Departing player reveals he turned down Wales for his own well-being as he quits game

Greg Bateman could be forgiven for thinking what might have been when he reflects on a rugby career which has just come to an end. After all, this was a man who was on the verge of playing for Wales before events dictated otherwise.

But, when he considers all he has been through, the 32-year-old is happy to be in the place he is right now and able to look back on his rugby days with real fondness. Having been released by the Dragons after two injury-plagued seasons with the Gwent region, he has decided to hang up his boots to focus on his People’s Captain brewing business.

When we catch up for a chat, he proceeds to reveal for the first time just how close he came to playing for Wales under Warren Gatland. He was approached twice, but on the first occasion he was denied by an illegibility issue. When that was resolved, Wales came knocking again, but Bateman felt he had to turn down the opportunity because of the mental health issues he was going through. Some four years on, it’s a story he recounts with unflinching honesty.

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It was in the autumn of 2017, when he was excelling on the tighthead for Leicester, that the Surrey-born prop was first contacted by the Welsh management.

“I met up with Robin McBryde and he was very complimentary. I was obviously having some good form at that time. Looking back, I was probably playing some of the best rugby of my career. So I was asked to go to them for the autumn series of 2017. It was all looking positive and it just felt like the right thing," he recalls.

But that was when red tape intervened, as he explains. “My whole understanding is I was Welsh-qualified. My grandmother was born in