Sam Warburton will lead Wales' Six Nations campaign
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Wales captain Sam Warburton talks to Oliver Brown about his previously split loyalties and his desire to forge a career in property some day Daily Telegraph.
"Listening to his gentle Cardiff lilt, you would mark Sam Warburton down as a man of unadulterated Welshness.
"Surely, the figure who carries the scarlet jersey as captain of Wales should be as emblematic of national conscience as Dylan Thomas or Tom Jones. And yet, he is half-English. So when the refrain of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadhau starts cascading from the Twickenham terraces in four weeks time, for the Six Nations collision with England, he will not feel a surge of Anglophobia.
“I don’t have the hatred that a lot of Welsh people have towards the English,” Warburton says, delicately. He is speaking in the lounge of his parents’ house in Rhiwbina, the affluent northern Cardiff suburb where he was raised and where father Jez, a fireman born in London, has just opened the door on this drizzly winter’s morning. “Half my family are English anyway. My uncle, my dad’s brother, came to see me play in the England game at the Millennium Stadium last year, and he wasn’t sure who to support.
"He points across the room. “I remember sitting in that chair and watching England win the World Cup final. My rugby hero was Jonny Wilkinson.”
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