The shame and salvation of Chris Jones - the infamous rugby player banned for life twice

05:35, 04 Oct 2026Updated 14:55, 04 Oct 2026

It's a Sunday evening in August 1990, and Chris Jones knows he's in big trouble. He's trudging back to the cells of Brecon police station, the words of his distraught wife Gillian already weighing heavy on his shoulders.

"‘The kids want to know when Daddy’s coming home. What am I going to tell them, Chris?"

Up until this point, Jones had dedicated his life to carefully crafting his persona as one of the hardest men in south Wales, backing it up with shocking acts of violence and disorder both on and off the rugby field. But right now, in this moment, he felt anything but.

"I was frightened," he said. "I didn’t want to go to jail. I didn’t want to lose my freedom. I didn’t want to not be able to go where I want, to run through the mountains... and there were no women there either.

"The worst thing of all was the shame. I had got to this point in my life, my marriage was breaking up and I kept thinking how the next time my three children would see me would be in the waiting room at Swansea Prison."

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Earlier that day, Jones had been arrested and led away in handcuffs after being involved in a fight in The Boar's Head pub in Brecon, during the town's jazz festival. While he initially thought it was a joke, he was later charged with wounding with intent and violent disorder, with police detectives telling him they had reason to believe he had stabbed a man during the altercation.

It was a crime he did not commit, but he was now facing time in prison. The shame and fear was overwhelming. How did he get here?

The first half of Jones' new autobiography - From Rucks to Redemption: My Life-changing Story - tells the full no-holds-barred story of that decades-long journey to Brecon police station, documenting a life that over time, spiralled dangerously out of control.

Crucially, it is just one half of the story, with the second act a tale of redemption, faith and deliverance that began in those cells that very night and has not only endured, but flourished, over the course of the last 35 years.

But until that point, Jones life was marked by a complete disregard for consequences, acts of thuggery and, at times, a quite sinister thirst to prove himself as the hardest of them all.

Playing mainly for Treorchy RFC, he became one of the most feared enforcers in valleys rugby during the 1980s, with his reputation on the pitch preceding him. Famously, he is the only player in rugby history to be banned for life twice, while stories of him carrying an axe around his kit bag have become the stuff of legend in Wales and beyond.

"Rugby was a different game," Jones explained. "It’s a more brutal game now, but it’s not a more violent game. Before the days of cameras and mobile phones, it was a case of literally anything goes.

"I don't want to be disrespectful but, often, especially in local club rugby, you’d have some old guy who was refereeing and trying to follow the game across the field - and the rest of us would all be kicking lumps out of each other on the other side of the pitch.

"That attracted crowds to the game as well, especially the local derbies. Thousands showed up to see that gladiatorial aspect of the game. That's the way it was played in those days. That wasn’t isolated, it filtered down into school and club rugby, especially in the valleys and in the Rhondda."

Despite his already fearsome reputation - cemented by frequent sendings off throughout school and youth rugby - Jones admits he was constantly driven to push the boundaries of what was acceptable on the field of play, revealing in his book that he considered carrying a razor blade around with him during games just to get an edge.

"Lunacy, absolute lunacy," he laughed. "In my head, I thought this is acceptable, so why can’t the next step be acceptable, and the next step after that? It was just the world that I was living in. It was crazy, absolutely crazy.

"For me it was just trying to outdo what I’d done last time, it had got to that stupid point in my life. I had loads of sendings off throughout all these age grades and in the world that I was living in, I thought this is just as much looked up to as the guys who are playing international rugby. It’s sad when I look back at it all. I’m ashamed."

Having already been banned from playing for Treorchy for nine months for "putting one of the committee men in a headlock" and a further six for "giving the referee a little clip" during a derby match, it all came to a head for Jones during a fiery Schweppes Cup tie with Cardiff in 1983.

One of five players to be sent off by Clive Norling during the game, he was given his marching orders for throwing punches and was banned for five years by Treorchy before the Welsh Rugby Union chose to suspend him for life.

While he later launched a successful appeal to return to play, it only took a handful of games before Jones was in trouble again, with the WRU issuing a second life ban after he badly injured an opponent by hitting him at a scrum.

He was heartbroken - not that he dared to show it. Keeping his emotions hidden, Jones' personal implosion gathered pace as he began to care less and less about the consequences of his actions and the bad behaviour he showed on the pitch bled more and more into his personal life.

A section of the book reads as an eye-opening rapsheet of offences, with weekends spent fighting, drinking, taking drugs and sleeping on the mountainside. There are stories of furious rows with his wife, with Jones smashing in windows and doors to get back into the house after another night out drinking, while he admits members of his family were left embarrassed by his behaviour.

"There were two things that set it off," he explained. "One would be in a competitive situation, in a game, and the other one would be drink. I was never a big drinker, maybe that was part of the problem - because when I did drink alcohol, it would just drive me crazy.

"When that happened, it was like ‘anything goes’. Then things would calm down and I’d want to change. The times when I was sober and with my family, of course I wanted to change. But I didn’t have the strength or ability to do it."

That brings us back to that night in Brecon police station. With the odds stacked against him, Jones was overwhelmed with shame and regret, and desperate to change his ways.

"So many people over the years had said I was going to get into that situation," he said. "My parents, teachers, the rugby authorities - I had all the warnings and I didn’t pay any attention to it.

"I just lived my life the way I wanted to live it, with no rules basically. I’d been a waster in every part of my life. I’d wasted my education in a grammar school, I’d been a waster in my jobs, marriage. Even in rugby, the thing I said I loved most of all, I’d been a waster. The feeling of shame was just horrendous."

Knowing he couldn't fight his way out this time, Jones had nowhere else to turn. What he did next would change his life forever.

"There’s an old saying, there’s no atheists in the trenches," he said. "I just got to the point where I thought ‘God, help me’. I hadn’t believed in God. I had believed in something, I used to think there must be something there, a force of good, but other times I thought ‘nah, there’s nothing’ and didn’t believe in it.

"I really was sorry for how I’d lived my life and I just said ‘God, if you’re there, help me’. I didn’t see any flashing lights or choirs of angels, but there was a feeling, deep down in my heart, that if I went God’s way, my life will change, and he will help me to change.

"For the first time in a long, long time, it felt good and right. The next morning, they were going to take me down to the prison on remand, but I now had something new, fresh and good going on in my life".

The rest is history. After being granted conditional bail, Jones went to see the local vicar and asked to learn more about God. Having tried and failed to understand the Bible while at school, he was instructed to study the Gospel stories and, with fresh eyes, he admits his "mind was blown" by what he read.

"It just all clicked," he said. "When I first read the Sermon on the Mount, I thought imagine if I could live my life like that, imagine if the world could live like that. I thought, wow, I'm in.

"My lifestyle was a form of addiction, and I believe God helped me to break that addiction. Other people can believe whatever they want but, for me it was that real."

From then on, everything began to change. Going 'all in' on his faith, Jones gave up alcohol and rebuilt relationships with those he had hurt, falling in love with Gillian all over again and, in his words, "being the husband and father I should have been all along".

So dramatic was the change in his fortunes, it wasn't long before his wife, friends and brother Clive - "the biggest atheist you could ever meet" - became Christian with him.

"I was just determined to follow this new faith that I had, and I just immersed myself in it.," he said. "I attended all the church meetings and met people and spoke to them, regardless of what other people thought.

"My wife thought I’d completely lost my marbles, but the proof of the pudding is in the eating and as time went on, she could see that there really was a change."

Of course, all of this came with a jail sentence hanging over him. But when the day of his trial arrived, developments saw the police offer to drop the charge of wounding with intent if he pled guilty to the charge of violent disorder.

Having agreed to do so, Jones nervously awaited the judge's verdict, before being told that he was being fined and would not face a custodial sentence, leaving him free to be with his family and pursue his faith.

For the next couple of years, he turned his back on rugby, believing it to be the cause of his problems. However, after being convinced to return to the game, he looked to find a way to put his new faith into action, leading him to Rhondda Schools Rugby in 1993.

It would prove to be another key moment in Jones' storied life. Over thirty years on, he is still dedicating everything to his role as senior rugby development officer, having helped to transform the lives of hundreds of youngsters in the region through rugby and mentorship.

Having never won it before 1999, the schools side has gone on to win the Dewar Shield ten times, finishing as runners-up on a further six occasions. Meanwhile, Jones has witnessed over 50 of his players go on to represent Wales at various levels, including 14 full internationals and even some British & Irish Lions.

Recent Wales internationals Tomos Williams, Corey Domachowski, Keiron Assiratti, WillGriff John, Cameron Winnett, Liam Belcher, Ben Warren, Shane Lewis-Hughes and Matthew Screech were all put on the path to Test rugby by Jones, following the likes of Matthew Rees, Morgan Stoddart, Andrew Bishop, Lou Reed and Rhys Gill.

Having fallen in love with the job immediately at a chaotic first session at Dunraven Primary school, Jones looks back on his time with Rhondda Schools as "33 years of joy".

"We’ve had quite a bit of success, but the job is much more than that," he said. It’s about giving these boys a focus and an opportunity and instil some good values, some discipline, a good work ethic.

"I’m just very grateful for the life I’ve been able to live over the last 35 years, and 33 of them have been with Rhondda Schools. The rugby is just a vehicle, it’s a means of trying to help these kids and give them a platform to go on to do other things.

"For some of them, they will go on to be professional rugby players. For others, they will learn discipline that they will be able to apply to other parts of their lives, be it jobs or relationships or whatever.

"I’m a Rhondda valley boy born and bred and I’ve lived the life that I’ve lived," he added. "So I’m able to say to these boys that I’ve been down this road, just be careful.

"You tend to listen to someone who has been there and done it, wrongly or rightly, over someone who hasn’t got any idea what they’re on about. Hopefully that has played a part in keeping some of the boys on the straight and narrow."

While he doesn't do the job for the recognition, the 2026 New Year Honours saw Jones awarded an MBE for his decades of work with Rhondda Schools, and he received his award from King Charles III himself earlier this year.

Thirty-six years on from trudging through the corridors of Brecon police station, he now found himself walking tall through the halls of Windsor Castle, with his loving family by his side. After such a remarkable journey what must have been going through his head this time?

"I was just thinking ‘I really hope I can hear what he says'!," he laughed. "It was completely out of the blue, but of course I was honoured to have it. It was mindblowing for me.

"It was a fantastic day and the King was brilliant, so engaging and humble. The couple of minutes I spent with him, it was the icing on the cake."

The remarkable life story of Chris Jones is far from over, with many more fascinating chapters still left to write. But he hopes that not only will his new book serve as an account of his life for his grandchildren to enjoy, but also a message of hope for those struggling.

"People believe what they want to believe," he said. "But there is a message there that says maybe, if we give an opportunity to the same God that Chris Jones gave an opportunity to, our lives might improve.

"From being very, very unfulfilled, I feel fulfilled. I have an inner peace and an inner contentment that I never used to have. I’m very, very thankful to God for that."