Dual-code Wales forward Mark Jones has died at the age of 59. In 2023, he spoke to League Express about how his aggressive style of play stemmed from battling a stammer.
MARK JONES had a reputation that crossed both codes of rugby, as one of the hardest of hard men.
His aggressive style of play could – and often did – cross the line, bringing six dismissals and cumulative bans of over 33 weeks for violent conduct throughout a two-decade career that saw the Welshman earn international honours in both Rugby League and Rugby Union.
But throughout his time in the 13-a-side code, which involved five seasons with Hull and two at Warrington in the 1990s, Jones was battling the demon of a debilitating stammer, which was behind his rage on the field.
Only after returning to union did he receive the speech therapy that has changed his life and made him realise why he acted as he did throughout his career.
Jones has now found peace and has published an autobiography, ‘Fighting to Speak – Rugby Rage & Redemption’, in which he explains his struggles and repents his brutal past behaviour.
SELF-LOATHING
Jones grew up in Tredegar, Gwent, with a stammer that saw him bullied as a child.
He tells League Express: “As a kid I ran away from things. I just wanted to hide. In school, as kids do, I got the micky ripped out of me, there was loads of teasing and stuff.
“It’s not nice as a kid to be made to feel different to everybody else. Everybody knew my stammer and didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all.
“I just ran away from the confrontations, up until I was around 14. I got a proper kicking then and I made a conscious effort after that. Why run away? Hit first.”
Jones believes a much bleaker life would have been in store for him if he had not channelled his aggression into rugby, where he was a promising youth international.
“I’d been locked up a couple of times for fighting. I didn’t want to get locked up again so I had to find a channel for the self-loathing and the anger I felt inside,” he says.
“I needed to vent; I didn’t want to get locked up again so I started to be a bit more robust on the field.”
That approach brought the forward success with Neath and full Welsh honours, not that he thought twice about some of his more violent behaviour.
Jones says: “I wasn’t aware that it was driven by my stammer until 20 years later really. I was just aware that I was lucky to get a bit of notoriety and I was in the papers so I thought ‘I’ll carry on that way’.”
HELP
The turning point only came after Jones’ time in Rugby League. He returned to Wales in 1996 amid the advent of professionalism in union, signing for Ebbw Vale.
In a match two years later he broke the eye socket of a young Ian Gough with a punch, and knew he had to change his ways: “I realised this isn’t right.”
His club supported him through a programme of speech therapy in which he essentially had to “start from scratch and learn to talk again”.
Jones adds: “I had to learn to breathe on a word. I’d start with the alphabet. Breathe in and breathe out, say the letter ‘a’, next breath, ‘b’, next breath.
“Then I moved up to small words like ‘dog’, ‘cat’, ‘bat’, then advance to syllables of words. On each breath I’d say a syllable of a word. Now I still rehearse and do breathing techniques and relaxation and all those things. It’s a constant thing.
“The worst part of it was they told me to record myself speaking on a video camera and to watch it back. That was the worst thing ever, it was totally cringeworthy and upsetting to see the way I looked to other people when I spoke.
“There were tics, I’d jump about. I’d think ‘why do people look at me like that when I speak to them?’ Well that’s what I looked like! It was bonkers.”
Jones continued to play rugby until his retirement in 2003 and, now 57, he currently works in Qatar as a technician.
BRUTALITY
Jones played the hardest of sports in a time when things like concussion were little understood, both giving and receiving more than his fair share of knocks.
Reflecting now, he is sure that the extra physicality of Rugby League made his stammer even worse.
“When I came back after Warrington my speech was the worst it has ever been. I couldn’t say three words without stammering,” he says.
“The concussions were making it worse. They had really had a marked effect, looking back now. There couldn’t have been another reason, it must have been that.
“I’d wake up in the middle of the night and feel like I’d been hit over the head with a metal bar. I had headaches for hours. That was the point when I knew I needed to be out of League; it killed me.
“It was each bloody game, you’d get hit in the knees, in the gut and in the clock! It was just an occupational hazard, one of those things. That’s the way it was.”
However, he bears no ill will towards either code of rugby, and says he would never consider making a legal claim for the effects of head injuries.
“In union now boys are making claims, but I don’t agree with it. I’d never make a claim, no way,” he says.
“We’re grown men in the end, we knew what we were doing, we were getting paid. It was the job we did. But that’s just my opinion and each man has his own mind.
“Everything I’ve ever had has come out of rugby. I would never be where I am if I didn’t have rugby.”
LEAGUE
Despite those effects, Jones has nothing but fond memories of his time in Rugby League, where he earned a Great Britain cap in 1992 and played nine times for Wales, including in the 1995 World Cup, when they reached the semi-finals.
Of first heading north for Hull, Jones says: “I was the incumbent Wales number eight, I’d had 14 caps, and I was still living at home with my mother. I was out on a dead end. Then Hull came in and the rest is history.
“I moved up to Hull and had a nightmare of a first season. My ankle was shot to bits and I was out for nine months. I got a bit of stick, as a signing coming up for big money and I couldn’t play.
“It was tough, it was the fitness part. I was six foot five as well so it was getting up off the floor, the defence work, it was f***ing tough. I had to work my arse off to get in the side.
“But it gave me the mentality and the work ethic. League was the making of me as a pro.”
“I had fantastic times at Hull; it was a wonderful place and a wonderful club. (Coach) Brian Smith was class. You had Steve McNamara, Richard Gay, Paul Eastwood, Andy Dannatt – we had cracking players.
“Then I went to Warrington and a lot happened there in two years. We lost to Saints (80-0 in a Regal Trophy semi-final) and they sacked Brian Johnson, bless him. It’s a topsy-turvy game, Rugby League. Things change in a minute. But I loved Warrington.
“I was 32 by then and the legs weren’t as quick as they were. When players like Paul Sculthorpe and Iestyn Harris, wonderful players and fantastic professionals, are two lengths ahead of you in training you think ‘shit, this is not for me now, I’ve got to go’!”
LOVE
Jones says that his stammer never caused any issues in the dressing room.
“In every squad the boys take the piss, it’s a brutal environment. But no one is really bothered, if you can do your job on the field no one gives a f***,” he says.
“The bit that drove me really was the snidey little comments and the giggles you’d get out in the street. In the squads, it was good craic and that was expected.
“If you’d had a bad game, they’d tell you were rubbish but that’s all that mattered. I never had any malice or animosity in the squads I’ve been in; the boys were always great.”
And that has especially been the case since telling his story and offering an explanation for his behaviour as a player.
“I’ve had nothing off people but love and respect and admiration. I can’t thank everybody enough,” says Jones.
“I’d done a lot of soul searching and I needed to come out. I spoke about it in an interview (with WalesOnline). The weight that was lifted off me was enormous. That was the start of it.
“Then the BBC rang me to speak on a documentary called ‘I Can’t Say My Name’. That expressed why I was not nice on the field, my mentality.
“Now the book has come out and it’s been a revelation. I can’t start to explain what I’ve had out of it on a personal level. It’s been unbelievable. It’s made me feel normal.”
