Читать книгу Gavin Henson: My Grand Slam Year - Gavin Henson - Страница 6

Stephen Jones is the happiest man I’ve ever met. He may even be the happiest man in the world. It doesn’t matter what the situation, the weather or the workload he never stops smiling and being upbeat. He must have his own supply of happy pills and they must be a better brand than anyone else’s.

I was rooming with Steve at our Vale of Glamorgan Hotel on the night we beat England. When I finally got back there in the early hours, I was still on Cloud Nine but Steve was somewhere way beyond that. We chatted for a long time before finally getting some sleep and I must have still been smiling from ear to ear when I went downstairs for breakfast the following morning. I was part of a Welsh team that had beaten the world champions and my kick was the moment that had clinched it, a moment I had prepared for all my waking hours and dreamt about when I was asleep. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could bring me down. Or so I thought.

Then, Alan Phillips, the Wales team manager, came over with a newspaper in his hand. It was the News of the World. Splashed all over one page was a story about Charlotte Church and me. The headline was something like, ‘CHARLOTTE TELLS GAV TO GET LOST.’ The story made me out to be some kind of stalker and quoted Charlotte describing how I had ‘pestered’ her for her phone number the night of the Japan game. I was gutted.

Of course, the other boys in the squad had all read it and thought it was hilarious. What made it even funnier for them – and much worse for me – was that I had told them all how I really liked Charlotte and wanted to see her again. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since that night in November and now this story seemed to be saying she thought I was a pain in the arse. Once the boys clocked on to my reaction, as I sat there like some sad loser staring at the paper, their mood changed. They started ripping into me, good and proper. To the real dealers in mickey-taking – guys like Tom Shanklin, Rhys Williams, and Ceri Sweeney – this was as if all their Christmases had come at once. They were queuing up to give me a good kicking. All I could think was, ‘The bitch!’ My ‘pestering’ her consisted of me giving her mother, Maria, my phone number as she had asked me for it that night I had met Charlotte. Oh well, I thought. That’s that. Might as well take it on the chin, let the boys have their fun until they get bored, and get ready for the next game against France.

On the following day, Monday, we were back in training when I was told by Hal Luscombe, our wing from the Newport Gwent Dragons, that some bloke had rung him in a bid to track down my phone number on behalf of Charlotte. The details sounded a bit sketchy to me, though, and I thought is was probably part of another wind-up. Probably, the hand of Shanklin was involved somewhere along the line. I didn’t really want to hand over my phone number to someone I didn’t know, so Hal gave the guy the number of another handset he happened to have on him. Sure enough, a message came through that appeared to be genuinely from Charlotte. She apologised for the story and claimed her mother had been set up by someone who had then spoken to the press.

We arranged to meet up the next day and she was still very sorry about what had happened. Once again we seemed to hit it off and our relationship developed from there. It was a strange time to start dating a high profile girlfriend, one match into my first Six Nations campaign, and I did have a few concerns that it might prove to be a distraction. There were plenty of people who were also worried and a few of them sat me down and told me to drop the whole idea. Peter Underhill, my agent, who was in the middle of re-negotiating a great new deal for me with the Ospreys, was concerned this might mean I took my eye off the ball. Scott Johnson, Mike Ruddock’s assistant coach, took a tactful approach and carefully spelled out some of the dangers that might lay ahead. Scott’s like that. He really thinks deeply about the welfare of every player under his responsibility. Alfie, our skipper, was a bit more blunt. ‘Listen, butt,’ he said. ‘You want to steer clear of all that crap. She might just be out for a bit of cheap publicity.’ As captain he had a perfect right to be alarmed. The last thing he probably wanted was for me to go off the rails and for the team to be badly affected. I listened to all their advice, but I didn’t take it.

It was the same with my parents. It hadn’t taken long for the newspapers to catch on that I appeared to be Charlotte’s new boyfriend. Neither did it take them long to trace where my parents lived and they were soon outside their door. ‘What the hell is going on?’ said my Dad. But he wasn’t too concerned about the cameras outside his house. He could deal with that. He was far more worried that my rugby career – something he had helped me build since I was old enough to walk – was in danger of going down the drain. ‘Don’t worry, Dad. It’s all under control.’ But I don’t think Mum or Dad were too convinced early on.

I was happy, though. Charlotte had come to my house to explain all about the newspaper story and we had got on really well. I dropped her back home at around 11 and was keen to see her again. I gave her a goodnight kiss and as I drove home I thought, this is great. She’s a really nice girl. I feel comfortable with her and I can handle what comes with it – the press, the photographers, even the stick from the rest of the boys in the squad. It’ll be fine.

And it has been. We sent each other loads of texts after that night and things just progressed from there. If Charlotte had not been a famous singer, then I admit we probably would not have gone out with each other. That’s not because I wanted to be seen with someone famous, but because of the kind of person I am. I’m basically quite shy. I would probably have been too shy to approach her in a bar and come out with all the chat to find out about her. But as I knew a little bit about her anyway, I didn’t need to go through all that. It sort of broke the ice. I knew who she was. She knew who I was. There was also an aura about her which I felt comfortable with. She’s fun to be around.

But it was a weird time to start a relationship. In a sense Alfie and Scott Johnson were right. I did find it hard to focus. I had never really had a serious girlfriend before, not since I was at school, anyway. Rugby had always come first and I hadn’t given much time or thought to relationships. But Charlotte and I just seemed to hit it off. She has an image in the newspapers of enjoying a good night out and a lot of drinking. She does like to party sometimes, but there are lots of different sides to her and her drinking isn’t as bad as they make out. She’s just a normal 19-year-old, enjoying her life.

So that was how I came to be sitting in a bar in Paris a few weeks later, exchanging text messages with my girlfriend after we had just beaten France. We had just won our third match of the Six Nations and had already beaten the two overwhelming favourites for the title. On and off the field, life felt good.

Financially, things were improving for me, too. I had come into professional rugby at 18 years of age and joined Swansea. It was the right decision from a playing perspective and I’m very glad I chose such a great club. But within a couple years the place was in financial meltdown. The club went into administration, wages were halved overnight, players left, and no-one knew what was around the corner. Thankfully, for me at least, the Neath-Swansea Ospreys lay around the corner and some much needed financial stability in my life. But by the time I went to Paris in late February 2005 my first contract with the region was drawing to an end and I had to decide on my future.

Talks about extending my contract had first begun back in the previous November but I had left it all with Pete, my agent, in order to concentrate fully on my rugby. My relationship with Pete is a good one and I trust him to look after my interests. He certainly seemed to have pulled off some pretty good deals for two of his other clients. Gareth Thomas was very happy at Toulouse and Colin Charvis had seen his career resurrected by joining Newcastle. Pete isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but then most agents in the game quickly divide opinion. But I was impressed by the fact that he soon realised my priority was to remain with the Ospreys in Wales rather than simply try and get as much money as possible from a move to England or France.

I was anxious to get things wrapped up so that I could focus fully on playing, but I was also aware that my standing in the game was changing. I had become a regular in the Wales team and there was interest in me from clubs in both England and France.

I could certainly have taken more money by leaving Wales, but so long as I felt the new deal from the Ospreys was a fair one I was more than happy to stay.

The Ospreys were having a very successful season. We were top of the Celtic League and more importantly I was enjoying my rugby there under the coaches, Lyn Jones and Sean Holley. I had no real desire to leave, even if I could have got maybe £30,000-a-year more by linking up with a French or English side. I felt very settled with the Ospreys and keen to remain there.

Eventually, an agreement was reached and I signed a new contract with the Ospreys. Pete had come over to Paris and I put pen to paper in a room in the team hotel. It was a four-year contract which ties me to the region until I am 27. A few of my team-mates, who had only signed two-year deals, were amazed I had committed myself for four years. But for me, it was relief. I don’t have to worry about my future for a while. The Swansea experience taught me that is much better to be in work and secure, than out of work and worrying about where your next pay packet is coming from. I also wanted to show my commitment to the region by pledging my future to them. They had shown a lot of faith in me by giving me regular rugby and I wanted to repay that trust.

After we had beaten France, we flew back to Cardiff on the Sunday and life could not have been sweeter. I was in the middle of this incredibly exciting journey with Wales, my regional future with the Ospreys had been sorted, and I was seeing Charlotte. Even without the half a dozen boys who were on Wales duty, the Ospreys continued to win during February and into March. They beat the Borders 34–10 at The Gnoll in Neath, gained an impressive 16–12 victory away in Dublin against Leinster, and then hammered the Newport Gwent Dragons, 30–0, at Swansea’s St. Helen’s ground. But while the Ospreys were homing in on one championship, most of my thoughts were on another. If we could beat Scotland, then we would be in a really strong position to face Ireland at home in what most people expected would be a Grand Slam decider for both countries.

We had a 15-day gap between the game in Paris and our trip to Murrayfield to meet Scotland which gave us all plenty of time to recover. All, that is, except Alfie, whose broken thumb had ruled him out of the remainder of the championship and cast something of a shadow over his Lions chances. Thankfully, though, Alfie stayed within the group as a non-playing captain and he remained a massive influence.

Scotland were going through a rough patch which they showed few signs of emerging from. They had been white-washed in the 2004 championship and although they had gained credit for their spirited performance in Paris in the opening round of 2005 the game had still ended in another defeat. The following week the Scots had been badly beaten at home by Ireland and even though they managed to scrape past Italy in round three the match had been an absolute stinker. We all knew, though, that Wales had a pretty poor record at Murrayfield in recent years and those of us used to going up to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the Celtic League had often found life difficult.

In the build-up, the big stress from the coaches and the management was that Scotland always came out with a big first 20 minutes. So long as we could contain their fire in that opening period, we felt we had the superior skills and extra fitness to win the game. As it turned out, we were just oozing confidence after beating France and in the opening minutes at Murrayfield almost everything we tried came off. Instead of a raging fire the Scots weren’t able to create a single spark. The truth is that we had won that game by half-time. We were 38–3 up at that stage and most of us switched off and started thinking about the Ireland match.

We had the best possible start with a try after just four minutes. It was a cracking one, too. Ryan Jones started it deep in our own half when he burst between two Scots – Stuart Grimes and Scott Murray – who tried to tackle him. The move was taken on by Kevin Morgan, Gethin Jenkins and Rhys Williams before Martyn Williams did brilliantly to put Ryan in for the touchdown. I was just behind Ryan and could tell we were going to score. But I was half-hoping he might get tackled so that I could claim the glory. That’s how confident we all felt. As it was, Ryan finished off what he had started.

It proved to be the start of something really big for Ryan. He not only ended the season turning up on the Lions tour in New Zealand as a replacement, but played in both the Second and Third Tests against the All Blacks. He had a storming game against Otago just after his arrival and his whole impact on the tour was massive – huge enough to make him one of the biggest successes on the trip.

But what people probably didn’t know that day in Edinburgh was that just a few minutes before Ryan was charging over for the try, he was being violently sick in the changing rooms. Nobody batted an eyelid because he does it before almost every game. I have never seen a guy get so nervous before matches. It doesn’t really make much difference what the game is, either. It can be a fairly routine Celtic League match for the Ospreys and Ryan will still be spewing. What makes it even worse for him is that he doesn’t really eat anything on the day of the game and yet he’s still spewing! It can’t be good for him. It’s nuts.

Now that he’s a big star for the Lions, I’m wondering whether or not Ryan will be able to control his stomach movements. I teased him a little bit after he made his Wales debut by asking him whether or not he was still planning to be sick before Ospreys games. It was the same after he played for the Lions. ‘Don’t you think you should stop spewing before Wales games now?’ He agreed it was overdue. But he’s a great guy, a fantastic back row forward, and despite all his pre-match nerves he’s an extremely confident person about his own ability.

Scotland actually put us under a bit of pressure after Ryan’s try. We were well stretched down our left-hand side but their outside-half, Dan Parks, chucked out a wild pass to no-one in particular. Rhys Williams snatched it out of the air and almost had the time to jog up their end to score under the posts. 14–0 to us and we knew we were still only warming up. Poor old Parks had a nightmare match, one of those days when everything he touched finished in a horrible mess. He was eventually substituted and I remember feeling very sorry for him as his own fans were booing him when he touched the ball and cheering when he was taken off. It’s not nice when you hear that kind of treatment given to any player. I’ve got to know Dan from chats after matches and he’s a sound guy who gives his all. You would think supporters would be aware that an international player is not going out of his way to be deliberately awful. In fact, I’ve never liked to hear players get booed when they are off their game. It happened towards the end of last season for my Wales team-mate Ceri Sweeney at the Newport Gwent Dragons. Ceri was going through a bad patch and the Dragons fans turned against him. I just don’t understand that. What kind of benefit does it give your team if you boo one of your own players every time he touches the ball? If that happened to me one day with the Ospreys, it would be the day I would consider moving on.

That might sound a bit extreme, but it’s true. The fans are the reason I like playing rugby in front of big crowds, rather than just for my own amusement before two men and a dog. It’s entertaining supporters that gives me a real buzz. If I’m thinking of watching Manchester United then I like to check the line-ups to see whether or not Cristiano Ronaldo is playing. If he is, then I get excited. That’s how I would like people to react to me as a rugby player. I would love it if fans of the Ospreys or Wales think that way about me – that my name on the team-list makes a big difference to how they view the game. I want to have the reputation of an entertainer, like Ronaldo. I want people to have the urge to watch me because they are not quite sure what I’m going to do next. If my own fans booed me then I don’t think I’d be able to cope.

I was actually having a quiet game in that first 40 minutes in Edinburgh. There was no need to do much else than master the basics. We were so slick in our passing and so instinctive in our movement that Scotland were left chasing shadows. After Rhys had scored, we added a penalty and then created another eye-catching try for Shane Williams with Martyn Williams’ handling skills again prominent in the move. Chris Paterson, another of the Scottish guys I get on well with, put them on the scoreboard with a penalty, but we were only midway through the half and it was already 24–3.

We went straight back onto the attack and Tom Shanklin ran through Rory Lamont to set up a fourth try for Kevin Morgan. Now the Scots looked very panicky every time we ran at them. Dwayne Peel, who creates so much danger when he suddenly takes off from around the fringes, left the Scottish defenders in his wake with another darting run and Kevin had a second try and our fifth. It was 38–3. It wasn’t even half-time. It was all over.

I was aware that my input had been fairly minimal. I hadn’t scored and I hadn’t had to do that much. Not that it bothered me, it really didn’t. Sometimes you just have to accept that you’re not going to be the main attraction. Of course, I’d love to make the headlines every week but rugby isn’t like that. It’s a team game and when you’re part of a team as good as we were in that first 40 minutes then you’re just happy to go along with the ride. I did what I needed to do, but the other players around me were doing plenty of damage on their own.

We came out for the second-half and scored a sixth try quite soon on. Dwayne, who was tearing Scotland to pieces, created space for Rhys Williams to stroll over. We didn’t manage any further tries, but I think the Scottish comeback had as much to do with our own wandering concentration as with any big improvement on their part. Scotland came back and scored three tries as we slacked off. I was replaced by Ceri Sweeney with about 15 minutes to go and watched the last moments from the sidelines. It was obvious we were tiring a little after our first-half efforts, but to be fair to the Scots they did play some good rugby in that last half hour. I think there’s a lesson in there for them which they need to take on board. They took a leaf out of our book and became willing to take risks in attack. They came at us from different areas of the field and they looked to try and keep the ball in hand, something we always strive to do. I think that has to be the future for Scotland and the basis for any recovery. They have the type of players who need that more adventurous approach and when the likes of the Lamont brothers, Rory and Sean, ran at us in that second-half they cause us problems. Not enough problems to ever threaten the result, though: it finished 46–22 to us.

The Scottish newspapers had been full of pictures of Charlotte on their front pages on the morning of the game, a Sunday. She had flown up to Edinburgh to watch the match with a gang of mates and they all seemed to be wearing cowboy hats with the words ‘Girls On Tour’ printed on them. But it remained a girls-only weekend. Within a few hours of the match finishing we were at Edinburgh Airport boarding our flight back to Cardiff. Our final game of the tournament, against Ireland, was just six days away and as the Irish had played the previous day then the Welsh management wanted to try and lessen the advantage the Irish had of an extra day’s training.

Ireland may have had an extra 24 hours of recovery time for their bodies, but on that Sunday it was probably their minds that needed more attention. Their own Grand Slam dreams had bitten the dust. Despite carrying victories over Italy, Scotland and England under their belts they couldn’t cope with France who had won 26–19 in Dublin on the Saturday afternoon. Not even a brilliant individual try from Brian O’Driscoll – who would go on to be my Lions captain – could save them. The Irish could still mathematically win the Six Nations title, but as far as the Grand Slam was concerned, it would either be ours or nobody’s.

‘Nobody in the squad is talking about a Grand Slam. We’re just treating the build-up as if we were playing any other game,’ claimed Mike Ruddock in the papers on the Monday morning. All I can say is that Mike must have flown home on a different plane. Everyone was talking about the Grand Slam. In fact, it’s all we were talking about. The management may not have uttered the phrase to the players for fear of breaking the spell, but everyone from 1 to 22 chipped in with their own thoughts of what it would mean if we pulled it off. We imagined what the reaction might be among the fans and the media, how the hype and the level of coverage would go through the roof. Someone also rightly pointed out that it might mean an end to people banging on about the old days of the Seventies.

I don’t want to appear disloyal about this. What the great Welsh teams of the 1970s achieved for the country was unbelievable. To win three Grand Slams in eight years and five Triple Crowns was an incredible achievement. But I was born in 1982. I have no memories of any members of that side outside of the re-runs I’ve seen on television. Gareth Edwards, Barry John, Phil Bennett, JPR Williams, Gerald Davies – these were obviously brilliant players – but they are from my father’s generation so it’s hard for me to feel the same kind of connection as my old man does. The same goes for all the other players in the present day Welsh squad. Even Gareth Llewellyn was just a kid back then!

All the current squad have massive respect for what those guys did. But what has annoyed us in the past is when those players from previous eras slag off the current ones. They have questioned our desire, our commitment, the way we have played the game, and lots of other things – often when they themselves have lost touch with the modern game and rarely even watch it. That is when you lose respect. I have to say I don’t want to name names and I don’t even know if those kinds of criticism have been directed at me. I tend not to read the coverage of Welsh rugby in the newspapers or watch much of it on TV. But I have much more time for the ex-international who actually comes up to you, face-to-face, and tells you what he thinks of your performance – good or bad. I put Jonathan Davies in that category. He’s always been honest and straight about my performances, but also constructive. I just about remember Jonathan as a kid before he went to rugby league but he is someone I have a lot of respect for. The same goes for Ieuan Evans, someone I loved watching on the wing for Wales. Mark Ring, who played for Wales and Cardiff in the late 1980s and early 1990s was another of my favourite players because of his attitude. He was an outrageous entertainer who was willing to try anything.

The bottom line, though, is that former players – even those who were your heroes – are in the past. Players live in the present. They want to make their own history and that was all that mattered to us as we touched down in Cardiff on that Sunday night.