Welsh rugby author Seimon Williams recently published his second book: Deffro’r Ddraig: Rygbi Cymru 1995-2024. The East Terrace caught up with Seimon to discuss not just his new book, but the reaction to his landmark debut.
The last time we spoke, you had just released ‘Welsh Rugby: What Went Wrong?’. The book has recently had an updated edition published. Can you tell us a bit about the reaction to the book?
The reaction has been pretty positive. One former journalist referred to it as ‘basically a load of cuttings’, which was nice of him, but given who it was, I can’t say I was particularly surprised. I’ve had players and others from the period getting in touch to say they’d enjoyed the book, with one suggesting I hadn’t been scathing enough about the whole Celtic Warriors debacle!
Its first paperback run had pretty much sold out by the end of the Six Nations at the start of the year. The publishers were keen to keep the book out there, so needed to print some more, so I adapted it a bit to include an updated introduction and a revised final chapter which took the story up to the end of the tournament.
Do you feel you’ve helped inform the wider debate about the issues in Welsh rugby, particularly in informing the more casual fan about some of the deeper issues that don’t get covered much in the Welsh media?
Some supporters who had been paying attention over the past few decades and who had read the book noted – correctly – that they already knew most of what the book covered, but that it had been jarring to see it all laid out sequentially. One review suggested that reading it felt like watching a 30-year slow-motion car-crash.
But for others, particularly people who may only really follow the international game, I hope it was a bit of an eye-opener. For too long, the men’s national team seemed to exist in a bubble, hoovering up the resource while other areas of the game withered. The apparently sudden collapse of the men’s team doubtless came as a shock to many supporters who had been used to 15 years or so of – at least – being competitive with the best.
I had several invitations soon after publication to contribute my thoughts, such as they were, to discussions on TV, radio and elsewhere. I particularly enjoyed giving evidence to a Senedd Committee inquiry into free-to-air broadcasting of Test rugby in Wales, and was quite pleased to be able to get in a few comments about the funding of the professional game, including Welsh Government’s punitive interest on its loan to the WRU (which, of course, the clubs are still repaying). I’m not sure that’s what they wanted to hear, and there were a few blank looks, but I was glad I managed to make the point. In terms of the traditional media, I think the situation is much healthier now than it has been for years. There’s a greater willingness to genuinely interrogate the WRU line which wasn’t there to the same extent for much of this century. That’s good to see.
Can we expect further editions over time?
I’ve – only half-jokingly – suggested that I’d love to write a sequel called ‘Welsh Rugby: What Went Right?’, on the perhaps naïve assumption that it isn’t too late to dig ourselves out of this current hole. As for further editions of the book, it may be that it’s a book of its time, which could only really have been published in the last year or so. I miss those old annuals – the Rothmans and Welsh Brewers/Buy as you View yearbooks – and part of me would like to contribute to resurrecting those. But I don’t know whether there is the market for those types of books any more. The IRB/World Rugby took up the mantle when the Rothmans series stopped in 2000, but even they gave up about a decade ago. It’s an oddity, because I think rugby is, while not in cricket’s league, quite prone to having a cadre of stattos who enjoy keeping themselves abreast of the game’s developments.
But I think there’s scope for further editions. The most dispiriting thing about this year is that lessons don’t seem to have been learned.
How are you feeling about the WRU and the key direction of Welsh rugby now compared to a year ago? (Editor’s note, this interview was conducted before the November internationals, AGM and, well, all sorts of other recent mishaps).
As we speak, we’re still waiting for the Union’s new strategy, which was published in a pretty high-level format in June with further detail due to follow in the autumn. We’re in a state of limbo – or maybe purgatory – until that arrives. If this week’s reports are accurate, it now sounds as though it will be further delayed.
And, again, it’s as if the Union can’t stop themselves from becoming embroiled in chaos. Just over the past week, we’ve had yet more revelations about the way in which the WRU treat the women’s game, this time around threatening to withdraw the team from the WXV and Rugby World Cup if the players refused to sign new contracts on the Union’s terms.
They seem to be stuck in a doom loop – egregious behaviour, media expose, WRU statement, apology, a promise to learn (or ‘take the learnings’ in modern day David Brent-speak).
This is in addition to other errors – Nigel Walker’s “feet to the fire” line, the Union’s sanctioning of that Bristol home game at the Principality Stadium, the executive’s failure to distance themselves from (or even publicly acknowledge) the serious failings of the previous regime, the decision to select Cory Hill as captain against Queensland, only to then stand him down when the utterly predictable backlash became too widespread. There appears to be a resignation among many supporters that four professional teams cannot be maintained – at least on an equal footing – but the Union does not yet appear to be ready to make that decision. Neither can it guarantee the kind of uplift in payments which would give the four a chance to thrive. We heard this week that the one sliver of hope – of strengthened relationships with English clubs, whether in a full Anglo-Welsh league or as a conference within a URC+ – seems to have been lost in part because the Union demanded all four are included when PRL offered two or three places. If this is true, it is pretty much exactly how the Union blew an Anglo-Welsh league in 1999. It would pretty much sum up the theme of the book – nothing ever changes. The people may change, but the game’s capacity in Wales to repeat past mistakes is relentless.
Tell us about your new book: ‘Deffro’r Ddraig: Rygbi Cymru 1995-2024’.
I’d done a stack of research for ‘What Went Wrong?’, but the focus I wanted for the book and space constraints meant that most of the attention went to the political and governance machinations rather than the rugby. I wanted to write a bit more about some of the memorable moments, the great tries, the characters, and just more of the stuff which made us fall in love with this game in the first place, and I was really fortunate to be given the opportunity to do so.
I’ve been writing a column for the Welsh language weekly ‘Golwg’ for the last year. It’s been great to develop my writing in the language and I’m delighted to have published a book in Welsh. So, it covers a pretty similar period – from the dawn of professionalism in 1995 up to the present day – and concludes with the recent summer tour to Australia. It is – hopefully – a lighter, less enraging read! It was certainly more enjoyable to write – watching great tries on YouTube certainly beats ploughing through annual reports and accounts of appalling behaviour.
How come the book is just one pound?
I pitched to the ‘Quick Reads/Stori Sydyn’ strand which the Books Council for Wales run each year. The series has been going for years, and there are a number of rugby related books in the series, including Lions diaries by Jamie Roberts and Jonathan Davies, and books by George North, the Cabango brothers and others. Usually, the series sees two books published in Welsh, and two in English.
The purpose of the series is to encourage adults who may not be regular readers, who may struggle to find the time or the resources to devote to regularly reading books, to give it a go. So, they’re short, snappy books of around 15-20,000 words, and they each cost one pound. The Books Council ran a ‘Booktober/Her yr Hydref’ challenge through October, trying to encourage people to take on one of these short books a week for the month. We’re now beyond that, but hopefully some people will now have the reading bug and will try some more of the books in the series.
Share with us your couple of happiest moments from the period you’ve written about.
The decade after the game went professional was difficult for the game here at all levels, and the men’s national team was a barometer of those struggles. Rare flashes of success were all the sweeter. That three-tries-in-five-minutes burst at Murrayfield in 1997, the last minute win at Wembley over England in 1999, those displays of riotous running rugby (albeit in a losing cause) in the 2003 Rugby World Cup against New Zealand and England.
There have been some wonderful moments over the past 15 years, too, and several championship and Grand Slam winning seasons and Rugby World Cup semi-finals, which my younger self would struggle to believe. Of all those triumphs, I think my favourite remains the 2005 Grand Slam. It’s the first time I can remember being fairly hopeful at the start of a championship and for those hopes not to have been utterly misguided. From that first, narrow win over England, the heroic effort to turn around a seemingly lost cause in Paris, that ridiculous first half at Murrayfield and then dismantling Ireland in the decider – it was a magical season, made all the sweeter by the style of play. And it was ‘my’ first Grand Slam, too!
And the worst? I know that can be a long list, but everyone has a particular game or result that hurts more than others and they can often be very different.
The heavy thrashings of the 1990s and early 2000s are obvious examples. Losing by 60 to England and Australia, being a dropped pass away from shipping a hundred against South Africa (and having their coach describe Wales as the worst international team he’d ever seen), 50-pointers to Ireland and France, 71 points to a provincial Australian team, for heaven’s sake. All of these were awful, but kind of expected – it’s just where we were at that time.
There are two results which still really rankle. The first is the 2004 game against New Zealand, which preceded the Grand Slam later that season. It was the first time – and last – in my lifetime that I felt we should have beaten them. There was confusion over the match clock – with time up, neither Stephen Jones nor Mils Muliaina realised and kicked to keep the ball alive. I remember walking out of the stadium that day, seething, telling the mate I was with that we’d just seen the best chance we’d ever had, and we might not get another chance for years. Which turned out to be correct.
The second is the semi-final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup. That was a young, fearless team of generational talents who I genuinely think could have won that tournament but for the red card (and Adam Jones’ injury, which may have been just as significant) in the semi-final. I know Warburton’s red was the correct decision, and I know you have your doubts that Wales had it in them to beat New Zealand at Eden Park in the final, but part of me thinks it really could have happened. Gatland’s teams seem to ride emotional waves – when it’s going well, they can be unstoppable, when it’s more difficult, they can get into doom loops. I don’t know why that rankles more than the 2019 semi-final which – if we’d won it and faced an exhausted and spent England in the final, we’d probably have had an objectively better chance of winning. But it does!
Find out more about Seimon’s new book here and, if you haven’t bought it already, get ‘Welsh Rugby: What Went Wrong?‘ for yourself and every rugby fan you know.
