“The job of Welsh coach is like a minor part in a Quentin Tarantino film: you stagger on, you hallucinate, nobody seems to understand a word you say, you throw up, you get shot. Poor old Kevin Bowring has come through the coaching structure so he knows what it takes… 15 more players than Wales have at present.”
So wrote the journalist Mark Reason as Wales struggled to make headway under Bowring during the mid-1990s. A lot of Wales coaches will understand the sentiment behind the words.
Bowring had succeeded Alan Davies as Wales head coach. It’s not known if Davies had Kipling drummed into him as a schoolboy, but the former Wales coach prided himself on dealing with success and failure in much the same way.
So it was that he didn’t despair the morning after Wales lost to Canada in 1993, even though countless of his fellow countrymen did. Nor did he turn cartwheels in the street after the Scott Quinnell-inspired victory over France three months later, even though countless others probably did.
“The difference between me on the Monday morning after France and me on the Monday morning after Canada wasn't phenomenal,” he once said. What a trait it is, to be able to treat triumph and adversity as just the same.
Yet even Davies had that ability tested. In 1994 Wales won the Five Nations title; a year later, beset by injuries, they were whitewashed and the head coach had jumped before he was pushed, taking his management team of Bob Norster and Gareth Davies with him.
"As far as coaching a rugby team again is concerned, or a club, I very much doubt I will put myself or my family through that agony again," Davies said after he departed. His exit happened 27 years ago this week. It was a time when Wales coaches came and went like taxis. From February 1990 to July 1998, seven men oversaw the men's national team at different points.
Davies was the third of those, and the only one to win silverware. He might have expected the success of '94 to have secured him some credit with the Welsh Rugby Union. If it did, it quickly ran out. Two months before the 1995 World Cup, the man from Ynysybwl, who had lived in England since the age of 10, succumbed to the intense pressure he had been under and left the scene.
Four years’ work spent building towards the competition in South Africa were thus wasted. It was a shambles by any standard.
Through it all, Davies kept his dignity, even if he didn’t keep his job.
The outsider who wore bow ties
It’s fair to say there has never been another Wales coach like him. “Alan was different,” writes Phil Bennett in his autobiography. “He was a bit eccentric although I have to say I didn’t really take to his bow ties and braces. Neither did most of Wales.
“He had a plummy English accent and the red bow ties made him look even more of an outsider. But he was a very sound coach and he should always be acknowledged for applying a brake to halt the speed at which Wales were careering downhill.”
'Different’ nicely sums up Davies. He was also articulate and softly spoken; he encouraged players to share in tactics and strategy; he believed in sports science at a time when much of Welsh rugby appeared in denial about such a field, with many perhaps preferring the replenishing qualities of Stella Artois, perhaps, to a protein shake.
Davies engaged with the press — he would field calls at home late into the evening — while management concepts were brought into the national set-up, with players given responsibilities. Total Quality Management, Davies called that.
Rupert Moon once revealed the coach read books like Jim Collins’ Good to Great.
Attention to detail
Sir Clive Woodward once declared: “I try to improve 100 things by one percent rather than one thing by 100 percent."
Nice one. But here’s the breaking news: long before Woodward ever dreamed of doing so, Davies was looking for those all-important marginal gains which can make a huge difference when added up.
Rewind to the Wales v France match in 1994, when the hosts wore green socks and Quinnell scored his glorious down-the-touchline try. Davies had made the call to change the colour of the socks after an observation made during the home game with France two years earlier.
“I saw that Robert Jones was having trouble getting the ball away,” he later said. “I noticed on the video that the French were tangling up the ball with their legs, and there was no way we would know whose legs they were because the socks were almost exactly the same colour.
“So we changed them. And it's a good job we did, because the touch judge put the flag up when Scott Quinnell scored his try, and the reason he put it up was that there was a red sock over the touchline." The flag is said to have come down only when the linesman realised his mistake.
There was also man-management that a psychotherapist would have signed off. “Alan was excellent at making people feel good about themselves,” said ex-Wales skipper Gareth Llewellyn, who played under Davies. Read more with Llewellyn and Welsh rugby's most controversial allegation here.
“I remember when we played Ireland in 1992, he gave Stuart Davies his first cap. During the build-up, he turned to Stuart and said: ‘Make sure you go out and enjoy yourself on Saturday. Don’t worry: I’m not going to drop you. You’ll play in the next game, as well.’ Imagine the lift that gives to a player.”
New-age coaching
Scott Johnson? Steve Hansen? Andrew Hore? Fair enough, but Davies got there before those three in the new-age coaching lark.
Welsh rugby generally had been in a state when he took the reins. “We’d lost a lot of our best players to rugby league, we started leagues late and so were playing catch-up, and we didn’t play leading countries often enough,” Llewellyn said.
“After I won my first cap in 1989, against New Zealand, we didn’t face the All Blacks again until 1995. We spent a lot of time going to places like Canada, the South Seas and Zimbabwe on tours which were fantastic life experiences but a complete waste of time for rugby development. But under Alan we made headway. He brought professionalism to the environment. There were video reviews, psychometric tests, diets and analysis.”
Wales even watched videos of referees. New-age coaching had finally arrived in this part of the world.
Players were encouraged to think and their views were valued. “It was a two-way street with Alan,” says Tony Clement, another member of the Wales set-up at the time. “There are too many coaches who think their way is the only way. Alan was different. He’d respect players’ views and be interested in them. He tried to mould a system around us rather than just impose a system. In that respect, he reminded me very much of Ian McGeechan.
“He came in fresh and appointed a brilliant team manager in Bob Norster, while Gareth Jenkins was an excellent forwards coach. Mark Davies was there as medical support, and there were important add-ons like Peter Herbert as fitness coach. It just made for a really professional set-up.”
Cut to a Wales training session at Waterton Cross in Bridgend in 1989 ( see how the ground looks now ), with a rainbow of colours out on the pitch. “When I first started with Wales you turned up for training in whatever you fancied turning up in,” says Llewellyn. “Under Alan we started having training tops, so that everyone looked the same. A small thing, but it mattered. It was all part of sharpening us up, making us more professional, I guess.
“Rugby globally was accelerating and changing massively. Alan was a bright enough guy to understand what was happening and try to keep up with it. I’d previously had ex-forwards coaching me at club and national level, and they had their strong points and I respected them a lot, and still do. But here was this bloke who was softly spoken, smiled a lot and was good with words. It was just a bit different.
“At Neath, where I was playing at the time, it was all about fire and brimstone. It suited us and there were some brilliant performances. But Alan had another way of doing things and he did make an impression on a lot of the boys. I liked him as a bloke and as a coach. He was probably the first of the new generation of coaches to lead Wales.”
Not enough…
It wasn’t enough for the WRU. Injuries had a ruinous effect on Davies’ final season, with the coach at one point having to operate without seven of the previous campaign’s title-winning side.
There were also behind-the-scenes rows over selection, with Davies said to be unhappy at supposed limitations on him to pick his own team. Maybe it wasn’t a coach Wales needed at the time as much as a miracle worker. Sadly for the WRU at the time, such individuals could not be acquired on demand.
Name game
Warren Gatland was that rarity as a Wales coach who finished on his own terms and with plaudits as he departed the scene. Back in the 1990s, the WRU didn’t make a habit of naming gates after anyone.
And, make no mistake amid calls for Wales to rip it up and start again at national level now, the disaster of the 1995 World Cup is a warning from history about the perils of changing coaches in the run-up to a global tournament. It doesn’t always work.
Davies had been wary about taking the job in the first place, saying after Wales had been prematurely knocked out of the global bash in 1991: “I have not the ability nor strength of character to bear the whole burden of the Welsh nation as a panacea for all ills.”
But he couldn’t resist the challenge. Coaches rarely can. “Deep down he probably knew he was on a hiding to nothing, but coaching at international level must have an appeal that temporarily blinds people to the blindingly obvious,” concludes Phil Bennett.
The WRU had spoken about the same mistakes being evident in matches before Davies left. Observers would have detected repeat errors on their part, too, with Bennett referring to the union’s “own methods of madness”.
Today, too few remember what he did. But 18 wins from 35 matches wasn’t a bad return from where Wales had come from. At the time, however, Davies was doing the impossible job. It was never going to have a happy ending.
