The 43-year-old now runs a pub in St Brides Major, having finished playing back in 2019
Few rugby players elicited the sort of interest that Gavin Henson did at his peak.
An exceptional talent that perhaps didn’t quite reach the heights that were hoped of him, the way he straddled the line of professional player and celebrity helped him transcend the sport.
During his storied career, there were spells at Ospreys, Saracens, Toulon, Cardiff, London Welsh, Bristol, Bath and the Dragons. However, it was his Grand Slam-winning efforts in 2005 that launched him into the public spotlight.
After retiring from the game in 2019 after leaving the Dragons, Henson has largely stayed out of the limelight, however.
Nowadays, the 43-year-old’s time is largely spent managing his pub, the Fox, in St Brides Major.
“I can always look at myself in the third person and go ‘F*** yeh, I didn’t reach my potential’,” he told WalesOnline in 2020.
“I had all the skills but it’s tough. There’s a lot of off the field things you have to deal with. It hasn’t been easy for me.
“I had some bad injuries and some bad times and they’re tough to get over.
“I suppose I’m quite a contradiction. People think I court the limelight and it’s all about me but deep down I’m not really like that so I’d rather just sneak out of the back door and go away for a bit.”
On the pub, as well as the Sunday league football club Super Fox United that he set up with childhood best friend Jamie Griffiths, Henson added: “I’m just really passionate about the village.
“We managed to put a team together of all the old boys. When I was in school they would all be playing football and I was always watching with a jealous eye, thinking ‘I’d love to play’ but I stuck to my rugby. You had to choose at that age so I pined for it a bit. I think I’m trying to recapture my youth. Maybe we all are.
“The pub has always been run down and never run right. It coincided well with me finishing playing rugby. It’s something for me to do and not have that thought of ‘Oh God, what am I going to do with my life now’.”
As well as focusing on the pub, Henson is also enjoying a more relaxed existence with his young family. He’s now a father to four children.
He does occasionally turn out for his hometown club Pencoed RFC.
In recent years, Henson has become a bit more reflective on his playing days. While he admits he doesn’t stay in touch with former team-mates, he has admitted in the last year to discovering a key aspect behind his personality.
In an anecdote on ‘The Big Jim Show’ with former Scotland international Jim Hamilton, Henson recalled how he had once visited a psychologist with former Ospreys owner Mike Cuddy and fitness coach Andrew Hore.
After two years with the psychologist up in the Scottish Borders, “he more or less threw his book down and said ‘I cannot work with this guy’. I was like – ‘What?’ He works with criminals and psychos. He said: ‘His chimp is in full control!'”
Henson never clarified what the psychologist meant by the comment, but a few years after that, he happened to be in a book shop when he saw a book titled ‘The Chimp Paradox’.
“I just see the chimp and it just hit a note,” he explained. “I looked at it and I saw the author’s name – Doctor Steve Peters.
“That’s the guy I saw! So, I bought the book. Wow. I read that and it was life-changing. I understood myself, it helped me in every aspect of life.
“From going through a break up, with kids, with rugby. I can see other people’s chimp, I can see when their chimp is in control of them, and I can learn how to deal with my chimp.
“You also need the chimp. He’s that animal side in you, which you need for rugby. I think that’s where I got lost a little bit in rugby.
“I started to control the chimp a little bit when I didn’t need to – I needed him to take over, he was the guy that played rugby. Because I was controlling him so much, I lost a little bit of my game at that point.”
Elaborating on the influence of the ‘chimp’, Henson has explained how he had struggled in the past to wind down after the adrenaline rush of matches – with the more impulsive part of his mind leading him to drinking.
That has resulted in some fairly high-profile incidents.
“If I didn’t drink throughout my whole career, I wonder how my career would have looked,” said Henson previously. “When you come through in the early 2000s, there was a massive drinking culture. It was crazy, the amount of drinking going on was mental. During the week before a massive game.
“What I quickly realised, if you didn’t join in on that, you were like an outcast. I went through school and I didn’t drink, I was so professional, I was the ultimate professional. I managed to get a contract with Swansea at 18, hell of a team, so professional, couldn’t wait to work with these guys – and they were so unprofessional.
“Great players, but massive drinkers. I learnt quickly I had to be part of that to be accepted. I had that grounding from them that it was part and parcel of rugby. To be involved in a team, you have to fit in and you have to do those social events. It wasn’t good for perceptions of me, for future coaches.”