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THREE Get Lost, Gav

      Stephen Jones is the happiest man I’ve ever met. He may even be the happiest man in the world. It doesn’t matter what the situation, the weather or the workload he never stops smiling and being upbeat. He must have his own supply of happy pills and they must be a better brand than anyone else’s.

      I was rooming with Steve at our Vale of Glamorgan Hotel on the night we beat England. When I finally got back there in the early hours, I was still on Cloud Nine but Steve was somewhere way beyond that. We chatted for a long time before finally getting some sleep and I must have still been smiling from ear to ear when I went downstairs for breakfast the following morning. I was part of a Welsh team that had beaten the world champions and my kick was the moment that had clinched it, a moment I had prepared for all my waking hours and dreamt about when I was asleep. Nothing, absolutely nothing, could bring me down. Or so I thought.

      Then, Alan Phillips, the Wales team manager, came over with a newspaper in his hand. It was the News of the World. Splashed all over one page was a story about Charlotte Church and me. The headline was something like, ‘CHARLOTTE TELLS GAV TO GET LOST.’ The story made me out to be some kind of stalker and quoted Charlotte describing how I had ‘pestered’ her for her phone number the night of the Japan game. I was gutted.

      Of course, the other boys in the squad had all read it and thought it was hilarious. What made it even funnier for them – and much worse for me – was that I had told them all how I really liked Charlotte and wanted to see her again. In fact, I hadn’t seen her since that night in November and now this story seemed to be saying she thought I was a pain in the arse. Once the boys clocked on to my reaction, as I sat there like some sad loser staring at the paper, their mood changed. They started ripping into me, good and proper. To the real dealers in mickey-taking – guys like Tom Shanklin, Rhys Williams, and Ceri Sweeney – this was as if all their Christmases had come at once. They were queuing up to give me a good kicking. All I could think was, ‘The bitch!’ My ‘pestering’ her consisted of me giving her mother, Maria, my phone number as she had asked me for it that night I had met Charlotte. Oh well, I thought. That’s that. Might as well take it on the chin, let the boys have their fun until they get bored, and get ready for the next game against France.

      On the following day, Monday, we were back in training when I was told by Hal Luscombe, our wing from the Newport Gwent Dragons, that some bloke had rung him in a bid to track down my phone number on behalf of Charlotte. The details sounded a bit sketchy to me, though, and I thought is was probably part of another wind-up. Probably, the hand of Shanklin was involved somewhere along the line. I didn’t really want to hand over my phone number to someone I didn’t know, so Hal gave the guy the number of another handset he happened to have on him. Sure enough, a message came through that appeared to be genuinely from Charlotte. She apologised for the story and claimed her mother had been set up by someone who had then spoken to the press.

      We arranged to meet up the next day and she was still very sorry about what had happened. Once again we seemed to hit it off and our relationship developed from there. It was a strange time to start dating a high profile girlfriend, one match into my first Six Nations campaign, and I did have a few concerns that it might prove to be a distraction. There were plenty of people who were also worried and a few of them sat me down and told me to drop the whole idea. Peter Underhill, my agent, who was in the middle of re-negotiating a great new deal for me with the Ospreys, was concerned this might mean I took my eye off the ball. Scott Johnson, Mike Ruddock’s assistant coach, took a tactful approach and carefully spelled out some of the dangers that might lay ahead. Scott’s like that. He really thinks deeply about the welfare of every player under his responsibility. Alfie, our skipper, was a bit more blunt. ‘Listen, butt,’ he said. ‘You want to steer clear of all that crap. She might just be out for a bit of cheap publicity.’ As captain he had a perfect right to be alarmed. The last thing he probably wanted was for me to go off the rails and for the team to be badly affected. I listened to all their advice, but I didn’t take it.

      It was the same with my parents. It hadn’t taken long for the newspapers to catch on that I appeared to be Charlotte’s new boyfriend. Neither did it take them long to trace where my parents lived and they were soon outside their door. ‘What the hell is going on?’ said my Dad. But he wasn’t too concerned about the cameras outside his house. He could deal with that. He was far more worried that my rugby career – something he had helped me build since I was old enough to walk – was in danger of going down the drain. ‘Don’t worry, Dad. It’s all under control.’ But I don’t think Mum or Dad were too convinced early on.

      I was happy, though. Charlotte had come to my house to explain all about the newspaper story and we had got on really well. I dropped her back home at around 11 and was keen to see her again. I gave her a goodnight kiss and as I drove home I thought, this is great. She’s a really nice girl. I feel comfortable with her and I can handle what comes with it – the press, the photographers, even the stick from the rest of the boys in the squad. It’ll be fine.

      And it has been. We sent each other loads of texts after that night and things just progressed from there. If Charlotte had not been a famous singer, then I admit we probably would not have gone out with each other. That’s not because I wanted to be seen with someone famous, but because of the kind of person I am. I’m basically quite shy. I would probably have been too shy to approach her in a bar and come out with all the chat to find out about her. But as I knew a little bit about her anyway, I didn’t need to go through all that. It sort of broke the ice. I knew who she was. She knew who I was. There was also an aura about her which I felt comfortable with. She’s fun to be around.

      But it was a weird time to start a relationship. In a sense Alfie and Scott Johnson were right. I did find it hard to focus. I had never really had a serious girlfriend before, not since I was at school, anyway. Rugby had always come first and I hadn’t given much time or thought to relationships. But Charlotte and I just seemed to hit it off. She has an image in the newspapers of enjoying a good night out and a lot of drinking. She does like to party sometimes, but there are lots of different sides to her and her drinking isn’t as bad as they make out. She’s just a normal 19-year-old, enjoying her life.

      So that was how I came to be sitting in a bar in Paris a few weeks later, exchanging text messages with my girlfriend after we had just beaten France. We had just won our third match of the Six Nations and had already beaten the two overwhelming favourites for the title. On and off the field, life felt good.

      Financially, things were improving for me, too. I had come into professional rugby at 18 years of age and joined Swansea. It was the right decision from a playing perspective and I’m very glad I chose such a great club. But within a couple years the place was in financial meltdown. The club went into administration, wages were halved overnight, players left, and no-one knew what was around the corner. Thankfully, for me at least, the Neath-Swansea Ospreys lay around the corner and some much needed financial stability in my life. But by the time I went to Paris in late February 2005 my first contract with the region was drawing to an end and I had to decide on my future.

      Talks about extending my contract had first begun back in the previous November but I had left it all with Pete, my agent, in order to concentrate fully on my rugby. My relationship with Pete is a good one and I trust him to look after my interests. He certainly seemed to have pulled off some pretty good deals for two of his other clients. Gareth Thomas was very happy at Toulouse and Colin Charvis had seen his career resurrected by joining Newcastle. Pete isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but then most agents in the game quickly divide opinion. But I was impressed by the fact that he soon realised my priority was to remain with the Ospreys in Wales rather than simply try and get as much money as possible from a move to England or France.

      I was anxious to get things wrapped up so that I could focus fully on playing, but I was also aware that my standing in the game was changing. I had become a regular in the Wales team and there was interest in me from clubs in both England and France.

      I could certainly have taken more money by leaving Wales, but so long as I felt the new deal from the Ospreys was a fair one I was more than happy to stay.

      The

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