Phillips revelling in role as stand-out star
There's a lot of Mike Phillips. Quite a lot, in fact. Sixteen and a half stone of beef that scrapes the sky just a tad below six feet and three inches. In a position -- scrum-half -- where exponents are marked by their diminutive size and rapid delivery of both ball and invective, Phillips stands out. Extremely so.
The apparently true story of Phillips' first meeting with Welsh coach Warren Gatland is instructive. Gatland told the 28-year-old that he was one of the most intimidating scrum-halves in the game. The player's response was instantly delivered with deadpan poise. "And the best-looking." Yes, this boy's got game.
Much of the trumpet-blowing is justified; he was one of the outstanding tourists on last summer's Lions tours and, as Gatland rightly surmised, he remains one of the game's most intimidating forces at No 9.
But just like the Galacticos whom he represents, it is fair to say that the narcissistic element of Phillips' character has often undermined, rather than underlined, his prowess as a rugby player.
Nightclub incidents and late evening jousts with taxi drivers pepper his biography with as much regularity as try-scoring feats, his celebrity romance with Wales' heterosexual answer to Dusty Springfield, Duffy, has hardly limited his excursions into the wrong end of the newspapers.
The player, reportedly on a contract worth over £200,000, has hardly spurned the attention. "Life has changed since the Lions tour," says Phillips. "I get recognised a bit more and I don't mind it, I quite enjoy it."
Last weekend, he pitched up at Crystal -- Cardiff's answer to Dublin's nearly eponymous den of the vacuous -- to attend a stag a week before this weekend's Magners League final and, without a hint of irony, said that "People think we want publicity, we really don't."
It's far from dry ice on champagne trays that Phillips was raised in Carmarthenshire. Father Trevor is a dairy farmer whose wife, Morfydd, is a retired teacher. Theirs was more of a boxing family; Mike's older brother Mark became a Welsh amateur champion before realising a dream and fighting professionally.
Rob, the elder of the three boys, was a decent scrum-half with Whitland, where Mike also spent his late teenage years, not surprisingly, given his size even then, as a flank forward. He made his debut for the Scarlets as a 20-year-old in 2002 and debuted for Wales against Romania and scored a try a year later. He has rarely looked back since.
This Saturday, he aims to add club silverware to his international bounty. "I've done all right," he says of his own form. "I've got high expectations of myself and I'm very critical of my own game, but that's why I think I've achieved great things in the game."
- David Kelly
Irish Independent
