As he approaches retirement, Toulon and former Wales fly-half Dan Biggar has opened up on his turbulent career in an autobiography. RW runs the rule over his new book
It was on the 2022 Wales tour of South Africa, in a coffee shop in Cape Town, that esteemed writer Ross Harries broached the subject of collaborating with Dan Biggar on an autobiography. After some gentle persuasion – “I thought the process would be like pulling teeth” – the former Wales captain and fly-half agreed to the project.
“I’ve never been on social media, I suppose I’ve never had a voice in a sense,” says Biggar, the fourth-most capped Welshman with 112 Test appearances for his country. “So I wanted to have my say on my life and career. The book is a really nice way to be able to do it. And the one thing I’ve wanted to do with this book is to be honest. I’ve been truthful and I’ve been honest in it and I’m really glad that I’ve managed to do that.”
Dan Biggar: The Biggar Picture is published by Macmillan today and matches Biggar’s character: forthright, thorough, analytical.
There is no pandering to the masses, the now Toulon player even admitting that he “didn’t really care” about losing to Australia around the time of his first son’s birth in 2017. Nor does he pretend to be a tub-thumping patriot. “I’m not some jingoistic Welshman who delights in seeing England suffer,” he writes refreshingly.
Playing for Toulon in a Champions Cup match earlier this year. This is probably his final season (Inpho)
When Rugby World spoke to Biggar, he wanted to know what we thought of the book – not give him hollow compliments but what we actually thought. There are a couple of opinions we happen to disagree with, such as his view on the infamous Rassie Erasmus video, but so what? It’s an enthralling read, as powerful as it is engaging.
Fundamentally, it gets to the heart of Biggar’s personality, the man who didn’t match the image of an archetypal Welsh No 10 and who developed a rhino skin to cope with all the flak and setbacks that came his way. It’s hard to credit it now but between his Test debut in 2008 and the start of the 2013 Six Nations, he garnered only 11 caps.
Overlooked for the 2011 World Cup, he was then ignored by his own national head coach, Warren Gatland, for the 2013 British & Irish Lions tour – the only one of the 15 Welsh starters in the 30-3 thrashing of England not to be selected.
Such decisions resurrected his insecurities, made him question whether he was good enough. Whatever he did for the Ospreys, whether dropping a goal from his own half on his first start as an 18-year-old or landing a title-winning touchline conversion in Dublin, it felt like he would never be one of Gats’ golden boys. At one point he jokes about an alternative title for his book: A hundred caps and still s**t!
A drop-goal winner against Scotland in the 2022 Six Nations, the occasion of his 100th Test cap (Inpho)
Yet paradoxically he always knew nothing would stop him. It’s part of his intensely competitive make-up. He forged on and became one of the Welsh greats, winning more caps and scoring more points than Cliff Morgan or Barry John, Phil Bennett or Jonathan Davies, or any other legendary Welsh No 10.
And as for the barbs about him being a slow, one-dimensional, kicking stand-off? Stuff and nonsense. He fulfilled the role required of him for Gatland’s Wales, then proved he could play an expansive style of rugby by orchestrating the thrilling Northampton Saints attack that broke the record for most Premiership tries in a season.
He enjoyed his four-and-a-half years at Saints more than any other period in his career and, in our November 2024 issue, tells Rugby World that if he was owner or CEO of a club, he would let coach Sam Vesty name his price to join it.
Biggar loved his time at Northampton. ‘Every day I felt I learned something, I got better,’ he says (Getty)
Naturally, his book addresses the issues in Welsh rugby, and what he sees as the missed opportunity to achieve genuine change for players when their demands to the Welsh Rugby Union were compromised on.
His negotiating skills were first tested when he was 16 and faced with an underwhelming offer of £2,000 per year to sign a development contract with the Ospreys. The other lads, Leigh Halfpenny, Kristian Phillips, Ashley Beck and Tom Williams, signed up but Biggar was concerned he might even lose money from the deal because of petrol costs.
So, confronted by owner Mike Cuddy, head coach Lyn Jones and assistant coach Sean Holley, he sat down to argue his case. Cuddy asked him to write down what he was thought he was worth on a piece of paper and Cuddy did likewise. Biggar wrote down £10,000, Cuddy wrote £12,500. So Biggar got the larger figure and you have to say it was a bargain for the club.
The episode illustrates Biggar’s strength of purpose. Here was a lad destined for the top. He rose at 5.30am to do gym sessions at Swansea College, stopping en route to collect his great pal Halfpenny; he carried a water bottle and took to wearing a weighted vest wherever he went, so that when he took it off for rugby he’d feel sharper and more agile.
He wasn’t quite as obsessive as his hero Jonny Wilkinson, who he had tried unsuccessfully to meet at a Brisbane hotel at the 2003 World Cup, but he certainly shared some of his traits.
His reputation for being feisty and aggressive on the pitch is legendary. Playing for Gorseinon in his early teens, he bellowed at team-mates for being too lackadaisical at a sevens tournament in Felinfoel. That set the tone for his career.
He has shouted at Wales team-mates like Gethin Jenkins and Rio Dyer and George North in matches, he’s fled from an enraged Jerry Collins after calling him a dozy p***k in training, he’s sledged opponents and told a Gloucester fan to f*** off. He’s been sarcastic to referees and even called Luke Pearce “an absolute disgrace” for not awarding Wales a penalty try against France and, in all probability, denying them a Grand Slam in 2021.
His parents and his wife, Alex, told him to stop calling until he could do so without ranting!
With his first son, James, at RWC 2019 in Japan (Getty)
Ask Biggar about this and he makes no apologies – it is simply the person he is and he can only deliver Test-match performances at full blast.
“Whenever I look back and I see myself on telly, having a cup of tea when the emotion has gone out of it, you think, ‘could I have handled the situation better?’.
“But being passionate is what got the best out of me more often than not. When I’m in the moment, in full swing, I’m not thinking, ‘I’ve got to make sure I look okay’ or ‘this journalist doesn’t like it when I react like that’. I’m thinking of what’s right for me and the team.
“When you care so much about winning, it’s hard because of the person I am. I’m not a Federer-type person, cool, calm and collected all the time, whereas you’ve got someone like Nadal on the other side of the net who’s getting fired up for every point and every mini-break. If I was to be that (Federer type), it would be me acting unnatural.
“I like to think it shows I cared for every moment. And it’s one thing I’m proud of, it didn’t matter if it was Glasgow or Connacht away on a Friday night or if it was Wales-England at Twickenham on a Saturday afternoon in the Six Nations, I cared about winning every moment of every game. There were no double standards.”
That attitude appealed to Wayne Pivac so much that he made him Wales captain and, eventually, Biggar got the accolades he deserved. If his career high point was the 2015 World Cup, when he was so majestic that Toulouse and Montpellier both made big offers for him, it was in 2021 that he got the ultimate validation that he was the real deal – by being picked to start all three Lions Tests in South Africa.
Now nearly 35, he is possibly in his final season as a player, on the books of Toulon where he’s helping to mentor younger talent alongside his playing commitments.
He won’t miss the ‘character assassinations’ when he retires.
“The No 10 shirt made me fall in love with the sport but it’s also made me resentful of it,” he writes. “At the end of the day, the sport doesn’t love you back.”
His book is dedicated to his late mum, Liz. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer just after her 50th birthday in 2004 and lived with it for 17 years before she died 11 days after Biggar learned of his selection for the 2021 Lions. He divides his life between before her death and after her death. “I miss her every day,” he says.
Dan Biggar: The Biggar Picture is published by Macmillan, RRP £22.
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