HANGING TOUGH

Life has thrown a lot of curveballs at Corey Domachowski but the Wales prop keeps batting them away...

- ALAN PEAREY

CHARACTERS SELDOM come bigger than Corey Domachowski, the football-loving prop whose nicknames have included Dom the Bomb and Fat Ronaldo.

A year ago he was barely featuring for his club Cardiff and contemplated throwing in the towel. Now he’s a Wales international with a World Cup behind him, a new contract in his pocket and the excitement of his first Six Nations looming. “It’s mad how things can change so quick,” says the father-of-two, who is engaged to fiancée Grace.

He tells us about his ancestry, ambitions and the agonising challenges that he sometimes doubted he’d get through…

We were devastated to lose the World Cup quarter-final. The first 15 minutes we were on fire. But the ref going off was a turning point as Argentina had time to reflect. They became a different team.

The whole experience for me was surreal, and for my family as well, and it’s something we’ll speak about for the rest of our lives. To be part of a World Cup quarter-final was a massive achievement for me.

Warren Gatland is a legend. What he’s done for Wales is immense. In the World Cup we were a tight-knit group. A lot of us were enemies for our regions but when we got into camp there was no animosity. I made a lot of new mates.

That’s one of the biggest things in our sport: you smash each other for 80 minutes and then you have a beer and a laugh, and get to know people from different parts of the world.