Taylor-made... a full life in and out of rugby
THE past is a foreign country. They do things differently there. Oh, yes. The bloke who came up with that quote might have been talking about Welsh rugby in the second half of the 1990s, a strange old world where the game had just gone professional and most were trying to make sense of it all.
Cut to Gavin Henson’s book, My Grand Slam Year, where he offers a flavour of life at Swansea RFC at the time, with a young John Plumtree as head coach. “Some of Plum’s team talks before a game were legendary,” Henson recalls. “‘Right, guys, let’s give this lot a f ****** spanking and then we’re all out tonight to get smashed. Let’s go.’”
Yet Plumtree pushed the right buttons at St Helen’s, with players delivering for him on the pitch and most relishing life off it. The New Zealander was credited with professionalising attitudes and on his watch Swansea won two league titles and a Welsh Cup. When Lyn Jones watched TV highlights of the Whites running in 50-plus points in a cup game in 1998, he said afterwards: “It was like watching a Super Rugby team. They played with pace, skill and intensity. It’s the way forward.”
But further afield others were already light years ahead.
When Wales went to South Africa in 1998 they were crushed 96-13 by a Springbok side playing not so much at a higher level as playing a different game.
In the press box after the final whistle that day in Pretoria, a South African journalist came across to say to your correspondent: “You’ve got a s*** rugby team.”
With respect, I was only writing about them.
South Africa’s then coach Nick Mallett threw salt in by dubbing the tourists “probably the worst” international team he’d seen.
Imagine what it felt to be a player in that Wales side.
Step forward, Mark Taylor.
Then aged 25, he’d just been recalled to the Wales set-up after three years in the wilderness. He’d been a semi-professional, earning £7,000 a year with Swansea, and had just taken the decision to go full-time.
But the gulf seemed so wide between the Welsh and South African players.
The thought crossed Taylor’s mind he might have played his last international. After all, which Wales coach would want any of the players who’d faced the Springboks and were so obviously off the pace?
Whatever, Taylor remembers it as the day it all changed for him.
“I did think that was it for me in international rugby,” he says. “I hadn’t been selected during Kevin Bowring’s period as Wales head coach, between 1995 and 1998.
“Dennis John had taken the reins on a temporary basis.
“I was thinking realistically that was me gone as a Test player.
“But I took something out of the game. I learned how big a step it was to be properly professional.
“After it, I just knew I had to work hard on the physical side of the game, because I was so far off it.
“We’d been blown away across the park.
“Percy Montgomery was full-back for them – I don’t think I got within five yards of him all day.
“They had a centre, Andre Snyman: wow, what a player – ridiculous. It seemed he had the speed of Carl Lewis and the power of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Someone like him was so far ahead of me then.
“The game in Wales had only just embraced professionalism, but South Africa were miles ahead of us.
“I just made sure from that point I didn’t leave anything to chance physically. I tried to make myself as big, strong and fast as I possibly could.
“After every training session I’d do extras, spending time in the gym or on speed work. I’d just do everything I could to make myself as physically right as I could possibly be.”
A year later, Wales beat South Africa in Cardiff, with Taylor scoring the first try. He went on to skipper his country, complete 52 caps and feature in a Grand Slam team. Not bad for someone who thought his Test career was over before it had properly begun.
Today, he is an accountant working for HJ Phillips and Son, a car dealership in Llanelli.
This writer first dealt with him when he was contemplating a move from Pontypool to Swansea in the summer of 1995. Pooler had been relegated and Taylor had been told it wouldn’t be the worst idea to seek pastures new.
It says much about him that he thought long and hard before opting to leave his local team.
“They were the only club I knew growing up,” he says.
“My dad played for them after joining from Newport. I was born in 1973 and by the age of five I’d be down there as a ballboy, watching the games.
“I saw them during the 1980s when they were dominant. Pontypool were my team in every sense. The moment I was old enough I went straight to Pontypool Youth and came through the system, staying there for four seasons.
“We went down in the season I was capped at senior level.
“I was told if I wanted to stay in contention for Wales honours I needed to play in the top division.”
Golden memories from The Park still linger, though, for the Blaenavon boy who was lucky enough to follow Pooler during their all-conquering pomp, when David Bishop and Mark Ring were masters of all they surveyed.
“I can remember Bishop and Ring. They were another level as a halfback partnership,” says Taylor.
“Bish was fantastic, probably the best I’ve ever seen.
“He would dominate games on his own. He was a scrum-half but he looked more powerful than the forwards at times.
“Ringo was one of my favourite players growing up.
“I played in the same team as him after he came back for a second spell at the club. To me, that was amazing, to be playing alongside someone like him.
“He was a fantastic person to be alongside.
“He’d try to show me things, but I was quiet and I’d struggle to be able to communicate back to him what my difficulties with his ideas were. Things that were so easy to him were hugely challenging to pretty much everyone else. He had all the skill while I wasn’t really that kind of player.
“I was never the type of guy who could take the ball to the gain-line and spin out a 40-metre pass. I was busy around the field and could pop up in the right place at the right time sometimes because I had that sort of energy.
“Ringo was a differentlevel player who could perform his skills in the pressure zone. Sometimes, particularly at a younger age, I found it hard to grasp what he was saying. He’d sort of smile and go, ‘keep trying.’ He was brilliant to work with.”
Today Taylor has a back spasm, albeit he hopes it isn’t anything significant.
He doesn’t watch a lot of rugby these days, having packed in as Scarlets team manager in 2018. “I have never been a great rugby watcher, even when I was playing,” he says.
“When I wasn’t playing, I didn’t really want to watch other people.
“I’d do all the analysis, which you had to do, but I’d rather watch football.”
Maybe he has enough rugby memories.
That said, no-one can say he had it easy as a player.
When he played, Scott Gibbs and Allan Bateman were also in contention for the Wales centre spots. So was Leigh Davies, while Gareth Thomas and Dafydd James were coming through, with Neil Boobyer and Matthew Wintle also on the scene.
“Scott and Allan were world-class players,” says Taylor.
“It’s hard to say who was the better of the two, but I guess I played a lot more with Scott through our Swansea connection so was more familiar with his game.
“That said, I loved played alongside Allan because it was like having, I’ll say it, a better version of me at your side.
“He was silky in everything he did.”
Taylor has a nice line in self-deprecation, but he was Welsh player of the year in 2000 and someone who commanded much respect at his peak. In My Grand Slam Year, Henson calls him “a total professional” who “set high standards at Swansea”.
His midfield link with Gibbs remains one of the great club centre partnerships. What was it like to figure alongside an enigmatic figure about whom it was once said “you could know him all your life without knowing him”?
“I loved Gibbsy,” says Taylor.
“Off the field, he liked to keep his cards close to his