All over for Evans after 111 lineouts

THE Beatles’ first album and Ron Evans’ landing on the international stage happened as near simultaneously in 1963 as made no difference.

Please, Please Me arrived to a fanfare of trumpets on both sides of the Atlantic. Evans, through no fault of his own, retreated from a winning debut for Wales at Murrayfield to the sound of The Last Post.

It was his luck to win his cap on the day his captain, Clive Rowlands, helped create a Five Nations record which still stands today for the most linesout or lineouts in one international. There were 111 of them at Murrayfield and nobody suffered more than Evans.

How ironic that his death a few days ago at the age of 81 should evoke fond memories of a centre whose exquisite range of passing skills stemmed from possessing the fastest pair of hands in the game.

As a schoolboy in the early 60s, Lyndon Thomas watched Evans in his pomp for Bridgend as he fizzed around the Brewery Field with backs like Keith Bradshaw, Glen Landeg, Billy Griffiths and Alan Walters.

“Ron moved a little like Barry John except he did it before anyone had seen Barry,’’ says Thomas who succeeded Evans in the Bridgend midfield. “Ron didn’t run inside or outside opponents, he ghosted past them. It was a time when Bridgend started making a name for themselves by running the ball as often as possible and moving it wide as fast as possible. Ron was the magician who made that possible.’’

How strange that when Wales recognised the value of his passing game, that first match by-passed him so completely that there is no record of Ron ever having the ball put in his hands. Rowlands kicked it so often that David Watkins at stand-off claimed he only received two passes all match. Neither, it seemed, got as far as the next man along the line.

Evans played two more Tests before Wales left him to concentrate on running the show at Bridgend and a police career which took him all the way to the top.