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MICHAEL OWEN MY STORY
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PROLOGUE
STREET RUGBY
THE VALLEY COMMANDOES
WALES AT LAST
VALLEYS RUGBY ABANDONED
WATCHING THE WORLD CUP
GRAND SLAM GLORY
THE MUTED LIONS
RUDDOCK-GATE
A WORLD CUP TO REMEMBER
SITTING OUT A GRAND SLAM
NEW BEGINNINGS
THE END
REFLECTIONS
A RUGBY WIFE’S TALE
APPENDICES
Club Appearances
British Lions Tour 2005
Wales Tests
Copyright
THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF THE BRITISH LIONS AND
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That summer I was chosen to go on a Welsh development tour of Canada. At one point, there was talk that as many as eight Pontypridd players would make the cut but, in the end, only Ceri and I were selected. This was a very different experience for me as the squad contained a real mix of young and experienced players. I remember feeling a bit out of it, on the fringes at times. Some of the management treated you a bit differently on that tour, probably because there were so many older and established players, and I felt on the periphery of things as the second youngest player there. Graham Henry was also on the trip, but he remained pretty detached from us, just observing, and when he did speak to us he was quite harsh.
We played five games and I started the first game in Newfoundland against Eastern Canada. I was moved from number eight into the second row and played in a 32–17 win over Young Canada in Alberta, too. I preferred number eight, but Henry wanted me to play more at blindside. The team won all five games, but I didn’t play against Canada A, which was the main game. We pretty much went coast to coast and the tour was an amazing experience, I was still only nineteen years old and I wanted to be more involved. When I got back, my mother had saved a cutting from the Daily Mirror. Graham Henry had written a piece about the tour, mentioning all the players. According to him, I needed to work on a couple of things but had a top attitude. It’s funny looking back at that trip. You could eat whatever you wanted and go up and order anything you wanted, with the WRU picking up the bill, but I can’t remember doing any weights. It’s totally different today and, with hindsight, it was a way of doing things that created a terrible culture, but that was just how Welsh rugby was back then. There was a massive drinking culture on that trip, too. In short, it was all a bit of a holiday, but the boys who were partying hardest were still somehow managing to play the best. Coming away from the tour, I felt that the coaches didn’t appreciate what I could do on the pitch.
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