Obituary: Clive Rowlands - rugby captain, coach and administrator
- Published
Archive: Clive Rowlands - I pass my cap every morning and say 'thank you'
Clive Rowlands, one of the most influential figures in the history of Welsh rugby, has died aged 85.
He was the only man to have captained, coached and managed Wales.
Rowlands also held the post of president of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1989 and managed the 1989 British and Irish Lions in Australia.
He overcame cancer in the early 1990s and in later life raised money for cancer charities.
Gregarious, talkative and an enthusiast in everything he did, scrum-half Rowlands was captain of Wales in every one of his 14 international appearances.
He made his debut against England in 1963 in the time before international rugby teams had coaches and the captain dictated the tactics.
And Rowlands' kicking game proved controversial when Wales took on Scotland at Murrayfield in a match which saw 111 line-outs.
Wales won 6-0 - a vindication of the kicking strategy - but the match set in train a movement which culminated in the laws of the game being changed to stop players kicking direct to touch from outside their 22-metre zone.
Wales won the Triple Crown in 1965 with Rowlands at the helm, but missed out on a Grand Slam when they were beaten 22-13 by France in Stade Colombes - Rowlands' last international. In 1965 he also won BBC Wales Sports Personality of the year.
Following his retirement as a player, Rowlands took over as Wales coach in 1968, guiding them to the Five Nations title the following year thanks to a crushing 30-9 win over England in Cardiff.
Two years later Wales won a Grand Slam, with wing Gerald Davies scoring five tries in the championship.
In his autobiography "Top Cat" Rowlands recounts how Davies - then a centre - had to be persuaded to play on the wing to cover for the injured Stuart Watkins during Wales' tour of New Zealand in 1969.
Rowlands' persuasive powers prevailed - and Davies is still regarded as one of the great wings in the history of the game.
In all, Rowlands coached Wales in 29 matches between 1968 and 1974, winning 18 of them.
Clive Rowlands: ‘He was a one-off, something special’ – Sir Gareth Edwards
Later on he managed the Wales team that finished third in the inaugural Rugby World Cup in 1987. It was after defeat to New Zealand in the semi-final that Rowlands was reportedly asked "Where does Welsh rugby go from here?" His supposed answer? "Back to beating England every year."
Rowlands was manager of the British and Irish Lions touring party that beat Australia 2-1 in 1989 and was also president of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1989-90 in a period of turmoil in the game.
Away from sport, Rowlands was a passionate promoter of the Welsh language, and a regular and insightful commentator on rugby matters on BBC Radio Cymru.
He successfully overcame illness twice in his life.
He spent two years in a sanatorium as a child recovering from tuberculosis, a disease which claimed his sister Megan's life, and in the early 1990s he overcame bowel cancer.
Rowlands was a teacher by profession and owned a sports shop in Ystalyfera. He played club rugby at scrum-half for Abercraf, Pontypool, Llanelli and Swansea.
In spite of his success and fame in Wales, Rowlands' heart was in his tiny home village of Upper Cwmtwrch in the Swansea Valley, where he lived until his death.