Peter Jackson: Brave rebel Byron Hayward is still blazing his own trail

Of the 1,109 players capped by Wales, only one began by scoring a hat-trick of tries on debut as a second-half substitute. He finished the same career in another part of southern Africa three weeks later under circumstances every bit as unique as his start, as another beleaguered victim of the heaviest Test defeat ever inflicted on a British team overseas: South Africa 96, Wales 13.
As if that was not enough to put him in a class of his own, the same player subsequently found the moral fortitude to make a one-man stand against Graham Henry in protest at the New Zealander’s foreign policy of putting the three-feathers on some fellow Kiwis of distinctly dodgy ancestry.
Whether it was in the act of touching down three times against Zimbabwe in July 1998 or being laid low by the Springboks on the High Veldt later that month, nobody could ever accuse full-back Byron Hayward of not fighting his corner. Taking Henry to public task required some courage at a time when the Kiwi’s more excitable Welsh disciples had anointed him ‘The Great Redeemer’.
A champion amateur boxer at light-middleweight, Hayward spoke out against what he saw as an injustice to genuine Welsh players denied their rightful place in their national team.
And for that reason he refused to take his selected place for Wales’ second string for an A international against Scotland.
At the time, in the late winter of 2000, nobody had heard of ‘Grannygate’. Within weeks the scandal broke over the heads of Henry and his WRU employers for picking two players who had no right to play for Wales – the former All Black Shane Howarth and his fellow New Zealander, Brett Sinkinson who won a stack of caps on the strength of claiming non-existent Welsh grandparents.
Hayward sounded more like Nostradamus than a goalkicking full- back/fly-half at Gloucester whose career had started at one Monmouthshire valley club (Newbridge) and finished at another (Pontypool).
“I spoke out because I felt what was being done in picking those players was morally wrong,” Hayward says. “I was expressing a view which many other players shared but decided to keep to themselves. Maybe they had a bit more sense. What’s done is done…”
By then, a rugby injury had sabotaged his plan to embark on a professional ring career at the boxing stable run by Joe Calzaghe’s father, Enzo.
More than a decade later, Hayward is still doing it his way. He will find out from an eye specialist at the Royal Liverpool University Hospital later this month exactly where he stands over the biggest fight of his life, one against a rare form of cancer, ocular melanoma. They discovered it, by chance, 15 months ago.
“I just went to the optician to get some reading glasses and they found a tumour behind my right eye,” he says. “The first question I asked was whether this had anything to do with boxing or rugby.
“The specialist was very definite that it had nothing to do with either sport. I had a check-up in July.  They said everything looked good but it was a bit too soon so I’ll know more before the end of the month.
“This can be a deadly disease and it can only be diagnosed in the very early stages through an eye test. I’ve met a lot of people who suffered from ocular melanoma and most of them lost their eyes because it wasn’t detected early enough.
“Luckily, I got an early diagnosis which means that I hope the tumour has been contained. Ever since then, I’ve been advising people to get their eyes tested.”
Typically, Hayward has not spared himself in raising awareness and money for research.
At the last count he had raised more than £5,000 from a sky dive, a 64-minute run to the peak of Snowdon followed by the Cardiff half-marathon.
At 44, Hayward has a crucial new role in ensuring Wales keep unearthing talent of sufficient calibre to keep their national team at least one step ahead of the game.
As head coach of the national U20 squad, his job is to ensure that the assembly line keeps delivering the next generation of international players.
Eight of the squad beaten by England in the Junior World Championship final last summer are still eligible. “We’ve got some real talent coming through,” he says. “These are exciting times for Welsh rugby. Gone are the days when Wales got beaten by a cricket score.”
Hayward has never forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end of the biggest one of all, at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria 15 years ago.
“I’d never experienced a defeat as devastating as that one,” he says. “It affected me for a long time.
“It knocked my confidence to pieces. To have gone from the high of my first cap and the three tries to that was quite humiliating. I remember one of the coaches in the dressing-room after that match saying, “remember how you feel now and make sure it never happens again’.”