Sam Warburton has spoken for the first time about the match he believes changed his career, saying a 2013 Six Nations game against Scotland became the point where he stopped fearing he was slipping away and started playing like himself again.

Warburton broke down in tears as he told the story on The Central Club podcast, describing how a halftime blast of Refuse To Be Denied by Anthrax helped him reset during a period when he was hurting badly and searching for belief.

At 24, he was dealing with serious nerve damage in his shoulder and neck, an injury so severe he said he could not drive for two months and eventually needed surgery. He said his physicality had been hit because he was coming back from injury, and that some supporters and pundits were already criticizing him in the early days of social media.

That was the pressure he carried into the Scotland match. Warburton said he was not playing his best rugby and went into the break doubting whether he was doing enough to earn a place on a Lions tour, after having committed himself to that goal since he was 14.

He said the music changed the moment. After hearing the track at halftime, he went back out ready to “cause hell,” and said he produced one of the best second halves of his career before being named man of the match. In his own view, it was the point where the choice was stark: either he would make it for the Lions or he would not.

What makes the story land now is how differently Warburton describes that night from the way many would have guessed his proudest memory. He has built a trophy-laden career and later captained the British and Irish Lions and led Wales through major Six Nations success, but he singled out this Scotland game instead, a match shaped as much by injury and self-doubt as by the turnaround that followed.

The sharpest unanswered question is not whether the performance was good — he has already answered that. It is how much that second-half surge altered the way coaches and selectors saw him at the time, because Warburton’s telling leaves the outcome of that Lions struggle hanging in the air even as it shows the moment he decided to fight through it.