Santa’s on his way to Welsh stardom

 
When Alan ‘Santa’ Reynolds first came to prominence as a power-house flanker with Whitland RFC we were so impressed by his commitment and power that in our ‘Sporting Snippets’ on January 31^st, 1986, we said,
 
“We predict that he will be a force to be reckoned with in rugby for many years to come – and he could go on to much higher things given the right breaks.”
 
We also explained why he was nicknamed ‘Santa’ – not because he was a generous person with a beard but because his family owned the ‘Santa Clara’ pub in St Clears.
 
For once one of our predictions over the years came right as he played 225 games for Swansea, ending up on the winning side in 159 of them and scoring 44 tries, plus three games for Wales.
 
He first caught the eye when he was a member of the Carmarthenshire Schools under 11s, which was coached by Whitland stalwart Trefor Evans, who told us that when they took a squad of about 30 for a summer camp in Pendine they had to stop the 10 year old from taking part in tackling practice because he was just too strong!
 
It was nice that after receiving his first Welsh cap, playing at Windhoek in Namibia, Santa presented his red jersey to Whitland RFC and who should be accepting it as the Borderers’  chairman was Trefor Evans, who had seen the very young Santa causing chaos with his tackling all those years before!
 
 

Pearls of wisdom from David Coleman . . .

 
In our last Sporting Snippets we told you about some not so wise words from local sports coaches and this week we can add a couple more, including one from the late, great David Coleman which he told me in an interview when he was on a promotional visit to Haverfordwest.
 
David was in the county town with his ‘Question of Sport’ road show organised by the old Baker’s Ford Garage and when I asked him if he had any slips the tongue he admitted he’d had his share – and told me about one of his worst.
 
Apparently he was on the hallowed turf at Anfield prior to a big match and announced live to the millions of television viewers that Kevin Keegan had passed a fitness test.
He couldn’t work out why all the outside broadcast staff had fallen about laughing until they later played it back to him and he heard his immortal words,
 
“I’m pleased to tell all the Liverpool fans that Kevin Keegan has pi**ed a fatness test,” and his immortal words had gone out over the air and he couldn’t do a thing about it.
 
 

. . . And David again fluffed his lines!

 
He also told me about his worst experience outside football, which came in the1968 Mexico Olympics, after Briton’s 400-metre hurdler David Hemery had won the gold medal.
 
After the excitement of the finish he could only identify the first two and exclaimed: "Who cares who's third?"  But the bronze medal winner turned out to be another Briton, John Sherwood!
 
David Coleman had sometimes seemed to be on the brusque side in interviews but I have to say that he was charm personified and he loved talking about Wolverhampton and Bilston Harriers, who were his home club.
 
 

Counting problems at The Obs

 
Former county rugby regular and current Milford Haven RFC chairman Steve Holmes contacted me after our ‘Pearls’ discussion last week with another beauty from the Mariners when he was a veteran in a team that also included another ‘old timer’ in Barry Kingston and another much younger front-rower as captain in a KO Cup Final against Narberth.
 
The Otters called for a four-man lineout and the young Mariners’ skipper responded with,

“You heard the call – that’s me, Steve (Holmes) and Barry (Kingston),”

and ever since then his maths has been questioned, which is ironic because Mr Holmes probably taught him the subject at the old Milford Central School!
 
But there was plenty of leg-pulling for some-time in the club as any trio of people buying a round called themselves a quartet and it was used as a ploy to fool the opposition in some matches!
 
 

Out of the mouths of youngsters . . .

 
From my own memories of that time I can remember lots of funny moments during my time as a cricketer with Pembroke and one regarding Jeff still makes me chuckle.

He was a very confident man as the youngster in the team and always had an answer – and I loved opening the batting with him because he pushed me hard to run everything.
 
I can remember we were playing Haverfordwest and between us we scored three threes and two twos (11 runs) in the second over at Treleet and when we met up in the middle of the pitch between overs I gasped,
 
“Slow down a bit Young Pow, you’ll wear me out!”
 
His answer was delivered with a smile but hit home:
 
“If you’d hit a four and then a single, and I smashed a six we wouldn’t have needed to run!”
 
And do you know – I had never thought of it like that - and his maths was good!
 


 

Pembrokeshire’s ‘Starsky & Hutch’ form a heavyweight police team but are uncompromising opponents on the field

 
John ‘Killer’ Kilcoyne was a very strong second row for Pembroke Dock Harlequins in his younger days and Rod Chamberlain was equally powerful in the same position for Neyland and as well as sharing that positional coincidence they were also police constables in the traffic division of our local police force.
 
On one occasion it is rumoured that they joined forces as a 36-stone combined team in a patrol car (and my mole tells me it must have been a big vehicle!) – and within a fortnight they were anything but friendly colleagues as they played against each other in a league match for their respective teams.
 
It goes without saying that neither would give an inch and there were some big impacts that measured high on rugby’s Richter Scale!
 
But it was ‘Killer’ who ended up with a smile on his face after 80 bruising minutes since The Quins won 16-4 – but I understand the police pair shared a couple of pints afterwards before being ferried home by team-mates!
 
 

‘Wally’ loses weight – and ‘Snudge’ follows in his footsteps

 
When writing about local sportspeople one has to be careful about saying certain things about them – and one such taboo could be writing that someone is overweight.
 
But I knew that I was on safe ground with Chris Walters and Mark Goodridge, of Johnston football fame, because I had taught them both and they shared a rich sense of humour, as well as being respectively an ace goal-grabber and cracking midfield dynamo.
 
On January 17^th, 1986, I had written that Chris, who is still known to all as ‘Wally’, had been so fed up of being described by me as a ‘burly striker’ that he had gone on a strict diet and lost well over a stone in weight.
 
And I couldn’t resist saying, perhaps unfairly, that because he had put on a few pounds , Mark (or ‘Smudge’ as he is known) was then being called ‘burly’ by his team mates.
 
And so, blow me down with a feather, Mr G also lost weight and was delighted to phone me and tell me his four goals scored the day before were down to his losing weight!
 
It was all great fun but I couldn’t resist writing in the next week’s column that if any other clubs wanted a player to lose weight I would happily encourage them with a quick mention in ‘Snippets’
 
I did have a couple of calls but since I had known those two talented footballers for a long time and I decided I should quit while I was still ahead!