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Geraint John’s incredible international rugby journey lands him in Canada
Former Pembrokeshire rugby star Geraint John is currently enjoying life as an high performance director with the Canadian Rugby Union.
John was educated at Prendergast Infants, Primary and Haverfordwest County Secondary Modern schools, the latter now known as Sir Thomas Picton.
The former Cardiff and Blues' assistant coach is busy taking on one of the biggest challenges of his life, trying to turn Canada into a major force in the world game.
Pembrokeshiresport.co.uk has taken a brief look at how Geraint’s past has driven him on as one of the most highly respected coaches in the modern professional era.
Tennis was his first love
Rugby definitely wasn’t his first love, in fact it was tennis, and it has to be said that he was one of the most naturally gifted sportsmen ever to come out of Pembrokeshire.
No matter what sport he played he always wanted to finish top. Yes, Geraint John was a sportsman with a winning mentality.
In his primary school days Geraint played goalkeeper for Clarbeston Road Juniors for many seasons. As a teenager his tennis skills came to the fore, and he was ranked one of the best juniors in Wales. The left-hander won county junior and senior titles. He also excelled at athletics where he won county titles at field and track, broke numerous county records at high-jump and showed tremendous promise as a 100, 200 and 400 metre runner, and competed many times for Cleddau Athletic Club, now known as Pembrokeshire Harriers.
Winning first Wales’ Schoolboy Cap
But whilst studying A-levels at STP his dream of playing rugby for Wales schoolboys was finally realised. Geraint was selected at outside half and was ecstatic to win his first under 19 Cap playing against Ireland at Thomond Park, Limerick on 29th March 1980.
This was just the beginning of life-long love affair and incredible journey with the game he truly loved.
Geraint blossomed as a player after gaining international experience. His next step took him to university in Cardiff, where he qualified as a PE teacher and played in an extremely useful South Glamorgan Institute XV.
Arms Park days
Geraint played a few times for Llanelli, but it was with Cardiff RFC that he decided to pledge his future to in those long gone amateur days. He regularly turned out for the Arms Park outfit for nigh on a decade, playing in many high-profile matches for the city slickers.
He regularly rubbed shoulders at Cardiff with class international players such as Terry Holmes, Gareth Davies, Robert Norster, Mark Ring, Adrian Hadley and the likes. Geraint played many times at fly half for Wales B, but the biggest mystery was the fact that he never won a full cap. Geraint made the full Welsh squad, but the closest he came to winning a cap was sadly sitting on the replacements bench. There were some class fly halves in his era and he had to compete for an international spot with the likes of Gary Pearce, Malcolm Dacey, Bleddyn Bowen and of course legend Jonathan Davies.
Proud wearing county colours
Geraint played at every level at school and senior for Pembrokeshire, but surely his proudest rugby highlights came when wearing county colours. Geraint played in two Welsh Counties Cup winning teams, and was instrumental when Pembrokeshire stepped-up to the plate to beat international teams Japan in 1983 at Haverfordwest, and few years later they defeated the USA Eagles at Whitland.
From teaching to coaching rugby
After his playing days were over Geraint used his practical teaching skills to land him many coaching jobs in the professional era. He had stints coaching the full Welsh squad, Wales A, also a backs coach with the Cardiff Blues and assistant to Dai Young at the Blues.
After leaving Cardiff Geraint had a brief spell at Gloucester where he was the director of rugby for Hartpury College, before Canada came knocking on his door a few years ago and persuaded him to move lock stock and barrel with his family to Vancouver Island.
Trees, water and mountains
For all the obvious benefits of an idyllic sounding existence, in which his wife Debbie teaches at the private Shawnigan Lakes School, where the family – 13-year-old daughter Lauren is happy and settled there too – have a house in the grounds of the school, surely Geraint must feel a bit remote from the rest of the rugby world?
“Like my daughter says, all that’s there is trees, water and mountains,” he told Pembrokeshiresport.co.uk.
“But seriously we love it there and we are very settled. It’s a good place to live and there’s a lot of work to get through. All our coaching staff and a lot of players live on the Island which is handy too.”
Geraint knows that things have to change if Canada realistically are going to compete with the top teams. There needs to be more intensity of games and Canada is striving to turn the game professional. At the moment it is still amateur with teams training just twice a week.
Canada is a huge country and Geraint is determined to improve the standard of games by creating centre of excellence where young players can get a real insight of what the high demands of international competition is all about.
The International Board needs to play their part. There needs to be a regular tournament just like the Six Nations or Tri Nations, where Canada can gage the level they need to be and to form a winning mentality.
“Canada folk don’t like change, but they have to because if we don’t we will get left further behind,” said Geraint.
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