Former Wales captain Ellis Jenkins speaks about life after hanging up his boots
For Ellis Jenkins, life after stepping off rugby’s treadmill is suiting him pretty well.
Year after year, season after season, all spent in the relentless pursuit of representing his club and country. Now though, there’s a greater balance to strike, with different avenues to explore.
“There’s a lot of spinning plates,” admits the former Wales captain. “Life is busy.”
A new job in corporate finance with Dow Schofield Watts has filled that post-playing void of a space in which to progress. “I’m enjoying solving problems with my brain rather than just my body,” he says. But that’s just one plate.
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“I still do a bit of broadcasting with the BBC, doing the Scrum V warm-up,” he adds. “And I host hospitality at the Arms Park.
“It keeps me in rugby, but also allows me to move on with a new career. It’s a fresh start and something I’m really enjoying.
“It still gives me the ability to spend time with my wife and kids at home, which is important particularly when they’re so young.”
The career of his wife, actress Sophie Jenkins, takes her all over Wales and beyond – with events in Germany, Monaco and Poland in the last year alone.
Their eldest, Jack, has just started school, while his second child, Louie, is nearly nine months old.
“I really enjoy being a dad,” he says. “I speak to a lot of older blokes in my new corporate life and none of them say they spent too much time with their kids when they were younger.
“It’s something I’m trying to remind myself of. It’s difficult, because the more you throw yourself into work, the quicker you learn and progress. But it’s a balance.
“You don’t always get it right. But it’s important to me.
“People keep telling me I’m in the eye of the storm. I feel that. It’s sometimes like I’m being chewed up and spat out the other end! I love it.
“I’m very lucky I’ve got an amazing, supportive wife who makes sure everything doesn’t fall apart. We recently moved closer to family. We’re two doors down from my parents, which is a goldmine for childcare! They might say different though…”
It’s now just shy of two years since Jenkins called time on his playing career. His days as a professional player will always be divided by the 26 months spent recovering from a serious knee injury.
Rightly or wrongly, some might say defined by that absence, too. “People always say that injury doesn’t define your career, but it’s the first thing people mention,” he notes.
For a few years, Wales’ former defensive guru Shaun Edwards used to ring up Jenkins every month or so, at different times of the day, just to see how he was getting on. His view on the injury to Jenkins, suffered jackalling against South Africa back in 2028 when victory was already secured in the dying minutes, is that if the opportunity to jackal presented itself another 100 times, he would do it every single time.
“I broke down in tears after that match in the changing room,” he says. “Shaun told me if I started thinking I shouldn’t have gone for it, I’d lose my edge.
“I’m completely at peace with it now. People ask if I would change it? If I could go back to 79 minutes and tell myself that the jackal wasn’t worth it, then I probably would have left it alone and just gone on to enjoy the night out.
“But if I did that, who says it wouldn’t have happened against Ulster the following week, or in training at some point behind closed doors. I’d have just faded into the darkness. And the funny thing is, the longer I was injured, the better I got too!
“But I don’t harbour any resentment towards it.”
Of course, if anything defined Jenkins’ career, it was not the injury, but the way he came back from it.
Some of his best rugby came in his second life as a player, working his way back into the national team and captaining his country once more.
It’s fascinating listening to Jenkins talk about this time in his career, because the mind naturally goes back to performances like the ones against South Africa and Toulouse in 2021 as examples of why Jenkins was able to come back a class act after the injury; a mind that, at times, seemed two moves ahead.
The 32-year-old is, obviously, a bright man. Switched on enough to end up with a career in finance, he loved school as a child. Yet while it’s easy to look at those performances as a mark of his intelligence on the pitch, Jenkins looks back upon them as markers on the way to the end of his career.
Were it not for a streaker in the way of Liam Williams, Jenkins might have had a record against South Africa of played three, won three. It might even have been three man of the match awards had he been on the winning side in 2021.
Yet looking back, he points out the warning signs as much as the high points. “I was playing well at the time,” he says. “It was one of those games where everything was coming off for me.
“I was back in the Wales squad, getting the best physio and yet I was still on one leg at the end of the campaign. I remember that game against Toulouse.
“I caught an intercept and I would have scored that if I wasn’t on one leg. An international seven should be finishing that. I was aware of my limitations and I pushed myself harder than most. But my knee couldn’t keep up with it.
“I’d get to a place where I felt good and would take that next step, but my knee would blow up. That happened a few times and that was my sign to finish.
“I made the decision to retire early. I’d spent the best part of two-and-a-half years out. That period was very difficult, physically and mentally. I could still play, coming back. I even played the best rugby of my career.
“But I couldn’t train to the intensity I was used to and what I felt I needed to be my best. It was tough, to be honest. One of my roles as a leader was being able to train harder than most people. I would push myself and thrive on that.
“I still had that mental side, but if I tried to push myself, my knee would let me know pretty quickly.”
There were one or two starker moments where Jenkins knew it was the right time to hang up the boots. One saw his knee balloon up after a 10-minute kickaround in the garden with his nephew.
The other saw him forced to slide down the stairs on his backside after his son Jack had woken up in the morning. “I was holding him in own arm and I couldn’t get down the stairs.
“I just thought, what am I doing? I’m playing international rugby next week and I can’t get down the stairs. I want to be able to play golf, padel or have a kickabout with my kids in the garden. The longer I played, the more I felt I was risking all that.
“Even in my last game, I went off with a head knock. I actually took myself off as I’d had a couple of big collisions. I could feel the pressure in my head and was struggling to pick up attackers.
“I was playing well too. I had about four turnovers in the first half. That probably sums up my career. I wouldn’t say I achieved everything I wanted to. I’d have loved to gone to a World Cup. I don’t feel bitter about it at all, but it’s something I didn’t get to experience.”
The 2019 World Cup should have been Jenkins’ opportunity to grace the world’s biggest stage. Wales went to Japan as genuine contenders; they left having fallen agonisingly short of a first World Cup final.
The dream of appearing in that tournament kept him in a state of tunnel vision at first. But as time went on, Jenkins’ mind drifted to what might come after rugby.
“My sole focus when I got injured was getting back for the World Cup,” says Jenkins. “It sounds ridiculous when I say that, given I missed it by 15 months.
“But when I had the injury, the surgeon said I think we can get you back on the pitch. I didn’t even realise that was part of the conversation. Things went well to begin with and there was a glimmer I could make the World Cup.
“But things turned quite quickly after two or three months with how the swelling was reacting. We were genuine contenders for that World Cup. To come to terms with that was tough.
“After that, I had a couple of times where I thought things weren’t going my way and I wouldn’t come back. Covid was double-edged too, as it meant I wasn’t missing rugby matches, but my last surgery was delayed for about five months.
“So I was stagnant. Somewhere along the lines there, I thought I should start thinking about life after rugby. It was Lloyd Williams who convinced me to do the MBA. He dragged me along, but as soon as we started it, he got back in the Welsh squad, so he left me on my own for three years to slug away doing an MBA.
“It was brilliant though, away from the monotony of rehab and it’s set me up for life after rugby. I’ve no doubt I wouldn’t have been in the conversation for certain jobs without it.”
And, when the time did come in 2024, those job offers did come. As did the choice to carry on playing. But Jenkins was ready to take a little time off the treadmill.
“I always knew I wanted a period of time out and I was hungry to get into something I wanted to do,” he says. “I had the idea of spending the rest of the calendar year doing nothing.
“I actively said no to things, as I’d seen mates finish up playing and jump straight into a job they then hated. I wanted to be picky about what I got into next and I was fortunate to be able to do that. Rugby is amazing, but you’re told what days you’re training and what days you’re not.
“You get four weeks off in the summer and the last two of those are spent worrying about the damage you’ve done in the first two! I’ve missed so many stag dos and weddings, so I wanted a year of saying yes to that.”
That led him to spinning some plates. The new job in corporate finance is obviously the focus, a second career that Jenkins can pride himself on progressing in. “I want to be successful and good at what I do, not just an ex-rugby player forever.”
But it’s not the only piece of crockery Jenkins is keeping moving. His final season at Cardiff, helping out younger players, saw him get the bug for coaching – helping out Cardiff Uni’s attack in the BUCs League last season.
There was also a suggestion of a playing return, having signed for Llantwit Fardre ahead of their 125th anniversary season back in 2024. Jenkins had previously played for the club as a 17-year-old, spending the whole game getting “beaten up by old blokes – it was amazing”.
However, a second stint there was never truly on the cards. “The chairman rang me and asked if I fancied playing in their anniversary season. I said if I was going to carry on playing rugby, I’d get paid for it!
“A couple of my mates from when I was younger when back to play. They were telling me to play, but I knew what would happen. I’d go back to do pre-season with them, then they’ll all stop playing after the first game and I’ll be stuck playing on my own. So the idea was to sign for them so if my mates were playing and I wanted to play with them, I could do. But I have no intention of playing for rugby again!
“My wife said it was ridiculous I was considering playing again, but I was never going to. If there’s a H20 technician job going, I’d be open to it. But I’d be no good to anyone nowadays.”
There’s also a burgeoning broadcasting career, with Jenkins a regular on BBC’s Scrum V: The Warm-Up. Even as a former Wales captain, Jenkins believes he doesn’t have a big enough profile to turn it into a full-time profession, but it keeps him involved in the game.
“I don’t have to run into people, but I can talk about other people running into each other,” he says. “I enjoy it while it lasts and I’m sure there’ll be someone who retires in a few years who takes the torch off me! It’s a race to the bottom in terms of who charges the least!”
Of course, in the age of Welsh rugby’s golden generation of pundits, there’s very little positivity to pass around from the sidelines at the minute. “I want to see Wales win and the regions challenging, so it’s difficult at the moment.
“My overriding feeling is I feel sorry for those boys. You grow up dreaming of playing for Wales. You don’t dream of losing eight games on the bounce. I was very lucky to play in a good team. I slotted into a successful team, but I benefitted from the quality of that team.
“We had some great wins. It was amazing. That’s what you dream of. It hurts my heart that some of the boys haven’t been able to experience that properly. I want them to experience winning.”
Jenkins doesn’t expect the broadcasting to last forever, but it does feel as if there’s several avenues open to him at the moment. He jokes that maybe he hasn’t done it the way you’re supposed to.
Most people would start a career long before they had a young family to look after. “They also say having a child and moving house are two of the most stressful things you can do, so I thought I’d chuck a new job in the mix anyway!”
Above all, Jenkins just feels lucky. His first career ended on his own terms. “I had that last season with Cardiff and because of that, I had no questions. I wasn’t going to get back in the Wales squad – they had Jac Morgan so they didn’t need me.”
His new career is still ahead of him. “I’m the happiest I’ve been outside of rugby now. It set me up for a great life and I’ve got great memories, but I don’t miss playing.
“I joke that me and Sophie both had made-up jobs for a long time, but I’ve got a grown-up one and she’s still doing the made-up one.
“She’s got a fantastic husband to look after the kids as well. Maybe that can be the headline!”
