Glenn Hoddle used three words to describe Paul Gascoigne after the then England football manager told his famously volatile charge he wasn’t taking him to the 1998 World Cup.
“A man possessed,” summed up Hoddle.
Gazza smashed a lamp and kicked over a chair of a hotel room, all the while offering his boss a colourful critique of his decision.
The player’s father reportedly threatened to sue Hoddle for compensation for missing his holiday at the tournament, saying: “I paid £1,024 for it, and I won’t be getting my money back. I even bought a travel iron.”
Read more: England poised to call up Wales-qualified teen
What of those at the heart of Welsh rugby’s bombshell selection calls?
There have been no reports of five-star rooms being rearranged in fits of rugby rage, or of dads warning of impending legal action.
But, still, some players have been more than a bit put out after being left out, so to speak.
Ahead of Wales' squad announcement for the tour to South Africa this summer, MARK ORDERS takes a look…
Ian Gough is ‘stabbed in the back’, 2003
Ian Gough felt he had played well in the World Cup warm-up against Romania in 2003, a few days before Steve Hansen was due to name his squad for the global bash in Japan.
Gough had also trained strongly that summer.
So when he was left out it wasn’t his happiest moment.
Brent Cockbain, explained Hansen to Gough, was an inch-and-a-half taller, so he would be going instead.
It wasn’t news guaranteed to delight.
As he walked away from the barn at the Vale of Glamorgan hotel where the squad were based, Gough received a phone call from a journalist, asking what he felt of his omission.
Both barrels were duly fired.
"I have been stabbed in the back," Gough informed readers of the South Wales Argus the following day, Wales-qualified Australian Cockbain having received the nod ahead of him.
"When Steve Hansen told me who was in, it was even harder to take. I daresay Chris (Wyatt) and Vernon (Cooper) feel likewise.
"I am very disappointed, upset and gutted and feel let down.
"It is a very bitter pill to swallow, one I never thought I would have to. I had reasons for not being selected, but they did not wash with me.
"I just wish I had not been messed about. I could have remained with the Dragons throughout the summer — I would have been further down the road for them."
The late Robin Davey, the reporter involved, had given Gough the chance to retract his comments before they went to press, but it wasn’t taken.
“The end result was it cost me nigh on two years in the international wilderness. I didn’t play for Wales again until 2005 when Steve had gone back to New Zealand,” wrote Gough in his book, Goughy, A Tough Lock to Crack.
“It was a harsh lesson for me to learn.”
Cockbain dropped via voicemail, 2007
Fast-forward to 2007 and it was Brent Cockbain’s turn to experience disappointment in selection.
The 6ft 8in lock was travelling home from visiting family in Australia after Wales’ tour that summer when then coach Gareth Jenkins named his Wales squad for the tournament in France, omitting the Ospreys player in favour of Gloucester's Will James.
Jenkins couldn't get hold of Cockbain personally.
But the news was still left for the giant forward.
Jenkins said: “I haven’t spoken to Brent personally yet but I have left messages for him.”
It may not have been a bombshell in the wider sense, but it couldn’t have been much fun for Cockbain, a hard man on the pitch but an individual who had been nothing but helpful when it came to media matters at the 2003 global tournament.
Adam Jones ends Wales career after snub, 2015
Adam Jones had dreamed of completing a hundred games for Wales.
Of course he had. All internationals would want to get there.
But it didn’t happen for Jones.
The tighthead had been whipped off early in the opening Test on tour against South Africa in the summer of 2014, with Warren Gatland not even bothering to wait until half-time, removing Wales’ much-feted No. 3 that day after barely 30 minutes.
At the time it seemed a dismal way to treat a man who had been the cornerstone of the Wales pack for Six Nations Grand Slams in 2005, 2008 and 2012.
Then Jones was left out for the 2014 autumn Tests.
End game approached after he found himself overlooked for the 2015 Six Nations, with the news coming via a call from Wales forwards coach Robin McBryde.
“Robin dispensed with the small talk: ‘Bomb, we’re not picking you. We don’t think you’re in the right place,’” Jones wrote in his autobiography, Bomb.
“In the jumble of words that followed, I heard mention of Samson Lee and Aaron Jarvis, leaving me scratching my head as to the identity of the third tighthead. ‘Who else?” I asked.
“‘Scott Andrews,’ the answer came back.”
Andrews was Jones’ Cardiff team-mate who was behind him in the Arms Park pecking order.
Of McBryde, Jones continued in his book: “What upset me most was his blunt manner. I’d played with and against Robin for most of my career, and he made me feel just like a number on a spreadsheet — one he could conveniently delete when the conversation was over.
“‘F**k it, then’,” came my less than eloquent reply, and I hung up on him.
“Once my thumb had hit the ‘end call’ button, I knew it was over.”
It was.
Jones announced his retirement from Test rugby on 95 Wales caps.
“I was done,” he says in Bomb.
Henson’s anger, 2003
Anyone who watched Gavin Henson playing for Swansea at the outset of his career would have been bemused how a player of such talent would have been left out of a World Cup squad around that time.
He could kick the ball further than some people could travel without getting car sick, he could glide over for spectacular tries and he had the strength of an ox.
But not everyone felt he was the complete package.
The night before announcing his 2003 World Cup squad, the then Wales coach Steve Hansen rang him. “‘Gavin, I’ve got some bad news for you, mate. I haven’t picked you’,” he said, as chronicled by Henson in his book, My Grand Slam Year.
“He said it again," said Henson. "I felt sick, physically sick. My head started throbbing and my stomach was turning over. The shock, the churning feeling in the pit of my stomach, the anger…it all tasted so sour and so horribly familiar. ‘What? Are you serious?’ I said.
“He probably expected me to tell him I was disappointed, but thanks for the call and best of luck for the tournament.
“Bo****ks to that. I was way, way beyond that. It felt like the worst news of my life.”
Henson didn’t play under Hansen again.
Gareth Davies quits after A. N. Other humiliation, 1985
The glory days of the 1970s were over as Wales endured episodes of dismal ordinariness during the next decade.
Plenty of lows were involved.
One trough occurred in 1985 when the selectors couldn’t choose between Gareth Davies, the incumbent, and Malcolm Dacey at fly-half, saying they would like to see them play against each other, with Cardiff facing Swansea the week before Wales faced England.
Davies warned the selectors that if the team was released to the public with A. N. Other at fly-half, he would end his Wales career. The Big Five did it anyway. Davies did as he had threatened to do.
The Cardiff player, a clever tactician and prodigious kicker out of hand, performed outstandingly in opposition to Swansea’s Dacey the next day, with Davies subsequently receiving a call asking if he’d reconsider his decision. He told the selector involved ‘no’.
But it hurt. "The way my career ended still rankles," Davies was reported as saying almost 35 years later.
Some had an even stronger view on it. “It was a disgrace,” said Davies’ old half-back partner for club and country, Terry Holmes. “What other country in the world would have done that? It summed up the attitude of those in charge.”
JPR hits the s**t out of team-mates
All good things must come to an end, even for those who seem immune from such laws of life.
It was 1981 and Wales had fallen to defeat against Scotland at Murrayfield.
JPR Williams was among those ruthlessly dropped.
The shock waves took an age to abate. That wasn’t how it was supposed to end for a superstar. The news had been broken to him during team preparations for the next round of matches. “They told me at the training session for the next game, against Ireland,” Peter Jackson quotes Williams as saying in the book, Lions of Wales. You can read more about the episode here.
“Steve Fenwick, the skipper, had been dropped as well.
“He went off home.
“I trained with the team and hit s**t out of the rest of the team, which was a fairly typical reaction!
“Maybe the desire for international rugby had waned, plus the fact that I didn’t have as many outstanding players around me.”
Nothing lasts for ever, not even a celebrated Wales career.
