Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

Reaching your goal is the beginning, not the end.

It's hard getting there, but I always find it's harder to stay there. That's the difficulty. You've got to give time and effort. You've got to be conscientious, and you've got to want to do it. There has to be a strong desire to do it, and what people tend to forget, although they talk a lot about it is that you've got to enjoy what you're doing.

But it's a long climb to reach the top, and people then tend to relax and think 'I've reached it', but that's when you find the hardest bit begins, because you want to stay there. It's more difficult to stay there than it is to fall off!

Have a hero

Many people inspired me. In rugby terms there was Cliff Morgan, who was quite a distant figure, playing for Cardiff and Wales. I very rarely saw him, but heard enough about him. Then there was someone like Carwyn James, in Llanelli and Stradey, who was more of a real figure because I could go and see him play on a regular basis.

Both of them were heroic figures for me because they showed me what a great game rugby was and fired my desire to want to play it. I think you've got to have figures like that to make you want to do it.

There were also figures like Tony O'Reilly from Ireland, who Iyou admired and Jeff Butterfield from England. You saw them play with elegance and style and you wanted to emulate that.

As a youngster growing up in West Wales you needed to have somebody to inspire you as very little happened in the village. So you wanted a figure, a key figure, a heroic figure to do that!

Attitude, attitude, attitude!

Sometimes it's more important than talent, because you can find you've got the skills to play a game, or to run on the athletics track, but then you've got to have a strong will to want to do it.

There have been many players, many gifted athletes, who have shown great promise, but didn't really have the hunger, stubbornness or a strong enough will to do it. Without the desire to do it, and the attitude to go all the way, they fall by the wayside and strong talent is wasted.

When the talent to play the game and the strong will to reach the top come together in equal measure, that's what marks the great player.

Take the highs with the lows

If you take part in sport it gives you great sadness because you lose, but it brings you great joy when you win. It also gives you the opportunity to show off, dare I say, the talent that you've got not just at home, not just in the UK and Ireland, but overseas.

It gives you the opportunity to display your skills all over the world, and I think that's a great thing to have. It also brings you great friendship when you play against people. Once the whistle is blown, once you're past the winning tape it's always important, I think, to remain friends with your competitor and that's what I value about the sport.

Follow your dreams

Enjoy whatever it is that you decide to take up because that's the mainstay for everything else. If you don't enjoy it, then it's really, really hard work and you're working against the grain all the time.

Keep training and keep practising until you reach the top. You can't do it by simply sitting back and hoping it will come. You can't daydream in sport; you can dream about your hopes, but you've got to put the work in.