Mark Ring: From mercurial 1988 Triple Crown star to 2020 care-worker
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Mark Ring and Greg Woods coached Cross Keys to victory in Welsh rugby's Swalec Cup final against Pontypridd 2012
In the latest Scrum V Classic, Wales' win against Scotland during their 1988 Triple Crown campaign will be shown on BBC One Wales on Saturday, 25 April from 13:15 BST. We caught up with one of Wales' shining lights that season, Mark Ring to talk about his new role in life
To hear former Wales centre and fly-half Mark Ring talk, you'd imagine he was pondering how to win a game or coach a new team to or rising talent to success.
"It's just getting my head around it, using my brain to see how things can come together naturally to strike the balance and get to know somebody new, which is something I've always enjoyed doing anyway," he tells BBC Sport Wales.
But this is not 32-time capped Ring talking about the mercurial manner in which he once wowed fans of Cardiff, Pontypool and Wales.
This is a different version of Wales 1988 Triple Crown star Ring - and one he admits being "strange" to have emerged at the age of 57.
He has turned to care work, though he is keen to emphasise personal care is not part of his remit.
"It's a strange one, but I absolutely love it," Ring tells BBC Sport Wales.
"A chap by the name of Chris James, who used to play in the back row for Swansea - he's a good friend of mine - we met when his lad and my lad came through the Cardiff schoolboys system together and they're both in the under-15 squad as we speak.
"He offered me an opportunity to get involved and I haven't looked back since.
"It's absolutely fantastic. I'm driving and meeting patients, if you like, with dementia or autism and providing companionship and giving respite to the wives for three or four hours at a time.
"[I'm] befriending them and trying to get to know them as best as possible and breed confidence into each individual and see what they're most comfortable doing really.
"If that means I've got to sit there watching rugby videos for three hours then I'll do it - that's the perfect scenario for me."
'It's a thoroughly enjoyable job'
Ring says that has happened in the short time he has been doing the work - he started in the role on 30 March - although the coronavirus pandemic has already disrupted his new role.
"One of the patients is a lovely lad - obviously I can't divulge too much about the individual - but he's got dementia and he's a former rugby referee and it allows his wife to get out and about and do shopping and bits and pieces around the house while I'm providing the companionship for him," says Ring.
"And the perfect scenario would be to take him down to Roath Park lake, give him a window seat and buy him a coffee to kill half an hour or so doing that.
"But with the Covid-19 at the moment, that's impossible to do so we just go for a drive and try and bring back some memories from his rugby days.
"We drop past a few rugby clubs and do a few drive-bys. That's just one case in particular.
"But there are others - it's a thoroughly enjoyable job."
Mark Ring was in the Cardiff team that lost the inaugural Heineken Cup final against Toulouse in the Welsh capital in 1996
He adds: "None of it is sort of hands-on. I see some of the guys coming in and showering and changing clothes and things like that - that's not exactly what I'm doing. I'm just providing the companionship.
"It's all about one-to-one confidence-building with the family and also with the individual, which can be difficult because it can take you a bit of time."
With much of life in limbo for many, Ring has seen first hand the difficulties an autistic client is facing.
"One lad who's autistic, his routine is precisely the same.
"He'll want to go into the town centre and want to play some crazy golf and go to Weatherspoons and have the same food and drinks every day.
"It's one step to another, to another and he can't do any of that now. So that's a difficult situation."
Mark Ring (right), then of Pontypool, tackles Cardiff RFC's Tim Crothers in 1988
Even in the short and disrupted time Ring has been involved in his new role, he has found himself in situations he could not have imagined - shopping for clients, and turning his hand to other kinds of help.
"Sometimes there are two people to look after one person and sometimes you are on your own," he said.
"I've done all kinds of things, shopping in Tesco doing the right protocols and keeping distance and things like that to get the shopping for one particular individual and yeah, it goes on and on, doing all kinds of different things.
"We were at one house and we'd doubled up so there was no pressure on me to be with the other patient all the time and I offered to wash the windows for his mum.
"I don't know what the Health and Safety Executive would have said about it, but I was up a ladder washing the windows for her.
"It's anywhere I can be of any assistance really.
"My missus thought [it was hysterically funny] because I'm doing half the things I've never done in this house.
"[But] because of Covid-19, my full book of patients, clients if you like, is not there."
That has led to Ring working as a labourer at a care-home building project in the south Wales valleys for his new employer.
"Chris has been so good to me, he's looking after me in terms of my hours etc so I offered my services in any other way, shape or form, so there's a big project going in the Rhondda at the moment where he's bought a run-down hospital that he's going to turn into a care home.
"It's going to take a long, long time and it needs gutting completely so I've been part of the development of that and I don't mind getting my hands dirty with a couple of days on the wheelbarrow; shovel, wheelbarrow - typical labouring."
It's all a far cry for how Ring's working life began while he played during the amateur era.
"I was a civil servant to begin with and was a roofing contractor and a sales rep in-between so you were always in and out of work.
"I played in the amateur days and wasn't shy of work. My brother's got a building company and whenever things have gone a little bit tight financially I've offered to work for him as well.
"I'm one of the slowest labourers in the world and I'm 57 years of age. It's not the perfect scenario, but I do what I can."