Mike Phillips on Wales' chances in the Six Nations, why he'd turned to coaching and life after rugby in the Middle East

When Mike Phillips ended his storied rugby career last May, he found the perfect antidote to potential retirement blues via two life-changing events.

First, the former Wales and British and Irish Lions scrum-half – once one of rugby’s most eligible bachelors with modelling experience – got married.

He and his wife – who he prefers not to name to shield her from the spotlight – moved to a place a world away from his west Wales farming background – Dubai.

“We’re loving it here and have settled in really well,” he tells The Independent.

Not that Phillips was content to settle initially as he embarked upon a hectic summer that nourished his passion for music. This encompassed a “quite inspirational” encounter with the American rapper P Diddy while holidaying in Capri, Italy, and a DJing debut at the Royal Welsh Show in his homeland.

Phillips’s annus mirabilis ended in more familiar fashion – on the rugby field – two months ago. He came out of retirement to play for his first professional club, the Scarlets, in their two Pro14 matches in South Africa after being persuaded by the club’s backs coach, Stephen Jones. He and Jones remain firm friends after forming a formidable half-back partnership with Wales and the Lions.

“It was nice to finish off where I started playing professional rugby,” says the 35-year-old, who represented Wales 94 times between 2003 and 2015. “We did okay as well with a bunch of young players [beating the Southern Kings 34-30 before losing 28-21 to the Cheetahs].”

Given Wales’s current injury travails, some romantics in the Valleys would love to see Phillips pull on a red shirt again when the Six Nations begins this weekend.

Preternaturally tall for a scrum-half at 6ft 3ins, Phillips provided the power of a back-row forward to match the mercurial flourishes traditionally associated with a Welsh number nine.

He notched nine tries for his country in big games such as a World Cup semi-final and a Six Nations finale. Yet there is as much chance of Phillips playing international rugby again as there is of Tom Jones forming a super-group with the Manic Street Preachers.

Instead, the two-time Grand Slam winner and Lions tourist is treading a conventional retirement path for ex-players – coaching.

Phillips has joined forces with the Dubai-based sports activity provider, ‘Just Play’, to launch a new rugby academy for youngsters aged between three and 11. Supporting him is his fellow Welshman, Emlyn Jones, a coach with more than 20 years’ experience at academies in the UK.

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“We’re bringing rugby to Dubai and the UAE and developing the sport there and making people more aware of rugby and growing the game,” Phillips enthuses. “That’s our main goal: getting people fit and healthy and running around with the ball in their hands, smiling, having fun and making friends.

“That’s what rugby is to me. That’s why I started playing it. And if it takes you around the world, then great. But if it doesn’t, we’ll keep them fit and healthy and on the right path.

“I’ve had such a blast doing the coaching already; there are so many different characters and everyone’s been enjoying it. Seeing the kids improve week to week is rewarding.”

Many rugby followers will find it hard to reconcile the image of Phillips the coach with that of ‘mischievous Mike’, who was involved in several off-field antics.

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There were brawls – ostensibly fuelled by alcohol – and an infamous Twitter spat with the One Direction singer Niall Horan; the Irishman claimed Phillips “looked like an arrogant idiot” following an altercation with Irish full-back Rob Kearney in a Wales-Ireland clash in 2014.

Phillips, who is now good friends with Horan and was due to meet him at last week’s Dubai Desert Classic golf event, risibly replied: “Come down to training in the week, big boy. And bring the rest of the Beatles with you.”

Now, however, Phillips is determined to make headlines for the right reasons; although it is worth noting he has been a long-time patron of the charity Follow Your Dreams, which supports youngsters with learning disabilities.

Phillips’s thoughts first turned to his latest altruistic endeavour of coaching during a tumultuous playing stint in France.

He moved to Bayonne after helping Wales reach the 2011 World Cup semi-finals, but was shocked by the “poor standards” compared with the professionalism inculcated by Wales.

“They sacked three coaches in one season,” he says. They also sacked Phillips for repeated misconduct in 2013, including allegedly turning up drunk to a team analysis session.

“It wasn’t run professionally at all,” Phillips argues. “There were long training sessions and a lot of older coaches doing the rounds, who were under a lot of pressure. [Coaching in France] is more driven by passion rather than structure. That can only take you so far in professional world rugby and you need to have a structural game plan as well to succeed.”

Phillips’s cross-channel adventure would end happily, however, with a 2016 Top 14 title success with Racing 92, whose infrastructure was “much, much better” than that of Bayonne.

Phillips’s criticism of the Basque club ironically echoes his denunciation of an overly “intense” coaching culture at Wales. In a 2016 newspaper column, he claimed notoriously combustible coaches such as the defence guru Shaun Edwards should “chill out”, rather than “blow up over small mistakes”.

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Edwards responded by opining that Phillips had spent too long in France – pointed comments now given Phillips’s depictions of Gallic laxity. Does the former Ospreys, Cardiff Blues and Sale Sharks man stand by what he said?

“I think it’s a balance. At that level, you have to send a rocket sometimes, which is obvious. But I think that can’t be sent every session. You can’t be screaming and shouting every single session. It doesn’t make sense.”

Phillips says the salutary lessons he learned at international level have heavily influenced his own coaching.

“I think I’ve got a good understanding of people. That’s probably my main strength.

“Everybody’s different. You can tell a kid who has got a lot of confidence and a kid who hasn’t. As a coach, you’ve got to identify that pretty quick and how you talk to them is really important.

“I’ve seen that at international level being in the Welsh squad. When certain players get told something, they just go into their shell a bit and that’s not right. I think it’s about confidence and giving kids, and even players of the highest level, confidence to go out and express themselves, even more so at international level when you’re going out in front of millions of people and you get judged on every little thing you do.”

One coach who gave confidence to Phillips in spades was his first coach at Wales, Steve Hansen.

The current New Zealand supremo was “ahead of his time” in coaching terms and possessed shrewd people skills, Phillips reveals.

“He was great for me because he treated me like a player that had been around for 10 years, which was probably the thing I liked the most – the respect. He didn’t treat me like a child – which I was, I was only young [at 21] – and it was really nice.

“I took part in training ahead of the 2003 World Cup and it was brilliant for me. I hadn’t played much senior rugby and I wasn’t really expecting to go to the World Cup. But still, he sat me down and said: ‘You’ve got a big future ahead of you. I know you’re disappointed that you haven’t been selected, but keep working hard’. Those little things for me were huge.

“At that time, whatever people think of me, I grew up on a dairy farm in west Wales. I’m a shy, quiet boy at heart and he could see this, so those positive chats meant the world.”

Phillips is also generous in his praise of Wales’s long-serving coaching triumvirate of Warren Gatland, Rob Howley and Edwards – despite his previous questioning of their regime.

“They were fantastic to me. I look back with fond memories and total happiness really,” he says of the trio, who have been in their roles for just over 10 years.

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He says Gatland will have to use all his famed motivational skills to fire up beleaguered Wales in the Six Nations, however. Phillips’s successor at scrum-half, Rhys Webb, is among a clutch of key men ruled out of the tournament opener against Gregor Townsend’s resurgent Scotland.

“It’s a big loss,” Phillips says, adding that “it’s a bit of a mess” and “cruel” that Webb could have played his last game for Wales. The Ospreys man is moving to Toulon next season and has not won the 60 caps or more by exiled players required under Welsh Rugby Union directives.

“We’re a small country, there are not many of us and we need to pick our best players to play for Wales wherever they are,” Phillips says. “Webb’s had a lot of injuries in his career, unfortunately for him. He’s one of Wales’s star performers, but it’s a position where we’ve got good strength in depth with Aled and Gareth [Davies] and the young boy coming in from Cardiff [Tomos Williams]. It’s unfortunate if you look at the last Six Nations, as everything that was positive was triggered by Rhys.”

But Phillips insists Wales can still be competitive, despite a casualty list which includes captain Sam Warburton, a two-time Lions skipper. “What’s happening now is nobody is expecting anything from Wales and some people are writing them off [saying] that they’re the underdogs massively with a lot of injuries. But still, that’s not acceptable and I think the squad is good enough to go out there and really push for the title.

“The talent is there and they can still achieve great things. They can’t hide behind those injuries – that’s no excuse in professional sport. They should be building a squad – [the coaches] have been there for 10 years – and you’ve got to build players down the line.”

Phillips also believes Wales can ride on the feel-good factor created by the Pro14 champions the Scarlets, who provide 10 of the starting XV for Saturday.

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They include Webb’s replacement at scrum-half, Gareth Davies, who recently helped the Llanelli side become the first Welsh outfit to reach Europe’s Champions Cup knockout phase for six years.

“The Scarlets factor will be massive I think with [their players’] confidence,” says Phillips, who played 64 times for the Scarlets between 2001-2005. “Those boys will be putting their shoulders back and being confident because they’re the ones in the [knockout] rounds of Europe. A Welsh team hasn’t done that for a number of years and that’s really important. International rugby is all about confidence. If you go on a rugby field and you’re scared, you’re not going to perform.

“Everyone’s building Scotland up, but they’ve not won away much in the Six Nations [since beating Italy in 2016]. They’ve improved but they lost heavily [against England] at Twickenham last year and I think Wales can certainly beat them at home.”

Phillips endorses Gatland’s recent switch from his so-called ‘Warrenball’ tactics to a more free-flowing approach.

“I think to be the best team in the world and compete with New Zealand, you’ve got to score tries.”

Phillips, meanwhile, has no such pressure on his shoulders.

He is merely enjoying supplementing coaching with regular games of cricket, golf and tennis in year-round, Middle Eastern sunshine. Can he ever see himself as Wales coach?

“If they can afford me!” he quips. “That’s down the road and I’m really just concentrating on building the academy.”