It’s a four-year cycle of players staying on contracts, or managers and coaches staying, it’s all become geared to that – it’s very exciting, it’s very different to my day.” Copsey? He actually stood 6ft 7in tall and weighed 17st 8lb in his Llanelli and Wales prime. He looked a formidable specimen on the pitch, then, but off it he was as amiable as they come. His obvious ability in the position soon attracted the attention of a number of first-class clubs and, in 1982, he joined Bridgend, where he was to spend seven contented years. You hear the current generations speak equally glowingly, despite the changes the game has gone through in the past two decades, but why does it mean so much? urn:lcp:mikehallstoryhow0000hall:epub:dc9c5715-9aca-4686-8f12-0b4af51106d5 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier mikehallstoryhow0000hall Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3331pd6h Invoice 1652 Isbn 9781847717108 Lccn 2015302688 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9799 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000353 Openlibrary_edition

Hall, from Harrogate, North Yorkshire, had set off from Fremantle in Western Australia on 18 March 2017 with other riders for the Indian Pacific Wheel Race. After 12 days and about 3,000 miles, he had crossed most of the continent to reach Cooma in New South Wales and was second in the competition. I have very fond memories of being involved with the world cup and everything that goes with it,” said Hall. “But, at the end of the day, it is about results and, ultimately, we failed in both (tournaments)because we didn’t get out of the group.

We had Clive Rowlands manager, Ian McGeechan and Roger Uttley coaches, Kevin Murphy, the English physio, and Ben Goodfellow, the doctor. That was it.

Now, after more than 20 years with that property development company, PMG, he is moving on and ready to embark on the next chapter of his life. When we catch up for a chat near his home in Pontcanna, it becomes clear his has been a career like few others.We all blended in with each other and Finlay Calder led from the front as skipper. He was a fabulous guy. Like granite, intelligent, physically hard. I went out there as a winger, which is where I had been playing for Wales, and I started the tour pretty well. I scored a couple of tries and I was feeling quite confident. I don’t think Rory Underwood was in the best form then and I felt I could put a lot of pressure on him for a Test spot. I’ve had boots in the head, scars on my head, right the way down. You never complained, you just got on with it.”

So with both rugby and football having played a huge part in his life, which sport is he more engaged by now?Mike Griffiths (left, wearing No 1) during a dust-up in the match against New South Wales on the 1989 Lions tour of Australia. Fellow Welshmen Robert Norster and David Young are the other Lions involved in the altercation You could see then how far Wales was behind the southern hemisphere countries because they were training in a different way to us. It was only when Alec came to Cardiff that we realised that. The council were basically saying ‘We are not going to gift you this land and allow you to build this stadium and do all this development if we don’t think you have got a credible business plan’. Leinster and Ireland rugby legend Dr Bill Mulcahy was inducted into the Guinness Hall of Fame. Mulcahy, a former UCD, Bective Rangers and Skerries captain, played on two Lions tours in 1959 and the 1962 tour to South Africa. In doing so, he, along with teammate Niall Brophy became the first players from the UCD club to represent the Lions. A hugely popular administrator after retirement, he became Skerries’ first President of the Leinster Branch in season 1995/96, the inaugural year of the Heineken Cup. There was a bit of hard feeling between Cardiff and everybody at that time. There was sometimes hatred between the clubs. But the individual players would shake hands and move on.