JBG THOMAS

'Rugby's Man of a MiIlion Words'

An appreciation by John Griffiths

JBG Thomas was rugby’s man of a million words. In a lifetime devoted to chronicling the game he loved, he wrote more words than any other critic, past or present, about rugby football. Books, magazine articles and programme notes flowed effortlessly from the proud Welshman’s battered typewriter, but it was as the chief rugby correspondent of the Cardiff Western Mail that he achieved lasting fame.

                His stint with the national newspaper of Wales established him as a household name in rugby circles, and arguably he did more than any other of his contemporaries to raise the Mail’s profile during his long service from January 1946 until May 1982, when he retired as the paper’s assistant editor.

Rugby was in the blood. John Brinley George – he was known as Bryn – Thomas was born in Pontypridd, but his paternal grandparents were of Carmarthenshire stock and keen Llanelli supporters. The 1920s were not golden days for Welsh rugby, but family summer holidays spent in Loughor inevitably involved trips to Stradey Park to see Dai and Arthur John and Albert Jenkins, Llanelli and Wales’s outstanding centre of the day, parading their rugby skills.

                The young JBG saw his first match there as a six-year-old, Llanelli v Pontypridd. He was hooked. He avidly began collecting everything related to the game that he could set his hands on. Cigarette cards, programmes and newspaper cuttings were all assiduously stored for future reference. His father was a butcher in Ponty and as a youth JBG was always the first to unwrap the parcel of recycled newspapers that came into the shop to be used as wrapping paper. These were plundered for match reports and pictures – rugby in winter; cricket in the summer. All were kept, meticulously labelled in manila folders, for the rest of his life. Later, after moving to Cardiff, where he was a pupil at Cathays High School, he began collecting books and caught the rugby-writing bug.

               He captained his school’s senior side as a full back but in his teens he was already finding his name in print. The BBC had pioneered outside broadcasting in the late 1920s with Captain Teddy Wakelam’s live radio commentaries of international rugby matches. JBG followed these intently, charting match facts from the remarkably detailed coverage. At length, he was bold enough to write to the Radio Times, where its then editor Gordon Stowell was an encouraging influence on the young rugby writer. The Western Mail and News Chronicle were other outlets for his freelance work as a youth.......... more...........click here

We have available for sale several items from the collection of JBG Thomas. Click on the links below for individual sections or scroll down the page to view the great selection of memorabilia available.

Each item sold from this collection is accompanied by a JBG Thomas postcard. (illustrated below). The postcard will include a unique World Rugby Museum reference code which is shown on the JBG Thomas museum page. The postcard will act as a certificate of authenticity for the item and guarantee that the item is genuine.

 1955 BRITISH LIONS PROGRAMMES  -  1974 BRITISH LIONS PROGRAMMES  -  AGE GROUP & REPRESENTATIVE PROGRAMMES  -  ANNUALS  -  AUTOGRAPHED ITEMS  -  AUTOGRAPHED PROGRAMMES  -  BARBARIANS & IRISH WOLFHOUNDS PROGRAMMES  -  BOOKS & PUBLICATIONS  -  CLUB PROGRAMMES  -  INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMMES  -  IRISH PROVINCIAL PROGRAMMES  -  MISC CELEBRATION PROGRAMMES  -  OXFORD v CAMBRIDGE PROGRAMMES  -  SINGLE AUTOGRAPHS  -  STAMPS  -  TEAM PHOTOGRAPHS  -  TICKETS  -  TOURING TEAM PROGRAMMES TO UK  -  WELSH TRIAL PROGRAMMES

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Grand Slam season for Wales

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Grand Slam season for Wales

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Triple Crown season for England

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GRAND SLAM MATCH

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GRAND SLAM MATCH

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...............But the turning point in his career, he always said, was in 1935 when, at the age of 18, he saw Wales beat the third All Blacks 13-12 at Cardiff. He was the same age as the Welsh scrum-half, Haydn Tanner. JBG had recently left school to start work at the City Hall in Cardiff, where he met his wife-to-be, Gwen. But reading “Old Stager's” match report of that famous Welsh win in the Mail’s sister paper, the Football Echo, he realised that rugby writing was his true calling. “It was the tender trap. I told myself, that’s for me!” he later recalled.

                He took himself off to the big matches in the years leading up to the Second World War, seeing first-hand the exploits of “Tuppy” Owen-Smith and Hal Sever in England’s Triple Crown year of 1937 and watching Scotland’s Wilson Shaw wrest the Crown from England in the Twickenham sunshine the year later.

                War Service in the Navy followed. He began on destroyer duty in E-Boat Alley and by June 1944, as a lieutenant RNVR in fleet minesweepers, was in the van of the D-Day landings heading the American Forces into Omaha Beach in the critical stages of the great liberation that led to Peace. Throughout his war service he carried in the breast pocket of his uniform a copy of the 1939-40 edition of the Rugby Football Annual – it was his rugby bible.

The most significant event of his war-service, though, had taken place whilst home on leave in 1943. The then editor of the Western Mail, David Prosser, invited JBG for interview. Johnny Hoare, who as “Old Stager” had led the newspaper’s rugby correspondents for many years, had died in his fifties and a successor would eventually need to be appointed.

                It was the offer of a lifetime and having survived the war, JBG Thomas began his professional writing with the newspaper in January 1946. He covered Wales and club rugby in the winter and county cricket in the summer.

                His first “big story” came two years later in 1948, not on the rugby front but with his beloved Glamorgan County Cricket Club.  

JBG reports on the 1969 championship success

The Welsh county won the Championship for the first time and JBG was in the press-box above the thousands at St Helen’s and Cardiff who watched a side led by Wilf Wooller beat off the challenge of England’s best. That success, Glamorgan’s victory over the 1964 touring Australians and the county’s repeat Championship win of 1969 were his favourite cricket memories.......... more on JBG.......click here

THE 1974 LIONS MATCH NOTES OF JBG THOMAS

(WRM-0713)

We been lucky enough to have the notes penned by JBG for each match during the 1974 Lions tour donated to www.world-rugby-museum.com by the family of JBG. 

The notes have at one time been contained in a spiral bound notebook and were probably removed post tour so that the book could be continued to be used at matches that JBG would attend. 

The notes give us some idea of how JBG the journalist worked. The general notes, would be aide memoirs for later reference when doing match reports. They generally refer to highlights - eg scores, but also lead up to scores, close run things near the try line, good defence, or injuries. These would be important for the run of play element on the whole report. 

JBG would type up his reports if time allowed or would dictate over the phone shortly after the game. When deadlines were tight he could dictate over the phone to the Mail/Echo using the notes. 

The notes are rushed down onto paper so that less of the match is missed, (this makes them almost impossible for others to read!) They are split into 3 columns..................

       We have isolated one incident in the third test as an example of how JBG's notes related to the match, Gordon Brown's try. This is how JBG noted it during the game.

As you can see from the above snippet JBG's writing is extremely difficult if not impossible for the untrained eye to read, we have placed question marks where we are unable to decipher the writing and most of the rest is an educated guess. 

This is how the try appeared in a photo and description in his book of the tour "The Greatest Lions"

 

............. " The Lions moved away and them much underrated Ian McGeechan made a clever break moving right. He kicked away to the corner and Irvine, following up at speed, steered the ball to touch near the right corner flag for a Springbok throw-in. Gordon Brown moved up the line from No. 5 to front and, as the ball was thrown fast and hard to the short line by Van Wyk, the clever Brown jumped high, gathered and dived over the line before you could say 'Boet Erasmus'. It was his eighth try of the tour to set a record for touring lock forwards and one of intense value to the Lions at this stage of the match."...........

It is clear from JBG's account of the third test that he was in regular telephone contact with the Western Mail & Echo in Cardiff during the game. 

  

"I waited high in the stand for the first phone call from Cardiff" "Ring ding ding went my telephone and I was able to report all square at three-all" "The fire died away and the Springbok steam was reduced in pressure and  was on the phone at the time to Cardiff I could hear the cheers (there was no live television broadcast in those days but a live radio commentary was provided by the BBC) in the background from the 'Echo' staff as the Lions went into a lead they were not to loose."

The time zone between South Africa and Britain are very similar and he would have been dictating the report in time for the 'Football Echo' to hit the streets at 6.00pm. Never one to bask in his personal glory JBG passed on his thanks to his staff and the system which allowed him to capture the British Lions greatest moment. 

"One was almost hoarse with delight sending the last words of the 'Echo' report to Cardiff and Mrs Leighton, an excellent copy taker, thoroughly enjoyed it all, while one must say 'Thank you' to telephone engineers and operators along the line. There have been fewer happier rugby stories that I have phoned to Cardiff in nearly thirty years. The British Isles Rugby Union team, disowned by its government, had achieved tremendous victory in becoming the first Lions side to beat South Africa in a series since 1896. More important still, it had become the first side to win a series in South Africa this century.
    The crowd applauded warmly as the Lions walked off in a genuine show of appreciation and this was symbolic of the pleasure the side had given to all South Africans, and especially the coloured people who had remained steadfast in their support. The South African members of the Press Gang were ready and warm in their congratulations even though a few of them, in the days that followed, castigated the national selectors rather overpoweringly, and 'Sniped' at the Lions for their prolonged celebrating!
    Thousands of words were being typed and written in the Press Box at Boet Erasmus in the hours that followed the end of the match, and several poured words over the air into the British Isles, everywhere the news was almost instant. The Lions were the new champions at rugby football. In 1891 the news of an unbeaten record had to be carried from Cape Town to Southampton by ship but now, 83 years later, and a complete change in the way of life of Africa, another side looked like enjoying or achieving an unbeaten tour."

1st Test	Rhodesia	2nd Test

                But rugby of course was his first love and he didn’t have long to wait before covering Wales’s first post-war success story. It came in 1950 when John Gwilliam, a late stand-in as captain for injured Bleddyn Williams, led the principality to its first Triple Crown and Grand Slam for 39 years.

The campaign opened at Twickenham where in 40 years Wales had succeeded only once before. There had been a massive shortage of newsprint in the post-war years but JBG was given more and more space as Welsh rugby started to recover the standing it had enjoyed during its Golden Era between 1900 and 1911. “Hats off to Wales! Theirs was a great victory at Twickenham, and restored the waning prestige of Welsh Rugby,” he led in the Western Mail on the Monday after the match. It was always capital R for Rugby and capital G for the Game when JBG wrote about the sport.

                Scotland were beaten at Swansea to set up a battle for the Crown with Ireland in Belfast. The Grand Slam wasn’t a term in the rugby lexicon in 1950, for France were still regarded as the also-rans in the International Championship at this time. It was winning the Triple Crown that was seen as the ultimate prize. Ireland, led by their hooker Karl Mullen and spearheaded behind the scrum by the great Jackie Kyle, had carried off the mythical trophy in 1948 and 1949. True, they had lost narrowly to England at Twickenham in 1950, but a recent 21-0 victory over Scotland had put them back on a winning road and with home advantage and the Championship title still in sight, the match with Wales was expected to be a huge showdown.

                The game more than lived up to expectation and it was Wales who took the spoils. In the dying moments and with the scores locked at 3-3, Newport wing Malcolm Thomas dived to score the winning try. “The Triple Crown is ours! Cymru am Byth! At long last the 39 years’ quest has ended and the bogy of continued failure banished,” a delighted JBG told his readers on the Monday.

Wales v Ireland 1950

                But the story was to be tragically put into perspective by the events of the intervening Sunday. A Tudor IV charter aircraft carrying 82 crew and passengers crashed returning from Belfast to Llandow. Eighty, mostly Welsh rugby supporters, lost their lives in what was then the worst civil air disaster.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE ABOUT IRELAND v WALES 1950 AND THE LLANDOW AIR DISASTER

                JBG had enjoyed a night of revels before rushing back by boat, train and car with his colleague Reg Pelling of the Echo to start working on a would-be front-page Triple Crown story. But he finished that Sunday afternoon helping newsmen report from the scene of disaster and compiling a completely different front-page story. The Triple Crown tale was buried among the sports pages.......... more.......click here 

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There was another Triple Crown to report two years later, by which time Thomas’s reputation as rugby critic and historian was secure. To mark the occasion the Welsh Rugby Union commissioned JBG to edit an official souvenir of the Triple Crown. The editor set about his task with enthusiasm, engaging the great names from Welsh rugby’s past to illuminate an attractive and informative publication. W J “Billy” Bancroft of the 1890s, Rhys Gabe, Billy Spiller and Tommy Vile from the Golden Era of the early 1900s and Wilf Wooller, a journalistic colleague now and a stalwart of the Welsh XVs of the 1930s, were all roped in to add colour to a publication whose proceeds benefited the Junior Rugby Unions in Wales.

                The 35-year-old JBG’s reputation was summed up by Sir David Rocyn Jones, the Union’s distinguished president, in the foreword: “He is a popular and knowledgeable critic who has covered every international match played by Wales since the War. He is respected by official, player and spectator alike, and is a great student of the game.”

                The success of the Welsh side and the part he had played in its telling put his name on the map. He had covered the 1951-52 Springboks tour of Britain and through his connections he was in demand to write for South African journals. The 1953-54 All Blacks tour was to provide a new opportunity. He had for some time toyed with the idea of producing a book on the history of the game, especially the great rugby tours. He found an accommodating publisher in Stanley Paul of London and his first work, On Tour, appeared in the New Year, 1954. When the first draft of the manuscript arrived at the publishers they were staggered by its length. He had to cut it by half, but still managed to add a postscript covering Cardiff’s defeat of the All Blacks in 1953 . . . in between the book going to press and its final release.

It is a relatively little-known fact that much of the half omitted appeared six months later as part of another book, Fifty Years of the All Blacks. For this publication by Phoenix House, Thomas was thinly disguised by the pseudonym David Owen. The book was a record of every New Zealand match played in Britain and Ireland between 1905 and 1954, JBG again teaming up with great players of the past to tell the fascinating story of the first four All Blacks tours to this country. Wilf Wooller shared the bulk of the writing, with Rhys Gabe, Len Corbett (England), Sam Walker (Ireland) and Jock Wemyss (Scotland) adding perspectives from the other Home Unions...................... more on JBG..... click here

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guest teams Bristol, Neath

Winners - Wasps

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guest teams Bridgend, Instonians

Winners - Rosslyn Park

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@ Newport

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Winners - Ebbw Vale

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These were the first of what became a veritable library of works and by the time JBG published his memoirs in his last book, Rugger in the Blood, in 1985, thirty had been penned under his name. Many charted the ups and downs of major touring teams while others adopted a more historical perspective. But all were written with enthusiasm – the reader sensed that the author was dying to tell his tale, to spread the rugby word. And spread it he certainly did, for at the time few books on rugby football were published.

                He wasn’t the most stylish of writers, and would never settle for five words when he could use fifty, but he had no superior as a rugby writer when it came to sheer hard graft. No-one ever made a fortune out of writing rugby books and money was never the driving force behind his publishing ventures. “Mind, they did pay for decent family holidays,” he once divulged.

                The year 1955 was to be a landmark one for JBG and the Western Mail. It was a Lions tour year, to South Africa to take on a side that hadn’t lost a home series since the 1890s. Wales were well represented in the tour party and the newspaper sent their man to cover the visit. John Billot, a longstanding colleague on the paper, recalled: “Expenses were tight. Bryn set off for London in a delivery van sitting on top of newspapers.”

The tour was a rip-roaring success. The Lions shared the series (after leading 2-1 at one stage) and JBG, like his press colleague Viv Jenkins, was so popular with the players that he became an honorary member of the party.  Investigative sports journalism was unheard of and JBG’s reports and stories were given plenty of space back home. He was a father-figure to many of the tourists and many of the friendships he forged with players on that tour were to last a lifetime that took in eight more Lions trips.

              Meanwhile in Cardiff the Western Mail had appointed a new editor in 1955. David Cole, at 27, was young and go-ahead with the drive and ambition to broaden the newspaper’s appeal. JBG’s rugby coverage would be a key factor in the paper’s circulation rising in the next two years by 30% and into six-figures for the first time in its history.

                By the late 1950s JBG’s name and the Western Mail were synonymous with rugby. His growing reputation attracted offers to leave Wales and head for a career in Fleet Street. He wrote under the pen-name “Arthurian” for the Daily Telegraph and was in demand to broadcast for both television and radio, skills he had honed as a youngster with his brother, the playwright Gethyn Stoodley Thomas. But he wasn’t interested.

                Both he and his newspaper went from strength to strength and the successes of Welsh rugby in the 1960s, thanks to its lead in appointing national coaches and the coming together of a team of exceptional talents, allowed JBG to ask for and get more rugby coverage in his paper than he could ever have expected working for one of Fleet Street’s soccer-dominated sports news desks. Having plenty of space to write about the game he loved was more important to him than big London salaries and generous expense accounts.

                When the Lions and Wales enjoyed a run of success in the 1970s they provided him with the best stories of his reporting career. The 1971 Lions visit to New Zealand was the highlight of his touring days. Even his newspaper surprised him on that tour, asking for Test reports on the whistle so that the Saturday morning editions – Wales being twelve hours behind New Zealand local time – could carry the first news of the tourists’ only winning series against the All Blacks to date.

                He was a straightforward writer, never worrying about the angle or the inside story. He told the tale, analysed the game and praised the best players. He never destroyed reputations. A host of Welsh greats, from Bleddyn Williams to J P R Williams, commented later that they knew when they’d had a poor game because JBG simply did not mention them. He had the respect and trust of the players and even the selectors. He was invariably the first to know the composition of a Welsh XV, but was trusted to keep the news embargoed until a suitable time......... more on JBG...... click here

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Youth International

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Air Training Corps

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Players past and present enjoyed his company. When Cliff Jones hosted the 50^th anniversary reunion dinner for the survivors of the 1935 Wales v New Zealand match, the game that had so captured the imagination of the teenaged Thomas, JBG was the honorary guest of the eleven Welsh survivors who attended the Royal Hotel on 21^st December 1985. He even proposed the final toast: “That beautiful one point.”

                Even when Wales were unexpectedly (or even sometimes expectedly) beaten in the Five Nations, JBG’s pieces would often include a paragraph that started off along the lines . . . “Wales can still be champions if . . .” He was always optimistic.

He was moreover always keen to see the interests of the game advanced. When the Welsh Rugby Union announced its intention to commission its Centenary History for the 1980-81 season, most connected with the game felt JBG should be the automatic choice for the job. He wasn’t. Nevertheless, he published his own splendid illustrated history of the Welsh game in a then modern, beautifully-designed volume. A wide selection of rare photographs from JBG’s personal archives helped to make the book arguably the most attractive published on rugby up to that time. Viv Jenkins, in his foreword, called him “indisputably the Recorder of the Century where Welsh rugby is concerned.”

                Yet JBG was generous to rival authors. “The game would welcome them all,” he wrote at the time, “for there can never be too many.” He was also encouraging to new freelances trying to make their way, as he himself had done many years earlier. For years he combined his Western Mail duties with those of press-box organiser for the Welsh Rugby Union. In those blissful days before corporate management of such affairs became the norm, he carried out his duties with the utmost professionalism. “I’ll see what’s about,” he would say to hopeful new hacks. He also did much to foster the interests of the Rugby Union Writers’ Club. Fittingly he served as its chairman in the Welsh Centenary season, was elected a life member and was the first chairman of the Welsh Rugby Writers’ Association.

                The only issue that vexed him was neutral officials. He had seen a New Zealander referee the All Blacks to a victory by six penalty goals to four tries against the Lions at Dunedin in the 1959 Test series and campaigned vigorously thereafter for neutrals to be appointed for major internationals overseas. He was equally trenchant in his criticisms of British referees who were lenient to visiting sides to this country. Sometimes he overstated the case and, understandably, his cause did not go down well in New Zealand.

                He retired in 1982, not because he wanted to but because he had reached the age of 65. He continued to contribute to the Western Mail and was awarded the MBE in recognition of his services to rugby in the 1984 New Year’s Honours List. It was the family support of his wife and three sons that made his career possible he always maintained. His wife Gwen died in 1985, shortly after accompanying him to Buckingham Palace to receive his award. 

JBG was plagued by ill-health in his later years. In April 1997, his treasure trove of rugby memorabilia went under the hammer at Phillips’ auction rooms in Cardiff, a touch-kick from the Arms Park. The remarkable run of cuttings dating back to the 1920s, programmes from an even earlier vintage and even the whistle from the famous 1905 Wales v New Zealand encounter were among the Aladdin’s Cave of items that fell under the hammer. He died a week later, a few days short of his 80^th birthday.

                John Billot, for the best part of 40 years his colleague, was among the many to pay generous tribute to JBG. “He was a compulsive worker and prolific purveyor of words. Working with him was an enlightening and frequently hilarious experience. With his cigar and flat cap he was, perhaps, the last of the great professional Welsh rugby-writing characters.”

end of  'Rugby's Man of a Million Words' - an appreciation by John Griffiths

Read about more Rugby Writers at www.world-rugby-museum.com

John Billot  -  Viv Jenkins  -  Old Stager  -  Wilf Wooller

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1949 - South Wales Rugger Souvenir - pub by Findon, edited by Emrys Evans

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