WELSH “NAPOLEON” READY FOR N.Z.

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31989, 16 May 1969, Page 13

WELSH “NAPOLEON” READY FOR N.Z.

(N .ZP. A.-Reuter—Copyright)

UPPER CWMTWRCH (Wales).

“Napoleon” is packing his bags, with months of planning completed in his mission to beat the All Blacks in New Zealand.

“Napoleon” is Clive Rowlands, coach of the Welsh Rugby team, which will leave London on Wednesday for its first tour of New Zealand, Australia and Fiji. Rowlands—“l don’t know why people call me Napoleon; maybe it's the haircut”—is the deep-thinking, quicktalking inspiration behind Wales’s success this year in winning the international championship (Wales, Britain, Scotland, Ireland and France). In addition, it won the “triple crown,” a mythical award carrying much prestige, which is the feat of one home country beating the other three in the same season. Rowlands, a former Wales captain and scrum-half, attributes the success to the squad system which Wales introduced at the start of the year/ A pool of nearly 30 players was chosen for regular training, and the test side was selected from those 30. Rowlands gained 14 Welsh caps consecutively, all as captain, between 1963 and 1965. He was carried off on a stretcher in the closing minutes of Wales’s 6-0 defeat by the All Blacks at Cardiff in December, 1963. He was injured early on the Welsh schools’ team’s tour of South Africa in 1956, and was back in that country in May, 1964, as captain of the Welsh senior team which lost the series to South Africa. Argentinian Lesson Rowlands gave up playing in April, 1968, was Wales’s team coach in the Argentine last September, and, as he says, “I’ve changed my thinking a lot, most of it concerning forward play. “In the Argentine we didn’t have much good ball. My thoughts were, if you can’t beat the Argentinians without good ball, what hope

have we against New Zealand?

“The Argentinians showed us the value of good scrummaging—something we have tended to neglect—and this is where I have concentrated. “We have done more scrummaging practice this year than in the whole of the time I played for Wales. The forwards have been kept working at it until their shoulders are sore.

“Everyone pushes—hooker, flank forwards, the lot. This is where the real work is being done."

Rowlands says that until this year he had not thought it that much important. “But we saw what can happen when South Africa played France earlier in the season. They had the better scrummagers and just wore down the Frenchmen in the end.” ACCENT ON ATTACK

Before Wales’s first match of the year, against Scotland in February, Rowlands said: “We are going to play positive Rugby with the accent on attack.”

The same applies for New Zealand—he has forwards he believes can do the initial job and the strongest running backs in Britain.

The touch-kicking dispensation, in which no direct kicking to touch is allowed outside the 25-yard line is of great significance in Rowland’s planning. If it can win a half share of the ball. Wales believes it may surprise New Zealand in the light of this law. It has opened up the game. Forwards have to run, and the mauls are not protracted. This certainly suits Rowlands’s men, who have all proved good runners and handlers and have been brought to peak fitness in their squad training.