WAY OUT WEST
IN WARTIME Swansea, while enemy planes were stalking the South Wales skies, a young Mel Nurse was developing his football skills using a tennis ball.
He grew up in Alice Street, Cwmdu, to the north of Swansea, a street where an incredible seven residents would go on to play for Wales, including near-neighbours John Charles (Leeds and Juventus) and John’s younger brother, Mel (Swansea, Arsenal).
Nurse was not well off, his father spending his £80 gratuity money on returning from the war “on the horses”.
He had overcoats for bedclothes and there was no electricity or heating – just a gas lamp.
But, just like his beloved Swansea City, Nurse would enjoy a rags-to-riches rise out of poverty, and luck had no part in it.
It was all down to skill, hard work, and intelligence.
After being taken on by the thenSwansea Town, the centre-half was transferred to Middlesbrough for £25,000 and was soon on £25 a week as captain at a time when a pint of beer cost around 8p.
He bought his first Jaguar in the early 1960s and was once even mistaken by police for on-the-run Great Train Robber Ronnie Biggs who, like him, had black wavy hair and a fondness for nice cars.
After picking up 12 Welsh caps, when his career came to an end he invested his money wisely.
While still a player he and his wife, Marian, had their first child, Nicola, in Swansea because they wanted her to be Welsh, but they’d forgotten to book a hotel when she was discharged from hospital so they had to stay with his mother – giving him the idea of buying hotels on Swansea’s seafront.
He would later own a string of B&Bs and hotels in Oystermouth Road, and drove a gold-coloured Rolls-Royce with the personalised number-plate NUR 5E.
And when the Swans hit rock bottom in 2002 he dipped deep into his own pocket to rescue his old club.
So when Mel Nurse was given the Freedom of Swansea in the city’s art-deco Guildhall (built three years before he was born) on Thursday there could hardly have been a more deserving recipient of the honour.
But the club is now about to enter a new phase of its astonishing story.
Known quite rightly as “Mr Swansea”, Nurse has received the award at a time when Swansea City are poised to do a deal with an American investment group prepared to take a controlling interest in the club.
There is, of course, anxiety at the prospect, and Nurse himself wants the Supporters’ Trust to continue to have a big say in the running of the club.
It could lift the Swans higher but there has to be caution in doing a deal – across Swansea Bay in Port Talbot those at the steelworks are learning what it feels like to be spat out by big business.