Jeff:
“He was coach to the itinerant Barbarians. But only the bent nose, broken three times in a 16-year career with Swansea, is a dead giveaway of a past life in the arcane pit violence of the front row. He was a hooker.
"I had to keep weight on as a player. I shudder when I think of how I used to have to eat. When I stopped playing, I lost a stone and a half and have been lucky to stay at that kind of weight ever since."
He came from classic Welsh rugby stock in Neath. But his miner father didn't play. He was a top amateur cyclist who once won a title as Champion of the Valleys.
Of the five Herdman sons, all played rugby and two played for the RAF.
"At school it was the only winter game you could play. There wasn't a soccer pitch in the area. I remember a teacher confiscating a football in the school yard and handing back a rugby ball. That was just how it was."
The young Jeff Herdman was an all round athlete who played cricket and was a Welsh schoolboy champion sprinter and even shot putter at one stage, but he was a natural hooker.”
on both counts.
- Flap
