The Breakdown | ‘The road not taken haunts me to this day’: ...

Imagine, for a moment, the following scenario. Having broken his neck in a freak rugby accident and avoided paralysis by a millimetre, the player concerned is back for a meeting with his spinal consultant. The specialist advice is crystal clear. Make the most of your second chance and, if you fancy staying alive, never do either of the following again: dive off a high board or resume playing rugby.

And now just imagine being the kind of guy who leaves the room and immediately nips home to pick up his swimming trunks before heading to the nearest swimming pool. Who puts on the swimmers, climbs up to the highest platform and dives straight off. Not once but twice. The rationale being that, if he survives, there will be no reason not to give rugby another go.

Welcome to the scarcely believable and frequently mad world of “The Bish”. Anyone with the remotest knowledge of 1980s Welsh rugby union will instantly recognise the nickname. Along with all the hair-raising stories. David Bishop of Pontypool and, all too briefly, Wales remains perhaps the best “one-cap wonder” in the history of British team sport and unquestionably the most colourful.

There were those who reckoned The Bish – the quasi-ecclesiastical nickname was bestowed on him by his late, great friend and Pooler teammate Eddie Butler – was an even better scrum-half than the legendary Gareth Edwards. And he was never the type to disabuse them. “At one stage I had an ego the size of Cardiff Arms Park, or the Principality Stadium, as we must now call it. I’d go so far as to suggest that a huge ego is almost essential to succeed. It didn’t really matter whether I was the best scrum-half in the world or not; the only way I’d perform at my best was if I believed I was.”

There is more, much more, in Bishop’s fascinating and absorbing new autobiography, written with the help of the seasoned journalist Brendan Gallagher. Let’s just say it goes to places other rugby books never reach. Including Aylesbury prison where Bishop once spent 12 months behind bars for assault.

Not forgetting the swollen River Taff where he once saved a mother and her baby from drowning. And the less salubrious parts of Cardiff where visiting fans never stray. “I marched around looking for scraps and fights, an angry and often dysfunctional young man who was much too quick to resort to fists and violence,” acknowledges Bishop. “It was the world I inhabited and that’s how things were sorted. When I look back, the sad fact is I didn’t grow up until I was nearly 40. It took me until then to become a fully formed, functioning adult.”

A physically abusive father and a swift temper were both contributory factors. “Throughout my life, there was also a madness and a manic energy – a rage, almost – within me, which was definitely not normal and which I struggle to explain.” The cider – “or ‘electric lemonade’ as I know it” – and the cocaine didn’t help either. And neither did the infamous punch to the jaw of Newbridge’s Chris Jarman on 23 October 1985 that effectively ended his international career after only one Test, against Australia in 1984.

For a variety of reasons, explained in greater detail in the book, Bishop’s punch assumed such notoriety that the incident attracted “Who shot JR?” levels of publicity. “I could easily have shot three people dead in Westgate Street in broad daylight or blown up the Arms Park and got less coverage,” reflects the perpetrator. He was initially sentenced to a month in jail only for the punishment to be suspended for a year on appeal. As far as his fledgling Wales union career was concerned, however, it was curtains.

The majority view will be that Bishop, now 64, has only one person to blame for not having at least 50 caps and being remembered very differently. But better a sinner who repents and all that. And, in terms of articulating still-burning regret, Bishop’s book is as honest a sporting memoir as any in recent years. “There’s never a day when it doesn’t hurt,” he writes. “Becoming the starting Wales and Lions scrum-half was my life mission … and my inability to process my failure to complete this mission played a big part in my descending into depression and cocaine addiction after retiring.

“I’ll never ever get over not having the Wales career I dreamed of; the career that should have been mine. The road not taken haunts me to this day. I thought it would get better with time, but it gets worse. I’m hoping this book will help. The final reckoning, if you like, after which I can perhaps find some peace of mind.”

Blimey. Told you it was a thought-provoking read. There will be young Welsh professionals who dismiss this cautionary tale on the basis it reflects an era so different it cannot conceivably apply to them. Which, given the diminished state of Welsh rugby at present, is technically true. But ultimately Bishop’s book delivers a timely home truth for every gifted youngster: there is nothing worse in life than awaking one day and realising you’ve wasted your talent. Instead of dissing The Bish, we should be thanking him for his searing candour.

The Bish: It’s All About Me is published by Y Lolfa

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