Читать книгу Once Were Lions: The Players’ Stories: Inside the World’s Most Famous Rugby Team - Jeff Connor - Страница 8

In the immediate post-war period, Great Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, had rather more to worry about than rugby. It was a time of strict austerity, and rationing still applied to many ordinary everyday items, including meat.

The tight rationing rules apparently did not apply to cigarettes, as the 1950 tourists were given their supply free of charge for the entire duration of the six-month-long tour to Australia and New Zealand in which they played 30 matches, including six Tests. It was to be the last time the Lions travelled by sea to the southern hemisphere. They sailed out on the SS Ceramic via the Panama Canal, and came back also travelling westwards, so it could be said that they sailed around the world just to play rugby. On the way home though, they took a shortcut via the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea en route from Sri Lanka, where they had played an unofficial match against a team representing the former Ceylon, before stopping for dinner in Mumbai, then known as Bombay.

More than a few of the players had seen service during the war or had undergone their two years’ mandatory national service in the forces, so they were used to being away from home for long periods. It was nevertheless particularly hard on newly married men or fathers with young children: ‘I had to leave an infant son behind and when I came back he was just so much bigger,’ as one 1950 Lion put it.

Two great characters of rugby and stars of that tour—both now in their late eighties—recently recalled what they were doing in the greatest skirmish of them all: the Second World War. It says a great deal about Dr Jack Matthews and Bleddyn Williams—and indeed all the rugby players who served in the war—that so many were anxious to get back to playing the game after what had been an ‘interesting’ time for them. Jack Matthews, who is now 88, managed to do both war service and national service, as he explained:

I was one of five children, with two sisters and two brothers, both of whom joined the army when war broke out. I was just starting to study medicine, but I wanted to join my brothers in action so I went off to Penarth without telling my parents and joined up as a fighter pilot.

I trained for five months of a six-month course and we were being taught to fly a new type of Spitfire, when my CO came up to me and said ‘Matthews, you’re out.’ I said ‘Beg your pardon, sir, what have I done wrong?’ He explained that they had just heard from the Home Office that I was a medical student, and I was thrown out because it was an exempt profession.

I spent the war qualifying as a doctor in Cardiff, but before I could finish, I was called up for national service. I said ‘Hang on, I’ve already done five months in the RAF, doesn’t that count?’ But Brigadier Hugh Llewellyn Glyn-Hughes, who was in charge of the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) and also ran the Barbarians, persuaded me not to go back to the RAF but to join the RAMC. I was captain of Cardiff at the time, and he was very persuasive in saying I could carry on playing at Cardiff as long as I played for the RAMC in the inter-services Cup. I did, and we won it.

I have a wonderful photograph of Field Marshal Montgomery presenting me with the cup. Funnily enough, I don’t think the RAMC have won it since.

During the war, Matthews kept fit partly by boxing for his medical school side, which travelled to St Athan to meet an RAF select in 1943. On that occasion his opponent was an American ‘guest’ with a knockout reputation—none other than Rocky Marciano, who would later become the only man ever to retire as undefeated heavyweight champion of the world. Matthews managed to avoid being stopped by Marciano, something only six of the great fighter’s professional opponents achieved.

Matthews eventually went on to complete his service in medicine with the RAF. His great friend Bleddyn Williams was also in the RAF, serving as a pilot, and performed the unique feat of invading Germany and playing for Great Britain at rugby in the same week.

More than 63 years later, Williams tells the story of the last week in March 1945 with relish:

After Arnhem there was a shortage of glider pilots so they were looking for volunteers from among us surplus pilots for the big push over the Rhine—it was ‘you, you, and you’, the usual way of volunteering, so I became a glider pilot.

I had been picked for the Great Britain side which was due to play the Dominions in one of the morale-boosting international matches that were played occasionally during the war. The match was set for Leicester on the Saturday after I was due to land in Germany, which we duly did early that week in the massive push (Operation Varsity) to get our troops across the Rhine.

On the Friday morning, the day before I was due to play for Great Britain, I was still in the camp in Germany, when my CO, Sir Hugh Bartlett, who later became captain of Sussex county cricket team, said to me ‘Aren’t you supposed to be playing at Leicester tomorrow?’ I replied that indeed I was, but I had been sleeping in a slit trench all week and was looking rather unkempt by then. All he said was ‘Pack your bags’. We were five miles inside Germany at this point, I should add.

I got a ride in a jeep to the Rhine, crossed over in a empty DUKW (amphibious vehicle) and there was another jeep waiting for me on the other side which took me to Eindhoven in Holland where I got a lift in a plane to Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. I was stationed in Essex at the time but waiting for me was the CO of the camp who grabbed a spare aircraft and flew me home.

I wasn’t long married at the time and when I presented myself at the door of our digs my wife thought I was a ghostly apparition, because she had been told that there had been very few survivors of the attack. I spent the night, went up by train to Leicester the following morning and I played for Great Britain and scored a try in our victory. War was incidental to rugby football, you see.

With two centres, one of whom had gone the distance with Rocky Marciano and the other who had invaded Germany, how could the 1950 Lions fail? Other former servicemen on the 1950 tour included Billy McKay, who had been a Commando and had served in the bloodiest conflicts in Burma, now Myanmar. Welsh scrum-half Rex Willis had served in the Royal Navy while Scottish captain Peter Kininmonth had seen action in Italy and as recently as 1947 had served on the Northwest frontier in Afghanistan. Ken Jones served as a sergeant in India, and his victory in the All-India Games in 1945 kick-started a sprinting career that saw him run for Britain in the 1948 Olympics and win a silver medal in the sprint relay—almost sacrilegiously for a Lion, he perhaps unsurprisingly recalled the 1948 Olympics as the highlight of his sporting career rather than his touring experiences.

Of such tried and tested stuff were Lions made. The 1950 touring party was the first to be called the Lions by all and sundry, though they were still formally billed as the British Isles Rugby Union Team, and the initials BIRUT appeared on the tour blazer beneath the now accepted emblem of the four home unions’ badges on a quartered shield. A more obvious change—as mentioned earlier—was the adoption of bright red jerseys, prompted by the previous blue colours clashing with the black jersey of New Zealand. The Lions in Red were here to stay.

The manager for the 1950 tour was a distinguished Royal Navy doctor, Surgeon-Captain L.B. ‘Ginger’ Osborne, then a selector for England and later a rear admiral. His good humour coupled with Mullen’s inspirational captaincy made this one of the happiest of tours. Indeed, we know just how pleasant an experience it was from first-hand accounts in a DVD documentary of that 1950 tour called The Singing Lions. ‘With all those Welshmen, what did you expect?’ as Jack Matthews put it.

In the 1950 party, for the first time every player was an internationalist and all four home unions provided capped players. Although Wales’s captain John Gwiliam could not tour, there were eventually no fewer than 14 players from Wales, Lewis Jones joining as a replacement for the latter part of the tour. Jones would become known as ‘The Golden Boy’ of Welsh rugby but, as we will see, he would become involved in a controversy that split his nation asunder.

The Welsh preponderance reflected the fact that the principality was enjoying one of its periods of domination over the other northern unions, having just achieved the Grand Slam. Great players like Williams and fellow centre Matthews—nicknamed ‘Iron Man’ by the New Zealanders ‘because of my tackling, I think’, he mused recently—and flying winger Ken Jones made the Welsh back line irresistible. ‘I once beat Ken in a 100m sprint,’ Matthews recalled, ‘and when my time was beaten later on, I had to remind the new record holder he was running in spikes and we ran in flat shoes.’

Other Welsh Lions of 1950 included the Terrible Twins from Neath, lock forwards Roy John and Rees Stephens, as well as utility forward Don Hayward, prop John Robins and fly-half Billy Cleaver. Hooker Dai Davies and flanker Bob Evans became vital team members while the ever-cheerful Cliff Davies provided the baritone for the Lions choir.

Despite the tour having an English manager and selector, England had just three representatives, including captain Ivor Preece, which was not really surprising as English rugby was then in the doldrums, while Scotland had five and Ireland nine.

‘The Welsh and Irish got on great,’ said Williams, ‘but really we all gelled right from the start, all the nationalities, and maybe it was because so many of us had been used to getting along with strangers during our time in the services.’

The best known Scottish player of the day, the great back row forward W.I.D. ‘Doug’ Elliott, was invited to be a Lion but could not make the tour as he was a farmer and would miss the harvest, as was also the case with another Scottish invitee, Hamish Kemp. Doug Elliot did ask if he could join the tour for part of the trip, but was refused. The Lions Committee wanted total commitment in those days, and he never did make a tour. He was ‘a great character who was missed’, in Jack Kyle’s words. The leader of the Scottish contingent in 1950 was the barrel-chested flank forward Peter Kininmonth, while his fellow Scot, scrum-half Gus Black, was noted for his long and accurate passes which attracted the attention of an All Blacks team anxious to stop the Lions’ backs from cutting loose. It says everything about his destructive opposite number, Pat Crowley, that Gus Black survived just two Tests before giving way for the third Test to Gordon Rimmer, who in turn was injured during the game and replaced by the Welsh utility back Billy Cleaver, before Rex Willis took over at No. 9 for the final Test—Crowley destroyed them all.

Both the team captain and its star player were Irish. A fine hooker, Dr Karl Mullen had been captain of Ireland’s Triple Crown-winning sides of 1948 and 1949 and was first choice to captain the Lions. Firm and fair and with a surgeon’s bedside manner about him, he would go on to become one of Ireland’s leading gynaecologists, and with his wife Doreen would be at the heart of Irish society for many years. Doreen died in 2008 and Dr Mullen is now living quietly in Ireland.

Due to injury, Mullen missed a good number of matches but had a sound replacement as captain in Bleddyn Williams, while Dai Davies was such a success at hooker that Mullen stood aside for the team’s benefit even after recovering. Incidentally, both Davies and the lightning-quick flank forward Bob Evans were policemen, the latter an inspector with Newport C.I.D. All those young doctors and policemen—yet it was somehow a trouble-free tour…

Bleddyn Williams would become one of the legendary figures of Welsh and Lions rugby, and at the age of 85 his memories of the tour and before are pin sharp. But he nearly didn’t make the 1950 Lions tour at all.

As he recalled:

In the final Welsh trial before the Five Nations in the early part of January, Malcolm Thomas, who also came on the Lions tour, and I were in opposition. He tackled me and my leg was caught in such a position that I tore the ligaments in my knee. I was in plaster for some time, and though they picked me for the Lions, I still had to prove my fitness, which I managed to do in a match for Cardiff against Bath.

The great thing for me was that we went out by boat taking more than five weeks so that I was able to do all sorts of exercises with weights and by the time we reached New Zealand I was in pretty good shape. It also helped that we had so many doctors and trainee doctors around—Jack Matthews was a qualified GP, and Jack Kyle and Bill McKay qualified later, while Karl Mullen became a gynaecologist and Ginger Osborne was a dentist.

I got injured against Otago and missed the first Test, but it was only a pulled hamstring though I made it worse by playing on with the injury—there were no replacements then, of course, and you stayed on the field unless you had to be carried off.

That old law will mystify modern rugby fans used to the ‘revolving door’ replacements of modern matches, but Jack Matthews remembers that ‘no substitute’ rule ruefully: ‘On the tour I think we finished with only 14 men on the pitch in about 20 to 30 per cent of the matches we played. You just had to carry on.’

Matthews himself was almost the victim of some skulduggery by an alleged Irish selector, who threatened him with expulsion from the Lions.

On the morning of our 1950 Triple Crown game against Ireland, I went to ‘spend a penny’, so to speak, and this fellow just said ‘If you play well today you won’t make the Lions tour, as I’m a selector and will see to it.’ I ignored him and went out and played my usual game. We won 6–3, and I never heard another word.

One of the ‘doctors in the making’ on that tour was one of Ireland’s all-time greats, fly-half J.W. ‘Jack’ Kyle, whose inventiveness sparked many a try-scoring move by the backs. Kyle and his fellow Irishmen proved a big hit off the field, and combined with the lads from the Valleys in many a singsong.

‘We had won the Grand Slam in 1948,’ recalled Kyle, ‘and Wales had just won it, so naturally between the two countries we had the bulk of the party.’

Kyle’s experiences of being selected were typical of the time. As a medical student at Queen’s University in Belfast, he had already played for Ireland and was reckoned to be the outstanding fly-half of the day. He had hopes for receiving the selectors’ call but in the end found out he had been chosen for the tour from a newspaper.

‘My father, who was also John Wilson Kyle like me, was reading the Belfast Telegraph when he noticed a report saying ‘the following have been selected…’ and there was my name,’ said Kyle. ‘I know plenty of Lions who found out the same way.

In those days there was absolutely no question of any money or benefits accruing from playing rugby. My dad frequently said to me ‘You’re not going to earn your living from rugby, son, you had better pass your exams.

When he read of my selection, fortunately I wasn’t in the house. He read out the report and noted the fact that I would be away for six months and miss a full term, and then turned to my brother Eric and said ‘Does that brother of yours ever intend to qualify?’

I actually did take a few books and hoped to get advice from the other doctors on the tour like Karl Mullen, but I can’t remember doing much reading and we only had one session where Karl tried to teach me a bit about midwifery and gynaecology.

That may have been the only occasion when midwifery was learned on a rugby tour. As for gynaecology…

As a qualified GP, Jack Matthews’ position was much worse—he had to pay a locum thousands of pounds to fill in for him while he was away so that he didn’t lose his practice. Matthews said: ‘My son was two at the time, and my wife said I could go on tour, but she wanted a maid to help out at home, so I had to pay for her, too. And all we got was seven shillings a day expenses and we even had to buy our own blazers.’ The clothing allowance was also frugal—a Lions tie and two BIRUT badges which the players had to sew on themselves.

Jack Kyle did acquire something substantial from that tour—a brother-in-law, Noel Henderson, who was a student at Queen’s alongside Kyle and Bill McKay. ‘He was a very good centre who greatly strengthened our defence—he was always criticizing me for not getting up on my man, saying things like “Does the out half [fly-half] intend tackling his opposite number by tomorrow?”’ Kyle had to forgive him later: ‘After all, he married my sister and they had four daughters.’

Coming from lands beset by shortages and rationing, the Lions took full advantage of their hosts’ generosity, and in turn they proved to be wonderful ambassadors for the sport in Britain and Ireland. The sparkling play by the backs in most matches and their sportsmanship in all of the games was rivalled only by their obvious enjoyment at the many receptions and outings laid on for them in New Zealand in particular.

‘We had a wonderful time,’ recalled Matthews. ‘The people in New Zealand were often more British than the British, and were always asking us how things were “at home”, even though they had never been there.’

The Lions played a full part in the social whirl that surrounded the tourists, as Matthews remembered:

There were no pubs as such, and people just took us into their homes where we ate and drank merrily. Often they would take us out to hunt wild pigs—fortunately they also brought along professional hunters.

I remember when we visited the Maori settlement at Rotorua and it was quite a sight to see our lads up there dancing with the Maori.

The pace was also leisurely largely because of the way the Lions got around: ‘We would travel by bus or train, never by aeroplane,’ recalled Bleddyn Williams, ‘and would train on school grounds. We had no coaches so Karl would look after the forwards and I would take charge of the backs. Afterwards we would have to give a little talk or answer questions from the pupils.’ Both he and Jack Matthews are adamant about the source of most of the questions—‘The girls, no doubt about it,’ said Matthews. ‘They really were very interested in all aspects of the game.’ So there you have the true secret of the All Blacks’ success—wives, mothers, grandmothers, sisters and daughters all keeping the men on their toes.

Jack Kyle recalled that the four national captains—Karl Mullen, Bleddyn Williams, Peter Kininmonth, and Ivor Preece of England—did the selection chores: ‘We went out without coaches and, to be frank, it was quite a leisurely affair at times.

‘We had plenty of time to see the sights and scenery and at the age of just 24, being carefree and away with a crowd of chaps with nothing to do but play rugby and enjoy ourselves, it really was quite something, a tremendous experience.’

That 1950 visit is still called the ‘Friendly Tour’ in New Zealand, as much for the style of play exhibited by the Lions as by their undoubted social charms.

‘It was all arranged beforehand,’ revealed Bleddyn Williams some 58 years later. ‘We threw the ball about because we all agreed that we wanted to entertain the people who came to see us, and we felt we did that.’

The appreciation of the backs in particular was shown by the fact that Kyle and Jones were named as two of the five players of the year by the Rugby Almanack of New Zealand. Due to injuries, other backs distinguished themselves in unaccustomed roles, with Scottish fly-half or centre Ranald Macdonald making an impact as a winger.

Sadly, however, the results of the Test Matches against New Zealand brought only a small degree of contentment to the Lions. Having started off with three easy victories, the Lions were humbled in the first two difficult provincial games against Otago and Southland, before travelling to Dunedin for the first Test. The match against Otago in particular saw the Lions come up against that province’s fierce rucking game that was to become such a feature of rugby in the land of the long white cloud.

A hard fought and highly creditable draw in Dunedin, where the Lions led until late in the game only for New Zealand captain Roy Elvidge to score a converted try, was followed by three defeats to give the All Blacks another series victory. The second Test was lost 0–8 in Christchurch, where the Lions were reduced to 14 men when flanker Billy McKay was forced off with a broken nose and concussion. McKay was obviously a forgiving sort—he liked New Zealand so much that he emigrated there after qualifying as a doctor.

Scores of 3–6 in Wellington and 8–11 in Auckland show just how close the Lions came to matching their opponents, especially in the latter Test. Bleddyn Williams still recalls the best try of the tour in that match.

We were 11–3 down and right on our goal line when I said to Jack Kyle, the finest fly-half I ever played with, to get the ball out quickly as we were going to run it. The ball went from Rex Willis to Kyle but it never reached me because behind me was Lewis Jones who nipped in and intercepted it, running up to their full-back and passing to Ken Jones and we scored at the other end of the field. Fred Allen, who later coached the All Blacks, says to this day that it’s the best try they have ever seen at Auckland.

From the kick-off I nearly scored a try but Peter Henderson, who was an Olympic runner like Ken Jones, caught me and pinned my arms in the tackle. He later told me it was the best tackle he had ever made.

The All Blacks themselves had been whitewashed 3–0 by South Africa the previous year—so how good did that make the Springboks? The Lions would have to wait five years to find out.

By common consent, the problem for the 1950 Lions was that, apart from the first Test, their forwards could never quite match the All Blacks in gaining and keeping possession. Perhaps only Roy John of Neath, Ireland’s Jimmy Nelson and Peter Kininmonth of Scotland were physically able to compete with the opposition in the Tests.

Some observers say that had the superb Lions backs been matched with New Zealand’s forwards, it would have created a dream team the like of which had not been seen in world rugby. As it was, those peerless backs Kyle, Matthews, Williams and Jones had to make do with considerably less possession than their opposite numbers.

The results from that period in New Zealand show that when the Lions backs got plenty of possession against the lesser provincial sides, such as Wanganui and Taranaki, they scored a barrowload of points, winning 31–3 and 25–3 respectively against these two sides. Indeed, the Lions won every non-Test Match after their defeat by Southland. Against the mighty rucking pack of the All Blacks, however, they were forced into defensive duties in the main, and though they usually coped admirably, no side on the back foot can hope to keep out New Zealand permanently.

‘We did play good rugby,’ recalled Matthews. ‘I was lucky enough and fit enough to play in all six Tests, and there were all these good players around me. We only just lost the series against the All Blacks by a few points over the course of the four games, and I’ve had many letters from New Zealand saying that our 1950 Lions were the best rugby-playing side that ever went there.’

Waving a fond farewell to their conquerors, the Lions moved on to Australia where again the hosts were magnificently hospitable and the rugby was rather less difficult. The backs feasted on much greater possession and ran in a total of 150 points in 6 matches.

The first Test in Brisbane was comfortably won by 19–6, with Lewis Jones scoring 16 points with a personal ‘grand slam’—all the possible scores of a try, conversion, drop goal and penalty featured in his haul. The second Test in Sydney was even easier, with a scoreline of 24–3 in favour of the Lions.

Their Australian copybook was blotted, however, with a lacklustre performance in the final match against a New South Wales XV who surprisingly won 17–12. Perhaps all those long days of travelling, not to mention the hospitality Down Under, had taken its toll.

Despite the final setback and the losses in New Zealand, the tour was judged a massive success, not least because the Lions had boosted the public image of the sport.

Karl Mullen’s words at the start of the tour summed up his squad’s approach and resonate down to us today as embodying the proper creed of the Lions: ‘We are not after records of matches played and won. We want to see the game played for the game’s sake and to give you good football. We will be only too happy if you beat us in a good football match.’ Sadly, not too many coaches and captains would dare to utter such sentiments in our winner-takes-all society of today.

Bleddyn Williams and many of his band of Welsh colleagues from that 1950 tour eventually did gain a measure of revenge over New Zealand, Wales beating the All Blacks during their tour of the northern hemisphere in 1953. Some 54 years later, he remains the last Welsh captain to have led his men to victory over the All Blacks. Williams would later become a company director and wrote on rugby for The People newspaper for 32 years as well as making countless broadcasts.

To their credit, both Williams and Matthews and their fellow Lions never turned their back on the Welsh Golden Boy, Lewis Jones, who committed the Great Sin of signing up as a professional less than two years after the Lions tour, joining Leeds for a then record fee of £6,000. Immediately ostracized by rugby union, Jones was was banned from having any contact with all clubs worldwide—he could not even buy a drink in a clubhouse for fear of ‘tainting’ a club. Many Welsh players and officials refused to speak to him, due more to fear of being expelled themselves rather than any personal animus against Jones.

His defection to rugby league at the age of 20 caused great controversy in Wales, particularly as he had been the Golden Boy of the sport. The headlines were blaring and most indicated that Jones’s decision had been a betrayal, though many pundits pointed out that his move had been inevitable given the fantastic money on offer.

The hypocrisy of the rugby authorities concerning professionalism was exposed as well. In those days, the very mention of being involved with rugby league scouts could see you declared persona non grata in Union circles, as Bleddyn Williams recounts: ‘It happened to George Parsons before the Victory International against France in 1947. He was kicked off the train while travelling to play for Wales because he was alleged to have been seen speaking to a rugby league scout. He eventually had to turn professional, and played almost 300 games for St Helen’s.’

The charge of hypocrisy arose from the fact that everybody in rugby union knew that it happened. Two of the 1950 tourists—Bleddyn Williams and Jack Matthews—are happy to admit that they discussed terms with rugby league clubs, though they eventually rejected offers. Williams said:

It happened during the war when I was about to go to America for pilot training, and in wartime there were fewer restrictions on mixing with league so I ended up at Salford and Wigan just trying to keep fit. My brother had played for Wigan before the war and the club manager obviously knew who I was. They offered me £3,000 on the spot to sign for them and I had to point out that I couldn’t serve two bosses and was off to America in any case.

When I came back they offered me £5,000 and then £6,000, and I gave them first refusal if I changed my mind, but in the end I just didn’t want to do it.

Matthews was also ‘tapped’ by rugby league clubs: ‘I had offers galore, but my parents wouldn’t look at it. It wasn’t for me but I didn’t blame anyone who went “up north” to join rugby league as they didn’t have any jobs, then. I wasn’t against that at all, but league wasn’t for me because they were two different games.’

Williams concurred: ‘I am glad I didn’t take the money and thus miss the 1950 tour, because I am very, very proud of being a Lion.’

As for the ostracization of Jones, both Williams and Matthews consider that it was shameful.

‘It was ridiculous that he couldn’t even go back and visit his old friends,’ said Williams. ‘Just ridiculous, but that was the way it was.’

Matthews agreed: ‘We looked after any Cardiff player who went north and came back, even though they tried to bar them from the clubhouse. It was all a lot of rubbish.’

Lewis Jones lives in Leeds and has kept his ties to that city’s club for which he starred for many years. The members of Gorseinon rugby club in his home village paid him the tribute of naming their new clubhouse after their local hero, and Jones himself came to open it in early 2008, making a welcome public appearance in Wales. More than 50 years on, all has long been forgiven and forgotten, but as we shall see in subsequent chapters, joining rugby league was still seen as treason for many years after the Golden Boy made his move north.

The Lions’ attitude to those who left the union fold is proof that the companionship forged on those tours with their long sea voyages was unbreakable. Williams and Matthews, for example, have remained lifelong friends and both have been honoured by the Queen.

Jack Kyle has always been grateful for being a Lion, but points out the main difference between then and now was not just money but the players’ attitude to the sport:

The fact that we had a career was more important than rugby. If you had a bad game and had an exam coming up afterwards, it soon got your mind off your game and onto the important stuff. In today’s professional world there would be a video analyst and a coach discussing your game and where you went wrong. The most we ever got if we lost was ‘Hard luck, chaps, you did your best.’

I have made and kept many friends through rugby and there’s no doubt being a Lion enriched my life tremendously and opened doors for me. To give you an example—I worked in Indonesia as a surgeon from 1962 to 1964 and my wife and I went up to Hong Kong for a holiday and were staying at the Repulse Bay Hotel. We had just got in and were unpacking and the phone rang. It was a guy from the local rugby club inviting me along to their meeting that night.

I said ‘How did anyone know I was in Hong Kong?’ as I was pretty sure no one knew we were going there. He said ‘The customs officer at the airport is a rugby man and spotted your name on your passport.’ Those chaps were wonderful to us for the whole holiday, taking us for meals and arranging cars for us. That’s the kind of thing that has happened to Lions over the years.

That 1950 band of happy Lions seems largely to have been blessed with success in later life. Ivor Preece enjoyed a long career with Coventry RFC, where he was both captain and president. He died in 1987.

Billy Cleaver rose through the mining industry to become deputy director of the National Coal Board in South Wales. Defying stereotypes about rugger lads, Cleaver had a lifelong interest in the arts and became vice-chairman of the Welsh Arts Council. He died in 2003.

Ken Jones lived until he was 84, having retired from rugby in 1957 when he was the record Welsh cap holder. The following year he had the honour of carrying the baton containing the Queen’s Speech at the Commonwealth Games in Cardiff. ‘What kept you?’ said Prince Philip, after Jones took a wrong turning.

Peter Kininmonth returned from the Lions tour with a most spectacular find: his wife Priscilla, who was on board the ship which took them home. Kininmonth had a distinguished career in financial services before turning to a second career on his wife’s farm where he became an award-winning master cheesemaker. He died aged 83 in 2007. Several of the 1950 Lions attended his funeral.

John Robins became a leading figure in physical education, and went on to coach the Lions in 1966—more about that later. He ended his professional career as director of PE at the University of Wales in Cardiff. He died in 2007. Fellow Welsh cap Bob Evans achieved high rank in the police and was a stalwart for Newport all his life until his death in 2003.

Doug Smith would become one of the most successful managers in Lions history—again more about him later. Grahame Budge, who died in 1979, left a rugby legacy to his family which endures—his granddaughter Alison Christie has been capped 61 times for Scotland.

The most extraordinary story of the 1950 Lions, one which they have kept to themselves assuming they know all about it, did not emerge until after the death of Don Hayward in 1999. No one should pretend that the Lions have been innocents on their tours, and there are countless tales of liaisons between tourists and women—some of them even of ‘a certain age’—over the decades, though most are treated under the unbreakable code of rugby omerta, which states roughly that ‘what goes on tour, stays on tour’. Not all such dalliances involved sweetness and romance, it must be said, but none had a happier ending than Hayward’s tale.

The Welsh forward had loved his time Down Under in 1950 so much that he emigrated there, after meeting and marrying his wife Linda in 1952. He returned briefly to play rugby league for Wigan in the mid-1950s when his wife became ill. On returning to New Zealand, Hayward opened a butcher’s shop in Wainuiomata, a suburb of Lower Hutt, though he later moved to Otaki. Linda sadly died, but Hayward remained in Otaki with his son Gareth.

One evening in October 1993 a knock came at the door of their house. On the doorstep stood 42-year-old Suzy Davis and her partner Tony Sims. They asked if he was Don Hayward, a member of the Lions tour party, and after being invited in, Sims blurted out: ‘Suzy thinks you are her father.’

Indeed he was. Hayward had met Suzy’s birth mother, Iona Potter, for just one night in Dunedin during the tour in 1950. He never knew that the then 29-year-old Potter had become pregnant and given birth to a daughter, who was named Elizabeth Victoria before being put up for adoption and acquiring the name Suzy Davis.

It wasn’t until the age of 35 that Davis began the search for her real parents. Showing all the determination her father had displayed on the field, she spent years patiently combing through records until she found her mother, who had two other children from a subsequent marriage and who confirmed that her father had been a rugby player from Wales, though she could not remember his name.

Davis combed through rugby books and found pictures of the Welsh contingent in the 1950 Lions. Revealing her story in 1999, she told the Evening Post in Wellington: ‘I remember looking and looking at the photo to work out which one it might be.’

Her birth mother was reluctant to say more about her illicit liaison in 1950, but after she contracted terminal cancer, Iona told Suzy that her only memory of the tall Welshman she had met in Dunedin was that he was a train driver from Pontypool. Armed with this information, Davis tracked down Hayward with the help of sportswriters.

His first reaction was: ‘My God, I have always wanted a daughter.’ A paternity test proved conclusively that he was indeed the father.

For the remaining five-and-a-quarter years of his life, Don Hayward cherished Suzy, and she grew close to the father she had never known. Ironically, for years she had passed his butcher’s shop daily on her way to and from work as a teacher, and had never known that the man behind the counter was her dad. But then, they did things differently in the 1950s.

That tour to New Zealand and Australia would be the last time that the British and Irish Lions would be forced to spend many weeks on a ship travelling back and forth to the southern hemisphere. By the time of the next tour, the age of the passenger aircraft had been well and truly established.

The world was changing and modernizing, and so was the sport of rugby, albeit under much protest and at a snail’s pace.