Alan Davies won 18 out of 36 matches in charge. Not a bad return when you consider the situation in which he found himself when asked to take over the reins. He introduced a level of professional back-up for players that hadn’t been seen before and through careful attention to detail he transformed the team from an organisational shambles in 1991 to a team that lost only 15–8 to England at Twickenham when chasing that Grand Slam. If Nigel Walker had been given a few more passes earlier on in that match, then who knows what might have happened. But the problems of Welsh rugby, the real structural and especially the administrative weaknesses, couldn’t be disguised by simply tightening up the national side’s defence. The foundations of the game were still unstable and one grisly night in Johannesburg the roof fell in when a poor Irish team beat Wales to knock us out of the 1995 World Cup, once again before the knockout stages had even begun. Alex Evans was at the helm, a caretaker who found that not enough care had been taken on innumerable areas of the sport.
Typically, Alex was slated for packing the Wales team with too many Cardiff players, the club he had enjoyed great success with. It’s become a knee-jerk reaction in Wales, even though it makes about as much sense as a car driver blaming engine problems on where his passengers are from.
Alex sounded off with a few home truths about the state of Welsh rugby, and was rewarded not with a full-time job offer but with the suggestion it was time he went home to Australia. He left in the winter of 1995, the tenth man to try the impossible job and the owner of the briefest record in it – just four games, which included only one victory. What has been striking about all the appointments is the complete lack of consistency and continuity. No coach was ever brought through the system. There hasn’t been a system – just a succession of stabs in the dark, and it’s been pretty dark for much of the time since the end of the 1970s. Two World Cups – 1991 and 1995 – were completely wasted because of this policy of chop and change and a pitiful lack of foresight. But at the start of 1996, the WRU promised that things would be different. For the first time they appointed a coach who had come through some kind of process by coaching Wales at U19, U21 and A-team level. Kevin Bowring, it was said by the Welsh Rugby Union, would take Wales through to the 1999 World Cup. He was also the first paid, full-time Wales coach after the move to professionalism. However, given the deep-rooted problems in Welsh rugby, I didn’t think the money would save him. And I was right.
The catastrophic 51–0 defeat to France at Wembley in 1998 didn’t turn Kevin Bowring grey. He was lucky on that front because he was completely grey when he came in. But the look on his face that Sunday night in London was the familiar expression of a man who knew his time was up. If the Welsh players hadn’t forced him to that conclusion with the abject nature of their pitiful performance then the supporters must have convinced him through the silence that lasted the entire second half. It only pointed in one direction for Kevin and if he hadn’t fallen on his sword a few days later then someone on the Welsh Rugby Union would have knifed him, if only to put him out of his misery.
It was all far removed from the optimism that had developed during the early stages of Kevin’s reign. He wasn’t pulling up trees in terms of results, but there was progress and more importantly his teams began to play with a style and verve that enabled every supporter to feel proud of the side again. Young players – like Leigh Davies, Arwel Thomas and Rob Howley – were given their opportunity and responded by playing with great flair and imagination. The future looked bright and even a defeat at Twickenham to England in 1996 was well received because Wales showed style and adventure before going down by just one score, 21–15. There was a three-year build-up period to the 1999 World Cup and after shamefully wasting the opportunities of the previous two tournaments there seemed a genuine determination to make this one count.
I liked Kevin Bowring. He was enthusiastic and energetic and had plenty of bright ideas on how rugby should be played and how rugby players should be developed. He had come from a background with London Welsh, so the usual accusation of bias towards one Welsh club or another wouldn’t fit. The critics would have to dig a little deeper to find their dirt. I had played against Kevin and remembered him as a good, solid back-row forward who might have won caps for Wales in other eras when the competition wasn’t so strong. I knew he could do well in the job and for a while that’s exactly what he did do.
The sad thing for Kevin is that he knew that his own ability, and that of his players, was not going to be enough. He could see there needed to be change in both the running of the game and the attitude of the newly professional players – fewer easy matches, greater time spent on physical training and conditioning, a back-up of staff on the management – but the WRU turned a deaf ear. It must be very galling for Kevin to know that many of the things he asked for were given to his successor Graham Henry on a plate. Or perhaps it isn’t, because Kevin now works for English rugby and the RFU.
Judged purely on results, the Bowring era was nothing special. In three Five Nations championships he won four matches out of 12. But Wales beat France 16–15 in 1996 and lost narrowly 27–22 in an exciting match in Paris the following season when the French won the Grand Slam. It seemed we weren’t that far behind. He freshened up the team, and youngsters were given their opportunity. Wales were easy on the eye, even if the win-loss column still didn’t make such easy reading.
Things started to go wrong sometime during 1997. Wales finished the Five Nations by losing 34–13 at home to England in the last match at the old Arms Park before they tore the old stadium down. The scoreline wasn’t a demolition, but it was very one-sided and Wales seemed to lack confidence against a side much stronger physically and quicker, with the honourable exception of Rob Howley. In the autumn, Wales had to play New Zealand at Wembley. Bowring had become very taken with the southern hemisphere approach to the game and wanted Wales to try to play a similar ball-in-hand game to the Australians, having taken Wales on tour the year before and suffered two big defeats to the Wallabies. The trouble was that Wales didn’t really have the players to adopt those kinds of tactics. It wasn’t Bowring’s fault. The Welsh club game at this time was slow and ponderous. Players would trundle from one set piece to another and then the referee would blow at the first breakdown in open play. It was all too static compared to the Aussies and the All Blacks.
Rather naively, however, Bowring believed that Wales could take the All Blacks on at their own game at Wembley and run them off the park. It backfired. Instead of running in the tries, the only thing that flowed was Welsh mistakes whenever we tried to counter-attack. Ironically, New Zealand showed the way with a much more pragmatic approach. They ran it when it was on, but Andrew Mehrtens kicked for position on the rare occasions his side were under pressure. The result was a comprehensive New Zealand victory by 42–7.
Things started to slip after that defeat. It’s often the way and it’s up to a coach to try and switch track, to offer something different in approach. Bowring wasn’t able to, or maybe he simply didn’t have the resources. Wales were slaughtered at Twickenham, 60–26, and it was obvious that the players had lost faith in what they were meant to be doing. Wales were okay as an attacking force, but defensively we were flimsy. The breeze, itself, could have blown us away. The Wembley defeat to the French was the last straw and Bowring decided it was time to go. Another decent man had bitten the dust.
Kevin was a capable man, though, and should have been retained somewhere along the line within Welsh rugby. For instance, he could have gone back to looking after one of the age-group sides, where he had proved very successful. Instead, he was thrown on the scrap heap, leaving it to England to rehabilitate him as a coach. He’s firmly in the English system, helping to advise and guide other coaches, and he’s obviously highly regarded by Clive Woodward. That’s a credit to Woodward and England, and an embarrassing loss to our own game. It’s yet another example of waste by Welsh rugby, which can ill afford such flagrant inefficiency. Wales were to pay a heavy price – literally – because the next national coach would cost £250,000 a year, about