Six Nations 2016: How Scott Baldwin came of age in Wales pack

World Cup struggles against Uruguay led to hooker becoming a fixture for his country

(Getty)

At face value, it is a trivial matter that only Sam Warburton, the Wales captain, and one other much less well-known player have started their country’s last eight competitive Internationals. The second man is Scott Baldwin, and the reason he sits one appearance above George North, Alun Wyn Jones, Jamie Roberts and Taulupe Faletau in that sequence is only because those four fellow Lions luminaries of Warburton’s were rested for the easy-beat World Cup match against Uruguay last September.

Yet the statistic does have significance: it shows the solid part Baldwin has come to play for Wales in the past 12 months, and more specifically the Uruguay fixture represented a coming of age in the 27-year-old hooker’s own mind.

“It was the first game of the World Cup and I didn’t enjoy it,” Baldwin recalled. “I’d got myself too hyped up all week, and even though we’d had such a big win [54-9], I wasn’t happy with my performance. Warren Gatland came up in the changing rooms afterwards and asked, ‘what’s wrong?’ and I told him. He said it’s better to have a game like that when you win. He said, ‘you can build on this’. He gave me that confidence to be positive again and from that point on I was determined to enjoy it.”

Gatland had surprised some pundits by dropping Richard Hibbard as first-choice hooker last summer but the head coach is renowned for his man-management and it is never more tested than for jousts against Ireland, today’s opponents in Dublin.

Anecdotally the Irish have become Wales’s bitterest opponents, but they have lost Paul O’Connell, their captain and line-out totem, who retired from Tests after the World Cup, when both teams fell in the quarter-finals: the Irish to Argentina in Cardiff and the Welsh to South Africa’s late try direct from a scrum at Twickenham.

The latter incident marked the shatteringly abrupt end to Baldwin’s enjoyable tournament. He started successive Twickenham engagements, including the dramatic win over England and the frustratingly tryless loss to Australia, before he ran head-first into the Springbok lock Eben Etzebeth in the quarter-final and was carted off for a concussion assessment.

“I was in the Twickenham medical room when Fourie du Preez scored South Africa’s winning try,” Baldwin said. “They wouldn’t let me watch a TV, as I was on oxygen or air or something to speed up my recovery if I was going to play in the semi-final. That was frustrating in itself but then to hear they’d scored was heart-breaking. Throughout the match we never thought we would lose it.”

The Bridgend-born Baldwin is praised by team manager Alan Phillips – like Gatland, a former hooker – as “just a step off world class, with a great work rate”, although avoiding soft penalties is regarded as a work in progress. At 6ft 3in and 18 stones, Baldwin’s bulk should be handy today as Wales’s defence coach Shaun Edwards has noted his team’s last three tries conceded against Ireland have come from mauls. Then, in a few weeks’ time, Wales will be back at Twickenham in round four of this Six Nations.

But Baldwin’s formative experiences on English soil stretch back further than last autumn. “Before I was a professional rugby player I used to make huge wooden panels for house builders,” he said of his time, aged 18 to 21, as a joiner.

“A fond memory is the first time I worked away, up in Chelmsford it was. The van wouldn’t fit down this lane and we were told we’d have to wait. I said, ‘no chance’, and I shifted the panels on a little skateboard, when they should have been on a crane, because the one thing I wanted to do was go out for a few beers in Chelmsford. We did go out – and I was that drunk I was in bed by nine o’clock.”

Fortunately he didn’t mess up his big rugby chance. Playing for Bridgend, with a contract at the Ospreys in the offing, his bosses put up a wooden post in the yard with a hoop for him to practise line-out throws – he was allowed 10 for every panel he finished, and was so determined to improve that he got up to 90 throws a day. “It is a help to know what life is,” Baldwin said, “to know what people go through outside rugby.”

Life is different now as Baldwin has joined the 16 other players, including Warburton, who are on national dual contracts, with wages paid by the Welsh Rugby Union and the player’s region, on a 60-40 basis, and guarantees over release for Tests, a maximum number of matches and medical cover.

“It’s nice to know you’re in the Wales coaches’ thoughts for the next couple of years, but day to day I don’t feel guaranteed a place,” said Baldwin. “What I would say is I don’t think they would have kept [his fellow Ospreys] Alun Wyn Jones, Dan Biggar and Rhys Webb in Wales without the central contracts, because it helps the region’s budget. They are three of the northern hemisphere’s standout players in world rugby.

“I wouldn’t be where I am now without Alun Wyn. He sets himself such high standards and he demands them of others. You’re almost afraid to make errors. So there is less pressure in a game because you have already had the pressure from Alun Wyn in training. If I am throwing in to a line-out and he gives me the old Alun Wyn stare, I think ‘oh God, I know I’ve done wrong here’.”

More often than not, though, things have been going right for Baldwin. “To be involved in every game last season and in the World Cup is just a stepping stone for me. I want to be starting for Wales for a long time.”