Reflecting on his comeback to international rugby. 7 June 2010

After my end of season comeback for Cardiff Blues, that culminated in our victory in the Amlin Challenge Cup final in Marseille, I was chuffed to get back in the Welsh squad. That was my aim after being out with injury until March, looking ahead to the Wales’ tour of New Zealand.

I was pleased to play my part in the Blues win over Toulon, we got the result we wanted and now hopefully we will build on the momentum created at the end of the season. The atmosphere in Marseille was one of the best I have ever seen as a player, there were probably only 900 Blues fans and over 49,000 Toulon supporters! On the night of the Cup final, we flew straight back home, but had a bit of a party back in Cardiff!

Two days later, after some rest I was back in training with the Wales squad and we had a really tough week of training. I think it’s great for Wales to have a summer test at home; playing one of the best teams in the World can only be good for everyone!

It is always great to be part of the Wales set up, I made my debut in 2005 and the preparation is so professional now, it has certainly moved up another level. The training is intense, with huge attention to detail in terms of our overall preparation and diet; the team management do a lot of research and analysis on and off the pitch.

For our home test against South Africa on Saturday, I was pleased to get on the pitch after half time, I was raring to go! I obviously would have liked to have played longer and it’s not easy to watch from the sideline. It was my 15th cap for Wales and the team really feel that it was the one that got away. The boys were really disappointed with the final result, especially after being 16-3 up in the first half. But there are some positives that we can take and now we need to start getting the results building towards the World Cup next year.

But now, we must look ahead to New Zealand, it will be my first tour to New Zealand, I’ve never been before, but it’s a shame it will be winter there! We fly out on Wednesday night after training together in the morning. When we arrive we will stay in Auckland for a few days. Then we head to Wellington, before travelling to Dunedin for the first test. I really enjoy being on tour, hope to get some good game time, as its always disappointing if you don’t make the team.

There are no warm up games, so we will be straight into the first test, against the All Blacks on 19 June!