Clive Rowlands, rugby union scrum

Fuelled by passionate national pride, he won Five Nations titles as player and coach

Clive Rowlands, who has died aged 85, captained the Wales rugby union team on his debut in 1963, after which he went on to lead the side as scrum-half in another 13 matches. During that period Wales shared the Five Nations championship with Scotland in 1964 and won the title outright in 1965.

Within a few years he was coaching Wales to further triumphs, taking them to a first Five Nations Grand Slam in 19 years in 1971 and laying the foundations for the great era of Welsh rugby in the 1970s. Later he went on to manage Wales in the 1987 World Cup and the British & Irish Lions in Australia in 1989.

One of the keys to Rowlands’s success was his passionate national pride. The fly-half Barry John, who played under him, recalled a pre-match talk against England at Twickenham in which Rowlands deliberately shoehorned the players into a tiny room to increase the drama of his message.

“Instead of the game, he just talked about Welshness – what it means, why beating England is so important to the people,” said John. “After having us spellbound for a few minutes, he wound up by emphasising just how much support we were receiving back home. ‘Even the dogs are barking in Welsh today,’ he said.”

Intense, excitable and good-humoured, Rowlands was a gregarious man, emotional, enthusiastic and a keen student of the psychological aspects of rugby. Although he was fortunate to be coaching at a time when the Welsh team was brim full of talent, his contribution to their free-flowing brilliance was never underestimated by anyone connected with the game.

Daniel Clive Thomas Rowlands was born on May 14 1938 in the Welsh-speaking village of Upper Cwmtwrch, on the south-western edge of the Brecon Beacons, to Tom, a coal miner, and his wife, Rachel, née Protheroe. It was a tough upbringing: two of his four siblings died young, from diphtheria and tuberculosis, and his father succumbed to the miners’ disease pneumoconiosis when Clive was 10, leaving his mother to bring up the three remaining children on her meagre earnings as a secretary at a clock factory.

Clive had also contracted TB aged eight, and was sent to the nearby Craig y Nos sanitorium, a bleak place where children were often submitted to traumatising medical procedures. On one occasion, after breaking a window at the hospital with a rugby ball, he was placed in a straitjacket for several days as punishment.

A transfer to Highland Moors hospital in Llandrindod Wells at least brought about a strong recovery, and at Maesydderwen Grammar School in Ystradgynlais he became robust enough to make a name for himself on the rugby field, representing the Welsh schools team in 1956 on a tour to South Africa, for which the residents of Upper Cwmtwrch had a whip-round to buy him a dressing gown.

Showing leadership skills from an early age, after National Service in the RAF he did teacher training at Cardiff Training College and became captain of the college rugby team, also appearing for Abercraf and Llanelli. Afterwards, while working as a PE teacher at Coed Eva school in Cwmbran, he joined the Pontypool club and was appointed their skipper in 1962, the same year he married his childhood sweetheart, Margaret Jeffreys, a nurse and knowledgeable rugby follower.

When Rowlands was selected as Wales captain the following year, Margaret, asked what she thought of her husband’s call-up, told the Western Mail newspaper: “I don’t think he’s done quite enough.”

Spousal scepticism notwithstanding, his debut – and first game in charge – came in the Five Nations Championship against England in January 1963 on an icy pitch at Cardiff Arms Park, ending in a 13-6 defeat. Rowlands did not like losing, especially to England, and soon showed that he was prepared to do whatever was necessary to engineer a win.

The following month, against Scotland in muddy conditions at Murrayfield, he decided to concentrate on gaining field position by chip-kicking to touch every time he got the ball, resulting in an incredible total of 111 line-outs in the match. It was dreary viewing for the spectators, but Rowlands declared himself happy with the tactics on the basis that they delivered a 6-0 away victory.

The win against Scotland was the only one in that Five Nations campaign for Wales. But in 1964 they fared much better under Rowlands’s leadership, going unbeaten to finish level with Scotland for a share of the title. The following year, despite losing to France, they beat England and Scotland before sealing the Championship and the Triple Crown with a 14-8 victory against Ireland in Cardiff. Rowlands was chaired off the field by an ecstatic crowd and later won the 1965 BBC Wales Sports Personality of the Year award.

On that high point, however, the Welsh selectors decided there were better scrum-halves available to them, and dropped him in favour of Allan Lewis. Rowlands never regained his place but continued to play club rugby for another two seasons, moving in 1966 from Pontypool to Swansea, where he was captain, before bowing out two years later with back problems.

Having been elected a member of the Welsh Rugby Union general committee shortly after stepping down from the Wales captaincy, he argued strongly for a more cohesive approach to coaching, and by 1968 had talked himself into becoming successor to David Nash as coach of the national side.

Steering Wales to the Five Nations title in 1969 and then to a share of the Championship with France in 1970, his greatest coaching achievement was securing the Grand Slam in 1971, when Wales swept all before them. By then the side included greats such as Gerald Davies, Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams, and with the addition of others, including Phil Bennett and JJ Williams, went on to become a dominant force in northern-hemisphere rugby across the decade.

Rowlands stepped down in favour of John Dawes after the 1974 Five Nations campaign, having won, or jointly won, four out of the five championships available to him, with 18 victories during his 29 games in charge.

He served as a Wales selector and on the WRU general committee for more than 20 years, and in 1987 was asked to be team manager of Wales at the first World Cup in New Zealand and Australia, proving to be an inspirational backroom figure as Wales progressed to the third-place play-off final, beating Australia 22-21.

Two years later he performed a similar function for the British & Irish Lions on their tour of Australia, which they won 2-1. He was the WRU’s president for a year from 1989-90 and, as a committed speaker of Welsh, later worked for BBC Radio Cymru as a rugby analyst.

Rowlands eventually gave up teaching to run sports shops in Morriston and Ystalyfera, while also working as a sales rep for companies in the oil, tobacco and pharmaceuticals industries. Appointed OBE in 1988, he was admitted to the Welsh Sports Hall of Fame roll of honour in 2013.

Clive Rowlands is survived by Margaret and their children, Megan and Dewi.

Clive Rowlands, born 14 May 1938, died 29 July 2023