Tony Rees holds a unique double distinction when it comes to the Heineken Cup.
Not only was he the first Welshman to win the trophy, but he was also the first one to leave it behind in a Cardiff bar!
It was 25 years ago this month that the second row from Chepstow made European history by helping Brive beat Leicester in the final at the old National Ground.
Plenty of illustrious countrymen have followed in his footsteps by winning the Heineken Champions Cup - the likes of Ieuan Evans, Rob Howley, Gareth Thomas, Allan Bateman, Richard Webster, Gethin Jenkins and Liam Williams.
But Rees will always stand alone as the first.
How he achieved it is some story, as is the tale of what happened that night!
He was already into his thirties when he joined Brive, having had a wandering career which had taken in an array of Welsh clubs, including a Swalec Cup-winning spell with Cardiff, as well as Japan and Australia, which has been his home for most of the past three decades.
It was a move that stemmed from a phone call from his former Sydney University team-mate, Nick Farr-Jones, the man who led the Wallabies to World Cup glory in 1991.
Rees was playing in Tokyo at the time and about to head back to Australia.
But the call from Farr-Jones changed all that.
“He just rang me out of the blue,” he recalls.
“He was acting as a consultant to Brive and he said they were desperate to find a second row with a British passport.”
So, just a few days later, Rees and his wife Lynn found themselves heading for France.
From the outset, it was to prove some experience.
“As soon as I arrived, I flew from Paris down to Perpignan, where Brive were playing, in what they called the Bullring,” he said.
“I was watching this match and, at the end of it, there was a mass fight.
“Their hooker came off bleeding and as he was walking down the sideline, he was gesticulating to the crowd and they were giving him a standing ovation.
“I am thinking ‘This is going to be an interesting season’.
“There was a four-hour bus journey back to Brive after the game and it was pretty clear they were switched on and wanting to do well.”
Soon, it was Rees’ turn to wear the famous black and white club colours.
“My first game was against Bordeaux, live on TV,” he recalls.
“I sent one through on their hooker because he booted our hooker.
“The guy got me back about the 65th minute with a head-butt into the kidneys and then I reciprocated and walked off.
“The crowd gave me a bit of a clap and the president gave me a double kiss on the cheek in front of them.
“It was like ‘Ok my son, you are going to survive’.
“I remember thinking ‘I’m going to be all right here’.
“I couldn’t see Peter Thomas waiting on the sidelines at Cardiff to give you a double kiss!"
Looking back, he admits his new world did take some getting used to initially.
“If you ask Lynn, my wife, for three months I would come home from training and go straight to bed to sleep,” he says.
“I would get up and go back training again.
“But the training was like it should be.
“It was really innovative. We were doing such different stuff that I had never come across before.
“We always trained as forwards and backs separately. We didn’t see each other until the team run on a Friday.
“You did your unit skills, you would come back as a group and put it together and bang there’s the recipe.
“It was so unique.
“We hardly did any very tough contact, we just did quality work and that’s testament to Laurent Seigne.
“He was the most progressive thinking coach in the professional era that you could have ever wished to be involved with.
“He had these amazing athletics coaches at the club, osteopaths, physios. There was medical testing for everyone.
“Seigne was brilliant, but he was a strange character, he was just odd. Because I couldn’t speak his language, he was even stranger, but I had a high regard for him.
“Coming from Japan, fairly sterile rugby, to this was truly exciting and challenging.
“It was a tough environment and if you weren’t good enough you were gone.
“But I survived, which was the main thing.”
In fact, Rees did much more than survive.
His abrasive style fitted in well and he played his part as Brive progressed smoothly through their Heineken Cup group campaign in the autumn of 1996, winning all four games against Harlequins, Neath, Ulster and Caledonia to top the pool.
Then came the quarter-finals and a 35-14 thumping of Llanelli, with his performance seeing him called up to play for Wales A against South Africa A.
His former club Cardiff were despatched 26-13 at a snow-covered Parc Municipal in the semis and then, in January 1997, came the final against Leicester in the Welsh capital.
That saw the continuation of an eve-of-match ritual with a difference.
"We had a tradition of having a beer the night before in whatever city we visited, prior to playing," revealed Rees.
"We did it for all our away games in Europe that season.
"It was unique and such a huge part of our winning culture.
"It was great to see the looks on people's faces when we were in a pub on Queen Street having a few beers on the Friday evening.
"We were very fit mind you, so we could afford it."
Then it was back to the team hotel for the serious business.
“That night, Seigne brought all the forwards together and I was the last one to speak,” recalls Rees.
“Grant Ross, the Kiwi, translated what I said.
“I told them I had played in eight finals, in Wales and Australia, and never lost.
“This was my ninth and I didn’t intend to be part of a losing team now.
“I believed 100 per cent in myself and, more importantly, 100 per cent in my team-mates. I knew we had done the work.”
Then, match day dawned.
“We were on the way in from St Mellons golf club and the Leicester fans were banging on our bus,” he said.
“They were all there carrying their Tiger heads and knocking the side of the bus.
“I got up and said ‘We ain’t losing to these f***ers today’.
“We were already pretty focused and that moment crystallised the fact there was no way in the world we were losing to them.
“We all went dark on the bus at that moment and that was it. I just knew we were going to win.”
So it proved, with Brive coming out on top 28-9, as winger Sebastien Viars scored two of their four tries in front of a 41,664 crowd.
“There were a lot of Leicester supporters there,” recalls Rees.
“But our 5,000 fans, compared to their 30,000, were more vocal and passionate, as you would expect from watching us at Brive.”
Rees came on as a replacement lock during the final quarter to share in the victory and add to his previous trophy triumphs with South Glamorgan Institute, the University of Queensland and the 1994 Welsh Cup win with Cardiff.
Then came the celebrations.
“We were about to get on the bus, when I said let’s go into the Cardiff clubhouse,” he reveals.
“As soon as we brought the cup in, it got filled with beer and everybody had a drink out of it, which was brilliant.
“We had the best time in there. We were treated so well.”
The Brive squad then headed off for a formal dinner at the Copthorne Hotel at Culverhouse Cross, where they were staying that night.
But that was far from the end of the evening as they headed back into town after the meal - with the cup!
“We were walking down St Mary’s Street and there were all these people wanting photographs with the trophy. It was great,” he said.
“A lot of the boys went to Kiwis, but maybe eight or nine of us ended up in a bar across the road from the New Theatre.
“I remember Philippe Carbonneau was there and Didier Casadei, the prop. I ended up with all the bad boys!
“Anyway, we were politely asked to leave that bar, but we forget the cup.
“We leave the European Cup in the bar!
“We just didn’t remember it. It gets left on the bar.”
And so the tale continues.
“The night rolls on, we get separated and I’m walking up Queen Street with a couple of the guys and this police car pulls up alongside us,” he said.
“This is about 12, 1 o’clock in the morning.
“It turns out it’s this second row I know from South Wales Police.
“He goes ‘Tony, well done today, where you are going?’
“I said ‘We are looking for a taxi back to the Copthorne’.
“So he says ‘Get in’ and he took us back.
“Then, just as we are dropped off at the hotel, there’s a taxi driver getting out of his cab with the European Cup!
“Somebody at the bar had realised these bloody idiots had left the cup behind and maybe we should find out where they are staying and get it back to them.
“I have no idea to this day how they found out which hotel we were in.
“But they worked it out somehow.
“You can’t write this stuff. It’s just incredible.
“So there’s this cab driver with the cup.
“I said ‘I’ll take that mate, thanks very much'.
“I didn’t even tip him, I don’t think!
“We walk into the piano bar in the Copthorne and the boys are going nuts. I bring the cup in and they all lose it.
“We had a lot of fun that night!
“The last thing I remember is the boys playing football with the cup in the reception area. I thought that doesn’t look good and went to bed.
“The previous year, Toulouse had destroyed the original trophy. By the time they left the changing rooms in Cardiff, they had basically broken it apart.
“So Brive couldn’t be outdone.
“Next morning, I wake up and the baggage man is putting the cup into the very smart container and it’s dented, the lip is turned in, it’s just gone south.
“Honestly, it was destroyed.”
Next came the journey home and some unforgettable scenes.
“There were 5,000 people waiting for us at the airport in Brive,” said Rees.
“The boys walked down the steps of the plane with the cup and threw it into the crowd.
“We got on a low rider bus then and there would have been 30,000 people out on the streets in Brive to greet us. It was live on TV.
“That was seriously brilliant.
“On the Tuesday, we flew to Paris to meet Jacques Chirac, the French President. So we had to get the cup half fixed up. Eventually, we got it looking pretty good.”
So, 25 years on, just what was it like playing for Brive?
“Wonderful,” replies Rees.
“What an experience. It was just fabulous.
“To end up there was such a bizarre story and then to win the European Cup, it was just so unexpected at that stage in my career.
“It was unique. There was no rhyme or reason why it should happen, but it did.
“We did it differently and we did it with aplomb and the whole community went nuts in the way they responded.
“It just meant so much to them. I have never felt a community coming together like I did at Brive."
A second spell with Cardiff followed, taking his tally of appearances for the Blue & Blacks to 65, before Rees hung up his boots and returned to Australia where he forged a successful business career.
Having started out as a PE teacher, he then went into financial planning before running a land rehabilitation company, called Groundworks, for 17 years.
So what is it about Australia that appeals so much?
“For 50 weekends out of 52, you can plan to do something and it’s not screwed up by the weather,” replies Rees, a keen golfer who plays off a single figure handicap.
“It’s as simple as that, it’s lifestyle. I have been here for more than 30 years now all told and I don’t regret one minute of it.
“I am more aligned to an Australian way of thinking than a Welsh one.
“It’s been an interesting life, mate.”
Home is Brisbane where he is still in regular contact with his former Cardiff coach Alec Evans, the man who really kick-started his playing career.
Having turned out for Newbridge, Newport, Glamorgan Wanderers, Neath, Swansea and Bridgend back home in Wales, Rees was offered the chance to go out and play for Queensland University in 1988.
It was supposed to be for six months, but he loved it so much Down Under he stayed with them for four years.
Then, in 1992, he was approached by Evans who asked if he would join him in going to Cardiff.
That was to be the start of a two-year spell during which the fortunes of the Arms Park club were transformed.
“Alec just hated losing. That’s in his DNA,” said Rees.
“He’s very easy with people. He had this great gift of being able to bring them together.
“That came out of his teaching background at Brisbane Grammar School.
“But he also had a very hard edge because that’s the way he played his rugby.
“Apparently, you would never want to play against him in his playing days. He was the axe-murderer of Queensland rugby!
“Find the hardest person in Wales, that was Alec in Queensland.
“He was tough, really tough and had a reputation for it as well. I don’t think he’s ever come off that.
“If it wasn’t for Alec, that Cardiff team would never have progressed.
“In the first month I was there, he got rid of something like 30 players.
“It was pretty shocking at the time, but it was the right call. He had that edge."
Rees bowed out on a high, sharing in Cardiff’s 1994 Welsh Cup final victory over Llanelli.
“Remember now, it was the year after we lost to St Peters,” he says.
“From the s**thouse to the penthouse really.
“Llanelli had won the cup a load of times. We were pretty determined to win it.
“We took it off them and it was a huge day, amazing.”
Then, three years later, came another cup final triumph and another amazing day with Brive.
Rees wasn’t with the French club that long, but bonds have been forged which remain strong to this day.
“We had a reunion to mark the 20th anniversary, which I went to in Brive,” says the 56-year-old.
“It was just so good, really brilliant. Not one of them had changed at all. They are all still bad boys. We had such a good time.
“All of us keep in touch constantly. I am on a WhatsApp group with all the former players. My google translator helps me a lot. It’s great fun.
“That whole experience in ‘97 has just bonded us for the rest of our lives.”
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