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'It's one of my major regrets': There is something Rhys Priestland would do very differently if he had his time over again

(Photo by Malcolm Couzens/Getty Images)

Bath out-half Rhys Priestland has revealed that his lax approach to mental health in the earlier part of his career is one of his biggest regrets as he prepares to head back to Wales and keep his career going with Cardiff in the Guinness PRO16. The 34-year-old has spent the last six seasons in the Gallagher Premiership after establishing himself at the Scarlets and breaking his way into the international set-up under Warren Gatland in 2011.

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Priestland went on to play 50 times for his country before the 60-cap rule for players based outside Wales made him unavailable. His decision to join the Blues will now put him back in the mix under Wayne Pivac and he goes there having played 91 times in the Premiership, 71 of those appearances as a starter with Bath including Friday night’s loss to Sale.

These past few weeks Priestland has been the Bath ambassador for the RPA’s Restart mental health charity, a topic close to his heart as he admitted to RugbyPass that if he had his time over again he would bring a different attitude to rugby and life rather than allow himself to be suffocated by the negatives – as was the case during numerous years not so long ago when he didn’t have the tools to cope better with the pressures.

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“I’m a lot better,” he said. “It’s something I have had to work hard on. I was guilty a bit at the start. If someone asked me how are you after not even a poor performance, if things outside rugby were getting me down, you’d just brush it off and say I’m fine.

“It seemed like the macho thing to do but I now realise you don’t have to do it on your own, there are people out there who can help you. It is something I have worked hard on and it has made me a better person. I’m nowhere near as miserable to be around if some things don’t go well on a rugby field anymore and that is important as well because it has helped me realise there can be more to life than rugby.

“I definitely wasn’t (the most confident player I could have been). If I had my time again that is one thing I would have focused more of my time and energy into that. At the time I couldn’t see the wood from the trees. I didn’t realise how important it [mental health] was. It’s one of my major regrets from my career. There we are.”

Set to be replaced at Bath by Danny Cipriani, Priestland reckons he will now return to Wales a better player due to the greater level of mindfulness that came to the fore during his time in England. “I think so,” he continued. “Although I haven’t achieved or we haven’t achieved what we sort of set out to achieve every season since I have been here (at Bath), I can look back at my time and definitely think I’m a more rounded person.

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“Probably a better person as well so hopefully I can take those experiences back with me and if I can play any sort of part of influence any players at Cardiff who are coming through that would be great.

It’s a fantastic initiative,” he added about Restart and its ambition to grow awareness around mental health in rugby. “One thing that has come from this pandemic is how important people’s mental health is. It’s something I have struggled with in the past and it’s something I have been very proactive with in terms of trying to make sure my mental health is in the best state it possibly can be.

“The more awareness that we as rugby players can bring to this sort of subject and what the charity stands for and what the campaign is trying to achieve the better, that it is okay not to be okay. There is still a stigma in rugby that it is a macho sport and you just have to get on with it but it’s not the case. The world has moved on and this charity can hopefully help people and make them realise they are not on their own.”

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fl 1 hour ago
‘Props are awesome…so why don’t they win prizes?’

“The reason most props don’t last the whole game is that they expend proportionally more effort than players outside the front row. Should they be penalised for that?”

No, they don’t last the whole game because they are less fit than players outside the front row. I’d be interested to know if you’d apply this logic to other positions; do PSDT and Itoje regularly last longer than other players in their positions because they put in less effort?

None of this is about “penalising” props, its about being realistic about their impact on a game.


“While scrums are a small part of the game in terms of time spent in them, they have disproportionate impact. Dominant scrums win games; feeble ones lose them.”

Strength at the breakdown wins games. Good kicking wins games. Good handling wins games. Strong defence wins games. Good lineouts win games. Ultimately, I think that of all these things, the scrum is probably the least important, because it demonstrably doesn’t correlate very well with winning games. I don’t think Rugbypass will allow me to link articles, but if you google “HG Rugby Crowning the Best Scrum in Club Rugby” you’ll get a pretty convincing analysis that ranks Toulouse and Bordeaux outside of the 10 best club sides in the scrum - and ranks Leinster outside of the top 30.


“Or there’s Joe Marler’s epic performance in the Bristol v Quins 2021 Premiership Semi-Final, in which he finally left the pitch 15 minutes into extra time having signed off with a try saving tackle.”

Yeah - that’s a good example actually, but it kind of disproves your point. Marler played 95 minutes, which is unheard of for a prop.


“Maybe we need a dedicated Hall of Fame with entry only for props, and voted for only by props.”

Well we have the World Rugby XV of the year. Its only been going for a few years, but in time it’ll be a pretty good record of who are perceived as best props - although the lack of interest most people have in scrums means that perception of who the best props are doesn’t always match reality (e.g. Tadgh Furlong was great in 2018 - but was he really the best tighthead in the world in 2021, 2022, & 2023?).

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