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Kevin Bowring: Childhood memories of learning by playing, supporting and playing for Neath

I was born and brought up in a terraced house in Pen-y Dre, Neath in South Wales and my early memories are of playing games outside in the street. In those days it was safe to play out in the street which we did for hours on end.

In the summer we would play cricket, with the edge of the pavement as the batting crease and three wickets chalked on the garden wall. In the winter we would play touch rugby in the local park that was just behind the chapel in our street which I attended almost every Sunday until I was sixteen!

We organised our own games of touch rugby, chose equal teams and refereed the games ourselves. This is where we learnt new skills because we had to avoid the roundabout, swings and slide as well as avoiding each other! This is where we learnt to take responsibility, make up our own rules, referee them ourselves with fairness. That was until an older boy, from Rosser Street, joined our games in the park and started to act as the referee as well. His name was Clive Norling. He went on to become and international and world cup referee.

Neath YMCA was at the end of our road and we did gymnastics, judo, played table tennis, basketball and football there. We weren’t very good at football and preferred rugby because the Gnoll Rugby Ground, where Neath RFC played, was in the street parallel to us. It was a great learning environment to grow up in.

As a youngster I was a fanatical supporter of Neath Rugby Club. They are now incorporated into Ospreys Rugby. When we made up our own games of touch rugby in the park we were always playing for Neath or Wales. Of course, Neath always won and Wales always beat England!

When I was growing up my hero was Dai Morris. He played No 8 for Neath Rugby and No 6 for Wales. Dai was a minor from Rhigos in the Neath Valley. He was hard as nails, hewn out of Welsh anthracite! On the pitch he was like perpetual motion, always in the right place at the right time. His nickname was ‘The Shadow’ because every time Gareth Edwards scored at try for Wales, who was there with him, in constant support, Dai Morris, the Shadow. He played in the back-row for Wales with John Taylor and the great Mervyn Davies in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was a terrific role model for me.

My first game for Neath in the early 1970s was when I was a student on holiday from Borough Road College, where I was training to be a PE teacher. I was selected at No8 and so, in my mind at least, I would be wearing Dai Morris’s jersey which was a wonderful feeling. In my second game for Neath, I was selected at No6. I wasn’t good enough to play at No8 so they brought back Dai Morris from retirement to play No8. I played alongside him and it was an even more wonderful feeling and experience!

Dai Morris was a great positive role model for me and I learnt important lessons in life as well as in rugby from him. He will not know it but he taught me the importance of providing constant support, reliability, selflessness and humility.

Memory added on July 4, 2021

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