Gareth Thomas knows better than most what it’s like to have a celebrity status which stretches beyond the rugby field.
He also knows what it’s like to be dropped by Wales and just how that feels.
So, on both counts, he is well placed to give his thoughts on Louis Rees-Zammit's situation.
It has been something of a roller coaster ride for Rees-Zammit of late.
By the age of 20, he was a Six Nations title winner, a Lion and a nominee for World Rugby’s breakthrough player of the year.
But now the Gloucester winger finds himself out of the Welsh team, having been dropped after the Six Nations clash with Scotland.
This week, it’s his life off the field which has hit the headlines, with the announcement that he has signed with London-based modelling agency Milk Management.
So what does former Wales captain Thomas - a man very familiar with the pros and cons of celebrity status - make of it all?
“I have a sense of empathy with Louis and an understanding of what he’s going through,” he told WalesOnline.
“The most poignant moment in my career, the turning point in my career was when Steve Hansen dropped me.
“What you realise then is you aren’t what everyone around you tells you that you are.
“You can’t just read the good press, you have to realise there are things you still need to work on.
“When you get selected for Wales, you have to be a great player, but you can’t stay playing for Wales as just a great player. You have to have so many more skills.
“You have to be really resilient, you have to want to evolve your game because there is constantly someone trying to take over your spot or fill your jersey.
“When you are away from that jersey, you realise what it meant to you and you want to get it back.
“Louis is still new on the block, he is still being tested, he is still being found out.
“He has played through Covid, so he hasn’t that much experience of playing in front of international crowds.
“All of a sudden, you are going away to different grounds, teams are testing you in ways they have never tested you before and you are not 10 out of 10 now.
“You realise maybe there are things you need to work on if you want to keep this jersey.
“So you go away to the training field, work on it and come back as a better player or the player the coach wants you to be.”
Read more: Louis Rees-Zammit scores stunning try after barely 30 seconds on the pitch
As for Rees-Zammit’s move into the world of modelling, the 100-cap Thomas feels it is fine to branch out as long as you are aware of the potential consequences.
“People think if you are a rugby player that’s all you can be,” he said.
“But you can do other things as long as you don’t lose focus on what it is you want to be defined as.
“You’ve got to take opportunities.
“People sometimes forget that a rugby career is very short.
“So any opportunities you get within that career, you should be allowed to explore, as long as it doesn’t take away from your game.
“But what you have to realise is, if you decide to do other things, it can become a distraction or a talking point.
“When you drop a ball, you might not have dropped it because the day before you did a modelling contract.
“But you have to take the consequences that people are going to use it as a way of coming in and saying ‘well maybe you should focus on this more rather than focusing on standing in front of a camera’.
“People don’t know what everyone else was doing the day before, but they will know what he was doing.
“So you are going to get the criticism.
“For a young kid, that’s very difficult.
“At Louis’ age, I would probably never have been able to cope with it because I would have fought back.
“If he still chooses to do it, more power to him, but he has realise it might come up and if it does then he has to deal with that.”
Win Wales v France tickets and watch Six Nations game for free:
You can also fill in the entry form and sign up to our newsletter here.
Thomas - known throughout the game as Alfie - has, of course, become a high-profile figure away from rugby with appearances on shows like Celebrity Big Brother, Dancing On Ice and The Jump, as well as documentaries.
He has been a regular on our screens once more over the past few weeks, as a pundit for ITV’s Six Nations coverage and via the BBC’s Slammed, a series charting the highs and lows of the Welsh rugby team in the 1990s and noughties. Read more on that here.
He was one of the main contributors to Slammed, so how did he find the whole experience?
“I loved it,” the former Bridgend and Cardiff back said.
“It was a really long interview. We sat there for about six, seven hours.
“We discussed years and years, not of my life, but the story of Welsh rugby of the time I was involved.
“Sometimes when you get asked questions about things you have forgotten, the memories come back to life.
“For me, I was doing the one thing I dreamt of doing and I was doing it with a great bunch of people.
“It was great to have all those memories come back and to be able to talk about them and share them with everybody else.
“It also made me realise how much I have moved on from then.
“I learned a lot about myself watching that programme.
“There were parts of it where I thought, ‘oh my God, that’s so embarrassing’.
“I think I had kind of forgotten what a massive, massive part of my life it was and also how I probably wasn’t ready to do what I was doing because I was too immature.
“I thought at the time I could do nothing wrong and that I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“But the reality is I could have been kinder, I could have been nicer. I could have been more willing, more open, more engaging.
“I know that now, but we can’t turn back the clock.”
Thomas, who captained Wales on 21 occasions between 2003 and 2007, continued: “I thought I did everything right at the time.
“Looking back, would I have done things a bit differently? Yeah, I would have, I really would have.
“I would have understood the connection the press have with the public and I would have been way more understanding of both sides of the story.
“For instance, the biggest thing in there was the Mike Ruddock incident.
“I feel like I have made up with Mike on it since then.
“But I don’t feel like I ever really fully empathised with him at the time.
“All I saw was the destruction around me, the destruction around my family, what it was doing to me and I never thought about the other side of the story. I never considered it.
“I feel like a better person would have considered it and rather than defending constantly would have gone ‘do you know what, maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe I was too hot-headed, maybe I was too passionate, maybe I cared too much and I should have seen things with different lenses.’
“Back then, I was so defensive and I felt the one thing I had on my side was passion.
“But passion isn’t all about defending what you care about, it’s about understanding and empathy as well.
“Mind you, as the media, maybe you wouldn’t want to have changed me back then, because there would have been s**t all to write about!”
Read more: The true story of THAT Scrum V meltdown and Alfie-Butler exchange that shocked a Welsh nation
Reflecting on the Slammed series as a whole, he said: “It was really interesting.
“I thought it was a brilliant story.
“It showed why Welsh rugby is so unique, why it’s so special, why it’s so emotive, why it’s so important.
“I really enjoyed it.
“Sitting with me watching it was my husband Steve. Now he genuinely has no idea about rugby, not a clue, and that’s one of many things I love about him.
“But there was a part in it which made him cry.
“It was where I told Tom Shanklin about my sexuality and the boys all knew and we played England and we beat them.
“I remember going up to Shanks and saying ‘I’ve got to tell you, for all the support always, I just want you to know I love you'.
“He says in his piece in Slammed how he turned back, looked me in the eye and said ‘Alf. I love you too’.
“At that point, Steve stood up and cried.
“I just thought to myself, oh my God, what a moment in time that was for me, but also what a moment in time it was in showing what rugby was about.
“Whatever it is, we can transcend, we can move on from anything, as long as we’ve still got rugby to connect us.
“We can be as different as we want, but the one thing we have in common is Welsh rugby.”
The show also reflected the passing of time, rolling the clock back some two decades, and the 47-year-old Thomas reveals how he has had another recent experience of that.
“I was in a shop in Bridgend and there was this group of people buying booze,” he says.
“One of them was asked for their date of birth and she said ‘I was born in 2003’.
“I was like ‘oh my God!’ I had been playing for Wales for eight years before this person was even born. That made me feel old.”
Bringing things right up to date, Thomas has been keeping a close eye on the Six Nations through his work with ITV.
He was on punditry duty for the England-Wales game at Twickenham, which ended in a 23-19 defeat for Wayne Pivac’s team.
With France coming up next, one wonders whether he would like to see any changes to the Welsh side?
“The only one I would consider is bringing in Josh Navidi, if he proves himself to be fit,” he replies.
“He would be an addition to any back row in the world.”
He continued: “Even though Wales didn’t win at Twickenham, I thought they left the field having hit the ground running.
“They clicked, they really stretched England, they looked really fit. I thought they were the fitter of the two teams, so there is a lot they can be confident about going into a tie against France.
“They can feel they have the ability to do this, to upset the best team in the world at home.
“So I wouldn’t ruffle it, I wouldn’t change it at all.”
Always a busy man, Thomas is also continuing his campaigning to raise awareness and understanding of HIV, having revealed he was HIV positive in September 2019.
“I feel like it’s too easy to say ‘well, things are better now than they were 20 years ago’," he explains.
“Yeah, things are better, but things are not where they need to be.
“Medically, scientifically, things have changed.
“There has to come a time where we also see change around the stigma with HIV.
“I sometimes wonder whether what I am doing is worthwhile.
“But I have to keep doing it because I won’t rest until I have change.”
- Tackle HIV, a campaign led by Gareth Thomas in partnership with ViiV Healthcare and the Terrence Higgins Trust, aims to tackle the stigma and misunderstanding around HIV. Visit www.tacklehiv.org and follow @tacklehiv
To get the latest rugby news and analysis, sign up for our Welsh rugby newsletter.
