Open Side: The Official Autobiography

And tackling, as the coach on the sidelines saw, is very much my thing.

The one constant through changing teams and changing years: Ben. On that grass verge near our house or on a pitch a few minutes away, we’re always playing; not just football now, but rugby and cricket too. God knows how much we cost Mum and Dad in broken windows, though of course we don’t really realise that things cost money.

The other thing we don’t realise is how much time we’re putting in to making ourselves better, because it never seems like a chore. In years to come Malcolm Gladwell will write in his book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours to really master something, and Ben and I are putting in a lot of these hours without even realising it.

We do lots of one on ones, trying to beat each other. Ben’s where I get my competitive edge from. But no matter how much we want to beat each other, we always help each other along too. We make suggestions and point out where we think the other one’s going wrong. We work together and look out for each other. We don’t lay into each other or put each other down. We’re best mates.

2001. I’m still playing football, not just for Whitchurch – such a relief to watch Gareth tormenting other defenders week in, week out, shielding the ball from three players at once and then weaving through them like a magician – but also for Lisvane. It’s quite an affluent area of Cardiff, and a lot of the teams we play against take the mickey out of us for being posh lads and that. But we’re good – we go a couple of years undefeated – and we can look after ourselves.

When we play Grangetown, which is a rough and tough area, I’m determined to show we’re not going to let ourselves be intimidated. I come in hard on this kid, and he jumps on my back and tries to punch me. I hold his arms out like a crucifix and walk him all the way over to the ref so he can deal with him.

‘You ever come past JD Sports,’ this kid says afterwards, ‘we’ll be waiting.’

I know that he and his mates hang around there, and that a handful of them against one of me is going to be a different story. I give JD Sports a miss for the next couple of months.

Besides, I’ve slightly tarnished Lisvane’s reputation. Before I started playing for them, they prided themselves on a spotless disciplinary record. The first season I’m there, I get two red cards and three yellows. I’m being physical rather than dirty, but it doesn’t matter.

I realise that football doesn’t have enough aggro for me. Football’s a contact sport, but rugby’s a collision sport. I need to smash people when I play.

2002. We’re playing Llanhari. Their number 8’s a big lad, running to fat, and he’s nasty too. We’re not yet a quarter of the way through the match when I see him choking our scrum-half: proper choking, lifting him off his feet while holding him by the neck, all that.

I see red. I smash into this lad as hard as I can, picking him up and throwing him down head first. I don’t know how dangerous this is, of course; none of us do. I’m just enraged that he’s picking on one of my team-mates, and the smallest lad on the pitch to boot. Besides, dump tackling’s my trademark, my way of stamping my authority on the game and getting my team behind me. In each game I play, I don’t look to dump the smallest guy on their team, but the biggest one.

Having seen red once, I see it again when the ref sends me off. I can’t complain, but equally I won’t apologise. I’m not a dirty player, and I never do anything illegal unless provoked; but if someone starts something, I’m determined to be the one to finish it. And I’ll never back down from defending a team-mate. Even a chopsing scrum-half, talking back to people.

I’m waiting for the bell to start school when I first see him. He’s walking across the yard with a file in his hand, and it’s the way he’s walking which really catches my eye: upright, purposeful, military. Even before we’ve exchanged a word, I know this is not a man who’s going to settle for second best.

He’s called Gwyn Morris, and he’s our new PE teacher.

The hardest-working player will win, that’s what he tells us. If you work harder than your opposition, you will win. Twice a week he has us training for an hour before school and an hour afterwards. It’s not all physical stuff – we’re 14 years old, and you can’t push growing bodies too hard – but tactical and mental too. Mr Morris doesn’t just want us to work hard, but also work smart.

Be professional, he says. Professional isn’t about getting paid. It’s about the way you approach things and the standards you set. It’s about never being satisfied with your performance and always wanting to analyse your game, to see what you could do better next time round.

April 2003. We win the Welsh Schools championship. The final is at the Millennium Stadium, where only a few weeks earlier Wales were playing Six Nations matches against England and Ireland. (They lost both of those, and their three away matches too, for a whitewash and a wooden spoon.)

The stadium’s almost empty, but it doesn’t matter. Ben and I become the first twins to play at the Millennium (he plays in the centre), and I score two tries. It’s a great team full of great lads. Afterwards, on the bus back to school, I have a profound sense of satisfaction: a glow, really. We did it. We worked hard for it, and we worked smart for it, and we did it.

We’re singing and laughing and joking, and we feel like kings of the world.

I go for a trial at Cardiff City FC. Very quickly, I realise two things. First, there’s no one here who’s remotely as good as Gareth. It’s hard to know quite how good someone is when you only have the schools you play by way of comparison, but Cardiff are a decent club – they’ll get promotion to Division One, a step down from the Premier League, next season – so if Gareth’s better than all these kids then he really must be something special.

And second, I’m not good enough. This is a step too far for me. I’m a little sad, because football’s been my first love for as long as I can remember, but sooner or later I’d have to choose between football and rugby. This has made my decision for me, and deep down it’s probably the decision I wanted to make anyway.

October. For our 15th birthday, Mum and Dad give Ben and me a multigym, which we put in the garage. We train there after school.

I keep thinking of what Mr Morris said. Whoever works hardest will win.

I go to the school gym at lunchtime to do weights. Sad Lad, a couple of girls call me when they see me coming out dripping with sweat. I don’t care. I’m not too cool to make it look like it’s all beneath me. Gym, weights, speed stuff, I’m mad for it all. I drop honey sandwiches for tins of tuna, crisps for pieces of fruit.

Whoever works hardest will win.

December. We get 21 days’ holiday over Christmas, and I train at the school on 20 of those days. The 21st is Christmas Day, and the only reason I don’t train then is that the place is locked and I can’t get in.

Whoever works hardest will win.

2004. I start to train my mind as well as my body.

Whenever we play a match, I have to be better than my opposite number. You hear whispers on the circuit: oh, Pembrokeshire have got a good number 7, or Llanelli, or Pontypridd. And I’m thinking, Well, he can’t be as good as me. He can’t be as good an athlete as me, or train as hard as me, or want it as much as I do. So no matter how good he thinks he is, I’m better.

Whoever I play for, there’s only one number 7 shirt. I’m the best 7 at Whitchurch, which is a huge school. I’m better than everyone I play against, every 7 in all 26 of Cardiff’s secondary schools, and all across Wales. I’m the best 7 in Wales.

And if that’s the case, and it is, then why shouldn’t I be better than every schoolboy 7 in England, Scotland and Ireland, because I train harder than they do too?

I take it further. I keep hearing about this team, this almost mythical band of brothers who comprise the four Home Nations and only come together once every four years. The Lions. The British and Irish Lions.

If I’m the best schoolboy 7 among the four Home Nations, and if I keep that going into senior level, and if I’m better than everyone in a 10-year age range too – if I continue to be better than every 7 I play against, no matter how old they are – then why shouldn’t I play for the Lions one day?

There’s a questionnaire for the rugby team. One of the questions is ‘What’s your ultimate ambition?’

‘British and Irish rugby legend,’ I write.

‘That’s a bit big-headed,’ says Dad when he sees it.

I shrug. ‘It’s true, though.’

Mr Morris nods when I tell him what I wrote. ‘Aim for the stars, lad,’ he says. ‘If you fail, you’ll still reach the sky.’

I win player of the year for Cardiff Schools Under-15s. I smile sweetly when I go up to accept the award and shake the hand of the guy presenting me with the award, but inside I’m seething.

Sure, I’ve won it this year, but the previous year I was on the bench all season and only played 17 minutes. I’d been a regular starter for the three years before that, and I was playing as well as anyone for Whitchurch, so why the difference?

Because the coach was getting free golf lessons off the number 7’s dad, that’s why.

To start with, I know her only as the badminton girl.

I hardly ever see her around. The school’s so huge – 12 classes in each year – that it’s split across two sites, and she’s usually on the other site from me. All I know is that she plays badminton at age group for Wales, and she looks really nice.

In year 10 we get to be in a maths class together. Friday afternoon, really bored, I’m sitting with my mates at the back, and we do what boys have done in mixed classes since pretty much the dawn of time: we start rating the girls out of ten. When it comes to Rachel Thomas, I go, ‘Oh, four,’ just so no one thinks I’m too keen. But inside I’m thinking, She looks really nice. Not just attractive, though of course she is – brown hair, big eyes, wide smile – but a really nice person too.

One of my mates adds her to my list on MSN Messenger, and we start chatting. Two years of messaging before we meet in person! Even though – and this is the really insane bit – all the time she lives four doors down from me, and neither of us ever know. We don’t even bump into each other on the street when going to and from school. She tells me all about her family, which is tight and close like mine: she has two sisters, her parents are always loving and loyal, they’ve got the same values I’ve been brought up with.

And just as I’ve never had a girlfriend, she’s never had a boyfriend. I ask her if we can meet up – anywhere you like, I say, even if it’s just for five minutes outside your house with a bag of sweets. She’s wary. She knows I play rugby, and she knows what kind of reputation the rugby boys have – girls and drinking and bad behaviour. I’m not like that, I say, but of course that’s just the kind of thing someone who was like that would say. No point in saying it. I have to show her. Once she gets to know me, she’ll see I’m really not like all the other rugby guys.

Christmas. The Lions are due to tour New Zealand next year. My folks give me a Lions jersey with 7 on the back: a real 7, with the Lions logo at the bottom. I wear this shirt everywhere, absolutely everywhere. I wear it to the gym, and out running, and in the school library when it’s a non-uniform day, and when sitting at home. Sometimes I even let Mum wash it.

2005. Rugby players have a bit of an image as thick louts, and I’m determined to be neither. I’m in the top third of my classes; not super-intelligent by any means, but better than average. Only two teachers reckon I won’t do well in my GCSEs. My biology teacher predicts a D, my RE teacher says E. No way, I tell them both. I’ll get an A. I might not be able to work everything out for myself from scratch, but I’m good at parrot learning, and if that’s what it takes then that’s what it takes. You can argue that the exam system is wrong and that it doesn’t take into account things that it should do, but it’s like wanting to play rugby at 7 – don’t bitch about it, just get on with it.

Prove the doubters wrong. It’s the easiest way of making me do something, to tell me that I won’t.

I get A’s in both RE and biology, just like I said I would. The RE teacher runs up to me and hugs me, thrilled that I’ve proved her wrong.

The biology teacher doesn’t say a word.

The prom, end of year 11. Rach is there. I’m more nervous than I’ve ever been before a rugby match. Do it, I say to myself. Talk to her. She’s right here. It’s now or never.

So I do. We sit on a bench and chat. It’s the happiest day of my life, honestly it is.

And that’s it. From that moment onwards, I’ve got no interest in any other girl. I know she’s the one for me. She’s the one I’m going to marry.

When you know, you know. And I know.

July. I immerse myself in the Lions tour to New Zealand, getting up at stupid o’clock to watch some of the games. Martyn Williams is my hero, and I’m so thrilled when he makes it onto the pitch as a replacement in the third Test, even though both the match and the series are long gone by then. I’m also transfixed by the way Marty Holah at 7 plays for the Maori All Blacks when they beat the Lions before the Test series begins.

The next time my beloved Lions shirt comes back from the wash, I fold it neatly and put it in the bottom of a drawer.

‘What’s up?’ Mum says. ‘Don’t you like wearing it anymore?’

‘Next time I wear that top,’ I reply, ‘it’s going to be the real thing.’

Rach and I start going out. I’m lovesick, quite literally; every time I see her, I’m so nervous that I throw up beforehand. I’ve only ever been sick before a match once, and even that was just reflex from a cough I had, but with Rachel it happens every time. ‘I’m not sure this is normal,’ Mum says. Maybe not, I think, but Kyle in South Park used to get sick like this too whenever he met a girl, so at least I’ve got company (even if that company is a cartoon character).

Sometimes it even happens when I’m with Rachel, in the car for example. ‘Rach, can you pull over? I just – there’s something I need to get behind that post-box.’ And then I’m out of the car and chucking my guts up behind the post-box, as if it’s two in the morning and I’ve had a skinful.

If I haven’t learned the lesson from last year’s case of free golf tuition, I do this time round. I’m playing two years up by now, and we go to face Glantaf. Last time we played them my opposite number started strangling me, and when I fought back he bit my finger. At the next kick-off, I told the fly-half to put it on him, and when he caught it I forearmed him in the face as hard as I could. He never came back at me for the rest of the game.

So there’s a bit of history here. I’m thinking about this and looking to see whether this bloke’s going to be playing again today, so when I see a Cardiff Blues car parked near the pitch I don’t take much notice. I assume they’re there to watch one of the Glantaf boys, a big, hard-running back called Jamie Roberts.

Turns out they know all about Jamie, and it’s me they’ve come to watch.

I do well at a Cardiff Blues academy training session and get taken on there. They pay me £50 a month, which for a teenage boy is the dog’s bollocks. No paper round, protein shakes whenever I want, travel expenses too. Happy days.

Not quite. The coach is really down on me, giving me three or four out of 10 when I know I’ve played much better than that. Not just one game or two, but every single time. Maybe he’s trying to motivate me, but if so there are better ways of going about it. I’m not a professional player, not yet. I’m a schoolboy who like all teenagers keeps a lot of insecurities tucked away behind the façade. Am I good enough? Am I tough enough? Am I wasting my time here?

Just as bad, he keeps putting me in the second row. I’m not a second row. I’m a 7. That’s where I play, that’s where I’m best.

One night, after another three out of 10 in the second row, I come home in tears. I go straight to the multigym and smash out as hard a session as I can manage, way harder than normal. I’m at it for an hour and a half, fuelled by rage and frustration, pumping weights until I can’t move my arms, screaming at the walls.

‘Sam!’ It’s Mum. She’s standing by the door. I don’t know how long she’s been there. ‘Sam, what’s going on?’

I tell her. She takes me inside the house and calms me down.

The next day, I realise something: the lesson that both this incident and the golf coach have taught me.

Not everyone has my best interests at heart, and not everyone’s going to play fair. The only way to deal with it is to make myself so good that they can’t do anything other than pick me, and pick me where I play best.

The only person who sets my boundaries is me.

I play for Wales Under-16s that year. Not at 7, ironically, but at 8, which is the next best thing. I don’t mind 8 – most of the skills are transferable. It’s still the back row, and I’m a back-row player.

On Friday nights, our mates start to go out into Cardiff, and they invite Ben and me along. We usually say no. Because we’ve always had each other, because we’ve never needed to bike over to someone’s house to find someone to play with, we’ve never really needed anyone else.

Besides, Fridays are when my granddad Keith comes round, and we sit there watching Friday night sport on TV. Wrestling, boxing, football, rugby league, whatever. Me and Ben and Dad and Keith, while Mum and our elder sister Holly roll their eyes at these cavemen on the sofa.

Dad introduces me to heavy metal. Specifically, he introduces me to Anthrax; and even more specifically, to their track Refuse to Be Denied.

Refuse to be denied.

Refuse to compromise.

I listen to it while running the streets at night. Seven – that number again – seven words in the chorus that sum up my entire philosophy.

Refuse to be denied.

Refuse to compromise.

I never stop trying to get better.

On Saturday mornings I watch Super Rugby on TV. I sit there with pen and paper, and whoever’s playing 7 – Richie McCaw, George Smith, Schalk Burger – I note down everything they do in the game. Tackles, rucks, carries, turnovers. In the afternoon I play for the Blues Under-16s, and when we’re given our own statistics for the match I compare them to those of the pros. So I might get something like eight tackles, 16 rucks, eight carries and no turnovers, while McCaw would be on 21 tackles, 40 rucks, 18 carries and five turnovers.

You’ve got a bit of a way to go here, old son, I think to myself.

But having a way to go doesn’t matter if I’m on the right path. I start jackalling – trying to steal the ball at the point of contact – in school matches, just like I’ve seen McCaw do. No one else my age is doing that. They don’t even know what jackalling is; they just tackle and ruck.

One of my teachers, Steve Williams, was a flanker for Neath, so he does one-on-one breakdown training with me too. It all helps me improve.

Ben and I play for Welsh Schools together. He’s a fabulous player, in many ways better than me, and that’s not false modesty on my part. He plays at outside centre, and his footwork and handling are absolutely brilliant. His hero is Brian O’Driscoll, and it shows.

One match, he suffers a shoulder injury, and a freakishly bad one too: serious nerve damage. The doctors tell him that continuing to play is really risky, and that the injury’s only going to get worse under contact. Besides, he wants to be a physio, and for that he needs strength in his upper body.

He’s 16 years old, and his rugby career is over. I couldn’t be more gutted if it had happened to me. Rugby is something we both live for, something we share. I feel his pain, his anguish and his frustration as though they were all mine.

From now on, I resolve, I’m going to play every game not just for me but for Ben too. I will carry his career, the one he didn’t have, in my heart and on the crest of my jersey. I will achieve the things he couldn’t, not because he wasn’t capable but because he wasn’t given the opportunity.

2006. After about a year, I manage to stop throwing up whenever I see Rach. It’s such a relief when this happens.

‘Sam,’ Rach says.

‘What?’

‘I think it’s time you met my parents.’

And the throwing up starts all over again.

Rach challenges me to a game of badminton. She’s playing for the Wales senior team by now, so I know she’s pretty good, but I reckon I can have her. I’m taller, quicker, more powerful, and I’ve got good hand–eye co-ordination. This might even be quite easy, I think.

It is easy. It’s 21–0.

To her.

She does me up like a kipper, hook, line and sinker. There’s not a single rally that lasts more than three shots. She’s always one step ahead of me, teeing me up one side and then putting the shuttlecock the other, or driving me deep to the back of the court before dropping it just over the net. I’m sweating and swearing and throwing my racket. There are a bunch of kids watching, and they’re all laughing: look at Sam Warburton, being beaten by a girl.

It’s the way you’re moving, Rach says. You’re turning like a boat, slow and cumbersome. Watch my feet. Look at the shuffle, quick steps side to side. You don’t need to keep twisting your body this way and that.

Right, I say. Race over 10 metres. I’ll definitely beat you.

Ten metres there, ten metres back, she replies.

No way, I say. She’s so much smaller than me that she’ll turn much quicker, and any advantage I have in straight-line speed will be cancelled out.

Finally she agrees just to the ten metres there, and I do beat her.

We play tennis on holiday. I beat her. We play again. She beats me.

That’s 2–2 in the Warburton–Thomas Cup. We agree to leave it there for the sake of our relationship. Otherwise in a few years’ time we’ll be going to the lawyers, and when they ask why we’re getting divorced we’ll both simultaneously say ‘sport’.

2007. Ben and I opt for the same A levels: chemistry, biology and PE. We revise together, and make it count; not the usual ‘Oh, I spent ten hours in the library’ stuff, conveniently forgetting that half that time was coffee and chat, but constructive and regimented, applying the principles of rugby training to revision. Half an hour on, ten minutes off, and repeat. Work out targets for sessions and stick to them.

A couple of months before the exams, I get a phone call. The bloke says he’s from the Welsh Rugby Union, and can he ask me a few questions. Sure, I say.

‘Where’s your dad from?’ he asks.

‘Originally? London. But his folks are from Lancashire.’

‘Like Warburton’s bread?’

‘Exactly.’

‘And your mum?’

‘Born in Somerset. Her folks are Welsh, but her great-grandfather had Scottish roots.’ My full name is Sam Kennedy-Warburton – the Kennedy is Mum’s side, and since she has a sister and their parents were both only children, she wants to keep the name alive – but I don’t use it too often when playing as it’s a bit of a mouthful and makes me sound way too posh.

‘Right,’ he says. ‘Thanks.’

Now he knows that I’m eligible to play for England and Scotland as well as Wales. Sure, I’ve played all my representative rugby for Wales at age-group level, but that doesn’t matter. You can play senior rugby for any country you’re eligible for, and the moment you have your first cap that’s it, you can’t play for anyone else (at least not without taking three years out to qualify for another country). Shit, better cap this kid quick: that’s what the bloke from the WRU’s thinking.