Jonathan Davies

As he lined up to take the kick, the ground of his childhood dreams fell silent. All around were fans who’d cheered for and against him. The silence was broken by one man, ‘I hope your wife dies.’ For all his brilliance in every shirt he wore, at every game, there was always one.

In the 1800s, in an attempt to stave off persecution for their language and culture, a group of 150 intrepid Welsh folk made the unlikely decision to head across the Atlantic and settle in Patagonia, South America. Today, depending on who you believe, there are still some 5,000 or so Welsh speakers living in Patagonia, and from a population of 150,000, a good 20,000 have ancestry that hails back to the Principality. 

The story is one told a thousand times over, in films, documentaries, songs and musicals. Given it’s part of Argentina, relations with the motherland in Welsh Patagonia could’ve been somewhat awkward in the post Falkland War years. Naturally, to ease tensions, there was only person they could send. “I did a documentary in Patagonia,” explains Jonathan Davies, or Jiffy, as he picks up the story of the 1988 television programme Saith ar y Paith (meaning Seven on the Prairie). “S4C sold it to us like this,” he continues. “They said, ‘right, you’re going to turn up in Patagonia, pick four players who’ve never seen a rugby ball before, then mould them into a sevens team – you’ve got to win three games in the Patagonia National Rugby Sevens, then you can go and represent Patagonia in Buenos Aires in the Argentinian national sevens’.

“On top of that, we were going to be among the first British tourists to go to Argentina after the Falklands War.

“And so we went, me, Carwyn and Ieuan, we found these players, and put together a team of three Welshman and four Patagonians. Basically, in the games, every time we [the Welshmen] got the ball we had to score, and we basically did. We won the games we needed to in Patagonia, and then we nearly got to the semi-final of the Argentina sevens.”

In fairness, Jiffy took considerable firepower with him, with “Ieuan” being British & Irish Lions legend Ieuan Evans and “Carywn” the free-scoring wing Carwyn Davies who had scored 45 tries in 44 games for Llanelli in a single season (his club total was 121 in 159 matches) and won seven Wales caps. 

It was talk of Carwyn that had taken Jiffy to the topic of Patagonia. Carwyn, who witnessed the Glanrhyd Bridge railway accident that took the lives of four people, had killed himself at the age of just 32. “He was still young,” recalls Jiffy. “It was quite soon after the documentary. 

“And we had Mike Budd who’d played for Cardiff and Bridgend on the wing, he took his life too, and Gary Speed…  When you see guys like that, someone like Carwyn who seemed so happy-go-lucky, then suddenly, without warning, that’s it… 

“Everyone has their demons I suppose,” he adds.

Jiffy’s train of thought isn’t so much a single train, as Clapham Junction at rush hour: a tangled network with endless trains that somehow still works and, ultimately, gets to where it needs to in the end. 

Thoughts tumble over each other in an effort to get to the front, perhaps giving you some idea of how his mind works: when he played, seeing countless opportunities in front of him, and having to choose which one would get him where he needed to go. And he knew where to go. Whether for club or country, league or union, in England, Wales or Australia, Jiffy knew where to go. He saw space where others saw clusters of bodies, he controlled opponents – whether he had the ball or not – and he won games, trophies and accolades. 

Look at his try-game ratios, and you have to double-take. For Neath 37 in 88; for Llanelli 23 in 33; and so on to league, 78 in 126 for Widnes; 43 in 66 for Warrington; and that’s before we get on to the kicks or the stints in Australia.

The conversation that took us to Patagonia had begun with mental health in the modern-day game: not only the pressures faced, but how players deal with it. Another fly-half with league connections also came to mind. “Look at Owen Farrell and the abuse he’s had,” Jonathan says. “One of toughest guys you’ll come across and he’s gone ‘fuck it, I’m not going to take this’, and he’s gone to France, and he’s going to make a lot of money.

“I’ve known Faz since he was seventeen,” he says, branching off, “and I know his dad too, what a great player, great family – there’s not a nicer family you’ll come across than the Farrells. Ferociously competitive, hard, mentally tough, and fiercely protective of everyone around them. So, when he [Owen] says something [about mental wellbeing]…”

As for his own mental wellbeing, Jiffy has been part and parcel of the BBC for more than a quarter of a century, covering both rugby codes, so opinion has been his trade, but it’s still a role that poses plenty of challenges. “Fifty per cent think you’re brilliant, 50 per cent think you’re shite,” he says, succinctly. “People think because you’re getting older, you’re a dinosaur. But I’ve been with the BBC for 26 years, and I’ve sat there with Jerry [Guscott], Keith Wood, Martin Johnson, Martyn Williams, Sam Warburton, John Barclay, Brian O’Driscoll, and we all have the same mindset, the game has not changed that much… 

“The game is far more technical, the preparation is greater, but the principles of the game are the same,” he explains. “You go forward, you determine if you use quick ball or slow ball, you think about what you want to do with it, you create opportunities, execute opportunities, miss tackles, make tackles. 

“The kicking game is a bit of a joke with the rule change,” he admits, “but I don’t think there’s much wrong with the game.

“But voice an opinion, and you get shot down in flames,” he says. “You’re either lambasted or glorified, there’s no perspective. It’s just an opinion, everyone needs to calm down a bit.”

Perhaps, he suggests, one problem is of the game’s own making. “People in the game are making it complicated,” he says. “Coaches are talking about USPs, maybe they’re trying to catch out the general public or catch out the journalists. 

“For what reason?” he asks. “Football is the biggest game in the world for one reason: it’s simple – apart from the off side – so everybody should be simplifying the game of rugby union to make it entertaining and understandable for the audience.”

Jiffy’s home, that he shares with wife Jay, overlooks the Mumbles coast on the western edge of Swansea Bay, and when we meet, he’s just finished another garage-gym workout. “Yeah, I’ll do it about three times a week, I’ve got a WattBike in there,” he explains. “When you’re on television, you can’t talk about fitness if you’re looking totally out of shape. It’s mainly mental [therapy] for me, although I do want to look tidy in my clothes.”

He’s also got the small matter of charity bike rides to contend with. As president of the Velindre Cancer Charity, he agreed to a ride from Yosemite to the Golden Gate Bridge a decade ago and has since completed nine rides, covering 3,000 miles, and raising millions. The most recent venture, Paris to Bordeaux, had to be briefly called to a halt. “It was between 34 and 38 degrees,” he says. “The Tour de France doesn’t cycle over 38 because of blowouts, which can take the whole peloton down. 

“This one, with riders aged about 45 to 65, was just a different kind of peloton. One day we just said we couldn’t do it because the stretch of the riders would be very difficult to cope with.”

When they restarted, they made it to Bordeaux to be greeted by fans singing Welsh hymns and ‘chucking money’ at them. “Since my involvement started, I think we’ve surpassed £46 million in fundraising; that’s amazing isn’t it?”

His involvement began following the loss of his wife, Karen, the mother of three of his daughters. “It was 1997, so I was 34, I was still playing,” he recalls. “I had the news on the Thursday and I was playing Swansea for Cardiff on the Saturday.”

Karen had already been ill while he was still at Warrington. “She’d been losing weight and not very well, but nobody picked it up,” he explains.

In a short space of time, Jiffy’s life took several twists and turns. He was a league player, then looking to sign for Kerry Packer’s much-vaunted rugby union circus, then, when that collapsed, he was back in union with Cardiff. But all of the rugby life paled in comparison to what happened off the pitch. “I had a seven year old, three year old and a one year old,” he explains. “So, you can’t stay in bed and wallow in self-pity, you’ve got people depending on you. I was playing, I was just going to keep a straight face and just … well, compartmentalise. 

“I’d go to play for Cardiff, come home, put a lid on that box, open the lid on the other box at home, and then take the kids to school.

“At the time when you’re going through it, nothing else matters,” he continues. “I suppose you just go through it, you have to make decisions.

“They said, ‘right, you’re going to Patagonia, pick four players who’ve never seen a rugby ball, then mould them into a sevens team - then play in the Argentina national sevens.”

“I remember walking them to school after my wife died in the July, and I remember my daughter saying, ‘Dad, you’re the only dad bringing their children to school, why’s that?’. And you’re there, filling up…”

Ironically, it was another personal loss that allowed Jiffy to cope. “I think, reflecting back on it, I got through it because of what happened to my dad…

“I was fourteen years old when he died [of cancer], which is an important time in your life, and he was a big rugby man. It meant all the big decisions that I’ve made, I’ve made them on my own. 

“Although I later had my stepdad Ken,” he adds. “But I didn’t want to burden him or my mum with big decisions, so that really hardened me for any knock-backs. It gave me the mental toughness from a really, really young age.”

It also made him ready for anything. “At the moment life’s going well, right, but it changes like that, with one phone call, right?” he says. “And [suddenly] somebody you love is ill, someone’s had an accident, someone’s passed away. And it’s how you deal with it, some people can’t deal with it and some can, but because of my upbringing [I can], and people in the village helped me at the time because everyone knew who my dad was.

“I lost a little discipline and I do regret not sticking in school and maybe going to university, but maybe [dad passing] influenced my decision to go to rugby league because I needed the security for my family.”

And when it came to handling his new life circumstances, he turned to his mum.

“I needed someone homely and my mum still lived in our old council house in Trimsaren, and I thought, ‘I wonder if she would move up’.

“So, I said ‘Look, Mum, I need a bit of help, fancy selling up?’  In hindsight, we should have rented that: she sold it for £9,000, it’s worth £120,000 now.”

Mum moved up, with Ken, into a house near Jiffy, and helped raise their three grandchildren. “She’s always been my rock,” he says.

Trimsaran, Carmarthenshire, was home. A village of little more than 2,000 people,  just north of Llanelli, but easily bypassed. Jiffy played for the seniors aged fifteen, but made a bigger impact for the youth team. “I played for Trimsaran Youth, not Llanelli Youth, or Bridgend Youth: Trimsaran,” he says. “We got to the Welsh Cup final and we played against Newport, in Trimsaran, and we lost 10-6 but – and I’ll always remember this – there was 5,000 people there. And it’s a village that [then] only had about 1,500 people in it!

“I didn’t have any international honours [at age grade],” he continues. “I knew I was good enough, I always had self-belief, I was always fit, I was always quick, but you know, look at Shane Williams he didn’t make it [when he was young], Ieuan Evans did make it...

“I played for Carmarthenshire, and we only had two schools, and we’d play against Cardiff Schools and Swansea Schools and Pontypridd Schools. We’d get battered, so how am I going to get seen as an outside-half if I don’t get the ball? 

“You have to have some resilience,” says Jiffy.  “You do think ‘I’ll show them’, but that club was good to me.  When dad died, they raised money to help mum financially with raffles and whatever in the club. 

“I knew that if I didn’t make it to first-class rugby, I’d still stay in Trimsaran and play for them, but then Phil Bennett – who’d seen me play for them – recommended me to Neath…

“Now, Neath,” begins Jiffy, “under Brian Thomas, who was head of the steelworks, were brutal.  He plucked guys from obscurity, players who were a bit loose, on their last chance, and moulded us into a side, making me captain at 21.”

“It instilled confidence in me at a young age,” he continues, “and I think I had the respect of everyone, because I was a bit loose too, and it just worked. 

“I was working in open cast [coal mining that extracts coal from the surface, not underground], so I was cleaning trucks and all that,” explains Jiffy, who’d left school at sixteen. “I’d be working from 6am until 6pm, going to train in the evening, then on Saturday I’d work 6am to 12pm and then go to play.”

Neath became a team that nobody wanted to play, but everybody wanted to watch. “We played this brand of rugby that everyone got excited about,” he explains. “We rucked everything, quick ball, no messing about, and if anybody was lying offside they would kick the shit out of them. We weren’t good in the tight, but we were brilliant running around the field, brilliant at running with the ball.”

His first cap came against England in 1985, aged 23, in Cardiff, scoring a try and drop-goal in a 24-15 win. “The biggest difference was the English press got involved,” he admits. “You go from the Llanelli Star to The Times and Observer – the media glare, the attention is the big difference, and you can’t be mentally tired as well as physically tired.

“When you played for Wales, the attention was magnified,” he reiterates. “I was on Wogan, Question of Sport, I was starstruck. But then you must be doing something right if you’re a rugby player that goes on Wogan…”

Controlling his instincts has always been key. When he made his debut, he had that fear of failure, and thoughts drifted to his dad, his mum in the crowd, his mates. “It’s a massive mental overload and you’ve got to try and put everything into perspective and control everything,” he says. “You’ve got to manage that and know when you can and can’t do things. I’m a big fan of Finn Russell,” adds Jiffy, another thought emerging. “But I still think his instincts override his game-management sometimes. He needs to control that a little bit more and that’ll come later; that’s how you learn, the balance of risk and reward.”

The tricks in his bag weren’t just his eye for a gap, sleight of hand and feet either. “It was all psychological as well,” he explains. “I would like tell the [opposing] full-back, ‘it’s going up in the air now’, before the scrum was put down. And, for that minute, he’d worry about it.  If I hadn’t told him, he’d catch it naturally, but him thinking about it, put that seed of doubt in there. I’d do lots of things like that, telling a wing forward it was going this way or that way... 

“Peter Winterbottom used to hate playing against me,” he continues. “Not because I was quick, but I’d trip him up and things like that – he’d want to kill me. We became good friends and we had huge respect for each other, but I knew if I tripped him up, it would give our loose forwards a better chance of getting the ball, because he was that good.

Llanelli saw the error of their ways and managed to tempt Jiffy to join them in 1988, but he’d stay just a season, albeit a prolific one, before making a switch that defined his career – to rugby league and Widnes. 

A sevens tournament in Australia in 1986, a hat-trick against the All Blacks, a try against Serge Blanco’s France, and the other code showed their first interest in Jiffy via the Australian Rugby League. He returned to Wales and the Scarlets after the tournament, and the calls began. “Leeds rang me first, then St Helens, Warrington,” he explains. “I don’t think I was ready then, I was enjoying myself with the Scarlets and Wales.

“I went to Leeds and they spoiled me, a guy called Harry Jepson, lovely guy [looked after me], I stayed at the Queens Hotel. They took me on a walk around Headingley – they trained on the cricket pitch then – and Leeds was a lovely city. But then he took me to watch Featherstone Rovers against Hull KR, and I was like, ‘I’m not ready for this, this is too hard’.”

St Helens’ approach was less to his liking. “I drove up to see them and I went straight to the chairman’s house, they took me straight to the back of the house and the board are all sat in the garage on deck chairs.  Alex Murphy – the coach – wasn’t even there. They were just presuming I’d sign there and then.”

“I remember walking them to school after my wife died in the July, and I remember my daughter saying, ‘Dad, you’re the only dad bringing their children to school, why’s that?’.”

There were talks with Harlequins and also an approach from Tony Rogers, offering a place at Cambridge University as a mature student.

Third-place in the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987 had raised expectations of where Welsh rugby was, which – like the rest of the world – was a long way from the bar set by the All Blacks. A year later, Wales toured New Zealand, losing 52-3 in Christchurch and 54-9 in Auckland. “After the New Zealand tour, instead of being proactive, they [the selectors] were reactive,” he says. 

“Anyone going to New Zealand would have got battered, but they were changing the coaches, changing the players but I’m still there as ten.”

The following autumn Wales beat Samoa 28-6, but fell to Romania 9-15 in Cardiff. “We had a far worse pack that day [than in New Zealand] and they battered us up front and I was living off scraps. 

“It was easy blaming me, and I said, ‘I’ll take it’, but in the background I didn’t like the way they treated us as players.”

The lack of support while not making his decision to move, didn’t help persuade him to stay either. Llanelli however were ready to take off. “I think the Scarlets would have gone on a massive run because we had such a good side, I was in a good place,” he says. “But I suppose from my DNA as a kid with, you know, insecurity, no money, no qualifications, and this [league] was a chance.”

Widnes were the English rugby league champions. “They were a good side and I didn’t want to go to a bad side,” says Jiffy. “I felt if I couldn’t get in that team then, well, I wasn’t good enough. Dougie [Laughton, the coach] was a great salesman, he said, ‘you’re part of the jigsaw…’. And they came up with more money than anyone else, so that was it. 

“Good club, great salesman, and Jim [the chairman] was Welsh too – they offered basically far more in every respect.”

Earning four times his then salary – which had come from working as a salesman, as rugby was still amateur – Jiffy headed north. “Even up there I had another job, as a salesman, three days week, I’ve never really been full-time, so I was earning from that, from Widnes, the Great Britain money, then you’d go to play in Australia in the off-season, so I crammed it all in.”

But warm welcomes such as that offered by Dougie and Jim were few and far between. “Traitor, Judas, better off without him, selfish, I was called everything, by the press and the public,” he says. “Everyone was saying ‘they’re going to take his head off’, ‘he’s never going to make it’, ‘too small’, ‘too soft’. All the press followed me for the first few weeks.”

The threat came off the pitch as well as on it.  “Everywhere I went, I was abused and gobbed on,” recalls Jiffy. “Even as I was walking on the pitch, fans would spit on me.

“I laugh these days when someone is complaining about this person saying this or that: well try having about 50 people spit in your face before a game!

“Everywhere I went, every game was full because they wanted to see who was going ‘to do him’ this time.” But Jiffy was used to the attention, in whatever form it materialised. “If you play number ten coming from south Wales, you’ve been a target all your life,” he explains. “You’ve got good peripheral vision, and you’re used to fucking defending yourself. Brian Thomas always used to say I was, ‘a nasty bastard, who could look after himself’.”

Every move brought with it another reason to have a dig: first it was union to league, then from one league rival to another. “I played for Warrington playing against Widnes, and I was stood there waiting for a conversion, and then the ball boy for Widnes gobs on me. I went to to grab him, but then there’s a policemen stood there saying ‘don’t Jiff’…”

Even as his career wore on, the vitriolic nature of the abuse continued. “I remember the worst one I had was going back to Llanelli with Cardiff [who he joined from league in 1995] in the cup.  I took a conversion, and someone from the crowd shouted, ‘I hope your wife dies.’ And that’s in my home town.”

Sharp elbows, sniping at England flankers, a confidence in his ability to let his game do the talking, and the shiniest of brass necks, helped him not let the abuse get to him. Most of the time. “Even sometimes in your social life, you get someone being a fucking idiot,” he says, putting it bluntly. “I got banged up once in Swansea for seventeen hours in a cell because these three blocks were idiots and being abusive and I flew into them. The inspector on duty, that night was Gary Tucker, who I used to play with at Neath. He was saying ‘what are you doing here Jiff?’
I was his captain at Neath.” This wasn’t during his playing days, which perhaps shows that  even in his later years, he’s also kept that ‘youthful exuberance’ alive. “This was when I was 50,” he laughs. “These guys were being abusive, started something, that was the end of it.”

He does reflect, it wasn’t the wisest of moves on his part, coming from a half centurion. “Those moments, you do think, ‘why do I do it?’. They knew what they were doing, they started it, they had witnesses there. I remember the police saying, ‘they’ve got a witness to say you threw the first punch’, and I said, ‘I’m not sure that’s true, I didn’t throw the first punch, but I landed the first one’.”

Proving himself has been a constant, whether to Neath, to Wales, to league, to opponents, or to team-mates. “If I’m going up north and they signed me for a world record fee, there’s going to be resentment from opposition and from my own team,” he says of his arrival in Widnes. “Especially when you walk in and they look at me thinking, ‘what the fuck have we bought here?’. I was only eleven and a half stone. But once I started doing things and scoring tries then things changed.

“I remember we went to Oldham on a midweek match,” he continues. “And the Lions [1989] side was announced that day when I was on the bus on the way to the match. I was thinking, ‘maybe I should have been on it?’. So I was like, right, I’m gonna have to write my own column inches here. 

“I went to Oldham – my opposite number that day was Mike Ford – and I scored two 60-yard tries, in the snow. All of a sudden everyone went, ‘fucking hell, this kid can play’. My try record for Widnes and Warrington, was amazing. I didn’t regard myself as a phenomenal try scorer because, by comparison, you also have Martin Offiah knocking them over…

“But I was very lucky,” he adds, “I scored some really good tries on television.”

The British & Irish Lions is one regret. The timing of his departure to league meant he missed out on what would’ve been a guaranteed selection for the 1989 tour to Australia, where the Lions made history by coming back from defeat in the first Test to win the series 2-1. “I was in Jersey on holiday when Jerry [Guscott] scores that try to level the series in ’89. 

“I’ve come to know Jerry now, and I always tell him he wouldn’t have scored that try if I’d been playing – I wouldn’t have passed.

“But, at the time, I did think about playing behind that pack for the Lions; oh my god that side could have been made for me – Jerry on the outside, Rob Jones [at scrum-half], the massive English forward-dominated pack … it would have been an armchair ride and I could have been a superstar. 

“I would have loved to play for the Lions,” he reiterates, underlining one of few rugby regrets. “I totally understand what it all stands for, I totally understand the camaraderie it generates. I nearly went on the ’97 one, I had a letter from Geech [Ian McGeechan], but he took loads of fucking Northampton boys instead because he was coaching them at the time. He took [Paul] Grayson instead and Grayson got injured!”

As fate would have it, he needed to be at home then anyway, with Karen passing in July of that same year.

“Peter Winterbottom used to hate playing against me, not because I was quick, but I’d trip him up and things like that - he’d want to kill me. I knew if I tripped him up, it would give our loose forwards a better chance of getting the ball, because he was that good.”

The Lions aside, rugby has always offered opportunities to Jiffy. Not only was he set to be part of Kerry Packer’s professional rugby circuit before its collapse in 1996, he was also offered roles by Cecil Duckworth at Worcester and Sir John Hall at Newcastle at the dawn of the new era. “I was always grateful for the offers,” he says of the chances to coach in the Premiership. “But I’d been in a tracksuit since the age of eight, so I might have needed a mental break and with the kids and everything, it was a 24/7 job.”

When he returned to Cardiff, he also returned, reluctantly, to the Wales team, earning a handful more caps. “It was too much pressure, I just wanted to relax, enjoy myself and just play club rugby,” he says.

He called time on his career in 1997, a year that saw so many chapters in his life come to an end, as well as new ones beginning, and embarked on a career as a dual-code commentator with the BBC. “I could do union and league, so it was cheap labour,” he laughs. “And by then our rugby league guys were coming to union so I knew the defensive strategies like the back of my hand.”

There are plenty more tales to tell and thoughts to ponder. Of his love for his Scrum V partner-in-crime Eddie Butler; of his frustration at some modern players not enjoying the game; of the need for an Anglo-Welsh league; of a lost connection with Welsh club supporters; of the need for personalities – “Look at Joe Marler,”
he says. “Love him or hate him, he’s on Michael McIntyre’s Christmas Special; and of union and league perhaps merging – “Imagine how good Australia and New Zealand would be?”

He’s been around enough to see what does work in the professional game too. “Just look at the adverts the NRL (Australian Rugby League) had. You’ve got Tina Turner on the beach playing rugby with the boys and singing, ‘Simply the Best’,” he recalls. “They’re not scared to make changes to the rules either if it makes for better entertainment.”

His greatest moments often came in rugby league, including scoring at Wembley against Australia in 1994. “I had two seasons [in league] when I was playing over and above the rest, 1991 and 1994 – I won Man of Steel, Kicker of the Year. 

“But then in that ’94 game – against Australia – I got injured after 64 minutes, because I damaged my clavicle joint. I didn’t pay for ten weeks and if I had been playing in that series, I might have been the difference to win the series for Great Britain against Australia.

“That’s a regret I’ve never openly said because people would go, ‘who does he think he is?’. But I was on top of my game, I scored that try at Wembley, I scored nine tries in 14 games in the NFL, I could score, I could run, I could have maybe been that difference against Australia because they were tight games.”

It’s a confidence borne of fact and the difference Jiffy could make in games, no matter how many fists, elbows, boots and gouging fingers were pointed at him. 

Life for Jiffy now is pretty good. He’s pondering more talks, touring New Zealand and Australia as a proper tourist, he’s cherry-picking his commentary work, and there’s another bike ride potentially in the offing – he says, he’s not sure about going, but you feel certain he’s going to get back in the saddle. 

All five of his children – four girls (including a step-daughter) and one boy – are grown up now, and his mum has long since moved back to her beloved Trimsaran, with her work helping Jiffy bring up his children now done. Through union and league, Neath to North Queensland, tragedy and triumph, he doesn’t believe he’s really changed. “Not really,” he says. “You grow up with your values and your principles and try and stick to them as closely as you can. 

“My mum has been amazing,” he adds, giving a nod to his biggest influence, “she has been an absolute rock ever since I can remember.”

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Francesca Jones

This extract was taken from issue 25 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.