{"id":325377,"date":"2025-12-19T21:53:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T21:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325377\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T21:53:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T21:53:12","slug":"eight-games-for-four-teams-in-three-years-and-a-100-record-for-wales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/325377\/","title":{"rendered":"Eight games for four teams in three years \u2014 and a 100% record for Wales"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regan Grace is a rarity: a Welshman with a 100 per cent win record in his national jersey. Scoring a try in the 36-35 victory over Queensland Reds was a glimmer in a series of misfortune. Injuries are inevitable for athletes. Some avoid the worst of it; others appear unfairly afflicted. Grace is the latter. <\/p>\n

A rapid, jinking runner who took the unexpected route from Port Talbot to St Helens and rugby league, it is three years since he switched to union and Racing 92. Except Grace never played in Paris. He has made eight appearances in the 15-man game: the uncapped warm-up match for Wales in Australia, two for Bath, four for Cardiff and one for Sale Sharks. <\/p>\n

In a part of the world that has witnessed peak Grace, he is rebuilding once more. Training for training\u2019s sake and \u201ca bit lost\u201d without a club \u2014 Cardiff released him, and no new deal was forthcoming in Wales\u2019s apparent death spiral \u2014 he joined Sale Sharks for pre-season thanks to WillGriff John. <\/p>\n

\"Regan<\/p>\n

Grace goes over for the second Wales try in their 36-35 victory over the Queensland Reds in Brisbane before celebrating with gusto, below<\/p>\n

MATT ROBERTS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\"Regan<\/p>\n

MATT ROBERTS\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

There was interest from the 13-man code but Grace stuck with union, and training turned into a trial, a start in the Premiership Rugby Cup and an unused bench spot in the Gallagher Prem against Exeter Chiefs. He will be at Sale until at least February. <\/p>\n

At St Helens, for whom Grace scored 89 tries in 143 games, they recall him as fondly as Kel Coslett and the other beatified Welsh Saints. A ruptured achilles in the summer of 2022, just after the announcement of his code switch, ended Grace\u2019s time in Merseyside. Several months into his Parisian rehabilitation, he tore it again while jogging. <\/p>\n

\u201cI know that all the staff there knew how hard I tried to make it work, because when I snapped my achilles the second time there, the staff were literally crying,\u201d Grace, 29, says. \u201cThat\u2019s the part of my career which [leaves me] gutted.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are speaking at Carrington on the day of Sale\u2019s Christmas lunch. There is a \u00a310 Secret Santa, and a song by youngsters mocking the coaching staff. There are also league fixtures to prepare for: away to Northampton Saints on Saturday, and home to Harlequins on Boxing Day. Having spent so many years in Super League, which runs from February to October, Grace is not accustomed to such Christmas overlaps. <\/p>\n

\"Regan<\/p>\n

Grace evades a challenge by Luke Briscoe, of Leeds Rhinos, to score one of his 89 tries in 143 games for St Helens at Headingley in 2020<\/p>\n

MARTIN RICKETT\/PA<\/p>\n

There is time to head south to his mother\u2019s house in Wales, along with four siblings, and nieces and nephews. Port Talbot is born of steel and entertainment, and Grace is one of their favourite sons. The ARTwalk offers a guided tour of street art and murals in the town, honouring Michael Sheen, Richard Burton and Sir Anthony Hopkins. Grace has one at Aberavon Quins, his old union club. <\/p>\n

Grace was 14 when Sheen performed his three-day epic The Passion of Port Talbot around the town, among the thousands who turned out to watch. \u201cHe\u2019s obviously a great bloke because I\u2019ve seen that he\u2019s given away a lot of what he owns now for charity and stuff and helping out people in Wales,\u201d Grace says. \u201cI\u2019d love to meet him.\u201d <\/p>\n

The fame does not stop there. \u201cPaul Potts, he\u2019s not from Port Talbot, but he lives there,\u201d Grace says of the Britain\u2019s Got Talent-winning opera singer. \u201cHe\u2019s got the nicest house in Port Talbot.\u201d That would be Sunray, known as \u201cMugs Villa\u201d because Val Jones built it from gambling proceeds. <\/p>\n

Port Talbot\u2019s entertainment is not limited to Burton\u2019s cathedral voice, Hannibal Lecter and Nessun Dorma singers. It has produced rugby talent in both codes. Johnny Ring went from Aberavon to Wigan in 1922 and was the club\u2019s leading tryscorer until Sir Billy Boston took flight. Mike Nicholas was the most colourful character in a Warrington influx from the area. <\/p>\n

There was animus in those years, when league scouts turned amateurs professional. It remained even when Grace was coming through. \u201cI found that playing as much as I could and playing both games helped me with each game more than training did,\u201d he says. \u201cSometimes I\u2019d miss training to play league or vice versa. But the one club that was quite forward thinking was my home club, Aberavon Quins. They always supported me. If I had trials in rugby league, they\u2019d take me to the trials because my mum didn\u2019t drive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Regan<\/p>\n

Grace\u2019s feats with St Helens have earned him a mural in Port Talbot where he is immortalised alongside Michael Sheen, Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins<\/p>\n

LEWIS STOREY\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

In 2014, St Helens signed Grace and Calvin Wellington, a close friend. Had he not taken that contract as a 17-year-old, Grace could have tried to advance with Ospreys in union, and maybe work in industry like generations before him. Tata Steel brought a close to steelmaking in Port Talbot last year, cutting thousands of jobs. There should be a new electric arc furnace in the town by the end of 2027. <\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my friends work in the steelworks and stuff,\u201d Grace says. \u201cThere\u2019s also companies involved in the steelworks like the JES Group, and they\u2019re bringing on loads of people with apprenticeships for welding and stuff like that. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re good friends of mine and when I\u2019ve been out of contract, they\u2019ve been messaging me like, \u2018Oh, if you ever do need to work or whatever, you can always come back and we\u2019ll try to help you out that way.\u2019 I feel like they try to stay positive and try to keep going, and just be as creative as they can in bad times. When things are not very certain, they just keep going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Grace has kept going amid the uncertainty, too. His call-up for Wales\u2019s tour to Australia in the summer of 2024 provoked tears once he realised it was not a prank. His dream had been to play for his country, not for a particular club, and he started in the uncapped game at Brisbane\u2019s Lang Park, a historic league venue. <\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019d missed the boat and I thought I\u2019m never, ever going to get a chance to get there, and I was starting to doubt myself \u2014 am I going to be able to get a chance to get to Wales?\u201d Grace says. <\/p>\n

\"Bath<\/p>\n

Grace made two of his eight appearances to date in the 15-man game with Bath<\/p>\n

PATRICK KHACHFE\/GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

He scored but also played through injury. \u201cIn the first, like, 15 minutes I ruptured my hamstring. And then I kept telling myself, \u2018If you come off, you\u2019re not going to have another chance to play for Wales,\u2019 because I\u2019d literally done nothing in the first 15. So I was like, \u2018Just stay on as long as you can, unless you can\u2019t walk, then come off\u2019. I just stayed on as long as I could.\u201d More than 70 minutes, mostly on one leg. <\/p>\n

Grace feels young in his body and cites GPS data to show he still has the speed that excited league and made him an untapped promise for union. You would need a heart of stone not to wish a prolonged chance for him. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf I looked at all the injuries I\u2019d have, I probably would have thought I\u2019d never get through that,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I\u2019m quite proud looking back, reflecting on the fact that I have got through it all and stayed positive, and that\u2019s pretty much all you can do, really, in those situations. Or just walk away from the game. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat question\u2019s been given to me loads of times; do you want to walk away? I don\u2019t, because I still actually love rugby. So as long as my body allows, I\u2019m going to keep going. I know I\u2019ve still got plenty in the tank.\u201d <\/p>\n

Northampton v Sale Sharks<\/p>\n

Gallagher Prem
Saturday, 3pm
TV TNT Sports Extra<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Regan Grace is a rarity: a Welshman with a 100 per cent win record in his national jersey.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-325377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}