Ieuan Morlais Evans was born in Betws in the Amman Valley, Carmarthenshire. His parents were Evan “Ianto” Evans, a miner and prominent trade unionist, and his wife, Mary Lizzie. Along with politics and music, Ieuan’s early passion was for the round ball until he was called up to serve in the RAF, where he was press-ganged by a senior officer into making up the numbers for a rugby match. The rest is, as they say, history.

Educated at Amman Valley Grammar School and Ammanford Mining and Technical College, Ieuan obtained his teaching certificate and Diploma in Physical Education after the war at City of Cardiff Teacher Training College, where he won college colours in cricket and tennis as well as football and rugby. His career as a schoolmaster, from 1948 until he retired in 1980, was combined with playing and coaching commitments which could, by anybody’s standards, be described as full-on but unremunerated, in accordance with the amateur code of the time. From 1947-49, he played at centre for Neath, and thereafter made appearances for Llanelli and Swansea. He completed his playing career at his local club, Amman United RFC (1952-1958), where, in 1953, he led the side to victory in the West Wales Championship. Between 1946 and 1956 he made over fifty appearances for the West Wales Representative XV, along with his brother-in-law Gwyn Jones, one of the four fabled Jones brothers of Penybanc.

His coaching career was already underway in 1949, with schools and local youth rugby. In 1963. he was appointed to the newly-created post of national coach of the Welsh Youth Rugby Union, where he developed the likes of Phil Bennett, Ray Gravell, Derek Quinnell and countless other talented young men who had until then been ill-served by the organisational gap between schools and senior rugby. These men would go on to lead their clubs, and Wales to glory, and Ieuan looked on youth rugby as perhaps the most satisfying of his achievements, taking especial pleasure in his Life Presidency of Amman Valley Youth.

From 1967-1969, he was coach of Llanelli, and handed on to his great friend, the late Carwyn James, who succeeded him there, a squad in fine shape which would famously go on to claim victory against the All Blacks in 1972. Between 1970-1976, he turned around the fortunes of Swansea RFC, coaching the team to the top of the Merit Table in 1974, the club’s centenary year. His self-stated priorities were speed, power, stamina, strength and mobility (all who knew him would add strict discipline to that list), his goals “to win and entertain with a totality of effort and skill”*  

In 1976, he was elected to the Welsh Rugby Union as a national representative and his fifteen years of service to the administrative side of the game coincided with interesting times. In summary, he represented his district, was appointed Chairman of the WRU National Coaching and Laws Committee (1976-1982), chaired the project team which prepared the Investigative Report of 1985 into the state of the game in Wales, and progressed to the presidency of the Union in 1991/2. In fact, this was one of the most turbulent and controversial periods in the history of Welsh rugby, embracing the  inevitable and, for some, unacceptable prospect of the professional game, the formation of the IRB, and the 1989 South Africa Centenary fiasco. A passionate and lifelong opponent of apartheid, his views were not universally shared but his conscience was always clear.

In 1982, he was admitted to the Gorsedd of the Welsh National Eisteddfod, for services to Welsh Rugby, taking the bardic name of  “Ieuan Morlais”.

Ieuan Evans died at his home in Garnant in 2000, aged 80.

* Swansea RFC Centenary Publication  - text by Janet Wynne Evans