Cliff Morgan was one of the greatest every fly-halves during playing careerHe went on to become a vastly respected commentatorHe famously commented on 1973 Barbarians v All Blacks matchUntil his death, he lived with wife Pat Ewing on the Isle of Wight
By Alasdair Glennie
PUBLISHED: 22:42 GMT, 29 August 2013 | UPDATED: 00:49 GMT, 30 August 2013
Legendary rugby international and broadcaster Cliff Morgan has died after a long illness at the age of 83.
One of the greatest ever fly-halves during his playing career, Morgan went on to become a vastly respected commentator.
After a distinguished career at the BBC, however, he was sacked as presenter of Sport on Four in 1998 on the grounds he was too old-fashioned and sentimental about sport.
His treatment provoked a huge national outcry from outraged listeners.
National idol: Cliff Morgan (pictured, left, in 1956) has died at the age of 83 after a long illness. One of the greatest ever fly-halves during his playing career, Morgan went on to become a vastly respected commentator (right)
Writing in today’s Mail, his friend and former newspaper editor Donald Trelford, 75, describes his reaction to the affair: ‘[It was] one of the most stupid decisions ever made by an organisation renowned for its long record of blundering ineptitude .?.?. [it] makes a nonsense of platitudinous tributes put out yesterday by BBC spokesmen .?.?. As a friend and admirer of Cliff over several decades, it made me want to yell, “If he was that good, why on earth did you get rid of him?”?’
And, indeed, yesterday’s reaction from the corporation made no mention of the affair.
Director of BBC Sport Barbara Slater said: ‘Cliff Morgan was not only a superstar in rugby, but also a pioneer in sports broadcasting and an inspiration to so many of the great voices of BBC Sport.
'He was a scholar and a wordsmith, who had a wonderful understanding of the use of language in broadcasting.’
Rugby legend: Welsh rugby union fly-half Cliff Morgan is tackled while playing for the British Lions against South Africa at Johannesburg in August 1955
Morgan appeared on the BBC’s Question of Sport before becoming head of sport and outside broadcasts, supervising coverage of football World Cups, Commonwealth and Olympic Games and royal weddings.
He famously commentated on the 1973 Barbarians v All Blacks match in which Gareth Edwards scored what many consider the greatest try ever. Morgan won 29 caps for Wales.
His most famous moment on the field came on the 1955 Lions tour of South Africa as he helped his team win 23-22 for the first time since the Second World War.
Morgan suffered a life-threatening stroke aged 42. Before his death, he contracted cancer of the vocal cords. Commentator Des Lynam said he had ‘one of the best broadcasting voices of all time’, but the disease eventually left him unable to speak.
Until his death, Morgan lived with his wife Pat Ewing on the Isle of Wight.
Star: Cliff Morgan in action in a 1958 Five Nations Rugby Union match between Wales and France
How the Mail's late great IAN WOOLRIDGE brilliantly captured Cliff Morgan in this 1996 review of his autobiography
This morning, as on most Saturday mornings these past nine years, the Voice of Trebanog will be introducing the BBC’s Sport on Four. It’s a little gruffer now from all those Silk Cut, but the unmistakable cadences of the Rhondda link us through arguably the most sensible programme on radio sport. There is no striving for Burtonian resonance or Dylan Thomas rhetoric. Clifford Isaac Morgan is no professional Welshman.
The second Christian name is no surprise when you know a little of his boyhood. There were no ball games on the Sabbath and even the Sunday newspapers lay unopened until Monday.
It was classic valley culture: chapel, choir practice on Wednesdays, the zinc tub by the living room fireside when Dad came back from the mine, fish and chips if the housekeeping ran to it on the eve of pay day. The home reading syllabus was the Bible, Shakespeare, David Copperfield, Pears Cyclopaedia and the Western Mail. It was a frugal, very happy home.
Sports team: Cliff Morgan, left, with David Coleman, Frank Bough and Tony Gubba at the 25th anniversary party for Grandstand in 1979
To this living room one morning came two men bearing ?5,000 in large white fivers and a post-dated cheque for a further ?2,500.
Cliff Morgan had never seen a ?5 note. Now 1,000 of them would instantly be his if he signed to play professional rugby league with Wigan. The cheque could be cashed after he’d stayed with Wigan for six months. At the property prices of 1952 he could have bought eight cottages down his street.
Cliff’s mum cooked the visitors bacon, eggs and black pudding for breakfast and said Cliff wasn’t going anywhere.
Well, he was but it was to play for glory and no money as an amateur for Cardiff, Wales and the British Lions as the most brilliant international outside-half of his generation.
Presenter: Cliff Morgan's rise in broadcasting was phenomenal
When, eventually, the reflexes slowed and the cheering died, he was a national idol. And financially broke.
Desperation was the springboard to such a remarkable career in public life that his autobiography Beyond the Fields of Play is not only obligatory reading for the rugby union players who can now run Porsches and domestic staffs but parents who remonstrate when their kids get a good clip round the ear when they run amok at school.
The Rhondda taught resilience and, by heavens, Morgan has needed that.
He chose freelance journalism, a precarious field at the best of times, sheer quicksands when you have less business sense than a parrot on a stick. Morgan has no business sense at all.
While less celebrated ‘personalities’ would claim anything from ?1,000 to ?3,000 plus expenses to speak at a dinner, Morgan would drive to some outlandish rugger club after an exhausting working day to speak for nothing.
Memorial services, weddings, reunions, Cliff was your man. He once flew down to Sydney, Australia, to present some sportswriting awards and was back inside four days.
Cliff has great contacts. As chairman of London’s Saints and Sinners Club there was huge curiosity as to whom he would produce as his speaker for the annual lunch. He wheeled in Princess Anne, the only women ever to address this esoteric assembly.
All for no money, of course, but Morgan doesn’t bitch about that in his book. He simply admits he’s a man who can never say No. Only two days ago he gave the main address at the funeral of his great friend and Welsh rugby international colleague, Clem Thomas.
Celebrated: Kevin Keegan (left), Cliff Morgan and Sir Bobby Charlton following the funeral service of boxer Sir Henry Cooper in 2011
His rise and rise in broadcasting was phenomenal: BBC sports organiser in Wales, editor of BBC TV’s Grandstand, editor of ITV’s This Week, Head of BBC Radio Outside Broadcasts and, to crown everything, 11 years as Head of BBC Television’s Outside Broadcasts.
It wasn’t a smooth passage. When he took that last job he could hear the doors slamming against him as he walked down the corridor.
BBC TV is the original home of jealousy, professional intrigue and thwarted ambition, however warranted. Who was this bloody little Welsh rugger player, this miner’s son, who’d leap-frogged them all?
The pace throughout was so unrelenting that there had to be a price.
Illness: Morgan suffered a life-threatening stroke aged 42. Before his death, he contracted cancer of the vocal cords
On the way up Cliff Morgan was commentating on a rugby match in Germany when he had a stroke.
The left side of his body was paralysed and his speech was impaired. They were so broke that Nuala, his wife, had to borrow the money for the air fare to reach his bedside.
The recovery was long and tough and that was when Morgan discovered who his friends were.
Among them were David Coleman and his wife Barbara, and Henry Cooper.
There was a letter from Richard Burton, then filming in Budapest, which concluded: ‘Should you need anything as mundane as money, you have only to ask.’
Jack Solomons, boxing promoter, sent a cheque for ?2,000 with the message: ‘You may need this during the time you will be out of work.’
Cliff asked Burton for nothing and never cashed the Solomons cheque. When the next cash crisis came it concerned the fees to maintain the private educations of their two children. Cliff sold his car and Nuala sold her engagement ring. Their son is now a surgeon and their daughter works in medicine.
A couple of years ago, parking his car outside his London home, Cliff was mugged, badly beaten and robbed.
He makes no mention of it in his book. ‘Never thought about it, really,’ he said yesterday. ‘I don’t suppose it would interest many people. You don’t want to go around whingeing all the time, do you?’
There is a lot of rugby in his book as well. But essentially this is the story about genuine family values, not those as projected by politicians. Cliff’s Mum must have been a terrific woman and his Dad a saint.
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