A giant of rugby who defined the age

WAS Jack Rowell the most successful coach in the history of English club rugby? Might England have won a World Cup four years early had he suspended his business career to take on a full-time professional role at Twickenham? Was he really held upside down and shaken by mischievous Bath players who thought it was the best way of separating him from the bulging wallet in his trouser pocket?

The answers to these questions are as follows: “yes”, “quite possibly” and “let us hope so”.

Rowell, who died last week at 87, was a compelling, challenging, formidably intelligent and devastatingly funny giant of the sport as it wrestled increasingly desperately with the forces that would bring the amateur era to its inevitable end in the mid-1990s. In short, he was one of the individuals who defined the age and made the game worth covering for those journalists lucky enough to be on the union beat at the time.

Without him, there would have been no golden decade at Bath – trophy-laden years that not only established them as the finest team in the country, but elevated them to a level of tangible achievement matched only by the Toulouse of Emile Ntamack, Christophe Deylaud and Christian Califano, and the Auckland of Sean Fitzpatrick, Michael Jones and Zinzan Brooke. Some company, you will agree.

Jack gathered together enough silverware to justify a clubhouse extension, but there was so much more to him than the title count: quite rightly, he would have been offended had anyone suggested otherwise. He was a dynasty-builder and a legacy-leaver who, for good measure, managed to register a full 12 on the Interesting Scale. At his most stimulating, he was close to a 13. In this corner of the paper, we miss him already.