Rugby star jailed for assault and addicted to cocaine admits regrets

At first glance, you wouldn't expect a rugby player with just one Wales cap to warrant writing his life story. But David Bishop wasn't your typical one-cap wonder.

The reality that he earned only a single international appearance is central to his tale, given his extraordinary ability and stunning displays for Pontypool throughout the 1980s. Simply reading the praise heaped upon him in his freshly-released memoir - The Bish - gives you an idea of what a phenomenal player he truly was.

Rugby legend Bobby Windsor calls him the finest Welsh scrum-half he witnessed at club level, whilst Mark Ring declares he was "Dupont 40 years before Dupont" and seasoned rugby writer Peter Jackson proclaims him "the best one-cap wonder in the history of rugby or probably any sport", reports Wales Online.

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The man himself shows no hint of bashfulness either.

Even now - as he confirms during our chat - he insists he was the world's finest No 9 during his prime.

Given this, the reality he secured just one cap continues to torment him, something that becomes crystal clear both when reading his memoir and speaking with him about it.

Yet that's merely one reason why his story deserved telling.

There are countless other tales too - so many narratives, as flicking through the chapters shows.

There's the harrowing description of how he shattered his neck during a game at 21 and defied medical experts to not only return to action, but reach the pinnacle. There's the occasion he saved a mother and baby from the raging River Taff, followed within a year by a stint behind bars.

Then there's the fateful moment where his punch in a Gwent derby saw him dropped from the Wales squad, banned from playing for 11 months and back in the dock.

It was an episode which he says wrecked his life.

He also discusses the cocaine dependency and depression he endured after hanging up his boots and the devastating stroke he suffered four years ago.

It's a gripping read and, at times, a challenging one, never more so than when he discusses the beatings he received as a youngster growing up in Cardiff, both at the hands of his father and in school.

His publican dad, also David, is a massive figure in the book and appears repeatedly during our conversation.

He was also crucial to the 64 year old Bishop waiting until now to pen his autobiography.

It was compiled in collaboration with rugby journalist Brendan Gallagher over a five year period.

"It all started when Brendan said he would love to do a piece on the 30 year anniversary of when I won my one cap against Australia," explains the Bish.

"He said he was down in Cardiff and would like to meet up for some food and a chat.

"So we went to my favourite old restaurant in town, Valentino's, and that's where it came up.

"He just said to me 'Have you ever thought about writing a book?'.

"I said 'No, I haven't' and I explained to him about how I couldn't do it while my dad was alive.

"If I was going to do a book, I wanted to put it all out there and tell the truth.

"So I explained I couldn't do it until my dad passed away."

However, following Bishop's father's death in 2016, the prospect of sharing his story became a possibility.

"Brendan had put it into my mind. So I phoned him and asked if he was still interested."

The response was affirmative and work commenced, with much of the initial preparation taking place during the Covid pandemic.

"We would do an hour and a half, two hours every Sunday on the phone," reveals Bishop.

"I made it clear to him from the start that I didn't want to do a run of the mill autobiography. I wanted to tell my life story and explain the way I was built.

"Other autobiographies are all about players' rugby careers. With me, I was back page and front page and probably too much on the front page.

"Because I was a well known rugby player, I would hit the headlines all the time. It was an amateur game and yet they picked on me as if I was a professional.

"With my book, I just wanted to give my truthful life story, why I took certain paths and how maybe I made some wrong decisions."

It's fair to say Bishop avoids no subjects in what amounts to an entirely candid memoir.

The account is brutally frank, especially regarding the brutality he and his mother suffered from his father. He discloses that he wet the bed until age 14 due to terror and dread about when the next thrashing would arrive, confessing he felt hunted and like a trapped creature.

"It was hard telling the world how I grew up," he admits.

"But where I lived, it was a common thing to have wives beaten up and to have the kids beaten. It wasn't just happening to me.

"You say that today and people gasp. But it was just commonplace.

"I would go down the shop with my mother and there would be a number of women there with black eyes. It always seemed like that.

"I thought it was important that I gave the whole story of my life growing up and to tell the truth.

"I am not looking for sympathy. That's the last thing I want off anyone. This is just my life story. It's the David Joseph Bishop story. This is what it was."

His bond with his father emerges as genuinely complex.

In the memoir, he explains he simultaneously adored and despised him.

"In terms of the sports side of it, whether it be rugby, boxing, baseball, it was all off his direction," he says.

"I was gifted, there was no doubt about that, but my dad was always making the right decisions for me all my life, as far as sport was concerned.

"When I needed an arm chucked round me, he was there for it.

"Saying that, in the same breath, he broke my rib and punctured my lung.

"The most important thing about the book is the way I turned out. Everything I hated about my dad, it turned out I am worse than him. He cloned me, if you like."

Speaking about his mother Kathleen, who passed away in 1997, Bishop's affection for her is palpable.

"She was only 5ft 1ins, a half-Irish girl, she was incredible," he shares.

"My dad tried to beat the devil out of me and she said 'You have beaten it into him'. I will never forget that.

"My world ended when she died."

Bishop's book, which includes a foreword by Wales football manager Craig Bellamy, reveals an extraordinarily eventful life marked by significant ups and downs.

Perhaps nothing encapsulates this more than the fact that when he received a certificate from the Royal Humane Society for saving a mother and baby from drowning in The Taff, he was actually in Aylesbury Young Offenders Prison.

"It just shows how extreme and volatile my life was," he reflects.

The promising rugby player, who had represented Wales at Youth level, spent a year inside from March 1980 to March 1981 after being convicted for assault.

"Let me tell you, it's not a nice place to be. It was a nightmare," he remembers.

"I remember this one Saturday afternoon, I had my radio on and Cardiff were playing the All Blacks at the Arms Park.

"All of a sudden, my mate Peter 'Pedro' Souto comes on off the bench.

"It was bitter sweet. I was locked in a cage, 6ft by 10ft, and I filled up with tears. I wasn't feeling sorry for myself. It was pride for Pedro."

Bishop managed to continue playing rugby whilst behind bars, in scenes that could have been lifted straight from the Mean Machine film.

"The physical fitness officer saw I had played for Wales Youth and said 'Can you build a side?'.

"I was captain, coach, rub-a-dub man, I was everything. It was really enjoyable.

"We got this team together and played the British prison officers, who had their own side, and we beat them as well.

"You tell a bunch of 18 or 19 year old murderers and bank robbers that they can have a free shot at the screws and they were queuing up to play!".

Upon his release from prison, the big question was where Bishop's rugby career would head next.

He had managed just a single outing for Cardiff, coming off the bench against Penarth in September 1979, before being given his marching orders by the club - something he details in his book.

"When Cardiff kicked me out, it was the end of my world at the time," he reveals.

A stint with Ebbw Vale followed, but then in 1981, following his imprisonment, he would join forces with the club where he truly established his reputation, Pontypool.

Yet in November of that year, an incident occurred which threatened to destroy his rugby career before it had properly taken off. Playing against Aberavon at the Talbot Athletic Ground, he suffered a broken neck, which left him just a millimetre away from complete paralysis.

Initially, the diagnosis was torn ligaments, until a spinal specialist reviewed his x-rays.

"They had put me in a plaster of paris hoodie. I was a bit like Frankenstein.

"I was walking around for a week, but then this professor came in and froze on the spot when he saw me.

"He said 'Don't move an inch!'.

"The nurses grabbed me and laid me out on a bed."

Then came the agonising process of having a steel frame cage bolted into his skull.

"They took the plaster of paris off and pretty much put a black and decker in both sides of my head. The bone fragments were flying through the air.

"When they started drilling, I was screaming and saying I was going to pass out and they said 'It's going to get a lot worse than this'. It was terrifying."

Bishop underwent surgery to have bone from his hip grafted into his neck.

The diagnosis was there was no way he should ever play again, but he had different plans.

By the summer of 1982, he was back out on the pitch.

The young scrum-half soon began to make a genuine impact for Pontypool, under the guidance of coach Ray Prosser.

"Pross was a massive influence on my life," he says.

"He gave me a free role. He would just tell me to fly - 'Go fly son, fly'.

"I could talk to him and suggest things. They all thought I was the son he never had!

"I had an unbelievable respect for Ray Prosser. He knew how to handle me, if you like."

Bishop's exceptional displays earned him a Wales debut against the Wallabies in November 1984, marking the occasion with a try.

With legendary Terry Holmes departing for Rugby League the following year, it appeared certain that numerous additional caps would follow.

However, in October 1985, came the pivotal moment that transformed everything.

During a match against Gwent rivals Newbridge, Bishop struck second row Chris Jarman with a punch.

The incident escaped punishment during the encounter, but would result in him being prohibited from representing Wales that season.

A court case also followed where he received a month's imprisonment, meaning he briefly returned to jail before an appeal saw the sentence suspended for a year.

Yet that wasn't the conclusion, as the WRU banned him from all rugby until August 1987.

Looking back today on the decisive Jarman incident, he remarks:.

"It was a derby, he was chucking his weight about. I just gave him a three inch clip which happened in most games back then.

"I'm not trying to justify what I did, it just happens. It was less than half a second, whack, done.

"That ended my career in Welsh rugby then really. It ruined my life."

Upon returning to the field after his suspension, Bishop continued to dazzle with his powerhouse displays for Pooler. His statistics are genuinely remarkable.

Across his 172 appearances for the club spanning 1981 to 1988, he notched up 143 tries, with his place-kicking prowess boosting his points total to 805.

However, after the Jarman affair, the Wales selectors remained silent.

"My mindset was I would make them pick me, I would put them in a position where they couldn't not select me. But they stuck by it, they wouldn't pick me."

In his autobiography, Bishop confesses to being eaten up with envy towards fellow scrum-half Robert Jones, who earned 54 Wales caps against his solitary appearance, and admits the bitterness has intensified over time.

"I don't have any qualms telling you this, I was the best rugby player in the world at the time in my position.

"I was the best in Wales by a country mile."

So was it simply that his face didn't fit?

"No, there was more to it than that," he insists.

"There was something very political. I don't know what it was.

"Maybe they didn't feel I was the right type of person to be playing for Wales.

"When I say political, they blackballed me, if you like, with the public, while the press murdered me.

"The whole of Wales were seeing me in headlines and on the news week-in week-out, for a punch up in Cardiff town or whatever.

"I guarantee you this, I wasn't the only rugby player in punch-ups in town. There were loads of them.

"I was picked on, there's no doubt about that. Even if it was nothing, it would snowball. It was just beyond."

Fed up with his circumstances, Bishop made the decision to head north to rugby league in 1988, signing with Hull Kingston Rovers.

This move enabled him to finally get back on the international stage, earning four caps for Wales and one for Great Britain.

When rugby union turned professional in 1995, he returned to his cherished Pontypool as player-coach, bringing his total appearances for the club to 241 before finally calling time on his playing career in 1999.

Since stepping away from the game, there have been challenges, particularly the stroke he endured in 2021.

"You don't recover fully. I am limited in what I can do.

"I am about 85 per cent. It's the right side of my body that's affected. There's a lack of coordination.

"I find I am a lot clumsier doing things. It's terrible, but it's just one of those things."

What about the sport he once dominated so brilliantly?

Does he maintain any interest in Welsh rugby nowadays?

"None at all. I can't watch it, mate. It's just so poor.

"The foundation of Wales was built on club rugby. Then, 22 years ago, they went to regions.

"You could never ask Liverpool and Everton or Man Utd and Man City to join up. You couldn't ask Hull KR and Hull to join up. It would never happen. I was outspoken about it at the time.

"Now they are talking about bringing it down to two. How can that strengthen our Welsh senior side?".

At last, I ask Bishop what he has gained from penning his book and what reflections he has drawn about his life.

"There is so much I regret," he responds. "I probably didn't mature properly until I was about 48 to 50.

"Up to then, when I was wrong I was right. What I mean by that is if I made a snap decision which was probably the wrong thing to do at that time, in my brain I was doing the right thing. That's the easiest way I can explain it, if that makes sense.

"I thought I was the crown king. I started to believe in the fame and believe in the hype and everything else. I probably did take the piss."

When asked how he thinks the Welsh public perceives him today, he responds, "Oh, as a bad fella,".

"A lot of people who don't know me always judge me one way or the other.

"Maybe I should have walked away from situations a few times, but I didn't. I can see now why I should have.

"But sometimes you get picked on because of who you are. So you think, why should I walk away?".

"If people smack me, I am going to smack them back.

"That's how I was brought up. Violence was part of my DNA.

"It was the same with most of the kids I grew up with. It was a rough area. It was beyond. There were things you wouldn't think of today.

"That was the way it was. It only stands out with me because I made it as a sportsman.

"It didn't matter about John Smith round the corner because he never did anything in life. It didn't matter if he went to jail."

In the book's final section, his daughter Samara shares some touching words about her father.

She characterises her father as "the kind of man who can't be explained - only felt", further describing him as "a soul too big for the system, too wild to tame and too human to ever be easily defined".

As our chat draws to a close, Bishop, who will be celebrating his 65th birthday later this month, shares his reflections on his autobiography.

"I have tried to be honest about everything," he asserts.

"I just hope, one way or the other, it's an enjoyable read. That was the way it was, that was my life."

The Bish: It’s All About Me by David Bishop is published by Y Lolfa.