Wainwright’s family were in the stands when he won his first cap in Wales’ historic 13-12 win against South Africa in Bloemfontein – the only time the men’s national team has won a game against the Springboks on their soil.<\/p>\n
The prop from Prestatyn, then with Saracens after earning a move from Rygbi Gogledd Cymru (RGC), helped win a scrum penalty that set up field position for Josh Adams’ late try that was converted by Gareth Anscombe.<\/p>\n
Wainwright was able to celebrate with his father, who was instrumental on his rise to Test level.<\/p>\n
“He was a huge influence,” said the prop. “We were best friends and he did everything with me.<\/p>\n
“He was one of the biggest support networks for me and when I got the call-up I thought about him a lot, it was quite emotional.<\/p>\n
“We’d speak about everything and he’d watch every game. When I was at the Scarlets he would tell me what to pick up on after every game.<\/p>\n
“He was unbelievable for me and that’s why getting this call up was a bit emotional for me. He would have been proud of me – 1,000%.”<\/p>\n
A former rugby league player and a construction worker, Shaun ensured that Sam was able to give RGC his full attention.<\/p>\n
“I told him I wanted to follow his route and have the rugby alongside it, but he would never let me do it,” said Wainwright, whose exploits earned a chance with Saracens in 2019.<\/p>\n
“He said ‘I do this, not you – you just focus on the rugby’. I was part-time at RGC and got a wage, but my dad just told me to eat and sleep rugby.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wainwright’s family were in the stands when he won his first cap in Wales’ historic 13-12 win against…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":443619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":["post-443618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/443619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}