APRIL DATE FOR THE SIX NATIONS?
Not enough use being made of former players, says Llewellyn
WORLD Rugby chiefs are proposing to move the Six Nations as part of radical plans to shake up the game’s sporting calendar.
The Rugby Paper reports that plans to push the competition from its usual starting date of early February to later in the year – in April – in order to ease the conflict between the club and international game are on the table.
The bold proposals would also see the European club season start in December, with a source saying the proposed schedule is getting “a lot of traction with clubs in the Gallagher Premiership, the PRO14 and the Top 14”.
The same publication states that the move revolves around the Rugby Championship, involving South Africa, New Zealand, Australia and Argentina, due to kick off in August, being moved to start at the same time as the Six Nations.
That would then free up space for Tests involving northern and southern hemisphere sides to take place in October and November.
At present the Six Nations starts in early February and reaches its climax around the end of March.
“We are working on a model for the club game starting some time in December,” a club executive told the Rugby Paper.
“The proposal is for a 29-30week season which would take us through to July with a break for the Six Nations to be played in April and finished in midMay.
“That schedule is gaining a lot of traction with clubs in the Gallagher Premiership, the PRO14 and the Top 14.
“It’s the one aspect of the global season which most people agree on. We know we have a big opportunity to build a better future. There are so many moving parts to be fitted in but there’s a growing determination that we really do have to get it right this time.
“The clubs must be given every chance to thrive, otherwise the international game will wither on the vine.”
IT seems a bit like a classicallytrained musician ending up not having very much to do with music at all. Not that Gareth Llewellyn buys such a take on things.
But, from here, it seems a fair one. He still follows the rugby fortunes of sons Max, with Cardiff Blues, and Alfie, with Cardiff Harlequins Youth, and occasionally dabbles in the punditry game, yet he has stayed away from the coaching scene after a difficult and seemingly jinxed spell at Neath ended abruptly two years ago.
And Welsh professional rugby and Llewellyn the coach have never been an item.
Some might consider that strange, given his CV as a player. He won 92 caps for Wales, enjoyed a stellar onpitch career that spanned three different decades and featured for Neath RFC when they were the most feared team in British rugby.
He also skippered the national side and played top-level rugby in England and France, as well as at home.
So, why haven’t clubs been queuing up to tap into all that knowledge? “It’s not a big deal,” he says. “There weren’t that many coaching opportunities available when I showed an interest. The ones I did have a look at, I wasn’t successful. “That’s life.
“It’s not just me, anyway. My beef back in the day was that Welsh rugby didn’t use enough of the guys who featured under Steve Hansen – the big education for everyone.
“I thought a lot of those boys would have come through into top-level coaching positions.
“But not that many have.
“Too few people were given opportunities to give something back.
“I sometimes feel Welsh rugby over the years hasn’t made the most of experience and what people have to offer.
“I’m not talking about myself. “What may have been a bit frustrating for me in the past is over. It’s history and I’m more concerned about what I’m doing now.”
What he’s doing now is working as a sales executive with Lima Orthopaedics, a supplier of medical devices. It gets him out and about in a role he enjoys.
“It’s great,” he says.
“I’ve been doing it for a long time and it takes me around the west of England.
“I meet different people, including surgeons, and sometimes watch them work. It’s a privilege to do that.
“After I stopped playing, I did spend some time looking around to see what coaching opportunities were out there.
“But then I thought: ‘I’ll get what might be styled a normal job’.
“I like it.”
In his quieter moments on the road, he could be forgiven for reflecting on the marathon top-flight playing career he had, one that started as a 19-year-old with Neath and went on to span the thick end of 20 years.
There were the triumphs with the Welsh All Blacks in those early years as they bulldozed their way through opponents, the honour of leading Wales and the challenge of playing during a sometimes difficult era for the national team. No career is a straight line.
Oh, and the major tour games, against New Zealand, Australia and South Africa in five seasons between 1989 and 1994, were huge highlights. Thunderous, dramatic and sometimes violent affairs.
Against the All Blacks, Neath gave one of the great sides in history a hurry-up, while the match with the Springboks may just have been the wildest encounter at senior level in the 1990s. Even now, it’s not certain either side took prisoners.
Sandwiched in between was the clash with the Wallabies, another match when it was rumoured the odd spot of rugby broke out in between punch-ups.
Afterwards, Wallaby coach Bob Dwyer made headlines across continents with his description of Neath as “the bag-snatching capital” of the world.
It’s a bit late in the day, admittedly, but it’s worth asking the question: was it a fair take on matters?
No, it wasn’t, if you listen to Llewellyn, who skippered the Welsh All Blacks that day, at the age of 23.
“It was a shock to me when Bob Dwyer said that,” he says now.
“I don’t know if there was an incident, accidental or otherwise.
“But I do know nothing was said among the players after the game.
“There was no talk about who supposedly did what Dwyer claimed had been done. The question wasn’t even asked.
“I guess people’s thinking ran along the lines of ‘it’s just a case of a whingeing Aussie’.
“There was never a plan beforehand to go out there and grab people by the nuts to put them off their game.
“No-one else made that allegation against us in other games.
“We played as hard as anyone, but we certainly weren’t cheap-shot merchants.”
Llewellyn says he treasures all his time in rugby, but his stint at Neath was clearly the making of him as a player and as a person. How could it not be?
Still pretty much a boy when he joined, he had to grow up quickly. “They were great years,” he says. “I wasn’t a Neath boy. I lived in Llanharan, and Cardiff were interested in me along with Bridgend, who actually came up to our house to meet me and talk to my mum and dad.
“I guess I thought I’d go to Bridgend.
“But there was this team who played in black who were playing the game at a different pace from everyone else in Wales at the time. They had two flankers in Phil Pugh and Lyn Jones who were dynamic in all they did.
“It was fantastic to watch and I remember thinking it would be fantastic to be a part of.
“I played for Welsh Youth, but Ron Waldron, our coach, didn’t seem to be showing any interest in me. I just assumed I was off the radar.
“Then I went over to The Gnoll for a Welsh Youth training session and afterwards we watched a game in the players’ bar.
“When we walked in there was this big character standing there.
“I’d heard stores from my dad about a guy called Twmws who had been stitched up on the side of the pitch without anaesthetic during his playing days and returned to the field, who played for Wales and had this hugely intimidating reputation. “It was him (Brian Thomas). “I went up to the bar to get some drinks.
“Twmws, meantime, was just abusing the TV, shouting things about the play and just behaving differently.
“As I went to take the beers back, he said: ‘Hang on, I want a word with you. What are you doing next year? Who are you playing rugby for?’
“I said: ‘I wouldn’t mind playing for Neath’.
“He replied: “There you are, then. That’s settled. Off you go’.
“I went back to the table and Ron came and tapped me on the shoulder and said: ‘Nice to have you on board, sunshine’.”
Llewellyn also has a clear recollection of the first time he clapped eyes on club legend Brian Williams.
“He wasn’t around when I turned up for those early weeks of training with Neath. There were suggestions he’d retired,” recalls Llewellyn.
“But it turned out he’d been busy on the farm and everyone was looking forward to his return. “Three weeks later, he came back. “When he walked into the dressing room, I thought: ‘Oh, what a let down’.
“He just didn’t look like a prop. I thought he must have lost three or four stone.
“Then Kevin Phillips, who was brilliant, took me under his wing and said: ‘You just watch him’.
“I spent the rest of the year in awe watching this guy with amazing strength and incredible levels of fitness. He was unique.
“If he’d been around 10 years earlier he’d have had a lot more Welsh caps.
“A lot has been made of his hardness and pretty much all of it is right.
“He was freakishly tough, but he never took the field with the intention of going outside the laws. He was a fair guy who just wanted to play the game, but you messed with him at your peril.”
Time is ticking by, but there’s still a chance to ask Llewellyn about what happened between him and Lyn Jones, his old team-mate, friend and coach.
It was on Jones’ watch as Ospreys coach that the second row left the regional scene abruptly.
“We fell out over something we shouldn’t have fallen out over,” says Llewellyn.
“The Ospreys were going through a difficult time in that first season and a bit of frustration was setting in. Gavin Thomas and I, who were probably the most vocal of the boys at the time, were released.
“I guess that put paid to the friendship Lyn and I had.
“To be fair to him, I was approached through an intermediary to see if I was interested in joining Lyn at London Welsh.
“But I didn’t think the move there would have been right for me at the time.
“Going back further, it would have been far easier to have sat down and talked our differences through. Lyn could have been more flexible in what he was trying to do, and I could have approached the whole thing differently.
“Maybe we’d both have done things differently if we could have had our time over again.
“As a coach and ideas man, with all his enthusiasm, he was excellent.
“It’s just we didn’t agree with that one thing he was running with at the time.”
The time when Llewellyn learned most in rugby was under Hansen, a man he rates as the best coach he played under, together with the team he assembled, including Scott Johnson and Andrew Hore.
“It was just a great coaching group,” says Llewellyn.
“Steve opened our eyes and so did the others.
“For me, Andrew Hore revolutionised strength and conditioning training in Wales and possibly across the UK. We started doing things differently from the way we had always done them.
“I remember going to the World Cup in 2003 and lifting more, running quicker and feeling fitter than I’d ever done. I was 34 then. I thought: ‘Where was this guy when I was 22?’”
The best player he played alongside with Wales? “It’s hard one,” he says.
“I suppose you’d look at players who were huge influences on the team, like Scott Gibbs, Scott Quinnell, Colin Charvis and Gethin Jenkins, guys who could impact in a big way on matches.
“My most difficult opponent was probably Victor Matfield, but Chris Jack and Ali Williams were up there, too.”
The clock has run down and there isn’t enough time to do justice to what happened at Neath during his time as a coach there, with Llewellyn saying he and his fellow coaches had encountered the worst injury crisis he’d seen in 30 years in the game.
“It was just a horrendous set of circumstances,” he says.
“I’m not sure anyone in that situation could have done better.”
It all adds up to a rich and varied life in rugby, one that some might feel should still be continuing.
But the sense is, too, that Llewellyn wouldn’t swap hardly any of it.
In that respect, he is a fortunate man.