Dan Biggar reveals Six Nations strike risk and Owen Farrell conflict

Former Wales fly-half and Mail Sport columnist Dan Biggar‘s new autobiography The Biggar Picture is released this week.

Here, in three exclusive extracts, Biggar shines a light on some of the stand-out moments in an extraordinary career.

How clash with Farrell left me fuming with Gatland

I was walking through the car park at the Vale Hotel the Monday after our 2023 World Cup warm-up defeat by England when a journalist beckoned me over.

He asked if I’d seen Warren Gatland’s newspaper column. I hadn’t. He raised an eyebrow. We’d let slip a 17-9 lead, even after England’s disciplinary implosion which saw them reduced to 12 men. One of those given his marching orders was Owen Farrell, who saw red for a high tackle on Taine Basham.

Fishing my phone out of my bag, I saw my wife Alex had already sent the column to me. I began to scroll down and could feel my pulse quickening with anger. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. Once Gats had finished criticising Owen’s tackle technique, he started laying into me for confronting Faz on the field.

I had to stop myself from striding up to his office to have it out with him. Alex must have read my mind, because a message popped up saying, ‘Don’t do anything you’ll regret now’.

It wasn’t until I saw Faz’s tackle on the big screen that I reacted, instinctively saying, ‘F***ing hell’. Owen took umbrage, shouting back. ‘Stop f***ing complaining’. I told him to f*** off, and he marched over and yelled, ‘What are you going to do about it, you soft ****?’.

That was the point at which it escalated and I said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are, going around cheap-shotting people all the time?’. I told him just because his England mates didn’t have the balls to stand up to him, it didn’t mean I wouldn’t.

It wasn’t the most illuminating of exchanges, but he instigated it, not me. I have no problem having confrontations behind closed doors, but I don’t expect my national coach to badmouth me in the press, especially when I’d done nothing wrong.

I’d been commissioned to write a column myself, but I’d given the WRU the right to veto anything they considered unsuitable. In fact, they’d asked me to remove a line referencing Faz where I’d said ‘he’s not God’, fearing it would be inflammatory.

I wondered aloud whether Gats’ column had been subject to the same degree of scrutiny, but inside I knew no one would have had the balls to challenge him.

You may think I’m over-reacting, but it would be disingenuous to pretend it didn’t hurt. It resurrected the ghosts of 2015 when, for whatever reason, he couldn’t find it within himself to praise me. It felt like a calculated move, but I didn’t know what he was trying to achieve.

When Six Nations strike threat almost caused Welsh civil war 

Tensions between the WRU hierarchy and the Wales squad midway through the 2023 Six Nations had reached boiling point.

We’d had enough of the contractual and financial uncertainty in the game. It was having a big impact on us. We formally called a meeting with Nigel Walker, the interim WRU chief executive, to let him know of our intention to strike.

We told Nigel that unless we saw progress on the state of the game, we would pull out of the England match, depriving the union of more than £10million in revenue. Nigel appealed for more patience, but plenty of the boys had already run out of that.

One was on anti-depressants and another had been refused a mortgage because of uncertainty over his employment. We told Nigel we’d be boycotting the sponsors’ dinner. He told us if we did, it would steer the game even closer to the cliff edge. I’d envisaged the walkout to be a fairly theatrical affair, but the reality wasn’t quite so dramatic.

We agreed that while striking was a last resort, we had to be prepared to go through with it.

Nigel called another meeting. I cut him off, telling him: ‘This isn’t a discussion, it’s an ultimatum. If our demands aren’t delivered by Wednesday, the game isn’t happening.’ Nigel is a pretty calm bloke, but that stoked his anger.

Gats had taken a back seat throughout. His position as a full-time employee of the WRU put him in an awkward position. There was a real edge to training.

Every time Gats called a tough drill, someone would pipe up, ‘Don’t fancy that. Shall we strike for that one?’

The feeling of unity cracked a little when we trundled into the meeting where the team is announced. Gats announced curtly he wouldn’t be selecting it until later in the week. There was a lot of anger among the boys that evening.

We felt Gats had shown us a lack of respect and was siding with the union. The one time we needed his support, he’d withdrawn it. I wasn’t the only one who was unimpressed. The longer I thought about it, the more it hurt. It had blindsided us all. The outcome was hugely disappointing, with everything ending in a fudge. I was gutted.

My Lions joy turned to despair

May 2021 was the month my life turned upside down.

On May 6, I was selected in the Lions squad to tour South Africa. Eleven days later, my beloved mum Liz died. Never had joy turned so rapidly to grief and despair. Mum had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2004. She’d lived with it for 17 years and had been so brave and stoic, you’d barely have noticed.

That’s why the end was so difficult to process. When I walked on to the ward on the day of the Lions squad announcement, her first words were: ‘Don’t you even think about not going.’

I had lots of lovely, thoughtful messages, but I’ll always remember the call I received from Alun Wyn Jones. My relationship with him has been complex, so it took a lot of courage to call rather than text. He’d recently lost his father and knew how I’d be feeling.

Everything that happened from that point on was coloured by Mum’s death. As proud as I was to be selected for the Lions, it paled into insignificance compared to the grief.

When we gathered ahead of the first Test to hear Gats read out the team, I was consumed with anxiety. When I heard the words, ‘Dan Biggar, Lions fly-half’ I closed my eyes and thought of Mum. Of how proud and emotional she’d have been and how bittersweet it felt that I’d achieved my dream and she was no longer here to share it with me.

During South Africa’s anthem, I stared into the vast emptiness of the stands and wished beyond anything that Mum could have been there.

Adapted from The Biggar Picture by Dan Biggar (Macmillan, £22), out on Thursday.

To order a copy for £19.80 go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Offer valid until October 12, 2024.