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The Guardian
27-07-2025
- Sport
- The Guardian
‘Jac's changed the game': a view from second Lions Test with Cwmtwrch RFC
A way along the Great Western mainline, a way up the Swansea Valley, a way off Heol Gleien Road, is Cwmtwrch RFC, where Jac Morgan first learned his rugby. They have turned out a handful of Wales internationals in the 135 years since they were founded, but Morgan is their first British & Irish Lion. He is also the one and only Welshman left on the tour and when he comes on to the field, 54 minutes into Saturday's second Test at the MCG, the atmosphere quickens inside the clubhouse. There is a swell of quiet pride and a little anxiety, too, as he latches on to the pack for his first scrum. The scrum wheels, the Lions break downfield and all of sudden Morgan's carrying the ball forward. Someone cries out in all the excitement: 'Great scrum, Jac.' And someone else: 'See. He's changed the game already' – and everyone breaks out laughing. There are about 30 people in here watching and there are about 30 out there watching. 'Some people were saving up two years for this trip,' says the club's chair, Tom Addey. They started putting money aside when Morgan was made Wales's co-captain in 2023 and the prospect of his being picked for this began to feel like a real possibility. Addey points out the spot they saved on the wall where they are planning to hang his Lions jersey, next to the TV screen, and shows off the little Grogg figurine of Morgan in his Lions kit, which came in when Morgan was named in the team on Thursday morning, 'a gift for the Cwmtwrch clubhouse'. It is a new building, Addey's pride and joy, two storeys with a gym and a physio room. The club moved up from the bottom of the hill five years ago. They're strictly amateur. 'We don't pay, we're adamant about that,' says Addey, and they put out only two teams, one's in the bottom division ('and by God are we trying to get out of it') and the other's an occasional XV. 'We're not the wealthiest club, but we have massive heart,' Addey says. Most times, I guess, he would use the Welsh. Calon. The word was given to Cwmtwrch, and all of Welsh rugby, by Clive Rowlands, who captained, coached and managed Wales in the 60s, 70s and 80s. There never was a prouder Welshman. 'Clive would pace the room, fag in hand, ranting and raving,' wrote Phil Bennett, who played under him. 'He would demand you performed not just for yourself, but for you father, your mother, your long-lost aunt, the miners, the schoolchildren – in effect the whole Welsh nation'. Rowlands lived his life here. His son, daughter and wife still do. His grandson used to play in the junior team with Morgan. Rowlands's own boy, Dewi, is here watching, on a stool at the back of the barroom. His dad managed the Lions team that beat Australia in 1989; Dewi, who was 22, went along with him. 'That was a proper amateur tour,' he says. 'The guys were making their own T-shirts to sell to raise money for the beer kitty.' Not Dewi, he pinched his from the old man's hotel minibar. There are a lot of good stories about his dad. I ask him which of them are true. 'All of them,' he says. His favourite is the time Princess Anne asked Clive which part of Wales he came from. 'A little place called Cwmtwrch.' She replied, without missing a beat: 'Upper or Lower?' The village was split in two by the old railway line. 'I always like to say we're the first regional team,' says Addey. 'The Lions meant everything to Dad,' Dewi says, before pausing for a moment. 'Well, not as much as Wales. But everything else.' Ian McGeechan will tell you it was Rowlands who taught him how to run a Lions tour. 'He'd have the beers poured for us, ready and waiting at the end of the day.' Sign up to The Breakdown The latest rugby union news and analysis, plus all the week's action reviewed after newsletter promotion Rowlands is keeping one eye on the game, the way old salts do, but down in the front the younger club members are glued to it. One of them is leaning forward on the edge of his seat, though he is so big it may be the only way he could fit into it. His name is Morgan Morse and if you don't know him already you will soon. Morse is on the books at the Ospreys, where he plays alongside Morgan. He has played 24 games for the national age grades and will break into the senior team any day. Like Morgan, he grew up here at Cwmtwrch and still comes back to carry the water bottles for the first team when he is not playing the region. 'My favourite memories of this place are all of the feeling of winning games with my mates,' he said. 'We'd all be in school talking about the game on the Monday morning, which made the week a hell of a lot more enjoyable.' A lot of the lads are decked out in Morse's spare Ospreys kit. When the club switched ball manufacturers, he snaffled a bunch of the old ones to bring here, only to get a call, a few days later, from someone at the club saying that they all had tracking devices in and could he please bring them back. These are hard times in Welsh rugby. Morse has a year to run on his contract, but given the WRU's recent proposal to cut the number of regions, cannot be sure if he will have a team to play for this time next year. But wherever he ends up, he will always have a club. It is the 80th minute and in the clubhouse they are waiting for the final whistle. The referee is just checking to see whether Morgan has committed a foul by going in for a clear-out in the run-up to the match-winning try and everyone is shouting at the ref through the TV. His voice comes back over the loudspeakers. 'No foul.' The camera closes in on Morgan, who flashes a big thumbs up, and the place erupts. 'Fucking brilliant.'
Irish Times
23-07-2025
- Sport
- Irish Times
Overnight sensation Thomas Clarkson taking advantage of surprise Lions call-up
If ever there was a five-year overnight sensation it is assuredly Thomas Clarkson . He made his Leinster debut in August 2020 but went into this campaign with less than 20 starts under his belt and as his province's third choice tighthead. Yet there he was on Tuesday night in the Marvel Stadium mixed zone after the 24-19 win over the Pasifika XV , a bona fide British & Irish Lion. No one seemed more incredulous as well as delighted than the 25-year-old himself, for he freely admitted he wouldn't have thought all of this was possible when he was named as one of the additional, or development, players to train with Ireland's squad last November, before making his debut against Argentina off the bench, backing it up against Fiji, and then playing in four Six Nations games, starting against Wales. 'I wasn't even really expecting to play in that. So, to get a cap I was delighted. 'The Six Nations; I was happy enough with how it went. I wouldn't have said I set the world alight or anything. So, to then play well for Leinster at the end of the season and come in here, it's pretty mad.' READ MORE As recently as January 2025, Clarkson was playing an AIL Division 1B game for Blackrock. 'I made my Leinster debut five years ago now, so I've been waiting a long time. So, the fact that when it has come, it's all come at once is a bit crazy. Because I went through a good few years of not getting a sniff in at all really.' It's been a Lions tour of an unprecedented and, frankly, unexpected bounty for Irish tightheads, three of them making the tour. And two of whom are inextricably linked. Had it not been for the calf and hamstring issues which restricted Tadhg Furlong to just seven games for Leinster and one for Ireland, Clarkson would never have had the opportunities that came for province and country. Ireland's Thomas Clarkson runs in try against Portugal. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho Even so, after adding three more Champions Cup pool games to his one outing before this season, Clarkson didn't make the Leinster 23 in their European knockout games. But with Furlong sidelined again, Leo Cullen started Clarkson in their round 18 game against Glasgow. 'It all kind of just clicked and then kept that momentum going. That was the first game when I thought: 'That was a proper performance'.' David Humphreys has now lifted his moratorium on the provinces signing props from abroad and although Furlong's injury woes have been a factor, Clarkson's own account of his growth this season shows how Irish players can learn from overseas acquisitions like Rabah Slimani. 'I've been kind of understudy to Tadhg for a good few years now. He's consistently been probably the best tighthead in the world over the last few years. It's been unbelievable being there, just around him. 'Rabah's come in and probably offered something a bit different, where he's 100 per cent scrum. Tadhg obviously has an array of different stuff that he brings to it, whereas Rabah, when you're scrumming against him in training, it's all or nothing against him. It's been a different kind of experience with him, but I've felt I've come out the other end well.' Clarkson retained his starting place at tighthead in the URC quarter-final, semi-final and final wins, before playing against Georgia and Portugal. That Saturday night in Lisbon, he thought his breakthrough season was done until he received a text from Andy Farrell at 3am. 'We were on a night out; I had to go home straight away. But yeah, some text to get. It was like: 'ring me when you're awake', so I said: 'Oh yeah, grand'. Then Paulie [O'Connell] rang me and was like: 'Ring him right now'. So yeah, I had to just compose myself and go outside. I told Jack Boyle and then just legged it.' Lions Thomas Clarkson and Jamie Osborne celebrate after the game. Photograph: Billy Stickland/Inpho Sadly, social media can be a nasty world, and on foot of the backlash to him and Jamie Osborne being called up, Clarkson opted to ignore it. 'I feel like the last few weeks in Leinster, before the semi-final, was fairly negative. I just tried to use that as a bit of motivation. I knew, just because Jamie got called in right before me, there was a bit of backlash to that. So, I knew it was going to be even more when I got the nod. So yeah, I just tried to stay away from it.' 'It was a bit of a shock at the start, to be honest. You grow up using social media. It was hard to step away from it. But I just had to get rid of a lot of that.' Clarkson admits that linking up with the Lions at short notice was a good deal easier for him than the late Scottish call-ups given his familiarity with so many players and coaches, not least Andy Farrell and John Fogarty. On Tuesday morning Fogarty told Clarkson that his form for Leinster merited his call-up and encouraged him to continue that form into the match that night, so building up his confidence. 'I felt like I was chasing my tail a little bit, but happy enough with the scrum and I made a few tackles. It was a good start.' To make Clarkson's landmark night even better, his father Finbarr made it out in time for Tuesday's match. 'I think he knew if he was going to be here for any game, it would be this game. So yeah, he legged it down.' All the while in the mixed zone, he still had his Lions cap in his grasp, which had been given to him by Ieuen Evans. 'It's crazy, 886,' he says, of his number in Lions' playing history. 'I didn't even know they did caps if you don't play in the Test.' He's a Lion now all right.
