A way along the Great Western mainline, a way up the Swansea Valley, a way off Heol Gleien Road, is Cwmtwrch RFC, where Jac Morgan first learned his rugby. They have turned out a handful of Wales internationals in the 135 years since they were founded, but Morgan is their first British & Irish Lion.
He is also the one and only Welshman left on the tour and when he comes on to the field, 54 minutes into Saturday’s second Test at the MCG, the atmosphere quickens inside the clubhouse. There is a swell of quiet pride and a little anxiety, too, as he latches on to the pack for his first scrum.
Rowlands lived his life here. His son, daughter and wife still do. His grandson used to play in the junior team with Morgan. Rowlands’s own boy, Dewi, is here watching, on a stool at the back of the barroom. His dad managed the Lions team that beat Australia in 1989; Dewi, who was 22, went along with him.
“That was a proper amateur tour,” he says. “The guys were making their own T-shirts to sell to raise money for the beer kitty.” Not Dewi, he pinched his from the old man’s hotel minibar. There are a lot of good stories about his dad. I ask him which of them are true.
“All of them,” he says. His favourite is the time Princess Anne asked Clive which part of Wales he came from. “A little place called Cwmtwrch.” She replied, without missing a beat: “Upper or Lower?”
The village was split in two by the old railway line. “I always like to say we’re the first regional team,” says Addey. “The Lions meant everything to Dad,” Dewi says, before pausing for a moment. “Well, not as much as Wales. But everything else.”
Ian McGeechan will tell you it was Rowlands who taught him how to run a Lions tour. “He’d have the beers poured for us, ready and waiting at the end of the day.”
Morse is on the books at the Ospreys, where he plays alongside Morgan. He has played 24 games for the national age grades and will break into the senior team any day. Like Morgan, he grew up here at Cwmtwrch and still comes back to carry the water bottles for the first team when he is not playing the region.
“My favourite memories of this place are all of the feeling of winning games with my mates,” he said. “We’d all be in school talking about the game on the Monday morning, which made the week a hell of a lot more enjoyable.”
A lot of the lads are decked out in Morse’s spare Ospreys kit. When the club switched ball manufacturers, he snaffled a bunch of the old ones to bring here, only to get a call, a few days later, from someone at the club saying that they all had tracking devices in and could he please bring them back.
These are hard times in Welsh rugby. Morse has a year to run on his contract, but given the WRU’s recent proposal to cut the number of regions, cannot be sure if he will have a team to play for this time next year. But wherever he ends up, he will always have a club.
It is the 80th minute and in the clubhouse they are waiting for the final whistle. The referee is just checking to see whether Morgan has committed a foul by going in for a clear-out in the run-up to the match-winning try and everyone is shouting at the ref through the TV. His voice comes back over the loudspeakers.
“No foul.” The camera closes in on Morgan, who flashes a big thumbs up, and the place erupts. “Fucking brilliant.”
