{"id":221153,"date":"2025-06-28T11:03:12","date_gmt":"2025-06-28T11:03:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/221153\/"},"modified":"2025-06-28T11:03:12","modified_gmt":"2025-06-28T11:03:12","slug":"jonathan-thomas-ex-wales-back-row-becomes-swansea-head-coach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/221153\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan Thomas: Ex-Wales back row becomes Swansea head coach"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Former Wales back row Jonathan Thomas has become the new head coach of Swansea RFC.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 42-year-old played 67 times for Wales and won Six Nations Grand Slams in 2005 and 2008, as well as playing in two World Cups.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas started his playing career at Swansea before joining Ospreys, playing 188 times and scoring 14 tries for the Welsh region. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He then joined Worcester in May 2013 but he retired from playing in 2015 on medical advice after being diagnosed with epilepsy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thomas began his coaching career with Bristol in charge of defence and the forwards, before becoming head coach of former English Premiership side Worcester.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He left the Warriors in January 2022 and joined Championship side Ealing Trailfinders as a forwards consultant in September that year, before joining the Wales set-up as contact area coach &#8211; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/rugby-union\/67711003\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">leaving that role<\/a> in December 2023.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Swansea begin their 2025-26 Super Rygbi Cymru campaign away to Pontypool on 13 September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Wales back row Jonathan Thomas has become the new head coach of Swansea RFC. The 42-year-old played&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5010],"tags":[748,4884,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-221153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wales","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}