Mills finally honoured with his cap from Top Cat

THE Welsh Rugby Union have dragged the good name of the game through the mud of some shameful episodes, not least their toadying to South Africa during the anti-apartheid era and their cynical capping of New Zealanders which led to ‘Grannygate’.

Wales, of course, were not alone. That the rest of the Union Establishment joined them in giving succor to the racist Springboks made it all the more odious and yet that same Establishment treated some of their very own like third-class citizens.

Those who chose to cross the Rubicon from Union to League were treated like social lepers because they dared to play for money, an attitude made all the more preposterous considering the Lions are on a minimum £70,000-a-man for six weeks’ work.

Many of those who went north were ostracised within their own rugby communities, banned from clubhouses. Player welfare may not mean a great deal now but it meant so little then that a decent human rights lawyer would have had a field day.

Many had their caps confiscated by the Union, a meanness of spirit which existed in most Welsh cases until the WRU decided to grant an amnesty in 1980. The late George Parsons finally received the cap which had been his all along, 33 years after the WRU ordered the Pontypool lock off a train taking their team to France on suspicion of his having been approached by a League scout.

In their pettiness, Unions ignored the fact that many who headed for the north did so out of sheer economic necessity. It offered an escape from the coalmines and steelworks or, in Jim Mills’ case, the dole queue.

He lost his job as a consequence of breaking into the Cardiff pack in his early 20’s when away matches forced him to choose between rugby and work. Halifax saw their opportunity and gave him £6,000, enough to buy a few terraced houses.

Now, more than half a century later, Mills at 72 is no longer a prophet without honour in his own land. He returned as chief guest at a celebration dinner, as arranged not by the WRU but the Welsh Charitables RFC thanks to their secretary Dave ‘nothing-isimpossible’ Powell.

Old stagers from both codes mingled as one, among them Clive Rowlands. The Charitables arranged for ‘Top Cat’ to present Big Jim with a cap, not the real McCoy, the one that he’ll always regret missing, but a cap just the same. No wonder he describes it as ‘a night I will never forget’.