The story goes that the then Widnes rugby league coach Doug Laughton didn’t exactly have rose petals thrown his way when he turned up on a scouting trip to watch Wales union wing Elgan Rees in the 1970s.
A Neath official told him: "You can get out of here. And you can take the big thug you've brought with you, too."
The chap standing alongside Laughton was, to borrow Raymond Chandler’s classic description of his character Moose Molloy, “a big man but not more than six feet five inches tall and not wider than a beer truck. His skin was pale and he needed a shave. He would always need a shave…he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of cake.”
