Wales icon Gavin Henson has opened up on two past incidents when drinking got him into trouble, as the former back was sacked by his club before being knocked out by one of his new teammates in a pub. The golden boy of Welsh rugby during the mid-2000s, Henson was once dubbed 'the David Beckham' of his sport and regularly made headlines, not just for his heroics on the pitch but also for his high-profile relationship with singer Charlotte Church and, later, his stints on Strictly Come Dancing and other reality shows. However, on a few occasions, he was in the papers for all the wrong reasons, with the former Ospreys , Bath and Bristol star finding himself in trouble after some drinking sessions went too far. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack to get exclusive news stories and insight from behind the scenes in Welsh rugby. One of those sessions occurred on a flight back from Glasgow the morning after Cardiff had been thumped by the Warriors in March 2012. Henson, who had been a wing replacement for the Welsh region the night before, had drunk alcohol following the match and continued to do so on the flight back home. While he apologised for his "inexcusable" and "inappropriate" behaviour, the two-time Grand Slam winner was sacked by Cardiff having just played eight games for them. A year later, a drunken comment he made to new Bath teammate Carl Fearns led to him being knocked out by the flanker during a team bonding night, with the incident caught on CCTV. In a new interview with MailOnline , Henson - who in 2019 became the landlord of The Fox pub in St Brides Major, Vale of Glamorgan - discussed his relationship with alcohol today and opened up on the handful of occasions where his drinking "didn't turn out well". It comes after the now-43-year-old revealed that he had been able to understand himself better after discovering the 'chimp' that had been running his mind.. Having "battled for a long time" with his own mind, Henson was captivated by Professor Steve Peters' mind-management book The Chimp Paradox, which outlined how to control the 'chimp', or "the voice which tells you to do things you maybe shouldn't." "I didn’t understand the thoughts I was having after games where I wanted to go out and drink," he explained. "They were a million miles away from my core values and goals in rugby. ‘Now, having read the book, I understand that for most of my rugby career, the chimp was controlling me and running my life more than I was. If I’d found the book while I was still playing rugby, I’d 100 per cent have been a better player and maybe I wouldn’t have made the mistakes I did." Admitting that he didn't know how to "put the chimp back in the box" away from the pitch, Henson added: "After a game, when you’re on a high, the first thing you do is go and have a drink. Drinking is hard to avoid in a rugby environment. Once I had a drink, it had quite an effect on me. "I wouldn’t sleep and could carry on drinking. I can handle quite a lot somehow. I could end up drinking a crazy amount and then silly things happened." "There’s probably three or four drinking stories from my career that didn’t turn out well," he added. "But over nearly 20 years, that’s not that many nights. The initiations were the problem. I had quite a few new clubs and at those, you’re forced to drink quite a bit." Detailing the "terrible" decision he made to keep drinking on the flight back from Glasgow with Cardiff, Henson said: "we played a game and then went out and came in very late. We were on the bus at half four in the morning to come home. "Some of us went straight on to the bus, obviously still drunk, and I made a terrible decision to carry on drinking. It wasn’t great and they sacked me. It was tough, but more so for my family and friends." As for the clash with Fearns, the Welshman added: "I didn’t really know Carl. He’d missed out on the full day of drinking and I said a comment to him about that. He was like 'Who the hell are you?'. And that was that. Good night." Today, however, Henson - who married his long-term partner Katie in 2019 - has distanced himself from such environments, admitting he has had "one good drink" in the last 12 months. "In social interactions, I probably need a drink because I'm an introvert," he explained. "If I have a drink, I become more of an extrovert and the chimp has more confidence! I can be good fun on a night out! "But now I choose not to go into those environments. I'm not tee-total. In the last year, I’ve probably had one good drink. There’s a place in rugby for sharing a drink with your team-mates".