James Haskell will never forget the occasion when he first encountered Liam Williams on a rugby field.
The self-styled bomb defuser had made it into the professional ranks after emerging at Waunarlwydd. A scaffolder used to operating at heights of up to 300ft at Port Talbot Steelworks, he had earned everything he had achieved in rugby. He was diamond-hard, with zero airs and graces, the way he is now.
And even after winning caps for Wales, he took time to rein in some of the, er, more vigorous aspects of his game.
Let 77-cap England international Haskell take up the story. “I remember the first time I played against Liam Williams, I tackled him, he got up, trod on my hand and kneed me in the head. I was like: ‘What the hell?’
“I said to him afterwards: ‘What the hell are you doing?’ He said: ‘Sorry, I was playing in league three not that long ago. I forgot where I was.’
“I told him it was fine.
“I got on well with him on the Lions tour of 2017. We had some good nights out together.”
It’s a strange one with Haskell.
Many have preconceptions about him before getting to know him. He is speaking to us to promote the hugely successful The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast, which he and fellow England international Mike Tindall are taking on tour, with dates at St David’s Hall in Cardiff on May 4 and Swansea Arena on May 15.
He is open and sometimes appears to operate without a filter, but he’s affable with it and says he got on well with all the Welsh boys on the Lion tour five years ago, name-checking Jonathan Davies, Taulupe Faletau, Dan Biggar, Williams and Justin Tipuric, among others.
“All of them were fantastic,” he said.
“People had mixed ideas what I’d be like, but when I came back from the tour loads of fans said to me: ‘I used to think you were a dick, but I’ve heard from the lads you were a good boy.’
“Welsh fans are nice to me, English fans are nice to me.
“So the boys must be going about reporting good things!
“I love all of them: Toby Faletau, Justin Tipuric’s one of the best rugby players I have ever seen — his skill.
“I made friends for life on that tour.”
Tipuric made a particular impression in terms of his quality.
“He’s an incredible player," said Haskell.
“Sam Warburton’s brilliant, but I think Justin Tipuric would have started in any [other] international side: the skill-set, his workrate. The only thing that ever got levelled against him was physicality, in terms of his size. But the whole point of a back row is that you create balance. He tackles like anybody’s business, but if you’re concerned about that you can ram another massive unit next to him.
“He’s the only back-row player I’ve ever met who has his own move, namely the chip over the top. I remember doing a lineout and the coach said: ‘Right, Justin, you’re out here, you get the ball.’ He ran, chipped it over the top and then someone ran around and got it.
“I was, like: ‘My turn to have a go at that.’
“I was told: ‘No, no, no. You don’t have that move.’
“So he was amazing.”
Had things turned out differently Haskell could have played for Wales.
He qualifies through a Welsh connection on his mother’s side, having revealed in the past “we were kind of all from Cross Hands and Upper Tumble”.
It reached a point where he explored a link with the Welsh Exiles at the same time as he played for England U18s.
How close was he to throwing his lot in with Wales? “I was very close,” he said. “Everyone who discovered that says: ‘Well, you wouldn’t have got in the Welsh team, anyway.’ I always laugh and tell them they’re probably right. They also say if I’d gone for it I would have won some more Grand Slams, and they’re right about that as well.
“I did all the Welsh Exiles stuff at the same as I was doing England U18s.
“It was weird and what I think people, fans, sometimes find hard to understand is that I didn’t play rugby for my country because I had an incredible passion for my country and I’m a die-hard nationalist. I did what I did to be the best at what I could do. If playing for Uruguay was the best I could achieve, I would have done that. That’s my mindset. People talk about passions and rivalries, but I never hated anyone. I never wanted to win over anyone more than anything. I just wanted to play the best I could play and, ultimately, for my team to perform and for me to enjoy doing it.”
He chose England, though.
“I went to school in England, I’m pretty white middle-class. You can’t disguise my accent. It was a lot of travelling to get to Wales. It just came down to it and I thought: ‘I’m going to have a go with England.’
“From then on, when Wasps started taking notice of me and stuff, it made more sense for me to be with England. With the Welsh team I was playing for being a development side, the England team was slightly more ahead at that time. That’s what it came down to, otherwise I don’t know what I could have done.
“I could have tried to play for Wales 100 percent. I have a lot of friends in the Welsh team, I love Wales. I love the Principality Stadium, the Millennium Stadium as it was then.
“It was closer than you would have thought.”
He almost pitched up in Welsh regional rugby, too. “I almost signed for the Ospreys,” he said. “ I went down, sat down, talked to everyone. Again, I was pretty keen on that, to play with Alun Wyn Jones, who I played against in age-grade stuff, with his performances in the Wales squad, his dedication.
“They had Sean Holley at the time. The whole Ospreys side was basically the Wales side. I thought it could be a good idea to come down there and really learn my craft. Yes, there’d be a lot of animosity, an English international playing in the league there, but, ultimately, France seemed like a better decision for me. With all due respect to Swansea, it was touch and go, but Paris is a nice place to live.”
So Haskell left for Stade Francais.
He tells an amusing story about expenses during his teenage years: “Obviously it’s a bit tongue in cheek, but with England, the RFU are very officious, telling you what you have to do and you have to fill in forms.’
“I would claim the expenses back (from the RFU), even though my parents were driving me and that would keep me in pizza money or whatever.
“When I went with Wales a bloke used to pull out a little briefcase full of cash and a calculator and you’d just go up and he’d say: ‘Where’ve you come from?’
“You were, like: ‘Eh, London.’
“And he’d be like: “What?’
“You’d say: ‘London.’
“He’d get his calculator out and say: ‘Right, that’s 300 quid, we’ll give you 300 quid in cash.’
“He did raise an eyebrow when I said I’d come from Serbia.
"He said: 'How have you…’
“I said: ‘Family holiday, I’ve come all the way. That’s five grand, please.’
“I was joking, but it was just nice you got it in cash. My dad was always trying to tell ’em I was coming way further than I was.”
Haskell has watched Alun Wyn Jones being named in the Wales team this week for his first game back after almost five months out with injury. There have been suggestions that sentiment could have influenced the call as he prepares to become the first man to complete 150 caps. But last summer he skippered the Lions and it’s hard to believe picking him could weaken a team, well though Will Rowlands has been playing.
Haskell said: I remember playing in the Grand Slam game against Wales in 2013 which we lost.
“That p***es me off because England coach Stuart Lancaster brought me on with five minutes to go to win my 50th cap. That’s not how I wanted to do it. I never got to lead my country out on a [milestone] cap. It’s still, like, ‘f**k’s sake, why did you {do it]? When you’re getting pumped 30-something, why would you bring me on? What am I going to do?’
“So I never got to lead my country out, which is a regret of mine.”
On Jones he said: “Will Rowlands is a player I played with at Wasps. It’s never nice not to get an opportunity.
“In sport you rarely do things because you ought to or should do or whatever.
“But when you get to a stage like that — 150 caps — I’m a romantic and I’d always let him have that opportunity to do it at home, because you just never know when it’s going to be the last.
“Didn’t Johnny Wilkinson finish in his late 90s in terms of caps, not ever getting to a hundred?
“You just want to give that guy an opportunity.
“And it’s against Italy. No disrespect to them, but I just think it’s the perfect time, the perfect opportunity.
“If I was coach, I would have done it one hundred percent. I would have said to Will: ‘You’re going to get on, but you understand this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.”
Pivac clearly wants to see Jones back on the field, anyway, and the probability is Rowlands will feature in the second half. That said, there’s probably a human element to the call and after all Jones has done for Wales it seems hard to rail against it.
Which is Haskell’s point.
He’s been impressed by Wayne Pivac. “I like him,” he said. “I didn’t know a lot about him until I interviewed him for our The Good, The Bad and The Rugby podcast. Both me and Mike Tindall said afterwards: ‘Wow, we want to play for that guy.’ I didn’t know what to expect. I’d not seen interviews with him. I didn’t know what he was going to be like. I wondered whether I was going to like him.
“But we came off that interview and I thought he was a very good man."
Maybe it’s the Cross Hands and Upper Tumble connection.
But the man doesn’t dislike Wales.
James Haskell and Mike Tindall hit the road with the debut tour for their hit podcast The Good, The Bad and The Rugby: St David’s Hall, Cardiff, on Wednesday, May 4; Swansea Arena, Swansea on Sunday, May 15.
Tickets are on sale NOW from www.cuffeandtaylor.com
