IT DIDN’T take long at the Neath Swansea Ospreys’ training session to spot Jerry Collins’ prominent feature.

No, it wasn’t the dyed yellow top of his head – the bizarre fashion statement he’s become so fond of – or a crunching tackle during a contact drill, but it was his smile.

Collins’ grin can work wonders, the recipient of it immediately feels a warmth towards him and when he flashes it to a young Ospreys 

back during the training session held in bitterly cold south Welsh conditions, the young lad is awe struck.

After training he pops up to a cricket pavilion on the edge of the rugby field for a chat and over the next hour Collins speaks more frankly than he’s perhaps ever spoken in an interview.

Ensconced in Wales and safe from the New Zealand media that has often been so obsessed with him, Collins doesn’t feel he 

has to guard his words.

It went without saying that his private life was off limits, it always has been. He denied that he was a father to be in 2007, despite 

the opposite being the truth. 

But aside from that Collins didn’t shy away from answering questions on any of the controversial subjects that have surrounded his career.

He talked about his relationship with the New Zealand public, the controversial comments Graham Henry made when he announced his departure from New Zealand, his troubled time at Toulon and how he’s being driven out of the game, but first he spoke about how much he was enjoying life at the Ospreys.

“It’s been good,” Collins says. “Obviously with being new here the boys have been pretty good to me and I’ve fitted in well.

“I came in, started playing and that’s pretty much all I’ve been doing, just playing. Living in South Wales is good apart from the traffic, that’s a bit different to New Zealand because there are a lot more people here.

“It’s a good region to play for, the public are pretty supportive, sometimes the media aren’t but that’s the way it is in Wales.”

Collins has reveled playing under Ospreys coach Scott Johnson, the Australian who once called New Zealand two poxy islands when he was assistant coach of the Wallabies.

They’re both maverick people who have battled to be against the norm, they look outside the square and aren’t afraid to do things their way regardless of the consequences.

“He’s the type of guy you end up wanting to play for,” Collins says of his boss. 

“He cares about the people who play for him and his attitude towards rugby is the same as mine. It’s a game and he tries to get the best out of us for it.

“He reminds us that it’s not the end of the world when we lose. It’s a fun club to be with when you’re working for an organisation that actually cares about your well-being, rather than going to a place where if you don’t win 

it’s the end of your life.”

Anyway, that’s enough of the nice stuff for a while. So, was going to Toulon a massive mistake?

“Yes,” he admits, “I went there a year early. It’s different with Phillipe Saint-Andre there now.

“I don’t regret going there. I suppose you learn from every experience. Some bloke came to watch me play in one game when it was pissing down with rain and he wrote that I’d got slow and had lost it.

“At least up here I’m not having weird shit happen to me,” he said, probably referring to the incident when police investigated a claim that he assaulted a woman. Apparently the woman in question had been stalking him and made the claims after having a fall when trying to sneak into his house.

“When I was at Toulon there was just a bad karma,” Collins adds. “As I said, I don’t regret it but with hindsight it would have been better to go down there this year, it’s a much more settled place now with Saint-Andre there.

“He runs a pretty good ship, whereas last year when they started losing games they started dumping players and they had got rid of 16 by the end of the season.

“That’s just because of the people they had in charge down there. Tana [Umaga] just wanted to concentrate on the coaching, but if you know anyone who works in France they’ll tell you that the French are very different.”

Collins is a cousin of Umaga and says it was a difficult time for his relative to handle the pressures at last year when the star studded team went close to being relegated from the Top 14.

“It didn’t help when there are a lot of outside factors,” Collins said. “Like we lost our forwards coach [Jean-Jacques Crenca] and the president [Mourad Boudjellal] cut a couple of other guys. It was hard for him when that was happening.

“We had the aura from the year before with George Gregan, Victor Matfield and all that being there, but when I arrived they’d all gone. So I got their baggage.

“But Tana handled it well. His aim was to keep them in the top league.

“In the end we played some really good rugby and there’s nothing much you can do when your front-row gets injured and the coach doesn’t know about people getting fired behind his back.

“It was a very testing time, but they are doing well this season and hopefully it keeps going because they’ve got some smart coaches and good players.”

Having decided he wanted out of Toulon, Collins’ reputation in Europe meant he could pretty much have the pick of any club he wanted to go to, so why the nearly men of Welsh rugby, the Ospreys?

“Having talked to other places, I liked the brand of rugby they were trying to play here,” he says. “On this side of the world it’s not always a winning style, but with Scott Johnson here it was attractive and Filo [Titatia], (Ospreys assistant coach and Collins’ former team-mate at the Hurricanes) said the other guys were pretty good.

“So that’s why I decided to come here and it’s probably better for me, in terms of playing wise to go somewhere where I don’t have to chase bombs all day.

“Playing off guys like Ryan Jones, James Hook and a few others it’s a similar fit for me.”

Those comments led the conversation to go towards the state of rugby these days, with Collins fearing that players like him are being forced out of the game because of the over emphasis teams are having on kicking due to the problems retaining possession at the breakdown.

Explosive and powerful ball-running loose forwards like Collins, Sione Lauaki and Liam Messam have all fallen out of favour with the All Blacks selectors to varying degrees “It’s happening to guys like Rodney [So’oialo] now too,” says Collins. 

“Coaches want loose forwards who are good in the lineout, can chase kick offs and grab high balls. Another good example of how it’s changing is Joe Rokocoko, who’s not an aerial specialist.

“When was the last time you saw him get the ball in space? Half the time he’s chasing 

a ball that’s been kicked by the second-five.“Nowadays players like me are getting filtered out of the game, because everyone’s going for aerial guys, because everyone’s going for midfield bombs.

“You see loose forwards now just chasing the ball and jumping up in the air. You don’t see many loose forwards come through like Liam Messam or Rocky Elsom who try to keep the ball in their hands and run with it.

“Now, even when you’re on the other side’s 10m line, the ball goes up in the air.

“Since the last World Cup there has been so much kicking come into the game.”

At the time Collins got an early release from his NZRU contract to move to France there was much disappointment from the New Zealand public that one of the country’s favourite players had gone overseas at the tender age of 27.

When Graham Henry was asked for his views on Collins’ departure, he said: “I think it’s the correct decision. He wouldn’t have got in the All Blacks in this first selection anyway. His form had wavered and he’d be the first to agree with that.

“I talked to him two weeks ago and said to him that it [blindside] was a very competitive position and that other guys were playing better than he was at the time.”

There are times when an All Blacks coach should give his frank opinion and times when he should keep his mouth shut if he can’t say anything nice and this was definitely a time for the latter.

Henry was widely criticised for speaking poorly of a player who had become a national treasure.

As send offs go, it couldn’t have been much worse than this, but Collins says there are no hard feelings between him and Henry.

“I’ve got no animosity towards Ted. When 

I left the coaches wished me the best of luck, it didn’t really bother me, but it did bother a lot of people though! “It’s all water under the bridge now. People just don’t understand. I don’t think people really got it that I just wanted to move on.

“I had a good time in New Zealand and I just wanted to do something different. But I don’t think people realise it’s a struggle over here. I didn’t like where I was [at Toulon] so I moved.

“When you leave you’re trying to find somewhere where you feel comfortable and can spend the next couple of years.

“Who knows, if this season goes well I might finish up here. Or I might move on to somewhere else.

“I suppose in the professional era you can do that, but a lot of people don’t understand that.

“You only have to look at professional sport in America. 

Guys can change between four or five clubs over the same amount of years.”

For all Collins has achieved in his career, the only thing he’s ever won is the NPC in 2000.

Silverware would be nice but for Collins it’s not everything. “The goal with the Ospreys is to win the Magners League and Heineken Cup. But just competing is more important to me, rather than trophies,” 

he says.

“If you win the Heineken Cup or Air New Zealand Cup it never sits in my house, it always sits in an office.”

Collins is still only 29. He’s non committal about coming back to New Zealand, but even if he had said he’d never play for Wellington, the Hurricanes or the 

All Blacks again, there’s every chance he’d have a change of heart and do just that.

“I don’t know,” he says when asked about his plans. “I hurt my knee pretty bad in France. Coming over here has been good, Scott Johnson got me working with the physios to get me almost running to how I was, because I was dragging one leg for the last seven weeks of the French season, but I had to because we were pulling out all of the stops to stay up in the top league.

“It’s almost back to normal, the other players here joke that I’ve regenerated myself to go back to New Zealand. But I’m just going to see how it goes, not look too far ahead and just enjoy what I’m doing.

“For me, it’s all about going somewhere I’ll enjoy playing. If I know I’ll enjoy playing in New Zealand, I might do that.

“When I first came here I did start doubting myself because people were saying I went to France and wasn’t so good. But then I played for the Barbarians against Australia and even though we lost I was pretty happy with how I played against an international side.

“Since that game in Sydney I found a spring in my step and I realised I’ve still got it.”

The move out of New Zealand, when he should have had his best years in an All Blacks jersey ahead of him, typified what Collins is all about.

If he’s not happy he’ll move on, as he’s done with the All Blacks and Toulon.

While he enjoys playing rugby and the team camaraderie, for him it’s a job. It’s what he’s good at and he can earn plenty of money from it.

His have-boots-will-travel approach may not be to the liking of some people, but it is how it is with Collins. He’s a team player yet he could be called a loner.

He’s a three dimensional person and it’s partly this mix of characteristics that made Collins such a popular figure in New Zealand.

The dry humour, no nonsense attitude, hard edge and warm smile make him the ultimate Kiwi bloke.

Who wouldn’t want to have Collins as a mate?

There is a softer side to Collins too, one that he usually covers, but one he can lift the lid off ever so slightly.

The majority of the New Zealand public adored Collins, but he admits he sometimes found it hard to give the love back and handle those who were against him.

“It’s a good thing and a bad thing [to be so popular],” he says. “To be honest, I found the last couple of years in New Zealand tough.

“People were picking on me just because I was an easy target.”

When asked who these people were, he says: “People in general, on things like Twitter. It’s always easy to blame the person who’s different.

“I’m the dude with the blonde hair and the scary face, so people decide they’ll blame me.

“It got a bit out of hand in the end. People were ringing up or emailing in, saying stuff.

“I suppose it’s a blessing if you can play for one of the best teams in the world and walk into one of the shittiest pubs in a city and have a beer and a laugh with the people drinking in there.

“The majority of time you get the good end of it, but now we’re in the age where people become famous for putting other people down, especially over here.

“People are less inclined to pump someone up when they’ve done something well nowadays. When you’ve done something well, there’s an emphasis on wanting you to mess 

up and bring you back down.

“I learned that the hard way in France. There were people jumping off the side of my house in France in the middle of the night and making up stuff.

“At the end of the day people are going to make up their own minds about me.

“I’d find it easier if a bloke told me after I’d spoken to him for half an hour that he didn’t think I was a nice guy, rather than if I was buying something in a shop and someone said hello to me, but I didn’t hear them, then they go and tell everyone Jerry Collins is an arsehole because he didn’t say hello to me,”

He pauses for a moment, takes a swig from a bottle of water and says: “The last two years have got to me.”