Phil Bennett: The Autobiography

Then it struck me: this was the state Welsh rugby now found itself in. We had no world-famous players, so we had to make do with our administrators. This is what we now gave the world – law craft rather than rugby brains. Of course, it would have made far more sense to have had Gareth Edwards represent Wales and I’m sure Vernon would have much preferred it. He needn’t have looked so sheepish. But Welsh rugby had spent 20 years ignoring the seventies generation, so there was not much chance of their rediscovering it in time for the 1999 World Cup. To be fair, Edwards and a lot of other Welsh greats did indeed show their faces at the opening ceremony. But it perhaps sums up the past 25 years in Welsh rugby that a lawyer should have represented Wales that afternoon in South Africa. Legal wrangling and verbal dust-ups have certainly dominated over the rugby out on the pitch.

Vernon manfully did a difficult job heading up Welsh rugby in the 1990s. There often wasn’t much to be proud of, but he showed great negotiating skills and, unlike some of the men in suits in the game, I always felt he had a good understanding of the sport and the people who played and followed it. It was certainty a loss to Welsh rugby when he decided to step down as WRU chairman.

That left the way open for Glanmor Griffiths. Glanmor had been treasurer of the Union for a while and seemed to do the job just as you would expect any former bank manager. Nothing too flashy, nothing very imaginative, but he seemed to keep the small clubs happy and balance the books. Suddenly, though, this bloke was both chairman and treasurer of the WRU, and chairman of the Millennium Stadium pic. He clung on to all those areas of influence for a long time, which I always felt was wrong. Until he eventually decided to stand down from the WRU in 2003 he seemed unwilling to delegate, but you cannot give all that power to one person. It creates suspicion and grounds for resentment and mistrust. Glanmor had too many conflicts of interest for along time and I know of many other ex-internationals who felt the same way. Gerald Davies and Gwyn Jones were part of a Working Party that said as much in their report of 2001, but unfortunately not enough of the clubs in Wales backed that conclusion.

Had Pugh stayed on in Welsh rugby then I think he could have steadied the ship more successfully than has been the case in recent years. He was certainly far more of a forward-thinker than Glanmor. But I think he got fed up with the endless backbiting and low-level politics the game seems to attract in Wales. The committee men on the WRU have not changed. They are the same type of people who were running the game when I was playing 20 years ago. Wales were successful then and some have used that as a defence. If amateur committee men were in control in the 1970s, when Wales were successful, then their argument is that they can help Wales be successful again. But the sport has changed. Professionalism altered everything, and professionals now should run rugby as well as play it.

Glanmor likes to blow the trumpet for the Millennium Stadium and his own part in ensuring its construction. Hats off to him, for that one. It’s a great arena and the problems that have beset the Wembley project make the construction of such a landmark in the centre of Cardiff something all Welsh people should be proud of. Recently, however, the extent of the debts owed on the stadium and their impact on funding the rest of Welsh rugby have become apparent. I don’t profess to be a businessman, but there are deals tied up with the Millennium Stadium that worry me greatly. For instance, it’s great for Welsh prestige and self-esteem that the FA Cup Finals are being staged in Cardiff. The hotels, restaurants and shops in the city are also delighted, no doubt. But what is Welsh rugby making out of the deal? Not a lot, it seems. The FA was desperate for somewhere to go while Wembley was being rebuilt, but the stadium was handed over for virtually nothing. In fact, Welsh rugby had to offer up many of its existing deals to the FA! Advertising and sponsorship was handed over to the FA, along with the hospitality income and all the merchandising and other top-ups from normal match-day activity. It’s all very well having the richest customers come into your shop, but if they don’t spend anything and you end up paying them to come in off the street, then you’re soon going to go out of business.

The FA deal sums up a lot of what is wrong with the way the WRU has run its affairs. It was way behind the times when I finished playing and it has stayed there. Friends of mine who run successful businesses have given up trying to deal with the WRU. They are slow to react, complacent, and their marketing of the game is about 100 years out of date. There have been no sponsors for the domestic league for years, the Celtic League hasn’t had one either and companies are trying to disassociate themselves from the national team rather than be linked with it. When the RFU launch their competitions in England it’s done with some razzamatazz and a fanfare. In Wales there is hardly a whimper. Rather than turning people on to rugby, the WRU are constantly bickering with our top clubs and turning people off. They fail to applaud success stories at the top level – such as Newport’s wonderful reawakening of their community’s passion for rugby or Dunvant’s work with young kids – and arrogantly believe that they know best. The truth is that what general committee members know most about is ensuring their own survival. In short, the Union that Glanmor has presided over for the past few years has been a complete and utter shambles, a total disgrace.

In 2002 there was an opportunity for change within the WRU. A Working Party had been set up, chaired by Sir Tasker Watkins, the Union’s own president. Other respected figures were drafted on and they had spent two years considering the future of rugby in Wales, both on and off the field. Men like Gerald Davies, one of the greatest players the game has ever seen, worked hard at examining what had gone wrong and how they could fix it.

The report called loudly for root-and-branch reform, but after initially ignoring it Glanmor Griffiths and the rest of the WRU general committee then set about coming up with their own counter-proposals. Not only that, but they toured all the clubs in Wales in a peculiar sort of roadshow aimed at promoting their own plans and undermining Sir Tasker’s.

Just before all the clubs came to vote on both sets of proposals I flew to Scotland for the funeral of my great friend Gordon Brown and sat alongside Gerald on the flight. He was worried. He felt it was a last chance for Welsh rugby – that unless a small executive of professional people ran the game then top-level rugby in Wales would virtually die out. It was in the hands of every club in Wales to vote for radical reform and a fresh start. In fact, they voted against change and gave another chance to those who had failed them so often in the past. Glanmor’s blueprint, which called for cosmetic changes, was voted through and the Working Party was left to reflect on two years wasted.

The news of that vote came through to me on the day I was at Oxford watching Pontypridd lose to Sale in the final of the Parker Pen Shield. Ponty had defied the odds to make the final but they had enjoyed a magnificent run and proved that a modern approach, harnessed to young talent and expertise in the right areas, could bring rewards. Unfortunately, the rank-and-file clubs in Wales couldn’t see that the governing body was crying out for similar fresh thinking and new faces. They put their own self-interest first, which essentially boiled down to how much money they could guarantee themselves from the Union. In turn, that cash is put in the pockets of substandard players. The process is that which the Working Party was trying to get rid of. Instead of spending cash on players, most small clubs should be funding academies to bring through their youngsters. The Working Party debate was a massive opportunity for change, but it was scandalously rejected. The clubs should have seized it, but they dropped the pass.

On one level I can understand the clubs’ dilemma. They are ambitious and want to progress. That often means paying a guy a few quid more than they can really afford to stop him moving down the road. If a club tries to buck the trend then the consequences can be grim. Dunvant are a fantastic little club in the suburbs of Swansea. They reached the top division, built themselves a lovely little ground at Broadacre, and everything was going to plan. But instead of paying the top-level wages they chose to invest in their own youth and junior teams. Their mini-rugby sections are thriving and they are doing a fantastic job for the future of the game. But they recently lost a planeload of players to a rival team because they would not pay the going rate. As a result they are now dropping down the divisions like a skydiver in freefall.

It’s a terrible message that is being sent out; it encourages short-term thinking and reduces opportunities to develop the next generation of international players. Anyone who can’t see the destructive effect of all this obviously has no care for the future of our game. It saddens me, appals me and leaves me very pessimistic about what is in store for Welsh rugby.

At the other end of the scale are Newport, who have speculated to accumulate. Thanks to their financial backer, Tony Brown, the club were able to bring in big-money signings such as Gary Teichmann, the former Springboks captain and Shane Howarth who played for New Zealand and then Wales. It was a sound policy because it was backed up by a real drive for new young supporters throughout their area. They used their star names, like Teichmann, to sell the club to the kids and they wisely underpinned the strategy with clever marketing approaches to involve the whole family.

As a result, Newport have been the great success story of Welsh club rugby over recent seasons – certainly when it comes to attendances. They have tapped into something huge. The WRU could learn so much from Newport. If they had half the energy and enthusiasm of the staff at Rodney Parade then maybe Six Nations games would still be sell-outs and every kid in Wales on match day would be walking around in a replica jersey with a red dragon painted proudly on his face. But instead of encouraging Newport, the Union always appears eager to confront them. Instead of learning from their expertise they seem more keen to criticise guys like Brown and their chief executive Keith Grainger. Yet Newport were in exactly the same position as Wales find themselves in now – falling gates, falling interest, and a losing team. They responded in a dynamic way by getting youngsters hooked on Newport and hooked on rugby.

Without young kids coming through at every club in the country, there will be fewer and fewer players to choose our national team from. Without decent facilities for those youngsters to improve, the quality of our senior players will diminish. If the big clubs are also going broke because the marketing and administration of the game are so poor, then they will likewise go on a downward spiral – able to spend less on youth development, less on elite coaching and modern advances in sports science. English clubs are starting to move so far ahead of Welsh clubs in such areas that they are almost out of sight.

All these problems feed into a growing chasm between England and Wales on the international field – it being this widening gap that now concerns me most. England moved past Wales more than a decade ago and have been getting farther ahead of us ever since. In the last 13 matches between the sides, Wales have won just twice and on both occasions it was by a single point. More worrying still is that England’s winning margins have been getting bigger and bigger. The fixture is becoming seriously one-sided, a foregone conclusion. Perhaps it was a foregone conclusion in Wales’s favour in the seventies, but the implications for what was then the Five Nations were less serious. Back then, alternatives to the championship in terms of rival tournaments were simply not on offer. Now, big business, more air links and the growth in broadcasting and sponsorship mean things can no longer be taken for granted.

If England keep thrashing Wales, as they have thrashed us in recent seasons, then I worry seriously for the future of the Six Nations. Scotland’s decline has been as bad as Wales’s, and Italy continue to struggle. Ireland are just about holding on, but even they struggle away from home to either England or France. The tournament has not yet become a two-horse race, but it is going that way. The more predictable it becomes, the less it is going to appeal to sponsors and broadcasters. Who wants to watch mismatches and foregone conclusions? We have seen Lloyds TSB end their sponsorship of the Six Nations and when the TV contract was up for grabs in 2002 the BBC was the only bidder at the table.

The 2002 victory by England over Wales at Twickenham was one of the most depressing matches I have ever witnessed. It wasn’t just the defeat – I expected that – it was the complete lack of atmosphere either before the game, during, or afterwards. Everyone inside Twickenham knew what the result would be. The only question was the size of the winning margin. In the end it finished 50–10 but it could have been a whole lot more. I felt relieved it wasn’t 80 points, but the reaction of the English fans left me dumbstruck. There were no noisy celebrations, no goading or even much satisfaction. It was as if they had beaten Italy or Tonga – a job had been completed but that was about it.

I know England have failed to pick up the Grand Slam by losing to Wales, Scotland, Ireland and France in successive seasons, but the Celtic countries cannot sustain their challenge at present. They can rise to the occasion once every few years, but that’s not really good enough. My big worry is that England will soon get a better offer to go off and play the Tri-Nations countries. For TV companies an annual tournament featuring New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and England would be very appealing. The French might then have their loyalties tested and it would not surprise me if they went, too. That would leave Wales, Ireland and Scotland on their own and in a real mess. I can’t think of too many companies who would break the bank to sponsor a Celtic Tri-Nations featuring three also-rans. Income for Wales would plummet and it could be the end of any hopes of ever getting back among rugby’s world elite.

I had a frightening vision of that kind of future when Wales lost at home to Scotland in the final match of the 2002 Six Nations. It was an awful match between two poor sides. There were empty spaces in the Millennium Stadium at the start and thousands more were streaming out before the end. Steve Hansen, who took over from Graham Henry as coach midway through the season, looked a deeply troubled man and he had every reason to be.

Wales, and Hansen, finished the 2002 championship with just one victory, at home to Italy. We were dreadful at Twickenham, plucky in defeat against the French, but awful against Scotland and simply pathetic in losing heavily to Ireland in Dublin. I hesitate to say that record defeats to England and Ireland represented a new low, because there have been so many other low points to choose from, but it certainly felt as though we were bumping along the bottom.

It’s been a painful ride and I have more bruises than I care to count. But for those men in charge of the Welsh teams over 20 years of decline it’s been absolute agony.

CHAPTER 3 (#ulink_da2ea54e-8588-5249-aee7-8e7f692a7319)

The Impossible Job (#ulink_da2ea54e-8588-5249-aee7-8e7f692a7319)

Some time after Kevin Keegan had quit as England soccer manager in 2000, most of the London-based newspapers were having trouble speculating as to who his successor might be. No sooner were they building up the credentials of some particular candidate than the poor bloke would have a panic attack and declare he had no interest in the job. The popular opinion seemed to be that it just wasn’t worth the hassle, the aggravation, the heart failure and the inevitable damning criticism when things went wrong. It was, most of the papers decided, not something any sane person would accept and they dubbed it, ‘The Impossible Job’.

Then along came this very academic-looking Swedish man called Sven-Goran Eriksson who not only wanted the job but also seemed to thrive in it. Against the odds, he took England to the World Cup Finals and became a national hero. Not even defeat to Brazil in the quarter-finals appears to have dented his reputation.

No, for a real ‘mission impossible’ try coaching the Welsh rugby team. Graham Henry did it for a while and for a time he became a bigger national hero in Wales than even Sven was in England after England had beaten Germany 5–1. Like his footballing counterpart, Henry took his team to the quarterfinals of the World Cup; but that was when the rot set in. Results nose-dived and so did Henry’s reputation. In the end he quit, joining a long line of former Welsh coaches who shone brightly, but briefly, and then hit the ground with a bump.

The comparison with English football is a useful one. Both Welsh rugby and English soccer have a rich history always looming large and threateningly over whoever happens to be in charge. The sports are national obsessions – except when there is any planning for the future to be done – and the respective coaches are forever carrying around unrealistic public expectations, fuelled by an intense and demanding media. The spotlight is very bright and not everyone can cope with the glare. For a time, Henry seemed to revel in it. But in the end, even he was burnt.

Just like the job of England soccer manager, the profile of the Welsh rugby coach has mushroomed over the years. Walter Winterbottom could have gone into most pubs in England in the sixties and very few people would have recognised him. Even Sir Alf Ramsey managed to continue to live a very private and humble existence after England had won the World Cup in 1966.

It was the same in Welsh rugby. David Nash was the first Welsh rugby coach in 1967 and his profile was even more modest than his record of one victory in five matches. Wales then entered the golden years of Grand Slams and Triple Crowns but most fans would have been hard-pressed to name the coach, never mind recognise him in the street. Gareth Edwards, Barry John, JPR and Gerald Davies were the names on everybody’s lips but Clive Rowlands and John Dawes were very much men who stayed in the shadows even though they had both been very prominent players themselves. Part of the reason was the structure of what passed for management of the national team. In those days the coach did not pick the side. That was left to a gang of selectors, in Wales the so-called Big Five. These were the men with the power. The coach was there merely to train the players who were given to him and offer them tactical advice and a passionate pre-match speech.

I first got into the Welsh squad in 1968, as understudy to Barry, when David Nash was in charge. David was a decent chap, a quiet man, but a thinker. He deserved a longer crack at the job but no one even knew in those days whether or not coaching was going to be accepted. A school of thought still existed then that viewed coaches as rather eccentric meddlers who should really leave things to the captain and the committee.

Clive Rowlands changed all that. He did the job for six seasons and lost just seven matches. By the time he stepped down in 1974, Wales were leading the way on the field and the coaching revolution was attracting many admirers off it.

Clive was the complete opposite of David Nash. He was loud and ebullient, with a cocky self-confidence and a fiercely proud view of what Wales and Welsh rugby should be all about. I was fortunate in that I knew Clive because our playing careers had crossed during his final days. I knew what a magnificent motivator he was and what effect those powers might have on me. I’d been part of the squad for a West Wales side against the touring New Zealanders in 1967 when Clive was coach. He was presented with a mixed bunch of young kids and old-timers who were all considered not good enough for the Welsh squad. But he used that fact as his trump card when it came to motivation and a fired-up West Wales came very close to beating the mighty All Blacks.

A year later I toured Argentina under Clive with a squad that had been stripped of its Lions players. We were raw and inexperienced but we drew the Test series 1–1 and it was more valuable know-how stored away in the bank for Clive. He was young enough still to have a strong connection with the players, but he was also very ambitious in this new field of coaching and that gave him a little distance from those who were playing under him.

As a player Clive would spend entire matches talking to referees, winding up opponents, doing anything to gain the initiative. He carried that shrewdness into his coaching career, too. He was crafty. He knew how to get the best out of players. He didn’t have the analytical brain of Carwyn James but he recognised what made most players tick and usually found a way of winding them up. Sometimes it wasn’t subtle, but it was generally successful.

A typical Clive Rowlands team talk before a Wales international match would go like this. There were no team rooms provided in the hotels in those days, so the whole squad would have to pile into the captain’s own bedroom. There would be players sitting on the bed, on the dressing table, 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 head-butting the walls and others would be crying their eyes out. Then he would briefly mention one or two dangermen in the opposition before ending the whole performance by telling everyone that we were the best team in the world.

The players would then squeeze out of the room and head for the ground. Anyone caught chatting, or worse still smiling, would suffer Clive’s wrath. It was a very Welsh, very emotional build-up and it produced a very emotional display on the field. It flowed out of Clive. Then it flowed out of the players during the match.

The problem, of course, was that players could only work themselves into this kind of frenzy so many times. After a while the words become just that … words. Both Gareth and Barry became a little bored by all the nationalistic stuff and I’d notice they would be yawning or looking at their watch while other players, perhaps less secure of their places in the team, would be lapping it up.

But Top Cat, as Clive came to be known, was a remarkable coach with a fabulous record of success. He learned from his early experiences, especially the tour to New Zealand in 1969 where Wales travelled with confidence but came back on the wrong end of two heavy Test defeats. Clive noted what needed to be done and then put it into practice.

On an emotional level, Clive always made his players aware of the responsibilities they carried and nine times out of ten they responded. His training sessions could be great fun – full of banter and stirring up the friendly rivalries within the squad. Everything Clive did was on a grand scale and the fans who watched us train were encouraged to feel very much part of the group.

Clive had a good rapport with the players as individuals, too. He would take me aside for a chat, perhaps because he felt I was drifting too far across the field. But rather than criticise players, he would make subtle suggestions to make you feel that it was in your hands. When you made the changes he was seeking he would be delighted and offer plenty of praise.

It was a time of plenty on the field, too, and Clive will always deserve huge credit for his role in helping shape the early successes of the seventies. But after six years in charge, which included a couple of Triple Crowns and a Grand Slam, it was time for a change. Clive made way for John Dawes, but it was still the selectors who called the shots. John was a very different character to Clive, more sombre and measured. He was already a hero for captaining the 1971 Lions to a glorious triumph in New Zealand and his step up into coaching was a natural one. He slipped into the role quite effortlessly, but there was still no huge public interest in the coach. The attention was still very much on the players. That was probably a blessing, as John liked the quiet life.

The only other realistic choice to take over from Clive would have been Carwyn James, my coach at Llanelli, who had masterminded that 1971 Lions success. But Carwyn was too much of a maverick, too outspoken for the conservative tastes within the WRU. Any hopes Carwyn had of getting the job probably disappeared when he spoke before a large audience at Llanelli’s centenary dinner in 1972. A homage to his own club turned into a scathing attack on the Union and the men who ran it. The home truths hit home but rather than concede that Carwyn was right the Union closed ranks and put a black mark against his name. Carwyn could see that any Welsh coach should have the power and authority to do things his own way and pick who he wanted to pick. This was viewed as an all-out attack on the WRU and any possibility that the greatest coach of his generation might have had the top job probably went down the plughole that evening.

We will never know what Carwyn, possessor of the sharpest rugby brain I ever came across, might have done had he become national coach. He would have been hard pressed to have matched the record of Dawesy, who won 75 per cent of his matches in charge between 1974 and 1979, but I think Carwyn would have been there or thereabouts. One thing would have been certain, though. Carwyn would have demanded a role in shaping the next generation of Welsh rugby players, not merely the ones under his direct influence. He would have possessed the vision to see past the next game and to shape the future development of the sport in Wales. He would have seen the lean times coming long before anyone else and taken the decisive and necessary steps to put things right. Sadly, he was never given the opportunity. That Carwyn was denied any influence at that level is one of the great tragedies of Welsh rugby.

Having captained the Lions under James, at least John Dawes had learnt well from the master and he was able to put much of that sound knowledge into practice. Dawesy was quieter than Carwyn. There was no grand oratory, none of the lyrical coaxing that characterised Carwyn’s dressing-room patter. John was more into sound common sense, although he had a very secure grasp of tactics and he knew how to persuade players to mix their flair with pragmatism.

I had great respect for John from our own playing days together. My own career with Wales was just starting to get off the ground while John’s was finishing, and I benefited greatly from his experience. In 1970 I came into the side for a match against France in Cardiff after Barry John had dropped out through injury. It was a good French side, with a lot of pace behind, while our own back line had been badly hit by injuries and looked rather slow by comparison. John, as captain, turned to me in the dressing room just before we ran out and said, ‘Phil, I don’t want to see you pass the ball today. Just kick for position and let our forwards do the rest.’ I’d never been ordered to play like that before, but I did as I was told. It wasn’t much of a match but they were exactly the right tactics in the wet weather and we won 11–6.

That advice sticks in my mind because it went against John’s natural inclinations. He had been brought up on good football with London Welsh and he always wanted to put skill, flair and attacking intent at the top of his list of priorities. Luckily for him, and for the rest of the Welsh nation, he was to have a team well blessed to win games in that style for the five years he spent as Wales coach. But the Welsh team of that time never chucked the ball about for the sake of it. We got the basics right and did the groundwork before we constructed anything fancy.

John was fortunate in having his coaching underpinned by the influence of Ray Williams. Ray was responsible for the development of coaches as a coaching organiser and did the job superbly. He was ahead of his time, introducing the weekend sessions for the national squad and formulating drills and skills programmes which the rest of the world came to learn from. Though they seem long ago now, those were the days when the Aussies came over to Wales to learn the latest techniques and ideas on how to coach rugby. John took those training days at weekends, but it was Ray whose vision had brought about their introduction.

Looking back, those Sunday sessions seem so simple and straightforward compared to later years. We would try to run off the aches and pains of the previous day’s game and go through the rudiments of a couple of very uncomplicated moves. When JPR Williams caught the ball and counterattacked, the plan would always be for him to run towards the nearest touchline. Either Gerald Davies or JJ Williams would then offer themselves on the switch and either take the pass or act as a decoy. It wasn’t rocket science but it depended on good players making good decisions out on the field. John was our guide. He had a vision for the way he wanted us to play, but this was only a framework. It was up to the players to provide all the detail. We were constructing something and John was the one who surveyed the land, suggested the best materials and provided the boundaries. But the style, the shape, and especially the fine detail was left to the players. For me, that is what rugby is still all about. When I heard of Graham Henry’s infamous ‘pod system’ with the Lions in 2001, I could hardly believe it. Martin Johnson admitted after the tour he found it difficult to know whether or not he should be at a ruck or hanging back waiting for the next one. It wasn’t that he couldn’t decide; it was that he couldn’t remember. This was rugby by numbers, by rote instead of thought or expression. If it could really be played like Henry seemed to suggest then coaches and players could work it all out with the opposition beforehand and no one would need to set foot on the pitch.

On Sunday evening, we would break up and not reassemble until the Thursday for another hour-long training session. The players would be allowed to return home again that evening, following which we would meet up at The Angel Hotel in Cardiff on Friday afternoon and head for the cinema. We would get back at about 11pm, have a quick chat, and then go to bed. In the morning, there would be a team meeting after breakfast. John was fanatical about rugby, but he was wise enough not to let it show. Team meetings would normally begin with a chat about his beloved Manchester United before we talked rugby and if there were any small problems or grievances on the part of the players then John would act quickly to sort them out. He was always a players’ man.