James Hook

When they finally gave James Hook a Six Nations start in the Wales number ten jersey, he showed them what they’d been missing. A full house. A try, conversion, drop-goal and four penalties. Twenty-two points. Victory over England. It was rugby Roy of the Rovers stuff for the boy from Port Talbot.

Mr Kane had it in for Jimmy Joseph. He saw in the young student everything he hated: a rugby player who didn’t follow the rules, who was creative, popular, played with a smile on his face and would do things on the pitch others – including Mr Kane – wouldn’t even think to attempt, let alone have the ability. And that’s why he, together with school bully, captain and full-back Mike Green, were going to break him.

Jimmy wasn’t just a mercurial fly-half, he was also asthmatic, had terrible eyesight, and didn’t exactly love the part of the game Mr Kane cherished most – contact. 

James Hook, ex-Wales, Neath, Ospreys, Perpignan and Gloucester fly-half and British & Irish Lions tourist, decided not to write an autobiography. Instead, working with writer David Brayley, he spliced chunks of his story into his books about Jimmy Joseph, the main character in Chasing a Rugby Dream, the “fictional” tale of a boy from south Wales trying to get on, and stay on, the path to rugby stardom. “I tried to bring quite a few things from my playing days and childhood into the books,” he explains, when we meet at the Gnoll, Neath, where he once played but today he’s coaching Ospreys under-20s. “I was asthmatic, I had a couple of asthma attacks, but it didn’t prevent me from playing, as long as I had my pump with me – and my eyesight was really bad.”

Anyone who’s met James will know he also still has the effervescence and enthusiasm of a rugby-mad schoolboy, who truly loves the game, living and breathing it every day: if not in his assorted roles as coach at Ospreys, commentator and rugby book author, then with his three rugby-playing sons (aged six, eight, and fourteen, with wife Kimberley).

For the readers of a certain age, the books are akin to Michael Hardcastle’s fiction series that followed young footballers trying to make it, often with the antagonist to the plucky protagonist coming in the form of a mean teacher, coach or bully. 

On this, the writer pair nail it with Mr Kane, based on an assortment of characters from James’s rugby past. “I had a trial for Welsh schoolboys and, without being too big headed, I knew I was the best scrum-half there at the time – I played scrum-half until I was seventeen,” explains James, recalling one of the stories that played out in real life and also within the book. “But I knew that one of the coaches’ boys was a scrum-half too.

“There were three twenty-minute thirds,” continues James. “And I wasn’t picked for the first twenty, which was fair enough, then for the second one I wasn’t picked, and then I didn’t start the third one. I was thinking, ‘right, well, maybe they’ve seen enough of me before, and I’m already in’.

“They ended up putting me on about five minutes into the last third. I got on, scored a try, then they subbed me off again. They selected the side right after the game and I wasn’t picked.

“My grandparents were a big part of my career growing up and my grandpa was there saying, ‘what’s going on?’ and went over to have a few choice words with the coach (and dad of the scrum-half who was picked!). That coach was basically Mr Kane. All the coaches that didn’t pick me and weren’t nice to me were Mr Kane.”

The personalities of Jimmy and James are also clearly aligned. “I was rugby mad,” he says, echoing the similarities. “I’ve got an older brother, two years older [Mike, also a rugby player], and my younger sister is two years younger and I just played rugby from the age of five.”

He played rugby across the road at Aberavon juniors. “Most of my rugby was in Port Talbot, I lived five minutes away from the steelworks. My grandfather worked in the steel works, my brother works in the steel works now and my stepfather worked there for thirty years, so we were right in the mix. But then everyone in Port Talbot had a family member who worked there, or at least someone very close to them that did.  It was right on top of you, you couldn’t avoid it, you wake up every morning and the steelworks is slap bang right in front of you, more or less.”

And, of course, he played for the most famous club on the Welsh leg of the M4. “Tata Steel RFC,” he says, the club that sits adjacent to the road as you pass the steelworks. “That was my first senior club. When I was playing, youth rugby was three years and in the last year, everyone went across to play for British Steel [as it was then], so I did the same. I spent a year and a half there and was picked up by Ospreys Academy. My brother is coaching them [Tata Steel RFC] now.”

The club currently sit bottom of the Admiral West National Championship West, the second tier of Welsh club rugby, with eighteen defeats from as many games. “They’re struggling at the moment,” James admits, “and they’re also losing 2,800 jobs in the steelworks [due to the closure of blast furnaces], so it’s tough for Port Talbot at the moment.

“When I was a kid growing up it was thriving,” he says. “I think at one point there were 20-30,000 jobs in the steel industry, which is cut down to about 4,000 now, but Port Talbot was booming, it’s not like that now.”

While his stepfather worked in steel, his dad – who lived nearby – is a paramedic who ‘played a bit of football’. “My parents split up when I was, I think it was twelve or thirteen years old. As a young kid, that was tough,” he admits. “But it was one of those things; my mother was working three or four jobs to keep the three of us. Everyone in Port Talbot is working class though, they all work their socks off, to be fair.”

Like the rugby and Mr Kane, this part of his life is also in his compelling Jimmy Joseph page-turners (admittedly, they are aimed at children, but they also have this dad eager to read more chapters than is suitable for his seven-year-old’s bedtime). But the one thing holding the series of books together is an unadulterated passion for the game, something you only usually see immortalised in football films. “I really loved rugby,” James says, repeating his earlier thoughts. “I was obsessed with rugby, but you don’t ever actually think you’ll make it as a professional rugby player. 

“So, I did a bit of scaffolding,” he says of his teenage years. “I did a bit of bar work and stuff like that, I wanted to be a traffic cop believe it or not. I used to love all the police programmes, but in the background, I was always obsessed with the rugby; it was my life.” As he alluded to, aside from being recognised at under-11s for West Wales, he was largely ignored by age-grade rugby coaches, not make any appearances until under-18s by which time he was on Ospreys’ radar. 

Playing at seventeen for Tata helped him though. “I had to grow up pretty quick, playing against men at seventeen,” he says. “I was in and around the academy with the Ospreys then, so I started to have the odd skills session while I was dual-contracted with British Steel and Neath.”

He’d eventually play weekly for Neath as part of his academy contract. “I played two seasons in Neath and that’s where it took off, I suppose, because back then it was a really good standard in the Welsh Premiership,” he explains. “The regional squads were so big and if the players weren’t playing for the Ospreys on the weekend, all the players dropped down to Neath or Swansea, so I was playing with and against good players every week.”

In his second season with Neath, he began to make up for the lack of representative action. “I was picked for Wales under-20, played two games for them, then went across to play at the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, playing against Fiji and [Waisale] Serevi. I learnt a lot about trying to defend big spaces against good players with lightning quick feet. I came back a much better player.”

The honours kept coming for James, with Wales not even waiting for him to establish himself with his region. “I played for Wales before I’d started for Ospreys,” he explains. “I was still playing for Neath when I got picked for the summer tour to Argentina in 2006. I’d only had a few minutes off the bench for Ospreys, and I’m literally talking two or three minutes towards the end of a game.

“I remember getting a call from Alan Phillips, the [Wales] team manager, saying I’d got selected,” continues James. “And I was like ‘you got to be joking?’. He said, ‘Nigel Davies and Gareth Jenkins have been watching you and think there’s something there’. 

“Nigel gave me so much confidence,” says James of the ex-Wales coach. “I thought I’d go to Argentina and hold the bags for three weeks, then come back. But Nigel said, ‘you’re going to play’ and I was on the bench for the first Test, then started the second Test at twelve against [Felipe] Contepomi. At the end of the game, he knew it was my first game, and I went to swap kit, and he let me keep it, and gave me his.”

Putting on the red of Wales was more than enough to channel his inner-Jimmy Joseph. “I was so excited,” he recalls. “Just putting the socks on, putting the shorts on, pulling the shirt on – I used to do that Christmas Day as a kid [put on replica kit he’d had as presents] and you’re thinking, ‘this is for real now’.”

Scoring a try in the first Test, a narrow 27-25 defeat, then kicking ten points in the second – also a defeat, 45-27 – was enough to ensure he could live the dream for a while longer. “I came back and Lyn Jones and Mike Cuddy signed me up for three years [at Ospreys], and that’s where professional rugby began.”

James then became a regular in the Wales squad, albeit with Stephen Jones the preferred number ten. Nonetheless such was his worth to the squad, Jenkins and Davies would find a way to fit him into the fifteen. “That autumn campaign after the Argentina tour, Stephen Jones was back in,” explains James. “He started the first game against Australia at ten, but then twenty minutes in, he was injured, and I was called off the bench and it was, jeepers, here we go, 70-odd thousand fans in Cardiff.”

Drawing 29-29 against Australia was a good result, and with James getting three penalties and two conversions, he was named man of the match, and started the next game at centre, with Ceri Sweeney chosen for the ten slot. Adding another try to his collection against the Pacific Islanders (a 38-20 win), he took the shirt from Sweeney for the next Test against Canada (nailing eight conversions), before Jones – then captain – was returned to the starting line-up for New Zealand. As the visitors raced to a 28-3 half-time, James was brought on to stem the tide early in the second half, but only had a conversion to show for his efforts, as Wales slowed but couldn’t stop the All Blacks, and lost 10-45. “I think Gareth [Jenkins] and Nigel [Davies] saw us [Hook and Jones] both as being important in terms of starters, so the following Six Nations I played twelve, aside from the last game against England, when we had to beat England to avoid the wooden spoon and stop them winning the Championship.”

Famously the Welsh won 27-18, with James the hero, taking 22 of the points and a full house thanks to a try, conversion, drop-goal and four penalties. The absence of Jones through injury again, allowed him to enjoy a run of games at fly-half, including the opening game of the 2007 Rugby World Cup – by which time Jones had returned to sit on the bench. James piloted Wales to a 42-17 win over Canada, albeit with his rival taking his place later in the game. 

Jones would take back the ten jersey for the remainder of the tournament, as James flitted between a replacement stint at full-back (against Australia) and then centre starts against Japan and Fiji, the latter ending in ignominy, a 38-34 defeat and exit from the Rugby World Cup. “We were overconfident,” he admits. “And we weren’t playing well enough to be overconfident, we had no right to think we’d just get to the quarter-finals.

“That ended Gareth Jenkins and Nigel Davies,” he continues. “We knew we had a good group of players, but we didn’t perform. And then obviously, that’s when [Warren] Gatland and [Rob] Howley and Shaun Edwards came in.”

James was part of Ospreys’ golden era, winning three Celtic League titles with a side that would also fill much of Warren Gatland’s early Six Nations-winning squads. “When Gatland came in, he didn’t know a great deal [about Welsh rugby], so he picked thirteen Ospreys for our first game against England because they were playing so well,” explains James.

It wasn’t just the Welsh stars that gave James an armchair ride at ten. “It was incredible as a young, 21-year-old, playing for Ospreys with Justin Marshall at scrum-half, Jerry Collins, Marty Holah, Filo Tiatia, Stefan Terblanche, not to mention all the excellent Welsh guys like Shane Williams, Gavin Henson, Ryan Jones, Alun Wyn Jones, Jonathan Thomas, Adam Jones, Duncan Jones. It was an incredible team and while we did underachieve as far as Europe is concerned, we won league titles. But I think Europe was the one we wanted to win and we lost in two quarter-finals. If we’d got that penalty against Biarritz – and the ref put his arm up, but then put it down again – we’d have won [they lost 28-29] and been through to a semi-final in Cardiff against Munster.”

What he also saw during his time with Ospreys was big crowds. “We’d get 20,000 for the derby games and, if not sell-outs, then at least 17-19,000 for those big European games – the Clermonts, Leicesters and Saracens. Growing up, that was all I knew, I didn’t know empty stadiums. Even in the Magners League against Leinster and Munster we’d be getting big crowds.

“To see it now though, it’s such a shame in Wales, especially for the young players. You grow up wanting to be a professional rugby player and one of the big things about making it, is to play in front of big crowds,” he admits. “Although I do think going to a smaller stadium is the right move for Ospreys. We still get seven or eight thousand for a big game so put that in St Helens of The Gnoll and that’s capacity. Look at Cardiff: when they’ve sold out the Arms Park recently, that atmosphere was incredible. Sometimes, I think it’s the right move to take a step back so you can make a step forward.”

The arrival of Shaun Edwards also had a big impact on James. “He’s a man of few words, but when he does speak, you’re listening. In his first session, I remember him saying, ‘Look, boys, if I’m screaming and shouting to you, it means that I think a lot of you as a player, it’s just that I think there’s room to improve. But, if I ignore you, basically you’ve got no hope with me’.

“I remember the meeting really well,” reiterates James, “because then I had Shaun Edwards shouting at me a lot, so I took that as a compliment.”

In 2008, he was pivotal in Gatland’s first Grand Slam, but would again spend time wearing an assortment of numbers on his back. Ironically, he’d experienced it before, much earlier in his career, when Neath’s signing of Arwel Thomas necessitated him playing the odd game at twelve. Now, James admits Arwel could have been a useful source of information had he known what lay ahead for him with Wales. “Arwel Thomas had had his time challenging Neil Jenkins and that was probably quite similar to me challenging Stephen Jones,” he says, reflecting on the common denominators between the number ten battles of different eras: one seen as the maverick, one as the safe pair of hands. “That’s probably one of the big questions I get asked: where I preferred to play,” he says. “I gotta be honest, I enjoy playing ten. I enjoy the responsibility of goalkicking, but when I was coming through, having that second playmaker (at twelve) was coming into play, so it didn’t really bother me that much. It was something I got used to pretty early on.”

It wasn’t just the twelve shirt he had to wear though. “Fifteen was my least favourite position,” he says. “Because the way we played with Wales, you didn’t see the ball much in attack and you just found yourself covering kicks, taking high balls, just covering defensively really, so I wasn’t on the ball as much.”

James earned 81 caps (scoring 352 points) with just under half coming at fly-half (21 starts, nineteen from the bench), the remaining split between centre (nineteen and two), full-back (ten and five) and wing (two as a replacement).

But again, the Jimmy Joseph in him comes alive with excitement when he talks about the ten shirt, belying his words that he was fine with playing in different positions. “You knew what the number ten jersey was all about,” he says. “I used to watch the 1970s VHS tapes from my grandparents and watch Phil Bennett, Barry John, I knew the Max Boyce song about the ‘Outside Half Factory’. There’s huge pressure but it’s definitely my favourite position. 

“The 2011 Six Nations pretty much summed up me getting moved around,” says James, warming to the topic. “I started the Six Nations at fifteen against England in Cardiff, then I played up in Murrayfield starting at outside-half. 

“That was around the time Stephen Jones was still there, but Rhys Priestland was coming through, and I thought I had a great chance to nail down the number ten jersey at Murrayfield. We won the game, I felt it went well, but during that game Jonathan Davis at thirteen got injured, and [Rob] Howley came up to me [afterwards] saying, ‘look Hooky, you played well, we were going to select you at ten, but we need you at thirteen’. So, I played thirteen against Italy and Ireland, then got moved back to ten against France.

“Honestly, I’d turn up to training on a Monday,” he continues, “and say, ‘right, where do you want me? Which position am I playing in?’ I never really knew.”

Did it get to you? “At times,” he admits. “When you think it’s an opportunity to nail down the jersey and get a run of games or even just a week’s worth of reps at ten in training, but then I sort of got used to it. Looking back, I got 81 caps: if I was just in one position would I have had that many? You never know.

“It probably helped me to get selected for the Lions [in 2009’s tour to South Africa] because of my versatility and I could cover a number of positions.”

Coaches, even those that inspired the making of Mr Kane, have never been boring. In Wales, aside from his international coaches, a long-term influence was Lyn Jones, a man seen by many as a rugby genius, albeit with a few quirks. “He was as mad as a box of frogs,” says James of his former Ospreys boss. “You never knew what he was going to do one day to the next, but the rugby knowledge, you ask any Ospreys player, was unbelievable.

“I remember the week before we played Gloucester in the Heineken Cup, they were playing Bath in a west-country derby and, because we didn’t have a game, he took me to watch Gloucester play and sat next to me and explained exactly how he wanted me to play. We were in the stands, it was absolutely pissing down, just me and Lyn, the weather was horrendous, and then following Friday down in Swansea, it was horrendous weather too, so it all played out as he said it would. 

“I just think, to go to those sorts of lengths, as a coach, shows the amount of detail he put into it.”

James left Ospreys for Perpignan after the 2011 World Cup. “The season I did leave, Lee Byrne was leaving, Mike Phillips was going, a couple of the overseas were leaving, the squad was changing, I could see it happening,” he says. “And it was such as good opportunity to go to France, experience a top league.”

Three seasons in the south of France were supposed to be extended, but relegation to Pro D2 put paid to that, and instead he went to Gloucester, where he met another of the game’s great characters, Aussie coach Laurie Fisher. “Mate,” begins James, “like Lyn, his rugby knowledge… he was also a proper supporter. 

“I remember when Laurie left: we’d lost to Quins at home, and we were fourteen points up and Quins scored fifteen points in last ten minutes and beat us. We were in the changing room, absolutely gutted, and after every game, win or lose, you wait for the coach to come in and say a few words. 

“So,” he continues, “we’d lost the game, sat down, and no Laurie. Nothing for ten minutes. Then we heard he was gone, not coming in.

“Then about an hour later, he put on Twitter, basically, that he’d just ‘seen enough after that performance, I’m gone, I’m done’, and we never saw him again. It was unbelievable.

“We literally never saw him again,” adds James. “He came back a good few months later, he had a house there, but he wasn’t Gloucester coach, he was in the Shed, watching a game, wearing this bucket hat of his, supporting Gloucester. I don’t think I ever spoke to him again after that.”

Gloucester, being Gloucester, brought mid-table mediocrity, but at least there was some silverware with a Challenge Cup final win over Edinburgh. Then it was back to Ospreys for a swansong. His Welsh career had already tailed off, with the caps, especially starts, becoming rarer after he made the decision to leave the Principality. “When I went first went to France, I was still a regular in the Wales team but I don’t think the Welsh management liked the fact that myself Lee Byrne and Mike Phillips were going to France. They lost a bit control of the players during the fallow weeks, which obviously Gatland likes to have, so I wasn’t getting picked as much when I was in France.”

Of his final 22 caps, nineteen were from the bench. “Even when I signed for Gloucester, a lot closer to home – I could probably get to the Vale quicker than from Mumbles – they still didn’t have the same access to English players during the Six Nations and they had that one game in the autumn as well [an extra Test, outside the official window], so that didn’t help.”

Aged thirty, at the 2015 Rugby World Cup, he played his final minutes for Wales, against South Africa in the 23-19 quarter-final loss at Twickenham. “I sort of knew, you know,” he considers. “You always have transition periods after World Cups and new cycles and I’d been on the bench for a lot of the games just sort of filling gaps, in different positions. I thought, well, this could well be my last cap. I went out and enjoyed the whole experience, but from then I was hoping for more caps but never expecting them, if I’m being honest.”

Now, being Ospreys academy coach is his day-to-day role, one that also includes coaching Swansea (Tuesdays and Thursdays), and he works with the Wales under-20 kickers once a week. In between he’s commentating for the BBC and running a gin and coffee company with his fellow ex-Ospreys Lee Byrne, Mike Phillips, and Shane Williams.

The books – a third is in its infancy – also give James the chance to address the hottest topic in rugby: contact, which was a key theme for the second book. “I think because of the rule changes, and the dementia stuff going on, it’s putting a lot of kids and parents off, especially junior rugby,” he says. “I wanted to get across the positive message of teaching children how to tackle rather than just being put off by it. If you get the technique right, anyone can do it really, you know.”

The lawsuit currently taking place around concussion involves hundreds of ex-professionals, many from his era, so he knows only too well what rugby used to be like. “When I first came into the professional environment, there was a lot of contact in training – Tuesdays were brutal,” he says. “You always knew that was going to be your hardest day. Warren Gatland had what he called ‘a minute drill’ where basically for a minute, you had two defenders, two defenders, two defenders – three rows of two – and then you’ve got a ball carrier plus two boys cleaning out. And you would just run head first into contact continually.

“It was normal then, we didn’t know any different, but now the contact is very, very limited, some weeks teams will go through the whole week without doing any contact.

“The game is probably a lot more physical now,” he admits. “So, it takes longer for the players to recover. Whereas before, on a Tuesday, it’d be the biggest day, players are still recovering from the weekend on Tuesday now.”

As a dad of three rugby players, he’s fully aware of the risks. “For my boys playing the game, I see how much joy my eldest has every single week, it’s similar to what I was like – he’s looking forward to training, and every week before games, he’s got his kit laid out on the radiator the night before, and his boots are clean.

“I think my wife worries a lot more than I do in terms of the contact side. So, when big boys are running at him, she sort of shuts her eyes a little bit, but like I say, I’m trying to teach my boys the technique and to just try and be brave.

“If he gets his technique right, he’ll be fine. But he understands, you know, he’s gonna get the little knocks now and again. 

“I think if you teach them right, they can enjoy the game. I know how much they love it, and there’s a lot of negative stuff at the moment, but I think that the good of rugby by far outweighs the bad.”

Jimmy Joseph would definitely agree.

Story by Alex Mead

Pictures by Francesca Jones

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