Why a captain quit the Wales job - and the trouble with today’s game
FEW did controversy better than Paul Thorburn back in the day. Maybe he even gained a degree in the subject — first-class honours, of course.
He’s the man, after all, who resigned the Wales captaincy while accusing some Welsh players on the tour of hell to Australia in 1991 of lacking commitment.
He’s the man who two years earlier had directed a two-fingered salute in the direction of cameras after a win over England, emphasising his disgust with pundits.
And he’s the man who called a scribe “scrum of the earth” at the postmatch dinner.
It’s close on 30 years since those fun and games at the Wales v England game in Cardiff, but Thorburn will not be holding an anniversary bash. The episode at the after-game function is one he isn’t especially proud of. But more of that later. We meet for coffee in Llansamlet, Swansea, but the coffee bit doesn’t happen, with the former full-back asking if any pictures or videos can be shot outside, to avoid bothering the other people in the cafe.
There follows quarter of an hour in front of a photographer’s lens, along with a quickly cut video.
Thorburn is a one-take man, speaking for a good eight minutes and barely pausing as he does so. After he finishes, our photographer, Adrian, tells him he’s one of the best he’s seen at doing such stuff.
Before all this started, a customer emerges from the cafe to engage Thorburn in conversation, asking him whether he felt the Ospreys should hold all their games at The Gnoll and in the process aid Neath RFC and achieve a better atmosphere at games.
The ex-welsh All Blacks full-back is polite and respectful without giving a definitive view on the matter himself, but the grey-haired, bespectacled chap is completely happy with the response and tells me: “You ought to listen to this man. He’s world class.”
There’s a bit of a chill wind but both Thorburn and I are wearing coats, so it’s agreed to do the interview outside.
I bowl him a few half-volleys for questions which he sends crashing to the boundary fence barely without thought.
Then we get to the Wales stuff, and in particular his time as captain.
In his book, Kicked Into Touch, published in the aftermath of his decision to call time on his Test career, the chapter on Wales’s tour of Australia is harrowing, chronicling as it does how one man was driven to the edge in sporting terms by what unfolded all around him: the factions, in-fighting, the on-field humiliations and what was perceived by Thorburn as a lack of commitment from some and a lack of support for the coach Ron Waldron.
There were tears, 2am phone calls home, a sleepless night before the Test and finally, on his return home, a letter to the Welsh Rugby Union saying “the pressures have now become too great for me to handle”.
Does he have the same recollections all these years on?
THE TOUR OF HELL
“I made a diary of the tour as I went through it,” he says.
“I was losing heart in the game, anyway, because of the way things were and I couldn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel.
“So when you lose interest in something the best thing to do is stop, isn’t it?”
But I suggest there was surely a bit more to it that. I tell him that I’d reread his book this week, the one that tells all, about the bitterness and illfeeling. It’s enough to prompt a more expansive reply.
DISAPPOINTMENTS
“There was a big anti-neath thing on that trip, and that was disappointing, particularly from certain quarters and certain players who should have known better,” he says.
“Because, as a bloke, there’s nobody who would have given as much for Welsh rugby as Ron Waldron.
“He didn’t deserve what he got from some of the players and some of the media.
“With hindsight I wish I’d had the guts to say to him before he became coach: ‘Ron, don’t take the job.’
“Had I known what was coming I would have said as much.”
He continues: “I don’t need to say much about Neath’s success. It’s in the record books.
“And our success was built on fitness.
“Ron’s philosophy was that if you haven’t got the fitness to compete at international level, it doesn’t matter how skilful you are: it’s not going to work out.
“The one thing he wanted to do was to assemble a fit Wales team.
“Some of the players didn’t like it, because, perhaps, it wasn’t something they were used to at their own clubs.
“Anyway, I finished. Those closest to me were devastated.”
One player is said to have joked that had the brilliant Moroccan athlete of that time, Said Aouita, been Welsh he would have won 50 caps under Waldron, so extreme was the emphasis on fitness.
Thorburn doesn’t buy the joke for a single minute, instead blaming a lack of dedication among certain players.
In his book he states that of the 30 who toured, only 12 were involved in any kind of weight training, and six of those were backs.
EMOTIONS
The chap sitting opposite me has been known to occasionally become teary. During the photo session he jokes about it as he keeps wiping an eye with a handkerchief because of a tear duct problem.
To his credit, he has never made any secret of being emotional. How could he when he had been known to choke up during the singing of the national anthem before games? It showed he cared. And that much was evident again when he broke down during a pretest meeting with Clive Rowlands on the Australia trip, explaining that he “couldn’t understand the attitude of some players not wanting to try”.
It must have meant a lot at that time? “Of course it did,” he says. “You work hard to play for your country, and if things don’t go well...” he presses the fade button before resuming and saying: “You’d just like the circumstances to at least give you a fair crack.
“But I don’t think the circumstances allowed for that because of the attitude and the approach of some of the players and the general animosity towards Neath by some people, and I include some of the media in that.
“I couldn’t see any hope of progress because of the system, the structure and the general approach to the game in Wales compared with the southern hemisphere. We were poles apart.”
RESPECT FOR WALDRON
Thorburn met with Welsh Rugby Union chiefs on his return to Wales but there was no huge improvement in the Welsh game for years after.
“I went to the WRU after the tour and had a discussion with Vernon Pugh to say: ‘You’ve got major problems.’
“It probably fell on deaf ears to some extent.
“That summarises that the be-all and end-all isn’t the coach.
“If you don’t have the system and structure in place it’s not going to work.
“Let me put it another way: Ron Waldron would have been one of the best coaches New Zealand have ever had, because he’d have had the players who knew what was required.
“It wasn’t fair to blame him for what happened on that trip.
“It took an awful long time for Welsh rugby to get any success afterwards.”
PRESSING ISSUES
Time mellows. Thorburn can still be outspoken in his pronouncements — last year he suggested World Rugby had created a monster and youngsters would shun a ‘needlessly dangerous game’ — but he doesn’t seem to fall out with the media any more.
His 86-year-old mother had a bad fall recently and it’s a situation where time is scarce as the family try to nurse her back to good health, but he went the extra mile for this interview, offering two potential slots this week and coming up with a couple a fortnight ago.
Relations with certain scribes weren’t always so cordial.
Cut to the weeks leading up to Wales v England in 1989. Wales had an unbeaten run in the fixture in Cardiff stretching back 26 years but they hadn’t been playing well and there was speculation that their run could end.
In his book, Thorburn recalls how Stephen Jones of the Sunday Times had argued on the weekend before the game that it would do Welsh rugby a power of good if Wales lost to England: at least it would force the WRU into some kind of positive action. But they didn’t lose. Robert Jones had a marvellous match, tormenting the men in white with his box-kicking, and Wales repulsed the old enemy yet again.
Skipper Thorburn couldn’t contain himself, turning to the cameras and giving a two-fingered salute. “The relief was such that I acted in a foolish and impromptu manner,” he later said. “I was angry because I felt the team had been let down by those who should have known better.”
The salute was meant for all socalled pundits, he said.
There was more to follow.
At the post-match dinner Thorburn called Jones “scum of the earth”.
It wasn’t his finest hour by a long chalk and he subsequently phoned the writer to apologise.
“I had a bit of a parental telling off after that, which was fair enough,” he says.
“What had been said rankled, but how I acted was a reflection of the pressure you were under as a player and particularly as a captain going into that cauldron amid expectations you would lose and become the first Wales captain in more than a quarter of a century to come unstuck at home to England.”
He says he doesn’t know if the outburst cost him a place on that year’s Lions tour but has long ago come to terms with that situation: “I would love to have been a Lion, but, hey, there’s plenty of other people who would love to have made the Lions.”
LIFE AT NEATH
There’s not much time left to discuss how a privately educated son of an RAF group captain fitted in among the rough-and-ready crew Neath had as forwards in those days, but he stresses: “I fitted in because the boys were decent guys, basically.
“Neath was a mix. There were a few university-educated guys in there, to go with the West Wales farmers and the others.
“It was brilliant and hugely enjoyable. ““Everyone was in awe of Brian Williams.
“On the field, he was extraordinary, a flanker and a prop rolled into one, and a tough character.”
Neath’s current problems are not glossed over. “It all goes back to the way the structure is in Wales,” says Thorburn. “I don’t think it should be like that. “The Welsh Rugby Union need to step in and ensure that the game and its rockbed, and that includes the Premiership clubs, are controlled in a manner that ensures those clubs won’t ever go out of business. “They are a community asset. “It would be hugely disappointing if Neath were to go bust.
“Neath is a rugby town. The same applies to Pontypool. Clubs like that should never have been allowed to fall by the wayside.”
THE MODERN GAME
What of the professional game in Wales? “Things are not truly happening at regional level,” he says.
“There have been sprinklings of success, but it’s not working to the extent that it perhaps could do.
“We’ve tried it now with benefactors owning the regions, but really the game in Wales should be under the control of the WRU as guardians of it.
“Our regions have done nothing in Europe, nothing that can be compared to Ireland’s success.
“It’s Leinster who are strong now, but Munster and Ulster have had their time. “Ireland have a model that works.” There’s room for improvement at a lower level, too, he believes. “We’ve all heard stories about junior clubs handing out £150 to £200 a week for players to play. In some cases, some of those guys are very average. “That’s not good for the game. “There shouldn’t be money being paid out below regional rugby.
“If you want to be a professional and earn from the game, you should aspire to get to the top.
“Clubs can’t afford it and it undermines aspiration in many respect and it takes money out of the game.”
These days Thorburn runs his own consultancy, helping and advising businesses.
To close, I remind him of his reputation for being outspoken on rugby matters.
“I’m not outspoken,” he replies. “I say what I think, but I try to be balanced.”
The probability is the fire will never burn out in Paul Thorburn, and nor will the memories of 1991 and all that.
Maybe he was ahead of his time in some respects. Some will say he was wrong to quit. But he has always been his own man, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.