‘We didn’t know what to expect going out there, but it was a great experience’
WHEN Wales begin their 2023 World Cup campaign against Fiji on September 10, they will have been together for more than three months. So how does that compare with the preparation ahead of the 1987 tournament?
Let former winger Adrian Hadley guide you through it.
“We met on a Friday night in the St David’s Hotel in Saundersfoot,” he recalls. “We had a training session on the Saturday and played a game against Tenby. Then we had a charity fun run on the Sunday along the beach and we flew out the next day! You never had camps like they had now. It never happened.”
The travel arrangements for the lengthy journey to New Zealand were somewhat different to today as well.
“We flew cattle class,” reveals Hadley. “It wasn’t much fun for some of the big boys. You can imagine, can’t you? It wasn’t great and it was a long old flight to Auckland. I think we were on the same plane as England and Scotland, if memory serves me right.”
Another big difference was the size of the back-room staff. Warren Gatland will have a management team in double figures out in France, with coaches, physios, medical staff and so on. What, then, was the equivalent in 1987?
“We had Clive Rowlands, he was the manager, then you had Tony Gray and Derek Quinnell as coaches and Tudor Jones the physio, who used to do all the warm-ups. That was about it. I don’t think we had anybody else.
“We had nowhere near as much kit as they get now either. We had a couple of training shirts, a couple of pairs of shorts. That became a big problem in Wellington ahead of the first game against Ireland because it was p*ssing down every day.
“We were training and getting stripped back in the hotel and everything was going into the laundry to try to get ready for the day after. That was an issue, but then again it was amateur, wasn’t it?”
What about the places where the squad stayed during the tournament? What were they like?
“The accommodation was very patchy,” says Hadley. “In Wellington, it was just like chalets, Rotorua was very similar. The hotel in Invercargill was built for when the Queen went there in the 1950s, so you had the old massive radiators that you used to have in school. As soon as someone put the heater on, it was just bang, bang, bang. It wasn’t great.”
So it was very much an old-school tour, but the rugby was still taken seriously.
“We were all amateur, we were all going away together, we did have a good time. You would have a few beers, but we still trained every day, which we obviously wouldn’t do at home. So it was a mixture. It wasn’t as if we were going on the p*ss every night.
“We had the social committee of Mark Ring and Glenn Webbe organising things at night just to keep us from being bored and going out on the p*ss. We did have a good laugh and a few beers at certain times through the tournament, but we also worked hard.”
Almost inevitably, there were injuries along the way. That saw the call-up for teenagers Dai Young and Richard Webster, who both made their Test debuts, while Hadley recalls another recruit who was not to be so fortunate.
“John Rawlins, the Newport prop, came over as a replacement and brought three caps with him, one for Webby, one for Dai and one for himself,” recalls the Cardiff winger.
“I can remember we were doing a sprint session and he had only just arrived. Tudor said, ‘Look don’t go mad on this because you’ve only just come off the plane’. But John just wanted to get involved, in fairness to him. So he started sprinting and did his hammy.
“He was only on the pitch for about ten minutes. He pulled his hamstring in the first training session off the plane! So he actually brought his cap over with him, but never got to win one.”
After victories in all three group matches – against Ireland, Tonga and Canada – Wales then beat England in the quarter-finals before meeting their match in the shape of the All Blacks in the semis.
“New Zealand were just like a well-oiled machine against us,” said Hadley. “It was rumoured they’d had a couple of weeks together before the World Cup started.
“Everywhere you went, one of their players was doing an advertisement for something. They were on the telly, advertising a car or health supplements or something along those lines. They obviously weren’t doing it for nothing.
“Yet, if we did an interview for TV after a game, the money would go to the union.”
There was to be one more match for Wales – the third-place play-off against co-hosts Australia in the city of Rotorua in the Bay of Plenty region of New Zealand’s North Island. So, what’s Rotorua like?
“It stinks, mate!” replies Hadley. “It’s the geysers. It’s like a sulphur smell. It absolutely does stink.
“It wasn’t the biggest place in the world, but with the relationship between the New Zealanders and the Aussies, every one of the locals was supporting us.”
It was a game that swung back and fore ahead of a thrilling conclusion, with Hadley crossing in the corner and Paul Thorburn landing the touchline conversion to secure a famous 22-21 victory.
As for his try, Hadley modestly says: “That was my position, that’s what I had to do.
“And we always had confidence in Thorby, no matter where he was kicking them from.”
Now 60 and the deputy chief executive of St David’s Hospice Care in Newport, Hadley looks back on that inaugural World Cup with real fondness.
“I just loved the whole tournament, I loved it,” he says. “There were three of us that played every game – myself, Thorby and Paul Moriarty.
“We had a lot of players with a lot of skills who could manufacture chances and we played some good stuff. We didn’t know what to expect going out there, but it was a great experience.”
“It was shocking quality with all ups and downs. It didn’t sound glorious, that’s for sure, but he was trying to make a point of what it meant for all of us and the fact we were playing for our families back home. He hit the nail on the head and motivated people hugely.
“He used to say, ‘The badge is getting bigger every game boys’. By the end, I think we had a badge like the Hells Angels on the back of our blazers, it was so big. But that was one of his many catchphrases.
“He would pull on all the triggers. It certainly worked and he was well loved as a result of it.
“I think it’s fitting that it says ‘faithful to my country’ on the collar of the Wales jersey because that typifies Clive. If ever there was a man who was almost obsessional about his country it was Clive ‘Calon’ Rowlands.
“He was such a passionate bloke and he engendered that in the group.”
After hanging up his boots, Norster went on to become Wales team manager himself, from 1991 to 1995, before moving into an administrative role with Cardiff.
“I think what Clive taught me as a manager was the importance of strength in unity, pulling people together to get the level of belief that we are all in it together,” he says.
“He was old school, like myself in many ways. He could be a bit of an Ayatollah at times, but that’s the balance in any management skill-set, to be the velvet glove over the iron fist.
“You’ve got to be firm but fair. He made everybody feel like he cared and he did care as passionately as any of us when the chips were down. He felt the pain as much as we did after a set-back and certainly celebrated the high points too.
“You learn off everybody that you work with over the years and Clive was a good role model to develop my self beyond the playing field.”
As for on the field during the 1987 World Cup, lineout ace Norster figured in the group victories over Ireland and Canada and then the quarterfinal triumph against England at Ballymore in Brisbane.
“England were definitely viewed as favourites. They were certainly going to do us in most people’s eyes, but we didn’t see it that way and it didn’t happen!” he said. “We beat them quite well in a hot and steamy, wet and muddy Brisbane.”
As it turned out, it was to be Norster’s final appearance in the tournament.
“I was unfit going into the English game and I shouldn’t have played really. I had tweaked a hamstring beforehand and I ended up tearing it during the game to the point where I could hardly bloody walk by the end of it,” he said.
“It doesn’t shade how I look back on that World Cup though. We were a good tight group. We had been through a lot together beforehand and we got stronger as we went along.”
Norster is particularly full of praise for the part young centre John Devereux played during the campaign.
“He was a stand-out, there’s no question. He was a handful that nobody quite expected. He was a horse in the middle of the field there and gave everybody a target. If he didn’t get through them, he took you forward. It was always gainline with John.”
As for the running of that inaugural World Cup, the 66-year-old Norster, who now heads up a sports agency, says: “I’m not being demeaning to anyone, but it was a bit of a tin pot. It was a first stab at it. It was all new, nobody quite knew how it was going to work.
“Certainly, from an organisational and logistical point of view, it was quite challenging. You have got all these teams in towns and we were in some pretty lowly motels and all sorts of weird and wonderful places. No-one realised how big it was going to become.”
‘It was just a great event to be involved in... I was so lucky’
THE 1987 World Cup was an examination for John Devereux in more ways than one – but he passed with flying colours. He was only 21 at the time and in just his second season of international rugby, yet he was to emerge as one of the stars of the tournament.
The Bridgend centre also emerged with a degree after sitting his finals out in New Zealand.
Devereux had been studying human movement at South Glamorgan Institute of High Education – Cardiff Met today – and it was time for his crucial final year exams. But the dates for taking them clashed with the World Cup, so it meant emergency plans had to be put in place.
“As soon as we landed in New Zealand, I flew down to Wellington with Ray Williams (WRU secretary) and left the rest of the squad to party in Auckland!” he recalls.
“There was a big bash there where everyone was awarded their World Cup caps and all that. Meanwhile, I was booked into a B&B in Wellington. I remember having jet lag and waking up in the morning with my books all over me.
“I’d been looking to do some last-minute revising, but that went out the window because I just fell asleep with jet lag.
“Then it was off to Wellington University. Ray took me there, gave me 10 dollars and said that I should catch a taxi back to the hotel when I had finished.
“I found where I was supposed to go and ended up in this big room with this woman doing her knitting. She was the invigilator.