Hard Men of Welsh Rugby

This fierce little book is for rugby fans who like their meat red – and preferably raw. A collection of brief, affectionate pen portraits of Welsh internationals famous, or infamous, for their physicality, it also offers a glimpse of a period in the game now almost unrecognisable. Only two of the twenty players selected here played into the twenty-first century and experienced professionalism as we understand it. When we read of Charlie Faulkner giving up his double shift at the steelworks to attend training, or Bobby Windsor changing buses three times in the rain on his way to a Cardiff international, and we realise that to many of these players the possibility of a Rugby League contract meant their only chance of financial security, it brings the hardness and – yes – the violence of their lives into sharper focus.