The Hardest Test Read Free

board, who out of the blue offered me a place in their academy set-up. I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. It was an incredible compliment and of course a real boost to my still fragile confidence.
    But I felt very much that I wanted to make my mark in rugby union, and at that time my only wish was to play for the Llanelli first team. Everything else could wait.
    Back at home, things were much the same. I began to miss school regularly, Wednesday afternoons in particular, which I would spend training. I recall one teacher cornering me one day and saying, “Quinnell, you’ll never come to anything playing rugby, boy!”
    His advice had come far too late for me!
    I began to show even more dedication to the game. I’d recently had a major eye-opener and a narrow escape, just missing out after a Welsh Under 15 trial, where I played at prop! I’d put on weight and was never so glad to have a hammering in my life! I realised if I was to get away from the dreaded front row and have a future in the game, I really had to focus.
    Thinking about it, my negative experiences in school may have made me even more determined to prove myself. I wouldn’t say I was a natural, but I was fortunate to have inherited a physique which, with work, helped me ply my trade in the No. 8 position.
    Playing for Llanelli youth at sixteen, week in week out, against older boys of eighteen and nineteen really served to toughen me up and get me into shape. Believe me, you take some big knocks, but if you want it badly enough, you’re always there the next week, ready for the next bout!
    My career was moving at quite a pace and I had little time to stop and think about education and the problems of the past. Besides, I had found something rewarding. I felt useful at last.
    I wonder sometimes whether or not that teacher has followed my career – I haven’t bumped into him since!

Chapter Four
    By the time I was seventeen I had more or less given up going to school. My time now was split between rugby and working for my dad as a representative in the family company. But somehow my father managed to persuade Graig headmaster Dennis Jones to allow me to stay enrolled in school. I had to re-sit maths in order to remain eligible to compete for a Wales Under 18 cap as well as work part-time for Dad. The re-sit was a minor diversion, keeping me in school longer than I’d anticipated – but I was prepared to do anything to pull on that Welsh jersey! I’d turn up at Graig in my Escort 1.4 company car (yes, I was a boy racer too!) wearing my school tie and leave later having changed into my work clothes and tie.
    That Welsh U18 trial soon came around. It was held at Aberavon’s Talbot Athletic Ground and was a huge moment in my life. I began the match in the “possibles” team, the mission being to play my way into “probables” for the second half. I was really determined to take this opportunity to show what I could offer. And sure enough, at half time, I was told to change sides for the rest of the game and to carry on where I’d left off, this time in the colours of the “probables”.
    Next it was back into the clubhouse for sausage and chips and the longest two-hour wait of my life. When the announcement finally came and my name was read out, it was like all my Christmases and birthdays had come at once. I was to pull on the cherished Welsh jersey against the Scots.
    Memorably, I played for the Welsh Under 18s team against the Welsh Youth at Stradey Park. It was not memorable because we beat our senior opponents, but because the Youth team that day contained a certain Neil Jenkins and Scott Gibbs. That result would supply valuable ammunition for the future!
    Then I was off to New Zealand with the school team, where we became one of the few sides (junior or senior) ever to win all six tour matches. This was no mean feat in the land where they live and breathe rugby almost as much