Copyright

First published in Great Britain in 2003 by

CollinsWillow

an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

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www.harpercollins.co.uk

Copyright © Phil Bennett 2003, 2004

Phil Bennett asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Statistics by Stuart Farmer at Media Services

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Source ISBN 9780007162550

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780008161217

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Dedication

To my wife, Pat, and my sons, Steven and James.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Acknowledgements

1 A Grand Day Out

2 The Lost Years

3 The Impossible Job

4 Guided by the Great Redeemer

5 Brown Envelopes, Whites Lies

6 The World in Union

7 In to Africa

8 Leading the Lions

9 Australia Rules

10 Vive L’Europe!

11 Scarlet Fever

12 Scarlet Thread

13 The Top Ten

14 Legends

15 My Favourite Fifteen

16 Day Jobs and Night Terrors

17 Financial Stability

18 The Future of Welsh Rugby

Career Statistics

Picture Section

About the Publisher

Acknowledgements

Phil and Graham would like to thank the following people for their help, support and encouragement along the way:

John Williams and Felinfoel Primary School staff, Mervyn Bowen and Coleshill Secondary Modern School staff, Llanelli Schoolboys coaches and teachers, Felinfoel RFC, Felinfoel Cricket Club, Llanelli RFC players, coaches, committee members and supporters, and everyone else who helped me live the dream of beating the All Blacks: Bob and Mary Bennett, Les and Myrtle Jones, Pat, James and Steven, Terry and Mary Jones, Wendy and Keith John, Tracey and Leigh Francis, Oliver Bennett, Thomas John and Esther Guy, John, Carol and Dave Lloyd, Huw and Carol Owen, Wynford and Pat Thomas, Maldwyn Griffith, Malcolm Hamer, Ian Jones and staff at the recreation and sports department of Carmarthenshire County Council, Leon and Vanessa Lyons, Veris and Geoff ‘The Barber’ Sherlock, Nigel Walker and everyone at BBC Wales, the sports desk staff of The Sunday Mirror, David Evans and staff at the South Wales Evening Post, Tarda Davison-Aitkins and all at HarperCollins, Nick Fawcett, Stuart Farmer, Huw Evans, Margaret Haggerty, Catherine Thomas, Ted, Martha and Isabelle Thomas, Dewi and Shirley Thomas.

CHAPTER 1
A Grand Day Out

There were no tears, no long, lingering, last looks back down the tunnel. There were no laps of honour, not even a trophy. Neither were there any emotional farewell speeches in the dressing room. I paused for a moment as I walked towards the dressing-room door, but that was just to catch my breath. I was exhausted. But I was also the happiest and most relieved I had ever felt in a Welsh jersey. We had beaten France and I had led my country to a Grand Slam.

I’d run off the field. Not because it was my last game for Wales, but because I always ran off the field when I was captain to make sure I could shake hands with the opposition skipper. The noise was deafening. There were supporters running everywhere with wild faces, trying to grab players as they made their way to the dressing rooms. I found Jean-Pierre Bastiat, shook his hand, and he congratulated us before I rushed towards the tunnel. We had done it, I thought. I was tired, my body ached and my head was pounding. But I felt no real pain – just pleasure and huge, huge relief.

I walked into our dressing room and the players I had been alongside for the best part of a decade followed after me – JPR Williams, Gareth Edwards, JJ Williams, Ray Gravell, Bobby Windsor, Derek Quinnell and Terry Cobner. They all looked as I felt, utterly exhausted but content. I walked over to Gareth and told him quietly, ‘That’s it. That’s my last game. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure to play with you, Gar.’ He smiled. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘You’re getting out, too. That’s my lot as well.’ Typical Edwards, he always produced the unexpected whenever anyone else threatened to steal the headlines. Both of us had spent the week reaching the same conclusion. It was time to go. But we thought we were alone in those decisions; neither of us suspected the other had resolved to do the same.

I had come to my decision after our previous game, in Dublin where we had beaten Ireland at Lansdowne Road to win the Triple Crown. It was the triple Triple. Three times in a row we had claimed the Triple Crown, but this was by far the hardest, the most demanding.

I had started the 1977–78 season too soon, but that was all the fault of Prince Charles. In the summer of 1977 I had captained the Lions to New Zealand and returned home feeling physically and emotionally shattered. I needed a break and the tradition then was for Lions to sit out the first month of a season after a tour. But Prince Charles was coming to Llanelli for a commemorative match and I had been persuaded to play. It was a mistake as it meant I began the season without a real break and by the time of the 1978 Five Nations I was feeling the strain. We had beaten England and Scotland but deep in my heart I could hear a voice telling me it might be time to get out. The commitments of an international rugby player seemed to be increasing every year. But I was playing quite well, so I was still uncertain.

Ireland helped make up my mind. The build-up had been incredible. The triple Triple Crown had never been achieved before but to read the papers beforehand you would have thought the result was a foregone conclusion. This would be the crowning glory for the team of Gareth, Gerald and JPR, they said, without much thought given to Ireland. But I knew where Ireland would want to stick our triple Triple Crown, especially on their own patch.

My worries were not misplaced. Ireland thundered into us for the whole game. There was a lot of blood spilt and it was one of the dirtiest Five Nations matches I ever played in. JPR late-tackled Mike Gibson and maybe should have been sent off. Either way, the crowd went ballistic but we somehow managed to keep our heads and win, 20–16, after JJ scored a late try in the corner. But what struck me more deeply than anything was not our achievement but the way it was received by the men who had delivered it. There was no elation or hysteria in the dressing room; the players were almost out on their feet. I looked around the room at the faces. Gareth looked worn out, but Gerald was ashen. I think he had been stunned by the physical ferocity of the game, the number of boots going in on the ground, especially from fellow Lions. That was one of the unwritten laws in those days. You didn’t stamp on another Lion. But that afternoon Gerald had witnessed a nasty physical edge to the game which he wasn’t familiar with, and which he didn’t appreciate. As a grammar-school boy and Cambridge graduate, Gerald had firm ideas on how rugby should be played. After coming through this match he looked ruffled, bemused and very weary. It hadn’t been pretty and if it had not been for the strength of body and character of our forwards – especially Bobby Windsor and Terry Cobner – then we would not have withstood the Irish ferocity and would have lost. Gerald was one of a number of Lions who took a good booting on the floor.

Later, at the Shelbourne Hotel in the centre of Dublin, we were greeted by hundreds of Wales supporters as we got off our team bus. They were cheering and singing but amid all the noise and congratulations I was stopped by one fan who looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Great, Phil. Well done. But just you make sure you beat those French bastards in two weeks’ time.’ The prospect of another brutal battle after a long week of training seemed to wash over me in a wave of fatigue. I had just spent about half an hour enjoying winning the Triple Crown. Now I would spend two weeks worrying about France and the Grand Slam. That was the way of things as a Welsh international in those days. The success was intoxicating and made you feel during matches that some kind of force was sweeping you off your feet and allowing you to perform to the most incredible standards. But in between games the expectations of the whole country were sometimes hard to bear. They were there when you played or trained with your club, when you went shopping or down the pub. It felt like a heavy burden, sometimes too heavy. After each victory we would celebrate like any other rugby team, but as soon as some supporter mentioned the next match, and how important it was that we beat the English/French/Scots/Irish, I would feel a tightening in my stomach.

On the Sunday before the match against France we had our normal training session at Port Talbot. It meant another weekend away from my wife Pat and our two-year-old son Steven. For the first time since I got into the squad in 1969, I resented having to go and train with Wales. I hated every mile of that M4 journey between Llanelli and Port Talbot. To make matters worse, the training session was a disaster. We were awful, so bad that our coach, John Dawes, abandoned things and told us all to go home and have a rest.

The week dragged and I felt jaded. Whatever spark I had that kept me going felt as though it was starting to burn itself out. I told Pat I’d had enough and that the match against France would be my last international. I was 29 years old. As a keen boxing fan I’d seen enough fighters go on for one fight too many and I didn’t want to end up like that.

But this was a match for the Grand Slam. In the days before World Cups, the Slam was the ultimate and I didn’t want anything to distract us from our goal. So I told no one else apart from Pat about by retirement plans and I took my secret with me on to the field at the Arms Park. There was also one other feeling that kept nagging away. Maybe, just maybe, this team had reached its peak. We had gone through most of the seventies together and now a number of players were coming towards the tail end of their careers. If the team was going to be dismantled then I felt we, the players, should be the ones who removed the first bricks.

I was concerned that my own emotions in the build-up to the match might get in the way, but as it turned out I had more then enough to worry about. We lost Gerald Davies through injury and Gareth Evans of Newport came in to take his place. France were a very impressive side. They had Bastiat, Jean-Pierre Rives, Robert Paparemborde, Jean-Claude Skrela and a fine young scrum-half in his first season called Jerome Gallion. My own feelings and emotions got buried under tactical considerations and the sense of expectancy that surrounded our bid for another Grand Slam.

I always tried to pick out one flag during the anthems and I went through the same routine this time. I didn’t shed any tears, even though I knew this, my 29th appearance, was going to be my last match for Wales. Of course, there was an enormous amount of emotion. I felt it deeply. But I was so wrapped up in wanting to win the game that I kept all those emotions firmly in check. I wanted to savour my last match, but much more than anything I simply wanted to win. We had worked hard that season and 80 more minutes of effort seemed a small price to pay for the biggest prize on offer. If I needed reassurance then it was there in the shape of the players alongside me. I looked at Edwards, JPR, JJ and Fenwick. They were too good to lose this opportunity, I thought.

France scored first, though: a try for Jean-Claude Skrela. They looked good and Gallion was making breaks all over the place. But then Edwards took over and showed Gallion who was boss. It was Gareth’s experience versus Gallion’s youthful energy and the old master started to win the day. I scored our first try from a solid scrum. Quick heel, Allan Martin … pass, sidestep, easy. I’d scored near the corner, though, and as I lined up the conversion I knew I had to concentrate if I was going to level the scores. In those days, we didn’t practise our goal-kicking. Neil Jenkins would have been considered a bit odd for having more than a couple of shots at the end of a training session. It was all a bit hit-and-miss. Sometimes you were hot. Sometimes you weren’t. That one went over, though, and I felt elated.

Edwards dropped a goal and then JJ finished off a move by passing inside to me as he was forced out of play and I scored my second try. In the second half Steve Fenwick dropped a goal late on and that was it. Most of that second 40 minutes was just a case of hanging on. We weren’t playing well. We were clinging on, but we had the character to do it. We were staggering our way to the finish line and the crowd seemed to be aware we needed a gentle push to finally get there. Edwards, as always, kept urging the players on – ‘chopsing’, as we say in Wales. I was hoarse trying to do the same. The noise of the crowd’s singing seemed to intensify, and somehow we held on. I never normally noticed the crowd when I played for Wales. I blotted them out and kept my mind on the game. But that day, they refused to be blotted out. It was as if their noise, their desire, came on to the field as an extra force. They became part of our weaponry, part of us as a team. I’d never known anything like it.

We won, 16–7. It was a victory based on guts, spirit and a formidable support. Playing ability was way down the list that day, but it was enough to give Wales the Grand Slam – our third in eight seasons.

The night that followed wasn’t bad either. I’d taken a bit of good-natured abuse in the dressing room when my conversation with Gareth had been overheard by some other members of the team. Someone shouted, ‘Hey, those two bastards are getting out!’ Someone else chipped in that we should have to buy all the drinks that night, but even our celebrations could not have gone better. I was presented with a jeroboam of champagne to mark our achievement and we drank most of it even before they had finished the speeches. Then, Rives and Skrela brought more bottles of wine over from the French players’ table and joined the party. When those ran out I ordered more myself and told the waiters to put it on the bill of the Welsh Rugby Union. I knew it would mean an inquest on Monday to find the offender, but I didn’t care. By Monday I’d be a former international.

There was some talk of convincing me to stay on, but I knew it was the right time to go. Wales were off to tour Australia and the thought of another summer spent away from my family was not very enticing. But there was also that nagging feeling again. This was it. Our time was up. I had been in the squad since 1969, so had JPR, while some of the boys like Gareth and Gerald had been there since 1966–67. I realised that if we were a soccer side then any manager worth his salt would now start clearing a few of us out. It was best to leave through the front door, I thought, than be pushed through the back.

Besides, there was young talent coming through. Gareth Davies and Terry Holmes were the ready-made half-backs, and there were other good youngsters like David Richards pushing for a place. Other countries were learning from our success and I could see that Wales might not have it all their own way for a while until a new team was established. It might take a couple of years – in actual fact Wales won the Triple Crown again in 1979 – but the baton would be smoothly handed on. Now was the time to stand aside and let the youngsters take the reins. The talent was there. Wales was flooded with talent. Once a new posse had found their feet then I had no doubts whatsoever that the Triple Crowns and Grand Slams would continue to be the Welsh currency. The economy may have been heading into a deep recession, but rugby was our business and business was booming.

Fast forward 20 years. It’s 5 April 1998. Wales have just played France in another Grand-Slam decider. I am walking down Wembley Way on a Sunday afternoon and the weather is glorious. But all I notice is the litter and the debris on the ground – crushed paper cups and ripped flags. I also feel crushed because Wales, too, have just been ripped to pieces. France are champions and Grand-Slam winners, having beaten Wales 51–0 in what was supposedly a home game for Wales. And as the old gag goes, Wales were lucky to get nil.

That afternoon marked 20 years since Wales last won the Grand Slam. Five more years have passed since. If someone had said to me as I left the field in 1978 that Wales would spend the next quarter of a century looking for their next Grand Slam then I would have told them to lie down in a darkened room while I fetched the doctor.

I hated Wembley. I loved it as a football venue, as the home of the FA Cup Final and England’s internationals, but as a temporary home for Welsh rugby while they built the Millennium Stadium it was a pain in the arse. The first time I watched Wales play there it took me three hours in the car to crawl the final five miles and the same on the way back. By the time of the home match with France I had learnt my lesson. Pat and I drove up from Llanelli the night before, ready for my day’s work with BBC Wales and the Sunday Mirror. On the morning of the game we called in at a teashop in Gerrard’s Cross and then caught the train into Wembley. The sight of Welsh fans, who had come from all over Wales and England for the game, taking over the carriages with their colours and their singing, filled me with optimism. I spotted one young kid with a scarf and rosette who was almost climbing the walls with excitement as he sat next to his grandfather. Watching him made me feel good about Welsh rugby. It could still excite and inspire, convince a young boy and his grandfather it was worth getting up at the crack of dawn on a Sunday for an expensive 500-mile round trip to see what was meant to be a home game.

Then came the match itself. Wales 0, France 51. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing. France were so superior to Wales it was like watching a training exercise where one set of players practise their attacking and the others half-heartedly pretend to try and stop them. The only difference was that Wales were actually trying to stop them. They just couldn’t. The gulf in class was a chasm.

Thomas Castaignede was simply magical for France that day at outside-half. He gave poor Neil Jenkins the worst runaround of his life and ran the show from beginning to end. It was one of the best displays I had ever seen from a No. 10 in a championship match. But France weren’t just better in one position. They were streets ahead all over the field. The body language of some of the Welsh players summed it all up. They were dragging themselves around the field with their shoulders slumped and their heads bowed, especially Jenkins who looked as though he was living out a nightmare. The pain of their humiliation at being so outclassed was agony to watch. They looked totally devastated. So did the crowd. I know that’s how I felt. France scored seven tries and should have had ten. Jean-Luc Sadourny, their classy runner at full-back, scored two, so did Xavier Garbajosa, one of their new boys. Stephane Glas, Thomas Lievremont and Fabien Galthie were their other try-scorers and Christophe Lamaison kicked five conversions and two penalties. Wales looked as if they wouldn’t get near the try-line if they stayed at it until the following Sunday and the final insult was when the French put on all seven of their replacements to reinforce the feeling that they were in a training session. The final whistle went and all I wanted to do was get out of there, get away from the shame and indignity of it all.

We walked down Wembley Way among hundreds of Welsh supporters, but in complete silence. No complaints or excuses, no rancour or accusations – not even any of the dark humour that had often followed some of the worst Welsh defeats in the previous years. They were all stunned at the awful magnitude of the defeat. There were no saving graces – absolutely none.

We waited on the platform, among hundreds of Welsh fans and this deathly hush. Incredibly, I spotted the same young kid I had seen before the match with his grandfather. All the bounce and energy had left him long ago. It struck me then how this kid had gone to the game so expressive and come away looking numbed and bored. If he was going to be hooked by rugby then he needed heroes, but Wales had nothing to offer when it came to heroics that afternoon. It hadn’t been a surrender, but the resistance had been brushed aside.

Pat and I were meant to meet friends for dinner that evening, but I couldn’t face them. I couldn’t even face food. I just wanted to get home and forget all about it. It was one of the emptiest feelings I’ve ever felt after watching Wales and I couldn’t even be bothered to fill my empty stomach. If 1978 provided bread of heaven, this was starvation rations for every Welshman there.

Kevin Bowring quit as Wales coach within a few weeks and I thought, ‘This is it. Welsh rugby cannot go any lower.’ I was wrong. Two months later Wales went to South Africa and lost 96–13.

CHAPTER 2
The Lost Years

Rugby used to be the undisputed national sport within Wales. But in the 20 years between the Welsh Grand Slam of 1978 and that awful day at Wembley, a rival pastime has emerged – talking about what went wrong. The pub chat used to be arguments about rival players. Now the arguments are over rival arguments. Who has the best theory to explain our descent has replaced talk over who has the best players. It’s the question I am asked all over the world. What went wrong?

Go into any rugby club bar in Wales and you’ll hear all the various theories over what went wrong, usually discussed in the same evening. It was the decline of the grammar schools; it was the decline of the heavy industries such as coal and steel; it was the teachers’ strike; it was poor coaching, it was hard-up players unable to resist the tempting offers from rugby league; it’s the fault of amateur administrators, the fault of professional players, the fault of the English; it was Western Samoa – the whole of Samoa!

In reality, it was probably all those things and more, but I can only talk from the vantage point provided by my own experiences. When I left the field in 1978, I walked into a dressing room bursting to the seams with enormously talented rugby people. It was a deep reservoir of skills and experience. But the game in Wales, in all spheres, so rarely turned on the tap.

It’s often suggested by some that the players from the seventies, those who provided the so-called Golden Era, turned their back on the game and walked away. They didn’t have the inclination or the generosity of spirit to put something back. Believe me, it was never like that. Some of us who had written books or newspaper columns after our retirement were simply banned by the Welsh Rugby Union from having anything to do with the game. We had committed the crime of professionalism, even though we had been paid for our efforts off the field rather than on it. We were not allowed to play, to coach, to hold any positions whatsoever. We had never taken a penny for playing, but the moment we opted to give something back to our families for all the time we had been away, we were branded as unworthy of staying within rugby union. And even those who had not sold their souls to the devil of professionalism were never encouraged to take up prominent positions within the game, either in coaching or administration.

After I played my last match for Wales I spent three more years with Llanelli, during which time I came back from a serious knee injury to play one last full season. I trained with track and field athletes to get myself fully fit and discovered a level of fitness I had never known before. I was quicker, stronger, more flexible and had more stamina at the age of 31 than I’d ever had before. But once I had put pen to paper for payment in 1981, that was it. I had to retire. Not only that, I had to cut myself off from any sort of role at the club I had loved and served for 14 years.

Just after I had retired I was asked to play in a charity match for a young man who had been injured in a car accident. It was against an international XV and I was desperately keen to play, but I had to turn down the offer. Because of the regulations at that time, if I had played not only would I have broken the rules myself but I would also through sharing the same pitch have ‘professionalised’ every other player on the field. I felt like a leper.

The consequence of this rule was to cast adrift so much knowledge. The 1978 team was full of genuine world-class talent, but within two years it had almost all disappeared, not just from the team but from the game as a whole. Even those players who were not deemed professional were never encouraged to have a role. In the three years between 1978 and 1981, I was never contacted by anyone at the WRU, never invited to coach or advise, or even simply to show my face around younger players or kids just starting to make their way in the game. The same went for all the other players. Between 1978 and 1980 the Wales team had lost JPR Williams, JJ Williams, Gerald Davies, myself, Gareth Edwards, Charlie Faulkner, Bobby Windsor, Derek Quinnell and Terry Cobner. Steve Fenwick, Ray Gravell, Allan Martin and Geoff Wheel all followed within a year or so. Not only did the WRU fail to make use of that expertise once we had retired, but over the next few years it became painfully apparent that nothing had been done to make sure there was a regular flow of talent behind us. Apart from one or two whose talent had ripened, the cupboard was bare.

Well-managed soccer sides don’t get wiped out overnight. The clubs integrate new players with experienced ones and the next generation is developed until their time has arrived. But there was no planning in the seventies. Within the heart of the WRU – and it was they who ran the game with absolute authority – there was a shameful complacency.

In the eighties, players were thrust into the Wales team and expected to sink or swim. The trouble was, the tide had turned and the momentum was now flowing with other countries that had got their acts together. A lot of those players sank without trace. But these were players who had never been watched and monitored through their developing years, and never been brought along to Wales training sessions to get a feel for international rugby. They were just chucked in and then fished out. I can remember going to watch a Wales training session in 1982, conducted by the coach Terry Cobner, and not recognising half the squad. They were strangers; boys plucked from the obscurity of club rugby and expected to succeed. It was a shock to many when Wales began to lose matches, but it should really have surprised no one.

One or two high-quality players tried to hold things together – guys like Terry Holmes and Gareth Davies – but results started to slide. Scotland scored five tries and thrashed Wales 34–18 in Cardiff in 1982 and then won at the Arms Park again two years later when France also won. It was the first time for 21 years that Wales had lost both their championship games in Cardiff. But even then, I didn’t really see a continuous downward trend. The Wales team of 1988, captained by Bleddyn Bowen, won the Triple Crown. It was an excellent side, inspired by the genius of Jonathan Davies, with solid forwards like Bob Norster, Rowland Phillips and Paul Moriarty, and great finishers in Ieuan Evans and Adrian Hadley. I thought, ‘This is it. We’ve gone through our sticky patch, but these boys are class. We’re on our way back.’ It was ten years on from my last game for Wales and I thought the decade had been a journey down a wrong turning. Now we were back on the right road and normal service was going to be resumed.

Of course, it didn’t quite work out like that. Within a couple of years that side had been ripped apart by defections to rugby League. Jonathan went. So did Hadley, Phillips and Moriarty. Dai Young, Stuart Evans, John Devereux, Allan Bateman and Mark Jones went and others followed in later years like Scott Gibbs and Scott Quinnell. The game was changing, more demands were being made of players and those running the show in Wales should have responded. But the attitude at the end of the eighties was the same as it had been at the end of the seventies. They just believed that Wales had a God-given right to succeed and that if one bunch of players disappeared then another gang would simply carry on the success. At the end of the seventies a generation disappeared because they retired. At the end of the eighties it was even worse in many ways, because the players who went off to play rugby league had not even reached their peak. But the outcome was the same. Welsh rugby was exposed for not having the foresight to look farther ahead than the next payday from a full house. The WRU has often tried to fend off the blame and point the finger at the clubs in Wales. But from my experience, the club scene had not changed. Playing in Welsh club rugby in 1974 was no different to playing in 1981. It was still hard, physical, intensely tribal, but with skilful players who were committed to the game and to the success of their clubs. So the breeding ground was there. It was the development and organisation of that talent that went awry.

When Wales began losing, a kind of panic set in. In the years between 1974 and 1978 the team picked itself. The coaches only had to deal with minor adjustments because of form or injuries and the changes were minimal. But when Wales started to lose consistently a frantic search began for the new saviours. There would be six or seven changes after a defeat with a handful of new caps. It was as if the selectors thought that the winning team was there, it was just that they hadn’t stumbled across the right combinations of players yet. There was never any appreciation that the problems ran much deeper.

Instead of clutching at straws by picking ordinary club players and expecting miracles, Wales should have been looking at the fundamentals. Why were fewer kids playing the game at weekends? Why were teachers turning their backs on running sides? Why were some clubs no longer running youth teams? Such problems were never addressed. There was no one within the WRU with the vision of someone like Carwyn James. Carwyn had proved his greatness with Llanelli and with the Lions. Had he been given a role by the Union then he would have seen the bigger picture. He would have identified the problems that were being stored up – the fact that there was nothing to fall back on at the start of the eighties once the top layer had been removed. Ray Williams was doing sterling work in the seventies with players at the top level. But beneath that, nothing was being nurtured. There was no continuity, no process, just blind hope.

The 1988 Triple Crown, far from being the start of a new dawn, was just a temporary flash in a long winter of darkness. In 1999 Wales went on a ten-match winning run under the coaching of Graham Henry. Again, though, it was a blip, a temporary recovery that eventually faded out, to be followed by more grim results and a further decline in our status around the world. Everyone remembers the highs, but they have been fleeting moments over the past 20 years. Every Welshman remembers the horrific defeats, such as the 1998 thrashings by France, England and South Africa, the shameful tour of Australia in 1991 where Wales lost 63–6 and then brawled among themselves at the post-match dinner. But so many games between 1980 and 1987, and then between 1989 and 1998, have not lingered long in my memory. These were unremarkable years filled with unremarkable matches. They are the lost years in more ways than one.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen, here to represent Wales as we look forward to that country hosting the 1999 World Cup … Mr Vernon Pugh.’ I remember hearing those words over the tannoy at a Test match in South Africa in the build-up to the 1999 tournament. Looking a little embarrassed, Vernon Pugh, one-time chairman of the Welsh Rugby Union, then chairman of the International Rugby Board until his untimely death in 2003, crept on to the field for the presentation intended to launch the countdown to the finals. I always had a great deal of respect for Vernon. He was a very able administrator, a bright, intelligent and likeable man, and it reflected well on Wales that he had the top job in world rugby. He also played a key role in making Wales the primary host nation for the 1999 World Cup, and it was an enormous loss to the game in Wales, and worldwide, when Vernon died at the age of just 57 in April 2003. The sport lost a statesman and a pioneer and Wales lost its most influential voice. But as he made his way to the centre of the field, I could hear hundreds of South Africans around me asking, ‘Who’s he?’ It was a fair question.

Vernon was a leading QC who had made his name within Wales by writing a report on the Welsh involvement in an unofficial tour to South Africa in the 1980s. He had then gone on to become WRU chairman after the grass-roots ‘coup’ that had swept former secretary Denis Evans out of office. From that position, he had strode on to become chairman of the IRB, the world game’s governing body. It was Pugh who had declared the sport professional following the 1995 World Cup, bringing to an end the ‘shamateurism’ that had been the prevailing status of the game in so many countries.

So Vernon was a Bigwig with a capital B. But to the crowds of South Africans that day, for a presentation that was holding up a Test match, he was, understandably, Vernon ‘Who?’ rather than Vernon Pugh. They didn’t know him from Adam.

Then it struck me: this was the state Welsh rugby now found itself in. We had no world-famous players, so we had to make do with our administrators. This is what we now gave the world – law craft rather than rugby brains. Of course, it would have made far more sense to have had Gareth Edwards represent Wales and I’m sure Vernon would have much preferred it. He needn’t have looked so sheepish. But Welsh rugby had spent 20 years ignoring the seventies generation, so there was not much chance of their rediscovering it in time for the 1999 World Cup. To be fair, Edwards and a lot of other Welsh greats did indeed show their faces at the opening ceremony. But it perhaps sums up the past 25 years in Welsh rugby that a lawyer should have represented Wales that afternoon in South Africa. Legal wrangling and verbal dust-ups have certainly dominated over the rugby out on the pitch.

Vernon manfully did a difficult job heading up Welsh rugby in the 1990s. There often wasn’t much to be proud of, but he showed great negotiating skills and, unlike some of the men in suits in the game, I always felt he had a good understanding of the sport and the people who played and followed it. It was certainty a loss to Welsh rugby when he decided to step down as WRU chairman.

That left the way open for Glanmor Griffiths. Glanmor had been treasurer of the Union for a while and seemed to do the job just as you would expect any former bank manager. Nothing too flashy, nothing very imaginative, but he seemed to keep the small clubs happy and balance the books. Suddenly, though, this bloke was both chairman and treasurer of the WRU, and chairman of the Millennium Stadium pic. He clung on to all those areas of influence for a long time, which I always felt was wrong. Until he eventually decided to stand down from the WRU in 2003 he seemed unwilling to delegate, but you cannot give all that power to one person. It creates suspicion and grounds for resentment and mistrust. Glanmor had too many conflicts of interest for along time and I know of many other ex-internationals who felt the same way. Gerald Davies and Gwyn Jones were part of a Working Party that said as much in their report of 2001, but unfortunately not enough of the clubs in Wales backed that conclusion.

Had Pugh stayed on in Welsh rugby then I think he could have steadied the ship more successfully than has been the case in recent years. He was certainly far more of a forward-thinker than Glanmor. But I think he got fed up with the endless backbiting and low-level politics the game seems to attract in Wales. The committee men on the WRU have not changed. They are the same type of people who were running the game when I was playing 20 years ago. Wales were successful then and some have used that as a defence. If amateur committee men were in control in the 1970s, when Wales were successful, then their argument is that they can help Wales be successful again. But the sport has changed. Professionalism altered everything, and professionals now should run rugby as well as play it.

Glanmor likes to blow the trumpet for the Millennium Stadium and his own part in ensuring its construction. Hats off to him, for that one. It’s a great arena and the problems that have beset the Wembley project make the construction of such a landmark in the centre of Cardiff something all Welsh people should be proud of. Recently, however, the extent of the debts owed on the stadium and their impact on funding the rest of Welsh rugby have become apparent. I don’t profess to be a businessman, but there are deals tied up with the Millennium Stadium that worry me greatly. For instance, it’s great for Welsh prestige and self-esteem that the FA Cup Finals are being staged in Cardiff. The hotels, restaurants and shops in the city are also delighted, no doubt. But what is Welsh rugby making out of the deal? Not a lot, it seems. The FA was desperate for somewhere to go while Wembley was being rebuilt, but the stadium was handed over for virtually nothing. In fact, Welsh rugby had to offer up many of its existing deals to the FA! Advertising and sponsorship was handed over to the FA, along with the hospitality income and all the merchandising and other top-ups from normal match-day activity. It’s all very well having the richest customers come into your shop, but if they don’t spend anything and you end up paying them to come in off the street, then you’re soon going to go out of business.

The FA deal sums up a lot of what is wrong with the way the WRU has run its affairs. It was way behind the times when I finished playing and it has stayed there. Friends of mine who run successful businesses have given up trying to deal with the WRU. They are slow to react, complacent, and their marketing of the game is about 100 years out of date. There have been no sponsors for the domestic league for years, the Celtic League hasn’t had one either and companies are trying to disassociate themselves from the national team rather than be linked with it. When the RFU launch their competitions in England it’s done with some razzamatazz and a fanfare. In Wales there is hardly a whimper. Rather than turning people on to rugby, the WRU are constantly bickering with our top clubs and turning people off. They fail to applaud success stories at the top level – such as Newport’s wonderful reawakening of their community’s passion for rugby or Dunvant’s work with young kids – and arrogantly believe that they know best. The truth is that what general committee members know most about is ensuring their own survival. In short, the Union that Glanmor has presided over for the past few years has been a complete and utter shambles, a total disgrace.

In 2002 there was an opportunity for change within the WRU. A Working Party had been set up, chaired by Sir Tasker Watkins, the Union’s own president. Other respected figures were drafted on and they had spent two years considering the future of rugby in Wales, both on and off the field. Men like Gerald Davies, one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, worked hard at examining what had gone wrong and how they could fix it.

The report called loudly for root-and-branch reform, but after initially ignoring it Glanmor Griffiths and the rest of the WRU general committee then set about coming up with their own counter-proposals. Not only that, but they toured all the clubs in Wales in a peculiar sort of roadshow aimed at promoting their own plans and undermining Sir Tasker’s.

Just before all the clubs came to vote on both sets of proposals I flew to Scotland for the funeral of my great friend Gordon Brown and sat alongside Gerald on the flight. He was worried. He felt it was a last chance for Welsh rugby – that unless a small executive of professional people ran the game then top-level rugby in Wales would virtually die out. It was in the hands of every club in Wales to vote for radical reform and a fresh start. In fact, they voted against change and gave another chance to those who had failed them so often in the past. Glanmor’s blueprint, which called for cosmetic changes, was voted through and the Working Party was left to reflect on two years wasted.

The news of that vote came through to me on the day I was at Oxford watching Pontypridd lose to Sale in the final of the Parker Pen Shield. Ponty had defied the odds to make the final but they had enjoyed a magnificent run and proved that a modern approach, harnessed to young talent and expertise in the right areas, could bring rewards. Unfortunately, the rank-and-file clubs in Wales couldn’t see that the governing body was crying out for similar fresh thinking and new faces. They put their own self-interest first, which essentially boiled down to how much money they could guarantee themselves from the Union. In turn, that cash is put in the pockets of substandard players. The process is that which the Working Party was trying to get rid of. Instead of spending cash on players, most small clubs should be funding academies to bring through their youngsters. The Working Party debate was a massive opportunity for change, but it was scandalously rejected. The clubs should have seized it, but they dropped the pass.

On one level I can understand the clubs’ dilemma. They are ambitious and want to progress. That often means paying a guy a few quid more than they can really afford to stop him moving down the road. If a club tries to buck the trend then the consequences can be grim. Dunvant are a fantastic little club in the suburbs of Swansea. They reached the top division, built themselves a lovely little ground at Broadacre, and everything was going to plan. But instead of paying the top-level wages they chose to invest in their own youth and junior teams. Their mini-rugby sections are thriving and they are doing a fantastic job for the future of the game. But they recently lost a planeload of players to a rival team because they would not pay the going rate. As a result they are now dropping down the divisions like a skydiver in freefall.

It’s a terrible message that is being sent out; it encourages short-term thinking and reduces opportunities to develop the next generation of international players. Anyone who can’t see the destructive effect of all this obviously has no care for the future of our game. It saddens me, appals me and leaves me very pessimistic about what is in store for Welsh rugby.

At the other end of the scale are Newport, who have speculated to accumulate. Thanks to their financial backer, Tony Brown, the club were able to bring in big-money signings such as Gary Teichmann, the former Springboks captain and Shane Howarth who played for New Zealand and then Wales. It was a sound policy because it was backed up by a real drive for new young supporters throughout their area. They used their star names, like Teichmann, to sell the club to the kids and they wisely underpinned the strategy with clever marketing approaches to involve the whole family.

As a result, Newport have been the great success story of Welsh club rugby over recent seasons – certainly when it comes to attendances. They have tapped into something huge. The WRU could learn so much from Newport. If they had half the energy and enthusiasm of the staff at Rodney Parade then maybe Six Nations games would still be sell-outs and every kid in Wales on match day would be walking around in a replica jersey with a red dragon painted proudly on his face. But instead of encouraging Newport, the Union always appears eager to confront them. Instead of learning from their expertise they seem more keen to criticise guys like Brown and their chief executive Keith Grainger. Yet Newport were in exactly the same position as Wales find themselves in now – falling gates, falling interest, and a losing team. They responded in a dynamic way by getting youngsters hooked on Newport and hooked on rugby.

Without young kids coming through at every club in the country, there will be fewer and fewer players to choose our national team from. Without decent facilities for those youngsters to improve, the quality of our senior players will diminish. If the big clubs are also going broke because the marketing and administration of the game are so poor, then they will likewise go on a downward spiral – able to spend less on youth development, less on elite coaching and modern advances in sports science. English clubs are starting to move so far ahead of Welsh clubs in such areas that they are almost out of sight.

All these problems feed into a growing chasm between England and Wales on the international field – it being this widening gap that now concerns me most. England moved past Wales more than a decade ago and have been getting farther ahead of us ever since. In the last 13 matches between the sides, Wales have won just twice and on both occasions it was by a single point. More worrying still is that England’s winning margins have been getting bigger and bigger. The fixture is becoming seriously one-sided, a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion in Wales’s favour in the seventies, but the implications for what was then the Five Nations were less serious. Back then, alternatives to the championship in terms of rival tournaments were simply not on offer. Now, big business, more air links and the growth in broadcasting and sponsorship mean things can no longer be taken for granted.

If England keep thrashing Wales, as they have thrashed us in recent seasons, then I worry seriously for the future of the Six Nations. Scotland’s decline has been as bad as Wales’s, and Italy continue to struggle. Ireland are just about holding on, but even they struggle away from home to either England or France. The tournament has not yet become a two-horse race, but it is going that way. The more predictable it becomes, the less it is going to appeal to sponsors and broadcasters. Who wants to watch mismatches and foregone conclusions? We have seen Lloyds TSB end their sponsorship of the Six Nations and when the TV contract was up for grabs in 2002 the BBC was the only bidder at the table.

The 2002 victory by England over Wales at Twickenham was one of the most depressing matches I have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the defeat – I expected that – it was the complete lack of atmosphere either before the game, during, or afterwards. Everyone inside Twickenham knew what the result would be. The only question was the size of the winning margin. In the end it finished 50–10 but it could have been a whole lot more. I felt relieved it wasn’t 80 points, but the reaction of the English fans left me dumbstruck. There were no noisy celebrations, no goading or even much satisfaction. It was as if they had beaten Italy or Tonga – a job had been completed but that was about it.

I know England have failed to pick up the Grand Slam by losing to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France in successive seasons, but the Celtic countries cannot sustain their challenge at present. They can rise to the occasion once every few years, but that’s not really good enough. My big worry is that England will soon get a better offer to go off and play the Tri-Nations countries. For TV companies an annual tournament featuring New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England would be very appealing. The French might then have their loyalties tested and it would not surprise me if they went, too. That would leave Wales, Ireland and Scotland on their own and in a real mess. I can’t think of too many companies who would break the bank to sponsor a Celtic Tri-Nations featuring three also-rans. Income for Wales would plummet and it could be the end of any hopes of ever getting back among rugby’s world elite.

I had a frightening vision of that kind of future when Wales lost at home to Scotland in the final match of the 2002 Six Nations. It was an awful match between two poor sides. There were empty spaces in the Millennium Stadium at the start and thousands more were streaming out before the end. Steve Hansen, who took over from Graham Henry as coach midway through the season, looked a deeply troubled man and he had every reason to be.

Wales, and Hansen, finished the 2002 championship with just one victory, at home to Italy. We were dreadful at Twickenham, plucky in defeat against the French, but awful against Scotland and simply pathetic in losing heavily to Ireland in Dublin. I hesitate to say that record defeats to England and Ireland represented a new low, because there have been so many other low points to choose from, but it certainly felt as though we were bumping along the bottom.

It’s been a painful ride and I have more bruises than I care to count. But for those men in charge of the Welsh teams over 20 years of decline it’s been absolute agony.

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