Sam Warburton - Open Side - The Official Autobiography

At one team meeting, the nutritionist said that we had a problem. He’d catered for each person having two bars per day for the duration of the camp, but now there weren’t enough anymore, so someone must have been taking more than their fair share. And he knew who the guilty parties were, as there was a CCTV in the gym and it had all been caught on camera. So if whoever had done it didn’t own up right now, they’d be exposed as liars and not team players. A few of the younger guys in the squad immediately fessed up, to gales of laughter from the senior boys.

Yes, the young guys had been taking more than their share, but of course there was no CCTV and we could have got more bars delivered at the drop of a hat. The point was to encourage blokes to be honest with each other and with the team as a whole, and it worked. Own up to something before you get called out on it.

Being professional extends to life outside rugby too; indeed, when you’re in the public eye it extends pretty much to everything you say or do, 24/7. You represent the club you play for, you represent your country, and you represent the hopes of all the supporters who’d give anything to do what you’re doing. These aren’t things to take lightly, and if they involve a certain amount of sacrifice here and there, well, that’s just the way it is, and it’s a small price to pay.

I haven’t been on a night out in Cardiff since 2012. The last time I did, it was with Lyds; we’d been to a wedding, and inevitably we came across someone who’d had too much to drink and who wanted to pick a fight, probably just to prove to his mates what a hard man he was.

On another occasion, I was on a stag night and we were in a pub. There was a group of guys there who wanted to chat, and I was being friendly to them, but then it was time for us to leave and to go on to the next venue. One of the men I’d been talking to became aggressive and started manhandling me in an attempt to get me to stay, and I had to grab his hands and yank them off me so I could leave.

It doesn’t take much for these kinds of situation to spiral out of control, and then suddenly you’re dealing with negative headlines and distractions, which neither the team nor you need.

Take the case of the England cricketer Ben Stokes, who was charged with affray following a fight outside a Bristol nightclub. He was acquitted, but not before he’d missed an Ashes series and lost a sponsorship deal, and following his acquittal he was fined for bringing the game into disrepute.

Now I don’t know him from a bar of soap, I’ve got no axe to grind with him personally and I mention his case for one reason only: that it could all have been avoided if he hadn’t put himself there in the first place. Don’t give people the opportunity to make you look bad.

People remember you and judge you as they see you. It doesn’t matter what kind of day you’re having; the professional thing to do is to smile and make time for people. What’s a few seconds for you might mean a whole lot to them. As Ben always reminds me, an autograph or a selfie might be my 100th of the day, but for them it’s their first. That’s why I always made time for autographs; they don’t take up much time and they mean a lot to the person receiving them.

Having been on the other side of the fence, trust me, you remember these things. In the summer of 1999, Mum and Dad took us to Copenhagen. Spurs had won the League Cup a few months before with a 1–0 victory over Leicester City, and Allan Nielsen had scored the winning goal.

In my 10-year-old mind, the logic was clear. Nielsen was Danish, we were in Denmark, therefore we were definitely going to see him. Dad tried to explain that Denmark was a big place with millions of people, so we weren’t going to see Allan Nielsen.

But one day, in the Tivoli Gardens, there he was! I plucked up the courage to go over and ask him for an autograph, and to this day I remember how nice he was: asking my name, where I was from, that kind of stuff. I was so thrilled that Mum laminated the piece of paper with his autograph, and for years it was my pride and joy. So when a kid asks for my autograph, I always remember that I could be their Allan Nielsen.

As Alan Phillips said to me: ‘People are looking at you and they’re dreaming, aren’t they? When they look at you, these people, when they see you, they’re seeing their dreams.’ That was my responsibility as a professional: to be worthy of their dreams.

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