‘A man who has given so much to Welsh rugby and Welsh life’
TOP Cat is 80. Welsh rugby’s indisputable leader of the gang, Clive Rowlands, hits the milestone on Monday. He can reflect on a life rich in achievement, contributing massively to Welsh rugby and the culture of the nation itself.
From the moment he was made captain on his debut for Wales in 1963 Clive has occupied every conceivable role in the game and made it his own. He coached Wales – guiding the superstars of the ’70s to Grand Slam glory; he managed the British & Irish Lions to success in Australia in 1989 – the same year he was made president of the Welsh Rugby Union. He’s even sung the anthem on the pitch with his beloved choir.
But perhaps as important as any of the highlights of that stellar rugby CV is the place Clive occupies in Welsh hearts. The charisma, humour and twinkle-eyed mischief that have lit up a thousand rugby dinners is underpinned by a strength of character formed in adversity – from the pain of childhood bereavement to the more recent trauma of battling through cancer.
Clive’s formative years in the Swansea Valley could not have been more challenging, as he recalls in his autobiography – describing the impact of tuberculosis on his family: “At the age of only eight, I faced the horrible reality of having to leave my mother and father. Thankfully, though, I didn’t have to travel far as I was to be treated at the former home of the world-famous singer Adelina Patti, in Craig-y-nos, near Abercraf.
“That winter in 1947 was the snowiest since 1814 and among the coldest on record, but our beds were wheeled out onto the balcony so that our lungs would benefit from the sharp, icy mountain air.
“Imagine my mother’s consternation and despair. Two of her children had died, her husband was ill and her remaining three children were located in separate hospitals. Somehow my parents dug sufficiently deep, physically and financially, with either or both visiting the separate hospitals on a weekly basis, with the arduous journey to north Wales endured every fortnight.
“Although I was one of five children, I don’t think I suffered as much as other youngsters because my sister, in her early twenties, was already in Craig-y-nos and I was allowed to see her every day. I also benefited from her weekly visitors because children’s visiting was normally only once a month. However, I wasn’t aware that my sister was terminally ill and she was later sent home to die.
“My most abiding memory, however, is of receiving a rugby ball...and being punished for kicking it through a glass door. I was put in a straitjacket for a week.”
By the age of 10 Clive had also lost his father, but against this backdrop of family tragedy rugby was to prove a valuable focus for the talented youngster. As a sixth-former in the summer of 1956 he was among 28 Welsh teenage boys who packed their boots and Brylcreem to set sail for the biggest adventure of their young lives.
The Welsh Secondary Schools Rugby Union sent the team that would become known as the Young Dragons on a historic eight-match tour of South Africa. Drawn from 17 schools, these 18- and 19-year-olds were not only the first Welsh side of any age group to tour the Southern Hemisphere, they were the first national team from the home countries to do so.
Clive may have been more Top Kitten than Top Cat in those days, but he still appreciates the lessons of 1956. Thanks to the generosity of Upper Cwmtwrch villagers, he arrived in some style: “I was the only boy who had a dressing-gown!” he recalls.
A broken collarbone against Orange Free State brought an end to his Young Dragons playing career. But a devastated Rowlands was drafted in by teaching staff as an assistant at training sessions – a first taste of coaching that would one day bear fabulous fruit as he led the golden generation of the 1970s.
By the time the scrum-half was on the fringes of the Welsh senior squad he had found a career in teaching and met his life partner, Margaret, a woman as steeped in rugby as himself. As Clive jokes: “There were only
My cap is the most treasured thing in the house. I pass it and I say ‘thank you’ CLIVE ROWLANDS
two books in the house when Margaret was growing up – the Bible... and the WRU Handbook!”
In 1963, as Clive staked his claim for a cap, the press pack were keen for Margaret’s perspective.
“I played in the final trial and they picked the team and announced it that evening, which was unusual. Obviously, they’d talked to Margaret. Everyone stayed behind in the clubhouse in Rodney Parade and all the press were after her, saying: ‘What do you think, Margaret?’ And she said: ‘I don’t think he has done quite enough’. She was being honest. But the headline on Monday was ‘Margaret says no, Big Five says yes!’ I was in the side.”
He was also captain on his debut, a remarkable feat. And although his first match for Wales ended in a 13-6 defeat to England the memories still bring him close to tears of joy.
“The telegrams were coming from all parts of the world. I could cry now, thinking about it. You travelled down on Saturday morning as you passed each village to get to Cardiff, everybody looked the same in their bobble hats and their scarves. And when you were arriving in Cardiff, coming past the castle towards the stadium, all you could see was red and white.
“When I saw the new caps – and there were five others with me – seeing their faces, my face must have been a picture as well. I’m sure it’s the same feeling that every player that gets that jersey for the first time has.
“It goes through here,” says Clive, tapping his heart, before touching his forehead: “And it registers very quickly up there what you have achieved in playing for Wales.”
Clive would go on to captain Wales in all his 14 appearances in the red jersey. His most infamous appearance came against Scotland in 1963, where his relentless touch-finding contributed to the much-maligned Match of 111 Lineouts.
“Imagine trying to make that interesting and riveting for the BBC television audience,” he once said. “I received a letter from a brigadier in the Scottish Highlands telling me that I was off my onions as there simply could not be 111 lineouts in a match. I had to write back, telling him that indeed there were 111.”
Reporting on the game, Clem Thomas took a more diplomatic view of Clive’s kick-fest, reckoning that his “chip-kicking into the right-hand corner first exhausted the Scottish pack, then totally shattered their morale”.
It certainly helped secure a solid 6-0 Welsh victory at Murrayfield – and it probably contributed to the 1968 rule-change which banned direct kicking to touch from outside the 25-yard line.
It has also expanded Clive’s considerable comic repertoire, as anyone asking for the salt at the dinner table with him will discover. “Sorry, Clive Rowlands never passes,” will be the deadpan response.
In 1965 Clive’s zenith as a player came as he led his side to Wales’ first Triple Crown since 1952. A delirious Arms Park crowd chaired him off the field after the trophy-clinching win against Ireland.
“I can see the crowd running on, I can see them holding me, feel them lifting me up and I’m crying,” he recalls. “But we Welsh are lucky, we show our feelings. And Welsh supporters without a shadow of a doubt are the best supporters in the world.”
He was to bring greater glories to his team as Welsh coach, taking the helm in 1968 as the youngest to occupy the post. His leadership skill was as much about the psychological dimension as the tactical.
Clive told me his motivational oratory – in which he invoked everyone from “Aunty Mabel to Owain Glyndwr” in willing his players to win – was influenced by the chapel minister of his childhood.
And he certainly imbued Welsh rugby with the fire-and-brimstone zeal of the pulpit.
His team talks in the Angel Hotel remain the stuff of folklore.
Gareth Edwards, who refers warmly to his former coach as his “big brother”, remembers the pre-match hwyl.
“To use one of Clive’s statements, it was all about The Ticker. If The Ticker didn’t want it nobody wanted it. He used to transform the captain’s room on the morning of a match from one of jokes and light-heartedness to one of complete focus, and within 20 minutes people left that room on a completely different plane.”
Phil Bennett also recalls the Rowlands Effect: “There would be players sitting on the bed, on the dressingtable, on the floor, even perched on the wardrobe – anywhere they could find a seat in a small hotel room. It would be stuffy and overwhelming. Wearing his Wales tie and pullover, Clive would pace the room, fag in hand, ranting and raving. He would demand you performed not just for yourself, but for your father, your mother, your long-lost aunt, the miners, the steelworkers, the teachers, the schoolchildren – in effect, the whole Welsh nation. You were their representatives and you owed it to them to deliver. By the end of this sermon, some boys would be headbutting the walls and others would be crying their eyes out.”
Another generation would experience the galvanising force of nature that is Clive. The Welsh team that finished third in the inaugural World Cup of 1987 cherish their former manager to this day, as do the victorious Lions of 1989 – captain Finlay Calder would still run through a brick wall for Top Cat.
And those of us in rugby’s wider circle love him too – for his generosity of spirit and wonderful sense of fun. (On the subject of the latter, if you haven’t heard his stand-up routine on the innuendo potential of the WRU handbook you haven’t lived.)
I’ll never forget the first time I went to interview Clive at his home in Upper Cwmtwrch. He had described the wondrous realms of UC to me many times. When 200 Welsh fans were once stranded on a plane on the tarmac of Rome airport for five hours, he entertained them in the aisles with his full repertoire of UC gags. The village had taken on an almost mythical status in my mind – thanks in part to a very long joke he tells involving UC and Princess Anne – but that didn’t stop me missing the turning when I went there to interview him.
Running very late and totally lost in the nether regions of Ystradgynlais, I called Margaret: “Don’t worry. He’s waiting for you down by the sign,” she laughed. And there was Clive, a one-man welcoming committee sitting patiently in his car on the border between Upper and Lower Cwmtwrch. If I’d been crossing the Bering Straits, the moment could not have had more geographical significance.
Ever since, he has humoured every request for quotes, broadcast interviews and dinner appearances. I particularly treasure the lovely phone calls Clive has made when he just wants to say well done. The same kindness has been expressed in the thousands of pounds he has raised for charity since getting the all-clear from cancer and recovering from major cardiac surgery.
In a BBC interview a few years ago Clive was shown gazing at that faded velvet keepsake that every player holds dear. “My cap is the most treasured thing that I’ve got in the house,” he smiled, “I pass it every morning and I say ‘thank you’.”
On the occasion of his special milestone Wales should also say thank you to the man who has given so much to Welsh rugby and Welsh life.
Penblwydd Hapus Top Cat.