Sportin Wales co-founder and professional rugby player Gareth Anscombe’s latest column covers all the chaos of being a young father… and a player in the French Top14!

The last couple of months have probably summed up my first season in French rugby: beautiful, brutal, and a little bit mad, all at the same time.

When people ask how life is, I’m tempted to start with the weather. As I’m talking now, it’s mid2 0s, I’ve just been down the beach with the family, and Bayonne is looking a million dollars. It’s a stunning place to live and, for a young family, a brilliant experience. That’s been the constant amid everything else that’s been thrown our way.

The biggest change, without question, was the arrival of our baby daughter, Romi. She was born on the 28th of December, right in the middle of the school holidays and a busy part of the season. She’s our third child and welcoming her into the world was so special.

Having the chance to help Milica out with the kids and spend time with our new arrival was a joy as injuries have clouded my winter a little.

I’d picked up a calf injury in November: nothing glamorous, just a training incident after we came back from a 10‑day break. A couple of high‑load days, one wrong step, and suddenly it was a decent tear that kept me out for about two months.

When you’re stuck rehabbing and watching the boys play without you, having a newborn at home is a blessing. Romi gave me something else to focus on, a reminder that rugby is important, but not everything.

My first game back was away to Toulouse, talk about a baptism of fire! I’d barely been on the pitch two minutes when I took a nasty blow to the shin from a teammate’s studs in a tackle.

At first it felt like a dead leg, and I was able to carry on until they scored, then finally looked down and saw my sock soaked and my shin basically open. It needed a lot of stitches, and because the cut was so deep, they couldn’t close the middle, it had to heal from the inside out.

That meant another five or six weeks on the sidelines, training now with a shin guard and still being extra careful. In more than a decade of professional rugby I’d never had anything like it.

All of this has played out against a pretty turbulent backdrop at Aviron Bayonnais. Earlier in the season we were flying – we’d gone a year and a half unbeaten at home and sat fourth or fifth in the Top 14.

Then the results turned, we lost two on the bounce at home, slid down to mid‑table, and the pressure came on quickly. The head coach was sacked not long after signing a new contract; the head trainer left too.

A bit like in Welsh rugby, the players often seem to find out what’s going on via social media before anyone tells us officially. It’s been a proper French soap opera at times!

And yet, this is also exactly what I imagined French rugby might be like. The beauty of the game here is tied up with the madness. The lifestyle is fantastic, the support is on another scale compared to the UK, and the domestic game feels like the dominant force in the northern hemisphere.

The clubs are powerful, wealthy, and fiercely local. In some ways, the club game almost rivals the national team – you don’t always feel that same tight connection between club and country that you get in Wales or England. The French clubs get big backing from local fans, the league is its own ecosystem, and it doesn’t look like slowing down any time soon.

For me, the goal now is simple: stay fit, stay on the field and help Bayonne fight back into the top eight. After a stop‑start, chaotic few months, I’d settle for a bit of boring consistency – with the odd sunny afternoon on the beach with Milica and the kids!

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