Phil Bennett: The Autobiography - Phil Bennett

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as a national humiliation of epic proportions and there were few dissenters when Ryan decided to stand down. I rarely get to attend post-match press conferences, as they normally take place when I am still on air for Radio Wales, but that day’s was late starting and I shuffled into the back of a crowded room. I’ll never forget John Ryan’s face that afternoon. He looked wretched – a broken man. The responsibility was obviously too much for him and when the hacks started their grilling he seemed to melt away in his own misery. At one point I felt he was on the verge of tears. Had his captain, Robert Jones, not done well in deflecting some of the blame away from the coach then John could have suffered even more torment. It was a sad, sad sight. The nature of the Welsh job was changing because the identity of the man in charge was so much stronger than it had been before. John’s misfortune was to walk into this brighter spotlight at a time when the players in Wales were simply not up to it, and so all that focus was thrust upon failings rather than success. John wasn’t cut out for such intense scrutiny and I was hardly surprised when he threw in the towel.

      The WRU needed a saviour, primarily to save their own disintegrating reputation, and they looked around for suitable candidates. The outstanding team in Wales at that time, and arguably in the whole of Britain, was Neath. So Ron Waldron, their respected coach, who had a slightly maverick reputation, was asked to step into the breach and he accepted. Ron did what anyone else in his position would have done; he relied on those he felt he could trust. In his case it was players he knew well at Neath. Suddenly, the team was half-full of Neath players, but still half-cocked when it came to shooting down anyone that mattered.

      Wales lost at home to Scotland and then away to Ireland. Following the defeats to France and England, which had triggered Ryan’s resignation, it meant Wales suffered their first ever championship whitewash. I can remember bumping into Ron that evening in Lansdowne Road. He was forlorn. ‘It will always stick with me,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘The man who led Wales to a whitewash.’ It was a harsh self-judgement, considering he had only been in charge for half the tournament, but things weren’t about to get much better. In fact, they simply got a whole lot worse.

      Wales lost three of their 1991 championship matches as well and drew the other, against Ireland. It meant that for the third season in a row we were left holding the wooden spoon – a staggering reversal of the fortunes of the past.

      Wales went on to tour Australia that summer and suffered record defeats, conceding 63 points in the Test and 71 points in a provincial match. The defeat to the Aussies was the cue for a fight to break out among the Welsh players attending the official post-match dinner.

      Wales left Australia with their reputation in tatters, their dignity stripped away and poor old Ron nursing a heart complaint that soon forced him to step down. Much of the personal bitterness that had been directed Ron’s way could hardly have improved his health. It’s true he gave away cheap caps to certain Neath players who were of dubious international quality, but that was not the real reason why Wales were declining. If Wales had been winning, no one would have noticed. Nobody complained that there were too many players from London Welsh during the 1970s. Ron was a good coach. He had proved that by shaping Neath into a very formidable team and bringing through players the rugby league clubs were eager to snap up. His emphasis on physical fitness may have been overdone but he was on the right lines, as other national coaches were to discover. It was the situation Ron found himself in that was all wrong. Chucked in at the deepest of ends it was little wonder that the waves engulfed him. The 1988 Triple Crown had been firm evidence of a revival in Welsh rugby, but the WRU pulled the rug away with their clumsy sackings, and confidence ebbed away from players, coaches and everyone else involved for the next three years.

      I have no doubts that Ron’s health problems were related to the stress of the job. It had become impossible to deliver success and impossible to live with the consequences of failure. By the end, I was glad to see Ron get out. Once your health and family life are put at risk then no job is worth it.

      With Ron gone, there was more panic among the general committee of the WRU. I can recall a lot of daft names were being muttered by people who should have known better, but someone with a bit of vision and common sense must have won the day because the Union wisely asked Alan Davies, the Welsh-born Nottingham coach, to take charge on a temporary basis for the 1991 World Cup. His temporary stint became permanent and he eventually coached Wales right through to 1995. You might have thought that would have included the World Cup of that year, but thanks to their own methods of madness the WRU sacked Alan just a few weeks before the tournament – creating exactly the same situation before that World Cup as when he had come in four years before. Most countries change their coach a month after a World Cup, but Wales like to be different.

      Alan was different. He was a bit eccentric although I have to say I didn’t really take to his bow ties and braces. Neither did most of Wales. He had a plummy English accent and the red bow ties just made him look even more of an outsider. But he was a very sound coach and he should always be acknowledged for applying a brake to halt the speed at which Wales were careering downhill.

      Alan took over at a terrible time following that shameful trip to Australia and although he brought some stability to the squad the 1991 World Cup was still a complete disaster. Wales lost to Western Samoa long before anyone took them seriously – the Samoans, of course, would later leave their mark on others – and although we scraped past Argentina we were thrashed by Australia, again, and found ourselves turfed out with the rest of the also-rans before the knockout stages. Once again, we were in desperate straits.

      The results gradually began to improve, though, and even if Wales were still losing too often for most people’s liking, Alan at least lifted the spirit and confidence within the squad. It wasn’t a time of great achievements, but throughout 1992 and 1993 the team began to regain a bit of self-respect. We were no longer quite the laughing stock we had been in the summer of 1991. One of Alan’s best decisions was to take on Gareth Jenkins of Llanelli as his assistant and I still firmly believe the time will come when Gareth will gain another crack at Test rugby. He and Mike Ruddock have clearly been the best Welsh coaches at club level over the past decade.

      Although Alan and Gareth stopped the rot, they found it hard to convince the public that they were entirely on the right lines. A blame game had set in, fostered by a sense of parochialism that had spun out of control. I was used to petty village jealousies, but even though the rest of the world had moved on Welsh supporters appeared trapped by their own narrow-mindedness. Just as Ron Waldron was continually castigated for picking too many Neath players, so Alan found himself sniped at by those who felt he was leaning too far towards Llanelli, Gareth’s club. When Wales played against France in Paris in 1993, there were eight Llanelli players in the side. The scoreline, 26–10, was certainly no disgrace but there was a lot of flak directed towards Alan by the anti-Llanelli brigade. It all became too personal and I found it ridiculous. Among the most unpleasant and unappealing attributes of some Welsh supporters is their willingness to heap blame on some small band of folk for the failings of a nation.

      The level of bitterness shocked me the night Wales lost at home to Canada in 1993 a few months after the French defeat. It was certainly a humiliating loss, our first ever against the Canadians, but there was a hostility towards Alan that was unjustified. Certain people in the game, including former Welsh internationals, questioned Alan’s credentials simply because he hadn’t played for Wales. I’d never felt that was a necessity for the job. After all, Carwyn James only played twice for Wales and yet he was the greatest coach I ever came across. In my mind it didn’t matter. It was never a factor for me when Graham Henry became Wales coach and it didn’t matter with regard to Alan.

      As it turned out, Alan had the best possible answer to his critics: Wales won the 1994 Five Nations championship, the last occasion Wales have won the tournament. They beat Scotland, Ireland and France and lost a respectable match to England at Twickenham when they were going for a Grand Slam and Triple Crown. The team was well organised, efficient, difficult to unsettle and occasionally unpredictable – much like the coach. But within a year Wales were whitewashed in the championship just a few weeks before the 1995 World Cup. Alan, Gareth and Bob Norster, the team manager, were all forced out and the Australian Alex Evans was asked to take Wales to the tournament with just a few weeks to prepare and pick a squad. Deep

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