The thing I like about England rugby coach Brian Ashton is that, unlike his predecessors Clive Woodward and Andy Robinson, he has a sense of humour. How misery-guts Woodward in particular would have coped with an unexplicable defeat by Wales in the ...
Like any other self-respecting Welsh rugby fan, I wasn’t so much bothered about the quality of last Saturday’s performance at Twickenham as the result. But now that the euphoria of that shock 26-19 victory over England’s World Cup finalists has ...
It was more like a rugby match than a second-tier football game. No aggressive, foul-mouthed rowdies, no baiting of opposition fans – and large numbers of women and children sitting on the terraces in the fading sunshine. I was sampling Spanish League ...
FLEE OF A KIND: Japan’s top golfer Isao Aoki was much in demand at the Open Championship at Lytham St Annes following his World Matchplay victory the previous year. Unfortunately, his English was not quite as good as his golf, and an interpreter had ...
The credibility of the BBC Sports Personality of the Year award was finally restored last night - 36 years after I dismissed it as a joke. The comedy goes back to 1971, when Princess Anne was crowned queen of sport for being the best of a handful of ...
DON’T CALL US: During their 1978 tour of Australia, the great Welsh team of that era tried all sorts of devious methods to get freebie phone calls through to their wives and loved ones back home. The players resorted to tricks like asking restaurant ...
STICKY WAGER: It certainly wasn’t the weather that took York Rugby League coach Bill Reilly and Aussie scout Arthur Clues to Batley. The Mount Pleasant ground was anything but pleasant as the wind howled, the rain sheeted down - and the teams made a ...
RIPPING YARN: England full-back Kevin Beattie was so accident-prone that Ipswich manager Bobby Robson actually delegated a team-mate as his ‘minder’ when the Tractor Boys played overseas. Poor Beattie even managed to set fire to himself on one ...
DON'T CRY FOR LEE: Manager Gordon Lee wanted a word with his Newcastle chairman Stan Seymour. He marched into the club chief’s office, only to be told by a secretary: ‘’Mr Seymour is not available. He’s gone to see Evita.’’ Lee retorted: ‘’I don’t ...
GEORGIA AND THE DRAGON: Wales had just lost 3-0 to the USSR in a World Cup qualifier - but full-back Joey Jones was in irrepressible mood despite being given the runaround by supreme Soviet Oleg Blokhin in front of 80,000 fans in Tbilisi. The ...
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