up and down the stairs fine, I can play with her on the trampoline. I know I’m not going to spend tomorrow morning in an operating theatre dosed to the eyeballs on morphine, or tomorrow afternoon getting stitched up under the stands with concussion.
All the scrutiny you get from the press, all the rehabilitation from injuries, the pain of playing, the mental strain of repeatedly getting yourself up for big games, the pressure you put on yourself, people not respecting your time, the emotional side of things that your family goes through, your parents getting stressed out about stuff – I don’t miss any of those things. Not one bit. Not one tiny bit.
I do miss one thing. I miss those moments in the dressing-room before or after a match, preparing for or recovering from the supreme effort, summoning up the sinews as I looked into my team-mates’ eyes and knew they wouldn’t let me down, or slumped on a bench after a titanic victory, too shattered to move but with every fibre of my being suffused with the deliciousness of knowing we did it.
I’m not famous, and I’d never want to be. David Beckham’s famous. Will Smith’s famous. That’s the kind of fame that must skew your life, when everybody thinks they know you and has an opinion about you long before they ever meet you. I’m locally well recognised, certainly in Wales and at rugby grounds around the world, but that’s pretty much it (and even then people mistake me for George North, which he finds devastating as he thinks he’s much better-looking than me). Rach and I went to New York not long after my retirement, and for an entire week there no one gave me a second glance. It was glorious.
I’m busy doing lots of stuff. Writing this book, obviously. Writing a column for The Times. Doing commentary and analysis for the BBC at the Six Nations, BT Sport for club matches and ITV for the World Cup. Being an ambassador for the WRU. Keeping up work with my sponsors. Busy enough not to be bored, but not so busy as to never have a moment to myself. It’s perfect. I keep fit and have lost several kilos. I’m still training like stink, but not eating as much. I was never supposed to be as big as I was.
What I like about rugby is that it doesn’t come with all the ridiculous hoopla that football seems to. I do my own social media, because that makes what I put up real, and people appreciate that. I don’t have a whole team posting things as me and ensuring that everything’s refined and on message to within an inch of its bland life. When I go somewhere for work, I don’t need an entourage around me or a driver who’ll chew my ear off for three hours. I like to drive myself: get in the car, chuck on talkSPORT, stop for a coffee and a pee when I want, and then claim the miles back at the other end!
As for the longer-term future, who knows? I know what I don’t want to do, and that’s be a head coach. When I see the pressure that’s been heaped on Gats over the years, the unforgiving nature of the media and the public, I wouldn’t put myself through that, and I certainly wouldn’t put my family through that. I wouldn’t leave my kids open to struggling in school, or my folks to being abused in the street, because everyone was slagging me off.
But there are lots of other roles within rugby that are less in the public eye. I’d like to do some mentoring work one-on-one with people. I’d like to help coach strength and conditioning, which were always among my favourite parts of the game. Perhaps when Bobby hangs up his coaching boots, the Bobby Cup could become the Warby Cup! I’d like to help get the Blues to a European title in whatever capacity suits them and me best.
And I’d love one day to be Lions manager; not the coach but the manager, who acts as a figurehead and conduit off the field, who helps pull all the players and staff together, and who’s always available to help out someone who for whatever reason is struggling a bit. To be Lions manager would be a great, great honour.
Sometimes I look back and think to myself: did I have it easy? Did I play so many games for Wales and the Lions, was I captain so many times, only because the coach liked me? On one level, perhaps, it doesn’t matter. Just like every other player, I had the career I had, no more and no less.
But I’d be lying if I said that even now I keep all the negative thoughts away. I never questioned my ability while growing up, but when you’re at the top and everyone’s queuing up to take pot shots at you – sections of the press, social media, even some of your own team-mates – then of course some of it starts to filter through.
Almost no player is lucky enough to finish their career with no regrets at all, with nothing left undone. I’m no exception. There are things I’d love to have done. I’d love to have won another trophy for the Blues. I’d love to have reached 100 caps. I’d love to have skippered Wales in a third World Cup and skippered a third Lions tour. But none of them were to be. You can drive yourself crazy with ‘what ifs?’, and they do you no good. Better, and easier, just to be grateful for what I did have.
Whenever you’ve been around a while and achieved some things in the game, people will always try to rank you. In the immediate aftermath of my retirement, many people were kind enough to call me a ‘great player’ (a description to which Stuart Barnes, unsurprisingly, took exception), and whenever pundits and writers choose their all-time Wales XVs, I’m in there more often than not.
Whether or not I was a great player is for others to decide, not me. What I will say is that I don’t see myself in the very top drawer of those who’ve played the game. I was at the top of my career for only six or seven years, whereas men like Brian O’Driscoll and Paul O’Connell were at the top of theirs for much, much longer. I won 74 caps for Wales; Richie McCaw won exactly twice that number, 148, for New Zealand.
Clearly there’s more to a career than just longevity. But, given the intense levels of competition at the top of the game, those who can stay there not just for a handful of years but for knocking on a decade and a half are obviously a cut above the rest, both physically and mentally.
I was never one of those, and I can live with that.
I still live in Rhiwbina. We’ve got one more bedroom than we did, but that’s as flash as I get. My brother lives across the road, literally; he bought my previous house off me. My entire family live within half a mile. I love it here. Why would I move? This is where I live. This is my house.
And if you come to that house, there’s only one item of rugby-related memorabilia on show: my first Test Lions 7 jersey, framed. Other than that, nothing. I don’t even have a rugby ball in the house. I’d make a terrible Through the Keyhole guest.
One day I’ll build a little room, more for my own memories than anything else. I’ve already earmarked the first seven things that will be going in there:
It won’t be a big room; there won’t be space for much more than one or two people. It’ll be just somewhere I can go now and then to look back and remember that, for all the things I never managed, there was an awful lot that I did.
The memories I have are very special, Kipling’s twin impostors of triumph and disaster alike. I’m very lucky to have them, and I’m very proud to have shared them with you as fully and frankly as I could – to have shown you my open side.