Visionary Francis gets recognition at long last

OF all the players ostracised by the WRU for ‘going north,’ a powerful case can be made to show that nobody suffered more than Roy Francis. Born in Cardiff and brought up in Brynmawr, his long career in League began as a teenager with Wigan in 1937.

Like those who had turned professional before him and afterwards, Francis found the doors of Union clubhouses all over South Wales slammed shut in his face. That insult proved to be trivial compared to his scandalous omission from Great Britain’s first post-war tour, to Australia.

Francis fell foul of the country’s ‘Whites Only’ policy and with those running Rugby League in England anxious to avoid rocking the boat, they acquiesced and Francis was left at home, robbed of his place among the famous ‘Invincibles’ by the colour of his skin.

Undaunted, the black Welshman made such a name for himself as a coach that today he is acclaimed for having been as great a visionary in League as Carwyn James had been in Union. Francis introduced methods that had never been used before, like filming his players so he could show them their mistakes and understanding the importance of diet long before anyone else had thought of it.

The result gave his teams a winning edge. Under Francis’ tutelage, Hull won the Championship twice in three seasons as well as reaching two Challenge Cup finals, all between 1956 and 1960.

He won the Challenge Cup with Leeds in 1968 without ever getting anywhere near the credit he deserved back home in Wales. With the cold war between the codes at its coldest, Union scribes who dared give the oxygen of publicity to League professionals were frowned upon, to put it politely.

In her revealing television documentary, The Codebreakers, Carolyn Hitt highlighted the injustices and paved the way for Roy Francis’ posthumous induction to the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame at their annual awards dinner in Cardiff.

They went some way towards righting an old wrong by putting his name in gold lettering alongside a galaxy of Welsh superstars from League: Gus Risman, Jim Sullivan, Trevor Foster, Willie Davies, Lewis Jones, Jonathan Davies, David Watkins, Clive Sullivan and one of the original Hall of Famers, Billy Boston.