Cliff Morgan

There was no one like Cliff Morgan playing at outside half. I first saw him when he played for the Welsh schoolboys team. I had heard something about him, how fast he was off the mark, how he could jink his way through gaps "that weren't there" but none of this talk prepared me for the real thing. At first he just passed the ball to his centres, not showing any style or brilliance, a mere pivot. Then suddenly he was off, breaking away from his team, cutting his way through the opposition. This he did many times. In short he was virtually unstoppable.
But the big games were ahead of him: playing for Cardiff after Billy Cleaver who was very popular (in East Wales that is, not so in the West where they always complained about there being too many players from Cardiff in the Welsh team) and one wondered if he would cope - he wasn't very big, stocky yes but meat for wing forwards maybe? Not at all. He was brilliant. Only once can I recall him having as poor match; that was against a strong South African team with wing forwards the size of trucks and fast with it. One was a man called Van Wyck who gave Morgan a torrid time, hitting him hard every time he received the ball. While he survived the crunching tackles -he was a stocky ball of muscle who could have survived a house falling on him - he changed his game to a kicking game and, in his own words, lost the match. He had his revenge in South Africa playing for the Lions when he left Van Wyck standing a few times, one to score himself.
He worked on the next bench to me when we did Intermediate Chemistry. He was always surrounded by lecturers and other fans and I don't recall exchanging any conversation with him. Outside lectures one day I had to pleasure of meeting him, introduced by a mutual friend, and he was a joy to know, talking without ceasing, his languagfe not without the odd - ok, the many - expletives.
The BBC smoothed his rough edges later on and he became a great broadcaster.
When he played his first game for Wales against Ireland, Jackie Kyle, his opposite number, came up to him before the start, put an arm roung his shoulders and said: "Have a wonderful, wonderful game, Cliffie, my boy." Cliff said he never forgot that.
A close friend of his was another Irishman, Tony O'Reilly who, when paying a tribute to him on his death recently, said; "I have often been asked if he would have been any good in the modern game and the answer is yes, certainly, absolutely."