“Every cap is my first, and every one is my last… that’s the way I look at it.”
“I’ve got it all: I’m good-looking, I’m educated, I can sing, and I can play rugby. Ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“You’re not going to please everyone, but then, it’s not about pleasing people: it’s about winning rugby games.”
“I am proud of being a bad loser. Bad losers are winners. That is the way it should be.”
“I never counted on playing rugby: I was just another fat kid chasing an egg. It has gone pretty well.”
“It’s very easy to quantify performances and personal accolades, but ultimately, I’m in a team sport, and it’s about winning.”
“When it comes to talking about beating certain teams, we can be narrow-minded when we need to look at the bigger picture.”
“What you put in, you usually get out. If you are not good enough on the day, fine, but if you put in everything you have, you usually get a decent result. When you lose, it motivates you to go again, not dwell on the past.”
“You have to be competitive in the job I am in.”
“I don’t regret the way I approached things, because otherwise I wouldn’t have achieved what I did, but when I look back, I could have enjoyed things more.”
“You’re as good as your next game, not your previous, so I’ll focus on the next one.”
“Losing hurts, it always hurts, and it should hurt.”
“My wife says to me, ‘You have achieved a lot’… yeah, I do know. But… there are a couple of things I haven’t.”
“It is easy to overthink things, and I am good at that.”
“You do not have time in international rugby to stop and think, ‘This is tough.’ It’s more a case of, ‘Let’s crack on.’ Where’s your next job? Fill a hole for someone who has just made a tackle?”
“There is ways and means to vent, and sometimes they can be the wrong ways.”
“Things come and go – there’s win, losses, and injuries, but you get back on the horse – but I appreciate what I’ve done more.”
“I’m very fortunate I’ve got a good support network.”
“A draw is the lesser of two evils. A loss or a draw, then obviously we are going to take the draw.”
“Going out there as a forward can shorten your career somewhat, whereas if you go out as a back, you will be OK.”
“I’ve no regrets. I don’t think you can afford to.”
“I wear my stripes on my sleeve, and I am not afraid to show them.”
“Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.”
“Some losses are harder to take than others. You can lose and play well. It is when you lose and don’t do the things you worked on and don’t do what you say you would that is difficult.”
“I’m thankful for the collaboration between the WRU and Ospreys, which will look after my best interests and enables me to play the best rugby possible.”
“You cannot expect teams to be up for a final every Saturday, but you have to in the Six Nations, and that is the difficulty we have.”
“We don’t want Welsh rugby to be seen as healthy or upbeat. If we think that, we could become complacent or stagnate.”
“People often ask whether you’d alter anything about your life. I can honestly say I wouldn’t change a thing.”
“For me, representing Wales really was a dream.”
“Ultimately I’m the captain, but if someone can’t get themselves in the right state to play, it’s not my job. If they don’t want to come into work determined to be the best they can be, they’re in the wrong job.”
“It’s great having a good academy, but if you can’t pay the players you’re producing, what’s the point of it?”
“It really gets my back up when people start using business phrases – ‘sustainability,’ ‘the brand,’ etc. – about rugby.”
“There are real people on the pitch. We’re not commodities. Well, maybe we are to some degree, but it’s the team which creates business. Some people don’t appreciate that.”
“I am a big believer that change is good.”
“I think a global season, moving it a bit towards summer, can only be a good thing from a playing and commercial point of view, but it would take a massive shift, and I do not know if it would happen in my career.”
“I find it hard to believe that anyone could be playing regularly and saying they do not have a niggle. It is the nature of the beast, what you get when you play a lot of rugby: you have to get another niggle to forget about the one you already have.”
“I would like to think I am well aware of what the Lions are about and what they represent, but out of respect for your body and the players who are putting up their hands to be selected, you keep it at arm’s length.”
“I do not know if I will stay in the game when I do retire; I have got humanity, so I do not know if I will go into law.”
“There’s always going to be questions asked where there is competition, and as long as you can answer those questions, then you’re deserving of a place.”
“I like to think I am a happy angry person, if that makes sense.”
“I am competitive because it is fun, a mentality thing, and it is something you have to be in this job.”
“I always want to be first.”
“I am paid to play, and the coaches are paid to plan, and that is what they have to do.”
“A bugbear of mine is bragging rights in regional derbies: it would be a lot more worth to the regional game if we did something special in European rugby.”
“I’m in no position to tell a fan how to support us. What I’d say is keep doing what you’re doing; it means a lot to the team.”
“There’s always a team behind the team. We’ve got our off-field guys looking after us.”
“I’d love to feature for the Barbarians. I’d love to win a Champions Cup, and I’d love to get to another World Cup and make a fist of it: get to a World Cup final at least and see what could have been, particularly after 2011 when Wales reached the semi-finals.”
“We are very conscious of our poor record against the SANZAR nations. We’ve simply not done well enough against New Zealand or South Africa.”
“Welsh rugby has done its dirty washing in public. It’s nothing new. We’re a tribal bunch. If warring parties want to sway public opinion, they do it in the public arena.”
“I’m not the only one that’s joined in the Maro Itoje song, to be honest with you!”
“There are always going to be questions asked when there is competition. As long as you can answer those questions, then you are deserving of a place.”
“I don’t compare myself with anyone.”
“You can only use what God gave you.”
“From a personal point of view, I wouldn’t have been happy with one cap but would always have been happy with two. I never counted on getting to 80.”
“When you lose, it motivates you to go again.”
“We’ve got a great team sport, but we harp on about individuals. It’s a bit contradictory.”
“Without being too profound, I never dreamt of getting 100 caps for Wales.”
“I got to a stage in my mid-20s where I was focusing on ‘what’s next, what’s next,’ and sometimes you don’t enjoy what you should.”
“I’ve got a family now, which matures you.”
“Ultimately, as players, we are inside the tent, and we have got to deal with what happens between the white lines.”
“I was watching the Five Nations as a kid, I’m very fortunate to have been able to pull the red jersey on a few times, and now I’m able to assist the team, assist the young players coming through, and help the guys who do have the ambition to play more for Wales.”
“I don’t really want followers, to be honest; that’s what Twitter is for. I want people who can make their own decisions and look after their own departments.”
“Before I was ‘the captain’ with the label – because essentially, that’s all it is – I was a player, and before that, I was a fan of the game, fan of the team.”
“When I retire, my CV might have a few holes, things I haven’t achieved that I would have felt I needed to do, but I won’t know if I did need to do them until I retire.”
“Whatever you do, whether you’re a journalist or a player, you want to see what you can do – that’s why you’re doing it.”
“I’ll look at stats after a game to see the work I’ve done in different areas.”
“You know when you’ve had a good game, and you know when you could have done better.”
“I am probably a bit numb upstairs, which is sometimes a good thing.”
“If we have given everything we can, you are not settling for mediocrity because the better team won. Sometimes you have to have that mindset to be able to improve rather than keep telling yourself you should have won.”
“I know there are certain things I may never achieve depending on whether I stay at the Ospreys or go.”
“If you had a global calendar, then you would have less games; you create more intrigue, create supply and demand with regards to the sport, and that will heighten the intrigue with regards to the Lions. Create more mystique not only at international level but at club level as well.”
“As you get older, you realise you can’t worry about mistakes; you just worry about playing, and I’ve been doing that.”
“If I make a mistake, I just shrug it off and carry on.”
“If I talk to a young player, I always tell them never try too hard.”
“I am always optimistic.”
“As I grow older, I like to think I’m getting a little bit more mature.”
“As individuals, we don’t sometimes let ourselves enjoy things that we possibly should because of ways you want to be perceived, which is a silly thing as well.”
“I’ll look back on my career as a whole and at parts of it and say I should have enjoyed that more. I suppose that’s my own fault.”
“The higher up the rugby ladder you go, the differences between winning and losing games get smaller and smaller.”
“The longer I have played, the perception of myself has changed. I conduct myself to other players a bit better.”
“I usually don’t talk for three days after a defeat. Then you have an epiphany and realise it’s just a game.”
“Ultimately, rugby players are like surfers. You look for the perfect wave, but you don’t always find it. And if you did, you’d probably pack up and try something else.”
“That’s the great thing about this sport: it’s always different.”
“Apparently, I’m the angriest man. I don’t know. It’s just an interpretation. If it was someone else, they might be called focused or competitive. I’m not that angry or grumpy, but if you want to say I’m angry because I’m focused or competitive, then that’s okay.”
“I’m happy in what I do, and I just like cracking on, doing what I love. The people around me know who I am, and that’s what means the most.”
“Players want to play a lot of rugby. We’re walking contradictions at times in that we want to play a lot of rugby, but we don’t want to play too much rugby, and we want to be available for all the big games, yet there are times when you have to sacrifice that because of game limits.”
“I did GCSE’s and A-levels. I did my finals after the Lions tour in 2009 to get my law degree. So I’ve always had an eye on life beyond playing, irrelevant of the period in my career.”
“It doesn’t matter how young or old you are, and whatever jersey you wear, you realise the derby games prick up the hairs on the backs of people’s necks.”
“Happiness is dangerous. If you’re happy, you’re content, and if you’re content, you can become complacent.”
“I’ll know when to retire when I don’t want to push myself anymore.”
“I know part of me is going to die when I stop playing rugby.”
“I look back at all the contracts I’ve had, and I never assumed I would get another one. Honestly. I don’t take anything for granted. Nothing.”
“To a point, family does that and a couple of life experiences both positive and negative that have definitely altered my perception on rugby. Whereas my first 28-29 years, rugby was the entire focus, which was not that healthy, now you realise what is really important.”
“It is very easy to make athletes, and it is very difficult to make rugby players with that rugby instinct. I would like to think I have got a bit of rugby instinct and have become more of a rugby athlete along the way.”
“I don’t think you need to go global rugby to save the Lions, but I think you need to go global rugby to save rugby and not lose things like the Lions.”
“Ultimately, we are professional rugby people, and we focus on the rugby. That’s the easy bit. We are not politicians, so we don’t have to delve too much into that.”
“Whatever career you are in, you always have other distractions.”
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