On pitch or page, Clem packed a punch with brilliance and bounce
COLUMNIST
EUROPE’S rugby media gathered in London this week for the launch of the Six Nations and as captains and coaches were rotated around the print, radio, television and online press pack, stories, clips, quotes and images were transmitted on myriad platforms.
Egg-chasing journalism used to be a lot simpler before frazzled hacks were up against 24/7 deadlines and forced to get to grips with Snapchat, Twitter, Periscope, Facebook live blogging, podcasts et al.
Basically, it used to just be blokes with notebooks in search of phoneboxes to dial in their stories.
If you were JBG Thomas, who bestrode the Western Mail back pages like a copy-churning colossus for 36 years, you didn’t even have to find a story because you were the story.
Such was the legendary rugby writer’s influence it was rumoured he was the secret sixth member of The Big Five WRU selectors.
As Rob Cole pointed out in JBG’s obituary: “The effect his writing was able to generate is best illustrated by the fact that his editor once told him to ‘make a few mistakes’ when predicting the Welsh team so that the readers of the Western Mail would not think it was he who picked the national side.”
And although the recent Rugby Writers Union Club annual dinner in London was not without hedonism – and thankfully not of the Presidents’ Club kind – sports-desk tales of yore suggest previous generations enjoyed a rather more riotous time on the circuit.
Just how much fun they had is clear in a new book on Clem Thomas, written by his son, Chris. Chris gave me a copy when I bumped into him during the autumn internationals and it has proved a rollercoaster read.
Entitled simply “Clem”, it is a colourful and anecdote-crammed account of one of the most charismatic men in the history of the game.
Obviously, Chris has done justice to his father’s illustrious rugby career as well as his journalistic skills, describing in loving detail his exploits for Swansea, Wales and the Lions. Not forgetting, of course, Clem’s defining moment against the All Blacks in 1953 when the formidable wing-forward cross-kicked to Olympic sprinter Ken Jones to create the winning try in what remains Wales’ last victory over New Zealand.
As his Lions team-mate Tony O’Reilly famously quipped: “Clem was the only man I knew who took his profession onto the field of play. He was a butcher on and off the field.”
The book reflects how the Brynaman-born cattle dealer took every challenge thrown at him by the horns “with a rugged assurance and confidence that enabled him to live a rich and varied life”.
It was a life of 67 years that saw him go to Cambridge University, stand for Parliament, dine with Nelson Mandela, drive in the Monte Carlo rally, swim across the Seine at 4am and win a downhill ski race in St Moritz.
When Clem hung up his boots – after his 26th and final cap against France in 1959 – he picked up a pen, working as The Observer’s chief rugby writer for almost 35 years.
Two years before his sudden death in 1996 he had switched to the Independent on Sunday.
This is the Clem that I remember. Somewhat to the chagrin of our local newsagent, we were the only homedelivered Observer readers in our street so he had to make sure he ordered our copy in along with the stacks of News of the Worlds dispatched to the rest of Llwynypia.
As a youngster, once my father had finished with the Observer, Sunday for me meant reading Katherine Whitehorn in the front of the paper – the columnist I wanted to grow up to be – and scanning Clem’s rugby reports in the back.
So when Chris gave me Clem the book, the chapter I was immediately drawn to was the one entitled: “The Sports Reporters: A Carousing Bunch of Pub-loving, Laid Back Troubadours.”
It does what it says on the tin, describing, in Chris’ words, “the golden age of a long-vanished Fleet Street, before Pilates and San Pellegrino came in, when any semieducated reporter was capable of writing crisp and concise English; when Dickens, Shakespeare and Tolstoy could be discussed knowledgeably by typesetters; when everyone smoked and drank themselves comatose and a newspaper had brilliance and bounce.”
Contributing to that journalistic sparkle were Welshmen like my wonderful late friend and mentor Peter Corrigan and Geoff Nicholson, the erudite sporting scribe and husband of broadcaster Mavis.
Geoff Nicholson and Clem would pool their talents to produce the book Welsh Rugby: The Crowning Years 1968-80, but the latter’s initial transition from rugby to reportage was not entirely seamless.
He thrived, however, under the tutelage of sports editor Chris Brasher – the Olympic steeplechase gold medallist, pace-setter for Bannister’s sub-four-minute mile and creator of the London Marathon.
“Chris Brasher, a man not known for his patience with people, spent hours coaching and mentoring Clem on the fine art of crafting a match report that had structure and clarity,” Chris explains.
“Brasher delivered to his acolyte an educational crash course in sports journalism and Dad rated that equivalent or better than any degree course. I know that Dad was genuinely forever grateful for the help