When you remind Andy Powell it’s now 16 years since he made his Wales debut against South Africa, his reaction reflects just what a special memory it is.
“Ooh, I tell you now, the hairs are going up on my arm when you say that,” he declares.
“It’s crazy how the time just goes. Hey, we are all getting older. But where has 16 years gone?
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“It seems mad when you look back on it.”
Powell was no newbie when he won his first Welsh cap on that November afternoon in 2008.
He was 27 and had already had spells with Newport, Llandovery, Beziers, Leicester, the Scarlets and Cardiff Blues.
He’d first been called up to the Wales squad as a 21-year-old by Graham Henry ahead of the 2002 Six Nations.
But his career hadn’t quite kicked on as his youthful talent had suggested it might and caps had eluded him.
“I was a good player, but maybe you could look back and say I didn’t help myself along the way,” he admits.
“Some coaches said I was uncoachable.
“But perhaps they didn’t have the time to push me on further. Plus, I had a few setbacks with injuries, which doesn’t help.”
So, as he moved through his 20s, it was a case of life in the international wilderness for the back row boy from Brecon.
That was until a certain Warren Gatland arrived in Wales.
“I was playing well at the time for Cardiff,” recalls Powell.
“We played Gloucester in the group stage of the Heineken Cup at the Millennium Stadium and had a good win.
“I can remember having a phonecall then on the Sunday night off Gatland.
“The words he said were ‘I’ll see you in training on Monday morning’ and I thought ‘Fair enough, let’s go’.
“Then, on the Monday, he told me I was starting against South Africa.”
That was to be the beginning of a key rugby relationship in Powell’s life.
“I remember Gats saying to me ‘How do you mean you are uncoachable?’
“Every player is coachable, it’s how you treat them and I just think Gatland had this way with me.
“He said ‘If you put the effort in for me, I will give you the opportunity’.”
That opportunity came in the 2008 autumn opener against South Africa and Powell responded with a stirring Man of the Match display.
A lot of former players will tell you their Test debut went by in a flash and that they have only fleeting memories of the day.
That’s certainly not the case with Powell.
“I have such a clear memory of that day, 100 per cent,” he says.
“You get up, you have a bit of breakfast, a spot of coffee, you make sure you are hydrated, you do your weigh-in.
“Then you go up to the barn and do some stretching, some weights to get your muscles activated for the game, and do some lineouts.
“We came back to the hotel, I got my bag ready, went down for lunch and then away we go.
“I can just remember driving into Cardiff on the bus. You have got a police escort and the streets were just packed.
“I was thinking to myself ‘I’ve been waiting for this time’.
“I got called up at 21 and I didn’t get capped until I was 28.
“Blooming hell, I must have kept positive!
“I’ll be honest with you, I never thought it would happen. I never thought I would get to play for Wales. But the day came.
“I can remember having a tear in my eye and thinking ‘Blooming heck, I have worked hard for this’.”
Warming to the tale, he continues: “We drove down the ramp into the stadium, you take your bag off the bus and then you walk into the changing room and you see that No 8 shirt, cap number 1061 on the sleeve with ‘South Africa, November 8, 2008’.
“I can remember going out for the warm-up and thinking ‘Don’t get injured’.
“You sing the anthem and then you are into it. I think I was just that pumped, I was just ready to get stuck into the South Africans.
“You look at that side we were playing against – you had Victor Matfield, Bakkies Botha, Bryan Habana, John Smit, the Beast (Tendai Mtawarira), Schalk Burger, Bismarck du Plessis, Ruan Pienaar.
“There were unbelievable names on that team. I couldn’t have picked a much tougher start. It was a massive test.
“But, as a player, I wouldn’t look at the opposition team-sheet and think I am scared of that.
“I was confrontational and I would take on anyone. I just went at them from the start.”
That he certainly did, as he produced a mighty ball-carrying display, both in the close quarter action and when dropping back to receive kicks and getting up a thunderous head of steam on the charge.
He played a pivotal role as Wales pushed the star-studded Springboks all the way before eventually going down to a 20-15 defeat.
“The stadium was absolutely rocking that day. The ‘Boks had some team, but we ran them close.
“We had opportunities. If we had just been a bit more clinical, I think we could have won.
“We had a great side ourselves. It was full of players who had won the Grand Slam earlier that year.
“I was the new bloke coming in. When you get the chance to join a team like that, you have to go out and take it and that’s what I did.
“I relished taking on the physicality of the ‘Boks. I absolutely loved it. They are confrontational, they don’t care, I don’t care either and it was just full on. You smash me, I’ll smash you.
“It’s one of the best memories ever and it will always live with me. I am very proud of it.
“It was the best day ever. The best day of my life.”
Father-of-two Powell adds: “It’s funny. My eldest put on the highlights of the game the other day and he said ‘Dad, you weren’t a bad rugby player were you?’
“I laughed, but then, as I watched it, I thought ‘Blooming hell, I was all right that game, wasn’t I?’”
Unsurprisingly, given his sensational debut, Powell retained the No 8 jersey for the forthcoming game against New Zealand when Wales famously responded to the Haka by standing their ground and he was at the base of the scrum again for the landmark 21-18 win over Australia which concluded the autumn campaign.
“I looked at that Wallabies game not that long ago and I probably played better in that match than I did against South Africa. That was another game which I would put right up there.
“They were rare, those wins against the big southern hemisphere sides.”
Powell continued in the back row for the start of the 2009 Six Nations against Scotland at Murrayfield where he showed his versatility by ending the game in the centre.
He was loving his rugby and loving life in the Wales squad.
“Gatland was very good at making everybody welcome.
“I had been in previous camps where you walk into the room and it’s like going to school for the first time.
“It was very different with Gats.
“He would give you spare time to go out and do something. Then when you came to training, you had to train hard. That was what he was good at.
“He brought the best out in me as a player.
“One thing people forget is, yes I was a big ball carrier, but I also had good feet for a big man. I could usually beat the first and second defender and get gainline, which would put us on the front foot.
“I was very lucky. I was about 18st and quite quick for a big man. But you have to make the most of that by working hard.”
Such was the impact Powell made during that first season of international rugby that he was selected for the 2009 Lions tour of South Africa.
It’s an experience he looks back on with huge fondness, but also with a sense of what could have been.
“I was fit, I was strong. But then, in the second training session, which was very full on, I caught my hand on Donncha O’Callaghan’s head.
“It swelled up and I knew something wasn’t right with it. So I went for a scan and I had broken three bones in my palm.
“Gats said ‘Ok, you can stay and play the midweek games, we’ll inject you before them, so you can’t feel it’.
“So they strapped it up and I did that for six weeks.
“But my hand was knackered.
“That was disappointing because I honestly felt I was good enough to get into the Test side. I just had a bit of bad luck really.
“But I supported the team. I carried the bags for them when they were preparing for the Tests.
“I look back and I think to be involved with the Lions was such a prestigious thing.
“To be away for eight weeks with them was unbelievable.
“Back then, you could go out, you could have a beer, nobody had a phone in your face. It was a lot more relaxed.”
Ask him which players he got on with best and the gregarious Powell replies in typical fashion.
“I’ll be honest, every single person. You know what I’m like, I just get on with everybody!
“It was good fun. It was just one of those tours where everybody got on. You make friends for life.
“I bumped into a few of them two years ago at Twickenham and it’s like you’ve never been apart.
“That’s what I love about rugby. It’s just the core values of what the game is about.”
There was to be another memorable occasion for Powell at the end of 2009 as he shared in the Barbarians’ 25-18 win over New Zealand at Twickenham.
He was joined by fellow Welshmen Jamie Roberts and Leigh Halfpenny, while the invitation team also included the likes of Bryan Habana, Matt Giteau, Victor Matfield, George Smith, Schalk Burger, Fourie du Preez, Joe Rokococo and Will Genia.
“I’ll tell you, that squad was unbelievable.
“To be around those legends and to have the experience of what a BaaBaas trip was like was something else.
“I remember we turned up at the Grosvenor in Mayfair on the Sunday and Nick Mallett (coach) said ‘Right lads, we are going to go for a few beers tonight, we probably won’t train tomorrow, we’ll train Tuesday’.
“But then it started snowing in London, so we didn’t train. I think we went on the piss for about four days! We trained twice for an hour and we beat the All Blacks on the Saturday. It was just the best experience ever.”
Powell was on the crest of a wave, but then, in February 2010 – Valentine’s Day to be precise – things came crashing down.
He had shared in another famous win, as Wales staged a remarkable late comeback to beat Scotland in Cardiff.
But then, that night, he took a golf buggy from the team base at the Vale Resort and drove down the M4, ending up being arrested.
He was removed from the Wales squad the following day and didn’t play any further part in that Six Nations, while he was to receive a 15 month driving ban and a fine after admitting the offence in court.
“I have got used to people bringing it up now, but at the time it was quite difficult,” he reveals.
“I had a bit of a bad patch. You know what social media is like. It’s good for some things and an absolute nightmare for other things. It can ruin people and I think it ruined me for a while, to a certain extent.
“I got a bit of bad press for what I did and deservedly so. It was my fault.
“I just had to rise above it. I couldn’t just say ‘That’s it’.
“I managed to come back and sort of distance myself from it all.
“I was getting a lot of hassle, which was rightly so, but I rode the storm well and I did really push on. I worked really hard after that.”
Hard enough in fact to make the Wales squad for the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.
“I really wanted to do a World Cup,” he says.
“Achieving that goal was a big thing for me after what happened.
“We had so many young players in that squad who rose to the occasion. Gats just made us believe we could beat anybody.”
Powell was to play a key role in the tightly contested group match against Samoa in Hamilton.
“Dan Lydiate went off with a bad ankle early on and I came on and made 26 tackles,” he recalls.
“I wouldn’t usually make that many in two or three games!”
A hard-fought 17-10 win over the Samoans saw Wales go through to the quarter-finals where they beat Ireland before narrowly losing to France in the semis following the infamous sending off of Sam Warburton.
“What happened to Warby, I don’t think it was a red card,” says Powell.
“They milked it a bit the French and we got knocked out.
“I spoke to a few Kiwis after the tournament and they said if they’d played us in the final, they wouldn’t have matched our physicality because we were just knocking teams all over the shop.
“It’s a real what if. It would have been lovely to have a Wales-New Zealand final and it was that close. Small margins.”
Powell won the last of his 23 caps the following year, with his wandering club career taking him to Wasps, Sale, the Dragons and Merthyr, along with spells in rugby league at Wigan and the South Wales Scorpions.
Finally, in 2016, at the age of 35, he called it a day.
“I made so many friends and I went to so many different countries,” he says.
“I had so much fun along the way and some of the memories will live with me forever.”
Powell has a special word for Gatland, who has been going through a tough time in his second spell in charge of Wales.
“I love Gats and what he’s coming under at the minute, with the pressure, I do feel sorry for him.
“I will never have a bad word to say about the man.
“He gave me an opportunity and if it wasn’t for him doing that, I wouldn’t have played for Wales, I wouldn’t have played for the Lions and I wouldn’t have had the career I did. He was so supportive of me.
“He is an absolute legend of a bloke and he gave me what I always wanted.”
Since hanging up his boots, Powell has remained heavily involved in rugby.
He spent three years coaching his home town club of Brecon, guiding them to a WRU Plate triumph at the Principality Stadium in 2019.
Then he took up the reins at Southwell RFC, in Nottinghamshire, where he lives, and he’s now begun a new chapter as head coach of Whitchurch RFC in Shropshire.
So, every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, he gets in the car and makes the long journey from the east Midlands.
“It’s a five hour round trip, but then if you are committed you do it,” he says.
“It’s a nice level and a good standard.
“We are getting good numbers at training, 30 odd boys now, which is brilliant, and they have got a great youth and kids system.
“I love coaching and giving back to the grassroots level. That’s why I am still doing it – because I love the game.”
Powell is also busy with his AP8 Academy, which runs rugby training camps for youngsters.
“It’s going well and I absolutely love it.
“It’s all about getting youngsters involved in the game.
“I love giving something back from what I learned from so many different coaches. It’s about having fun, but at the same time it’s about learning and being together and doing what’s right in terms of rugby values.
“We have got this exciting thing we are doing now where we are going to go back to every single club I played for and do a memory of my time there.
“I am going to be going to France, Leicester, Sale, Wasps and recreating something I did on that pitch, with my two boys and some of the Academy kids and we are going to film it.”
Powell’s sons, Henry and Timmy, are 10 and 6 respectively.
“They both love rugby. They play football, tennis, golf, they do everything, they just love sport.
“I have told them, don’t play rugby because dad played, do what you want to do, but they just love it.”
Powell, now 43, also does a lot of after-dinner speaking, travelling to various clubs and corporate events, which inevitably sees the buggy incident cropping up in conversation.
“I was in London the other day doing some work and somebody said to me ‘If you hadn’t done that, you probably wouldn’t be doing this now’ and I said ‘Yeah, you are right’.
“It’s probably helped me out in a way.
“I shouldn’t have done it, but it’s done now and you can’t look back. You have to look forward and get on with life.
“When it comes up, you just have a bit of fun with the people. That’s how it is.
“I wouldn’t say that’s the funniest story. It’s a good one, but there are others I have got!
“I am not going to change the person I am. I am still a character and I try to enjoy every day.
“I do like doing my talking because I have got so many good stories and the stories are very interesting. I think people like to hear the truth. I don’t use other people’s stories. I am unique, which is quite good.”
Unique is certainly the word for Andy Powell.
