Wales, the All Blacks and Howard Kendall - a whole new bawl game

MY beloved Wales may be out of the Rugby World Cup, but I reckon we won almost as many new friends as did the nippy little dazzlers from Japan.

Warren Gatland’s injury-ravaged squad were on a hiding to nothing after losing key backs Lee Halfpenny and Rhys Webb in their final warm-up game against Italy. By the time they faced South Africa in Saturday’s quarter-final, they had been reduced to taking the field with two fourth-choice backs in centre Tyler Morgan and fullback Gareth Anscombe. Not to mention a brilliant fly-half in Dan Biggar whose goalkicking preparations include a passable impression of the symptoms which led to my being diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.

A hwyl new bawl game: Michael Caine in Zulu

That we beat England at Twickenham and ran Australia and the Springboks so close is testimony to the never-say-Dai spirit known in Wales as ‘hwyl’. If you don’t know what hwyl is, try nipping over to South Africa and asking a few descendants of the Zulu warriors who overran our (Rorke’s) Drift defence. Not that we managed to beat the South Africans in 1879, either. Must be down to having Englishman Michael Caine as our commanding officer - but not a lot of people know that.

For all Wales’s courage, at least we went out of the 2015 Rugby World Cup with our honour intact. That is more than can be said for the French, who found themselves suffocated by a black New Zealand cloud in Saturday’s second quarter-final. The 62-13 scoreline suggests that South Africa will also be blown away next weekend and that Richie McCaw’s champions will become the first nation ever to win two World Cups in succession.

Football has had its great international teams like Brazil and Germany, cricket had the era of West Indian invincibility and, more recently Australian dominance. But only in rugby union has a single nation dominated the world game throughout my lifetime. A tiny nation with a similar three-million population to Wales, not to mention around 80 million sheep.

Howard Kendall during his Blackburn Rovers days

HOWARD KENDALL achieved a lot in football. In fact, he was a legend. At 17, he became the youngest ever FA Cup finalist, later captained Everton to the Football league title in 1970, and for good measure went on to become the Toffees’ most successful manager ever. He also liked a drink, which became more and more apparent in his increasingly flushed visage at Goodison Park press conferences as the years rolled by.

I don't think he'd had a tipple the day he laid into me at Ewood Park. But I have never forgotten the rudeness of the Blackburn Rovers player-manager at that impromptu after-match press conference in the early 1980s. It was during the early days of hand-held tape recorders and this particular inquest was held in a corridor near the changing rooms with perhaps a dozen reporters milling around.

I was armed with notebook, pen and an untested tape machine. Fearing that the new gadget might not work, I quickly pressed the record button, placed my notebook on top of it, and stood jotting down Howard’s words with my other hand. I made no attempt to hide the machine, which Kendall spotted immediately.

“If you’re going to use one of those things, at least have the decency not to try to hide it,’’ he rapped, clearly irritated and pointing to my notebook sandwich. It would have been bad enough had the innuendo been correct. But this was positively embarrassing.

I’ve spent the last 30 years wanting to put the record straight so if you are listening up there in God’s-Own Park, Howard, now that you know the truth, I accept your apology. However, it’s too late for you to climb up there alongside turnip head Graham Taylor and West Ham’s genial John Lyall as the most polite and approachable managers I came across during two decades of covering League football for the British tabloids. There were also bosses and players some of my colleagues preferred to avoid. Keep reading this blog and I may just tell you about them....

As for Howard Kendall, he and I did have one thing in common. My other half and I called our two daughters Hayley and Lisa – and so did Howard and his wife.

Is Sir a sport? The truth about Paul McCartney and Tom Jones

Can you imagine a young Paul McCartney beetling around the country following his favourite football team? I certainly can't.

That’s not to say that sport and music don’t mix – just that Mac the Knight seems about as steeped in the beautiful game as old codgers like myself are besotted with rap music.

Yet various websites would have it that Sir Paul is a keen Everton fan.

The reality, however, is not exactly engraved in blue-and-white stone. ‘‘Here's the deal,’’ the great man explains. ‘’My father was born in Everton, my family are officially Evertonians, so if it comes down to a derby match or an FA Cup final between the two, I would have to support Everton.

"But after a concert at Wembley Arena I got into a bit of a friendship with Kenny Dalglish, who had been to the gig, and I thought 'You know what? I am just going to support them both because it's all Liverpool and I don't have that Catholic-Protestant thing.'

"So I did have to get special dispensation from the Pope to do this but that's it, too bad. I support them both.
"They are both great teams. But if it comes to the crunch, I'm Evertonian."

Personally, I would have thought that master musicians of McCartney’s talent would be too driven by their first love to be sidetracked by such trivialities as football. And it’s clear from his comments that Paul is a bit of a sporting fence-sitter, anyway.

At least his explanation sounds marginally more sincere than fellow Beatle Ringo Starr’s assertion that he’s a Liverpool supporter because ''I like the colour red”, which  presumably he also bangs the drum for every red-shirted team from Arsenal to Aberdeen. Well, I love the colour purple but that doesn’t mean I support the team they call the Royals – be it the monarchy or Reading FC.

Great Scott! Tom Jones as I remember him in Pontypridd

The only celebrity I actually KNEW before he was famous is another shining knight, Tom Jones (yes, I am that old!). I gave him his first-ever write-ups in the Pontypridd Observer a couple of years before he hit the big-time – in the days where he sang around the South Wales clubs under his stage name of  Tommy Scott.

Whilst Tom may have been built like a sportsman, I can assure you he never showed the slightest interest in football, rugby or any other sport. And believe me he definitely was neither gay nor a wimp.

Cardiff City, the nearest professional football club to Pontypridd, were in the old First Division - the equivalent of the Premier League. But although I was a keen Bluebirds fan myself, the only birds Tom was interested in were certainly not blue. Nor had he any time for Spurs, Manchester United Spurs or any of the other big-name teams of that era.

The sporting fraternity sometimes wheels the great man out onto the green, green grass of home to sing at the occasional Wales rugby international and what have you. But while the old Jones heart may still beat for his homeland, I doubt that Sir Tom's head really cares about match results, whatever the shape of the ball.

Having said that, many celebrities are completely smitten by sport - and particularly football. Some to the point that their names are synonymous with their favourites - for example the oasis of Gallaghers at Manchester City and Mick Hucknell’s simply-red love affair with Manchester United.

Others, I am convinced, just attach themselves to the mast of the big-name clubs for effect. Teams like Manchester United and Arsenal, for example, have such large fan bases that showing token support for them might just persuade a few extra fans to buy their CDs and albums.

Conversely, when I was young (and there aren’t many people alive who remember that!), major pop stars  were rarely linked with sports teams. Presumably with professional footballers no better off financially than miners or postmen, there was no glamour spin-off for the marketing people.

Indeed, I can’t remember Elvis Presley, the biggest name in music during that era, having any particular sporting allegiance. And the only British top-tenner I recall with strong football ties was Gerry Marsden of Gerry and the Pacemakers fame.

Until he came on the scene, if you weren’t a fan of Hollywood musicals, the song You’ll Never Walk Alone would have meant nothing to you.to the vast majority of people.

Now Marsden’s name is likely to live as long in the Anfield memory as those of Bill Shankly and Dalglish.

And thereby hangs a tale – because some sources insist that until Liverpool fans adopted his 1963 smash hit as their club anthem, Gerry was in fact an Evertonian.

Perhaps it’s time he had a chat with Macca and Ringo.