Strictly rugby again as Henson targets return to Welsh ranks

GAVIN HENSON remains a valuable commodity. Just flick to the Cardiff Blues website this week and there he is, half-naked, flogging season tickets.

“Yeah, I don’t mind it when I am playing. Obviously, I don’t like it when I am not playing so much. But it is an entertainment business and that is what we are – entertainers. If I can help in that way, great. If that gets me a contract at the end of the day, then happy days! But hopefully my rugby does the talking.”

You don’t know him but you have formed an opinion of Henson. Everybody has by now. You’ve seen the perma-tanned, metrosexually manicured and briefly brilliant centre gliding through defences or launching penalties from miles out.

Then he was gone – his body broken – only to reappear on Saturday night prime time television as a ballroom dancer.

When he was inevitably drawn in to the asinine world of “reality TV” shows that opinion understandably hardened and you promptly forgot about him.

After a 21-month hiatus, Henson returned to rugby a year ago with Saracens. Looking and behaving the same, he dropped the wealthy English club, after only four outings, for mega-rich Toulon.

The French experience also ended abruptly. Having nailed down the inside centre position at Toulon, formerly held by Sonny Bill Williams, he showed well against Stade Francais and Toulouse. A bright new chapter was promised, but his adult life is sprinkled with late night incidents and a row with two team-mates led to an internal club suspension. It was eventually lifted but the damage was done.

Wales gave their 2001 IRB young player of the year another chance last August but an Englishman landed on him, snapping his wrist. No club and a third World Cup dream in tatters, Gav was gone again; another sporting example of what could have been.

He brought most of it on himself, of course, so forming that opinion is easy. But are you certain? Is he man-child or loving father? Prodigy wasted or prodigal son returned?

You see, this story isn’t over. We are merely in medias res.

The Cardiff Blues flung him a lifeline. He turns 30 on February 1st and has until the end of the season to earn a new contract.

All things considered, an interview with Henson should be short and sour, the answers petulant, the tone arrogant.

Instead, he was keen to talk about his future in rugby and as a dad to Ruby and Dexter (the two children he had with ex-girlfriend Charlotte Church).

We’re on to him for two reasons: He is playing again and Leinster are in Cardiff this evening. Jamie Roberts is injured so Henson may even get a run in his favourite inside centre berth, although the Blues deployed him at fullback against the Dragons and Ospreys recently.

“Ah look, I want to be centre. Ten or 12 is my best position. I like to influence the game and I think I am better for the team in those positions but I know there is a process. At the moment I am filling in at fullback and just trying to do the best I can.”

The Christmas fixtures were his first for a Welsh club since early 2009, when he took unpaid leave from the Ospreys. It’s been a ridiculously undulating path back from self-imposed exile, brought on by repetitive injury and a messed up personal life.

Yet, while rugby easily forgot about him in all that time away, the limelight never dimmed. “I was in a lucky position where I had the option of still earning when taking time out, which isn’t an option for most players.

“I just needed time out to refresh myself. I have been playing since 2000 and with the run of injuries I had from 2005 onwards it was hard not training all week and then doing a team run and playing. Doing that for three or four months on the trot. You can’t better yourself. You just maintain what you got. It just felt like I was fighting a losing battle.

“And with everything else, personal reasons, I just needed time out to sort things out.”

When the relationship with Church ended the tabloids poured in like ravenous hyenas.

“It took nearly two years but I feel much better for it. Hopefully I have just got away with it. Hopefully I have not come back into the game too late. I don’t think I have. I’m feeling great body-wise. All the skills seem to be there, I just have to concentrate a bit more than usual. Hopefully it will come back to me more naturally.

“I still think I can play my best rugby. It is just up to me to prove that on the field.”

Irish rugby has witnessed the crumbling of plenty of high profile bodies recently. Henson can relate to Brian O’Driscoll’s trapped nerve eventually requiring surgery. “It is only so long you can do that for. We’ve all gone through it and then there comes a time when you have to have that op. It will be hard, Brian coming back, because he has had some bad injuries as well.

“I suppose I am a bit highly tuned. But I haven’t had a lower limb injury for a while so I am hoping they are behind me. I have corrected my running style and stuff like that.

“It was the same injuries over and over again for three years. The same rehab. Mentally, I just couldn’t do it anymore. It kind of broke me and I needed time out.”

Did you miss it?

“I’ll be honest. For the first eight or nine months I didn’t miss it at all. I didn’t even train. I became a full-time dad. Eating anything. Completely switched off from what I was like before, which I enjoyed. Then I started thinking, ‘Right, shit, what will I do with my life?’ I slowly got back into training. The positive thoughts about rugby came back. I didn’t want to rush back in. I wanted to be sure this time. It took another eight or nine months. I was lucky enough that I was young enough to make that comeback.

“Hopefully it hasn’t been a bad decision and it works out for me.”

After a truly disastrous 2011 this must be Henson’s last chance at leaving an on-field legacy to outweigh off-field woes. Starting tonight. The Blues offered him an eight-month contract. If he keeps it together, both mentally and physically, then something more long-term will follow.

What he really wants is to play for Wales again. The whole point of Saracens then Toulon was to sneak back into Warren Gatland’s World Cup squad, and despite the French debacle, he very nearly made it. England at the Millennium Stadium last August was the last roll of that particular dice.

“I placed the ball back and one of their forwards landed on me with his whole weight. My palm was open and all I could do was take the weight. Obviously it couldn’t and my hand went back and through the arm.

“I think they thought that it wasn’t as bad because when I came off I was in more pain about the fact I would be missing the World Cup. I was like, ‘Look, it’s broken’.

“When I had the scan it was really badly done. Dislocated, torn ligaments. I had to have wires in there, plaster for eight weeks. It has only really got strong the last couple of weeks.”

It must have been a sickener to miss a third successive World Cup?

“For me, it wasn’t. It was obviously tough missing out at the start but this World Cup was much easier to watch because the previous one we’d been terrible. In this one the boys were fantastic – playing the best rugby in the tournament so, for me, it was much easier to watch.

Was he surprised by how comprehensive the quarter-final victory over Ireland was, considering how Leinster and Munster have been handing it to the Welsh franchises over the years?

“Because I know the Welsh boys so well I could see they were flying, but I thought Ireland would be the same after beating Australia. I think the hard work during the summer on the fitness side of things just paid off in that game.

“When you are feeling that good about yourself going on the field, well, it seems to work for us. I know that is something Gats wants to do before the Six Nations, if he can fit it in. It does give us an edge and as a team we would love that.”

He doesn’t expect any contact from the Welsh management until he shows sustained evidence that the old Gavin Henson has returned.

“I always want to play for Wales and I am going to try my hardest to get back in there, but it is harder than ever at the moment because the youngsters coming through have set a new standard. There is so much competition for places, especially in the centre position.

“I still feel I have a lot to offer. I have to prove that with Cardiff but I am running out of time before the Six Nations starts.”

Really, by now, the Welsh should be speaking about the Henson and Roberts combination in the same way O’Driscoll and Gordon D’Arcy are championed in Ireland.

“Yeah, Jamie is injured but I think he is back in a week or two. If I do get a chance at centre hopefully I can show something a little different than the other centres that are here and hopefully that will spark something with the Welsh coaches.”

They are both inside centres.

“Either I have been injured or he’s been injured so we haven’t played that much together yet. When we do play together we swap between 12 and 13, which seems to work. We just haven’t had that game time but it is an exciting combination. I think we could benefit each other with the different styles we play. It would be ideal if we could play together before the Six Nations and something special happens out on the field.”

The conversation switches to Leinster and he has questions of his own.

“Do you think Leinster are going to bring their full team down here to get themselves ready for Europe?”

Yeah, probably.

“The Irish boys?”

Looks like it.

“Aw great, it is going to be a massive game then. It is going to be huge. They are playing the best rugby at the moment. The best team by far. I watched them destroy Bath on TV. That was unbelievable. The way the game should be played. Awesome. Hopefully we’ll play some rugby as well and it could be a hell of a spectacle.”

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