Wales star left in tears by 'brutal' rejection after club let him go

He fell out of love with the sport but it all worked out in the end for the Wales international

Wales rugby star Aaron Wainwright has opened up on the 'brutal' rejection that saw his dream of becoming a professional footballer crushed as a teenager.

The 27-year-old Dragons back row, who is currently recovering from a torn hamstring, is now one of the first names on Warren Gatland's team sheet but came to rugby relatively late after quitting football in his late teens. Before that, however, he had ambitions of playing for Cardiff City, having joined the club's academy aged 10 alongside other talents who went on to join top sides around the world.

It wasn't to be for Wainwright, though, as he was let go by the Bluebirds at the age of 16. A move to hometown club Newport County then followed, but when that didn't work out either, he quit football altogether and turned his hand to rugby instead.

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He opened up on the rejection that made him who is he today on the latest Scrum V podcast, describing how he was left in tears after finding out he wasn't going to be offered a contract by the club and how the decision made him fall out of love with football.

"At the time I was thinking that I wanted to be a professional footballer, I thought that was the route I was going to take," he said. "I played with Regan Poole who went to Manchester United, Mark Harris, Rabbi Matondo, so I played with a lot of them coming through.

"You're training and playing with those guys week in, week out and there were a lot of role models going through the age grades that they would try to inspire you to be like. But I didn't think I wasn't as good as they were or that I wasn't going to make it. I always had it in my head until there was a crunch decision to be made."

However, the contract offer didn't come for Wainwright, leaving him devastated. "I think there were 17 or 18 of us at that age that were going to be offered contracts or not, and I think only four got offered contracts," he added. "I went in with my parents and came out crying."

"They just said that they didn't think I was good enough to keep progressing. It sounds cliche but I'd been injured for a while. I came back from injury and I hadn't got to the levels that I was at before.

"So they said 'we haven't seen enough from you since you've come back from injury, we're going to have to let you go' and that was it basically. It's brutal, but that's how football is, and those are the decisions that have to be made."

As for what happened next, Wainwright said: "I went to Newport County and had an offer to get a scholarship with them, but I just fell out of love with football after that. I just remember speaking to my parents and saying 'I'm not enjoying this anymore, I'm going to concentrate on my A Levels'.

"I stayed in school and thought 'what do I do now?'. And the boys at school were like come down and play rugby for the Whiteheads. I'd had a couple of games for the school on the wing while I was at Newport and that probably made the decision easier, I wasn't enjoying football and I discovered playing rugby with people I'd known for so long which helped the transition over."

The rest, as they say, is history with football's loss proving to be very much rugby's gain. With 48 caps under his belt for Wales, Wainwright is a talisman for club and country and was named Wales men's player of the year by the Welsh Rugby Writers Association (WRWA) for 2024