Cliff Morgan

Rest easy Cliff Morgan, legend, mellifluous in voice and motion; one of rugby's greats has gone to the changing room in the sky.

Grab a tea and please read the biography here.

Listen and watch as he describes Gareth Edwards iconic try for the Barbarians against the mighty All Blacks. See if your goosebumps make you thrill to the images and sound.

Cliff became head of outside broadcasting, most of what we see now on TV is a shambles without his managerial abilities. 'They," the suits decided he was too long in the tooth and retired him from Radio 4's Saturday morning spot. The day of an International was nothing like it used to be, informed conversation preceded the game and set you up if you were driving to watch your heroes.

My own boyhood was spent playing rugby and watching the icons of that age play what was still an amateur game. Edwards, Morgan, Bennett and of course Barry John are etched in the memory, they created my side step, wanna see it again? The thumbs in the picture are part of another story.

Each Saturday morning from the age of 11 the Grammar School in Aylesbury turned out various age group rugby teams. Graham Burchill was our scrum half, I was the Fly Half, Graham would spin a leather rugby ball, which was covered in dew, at me, it would slam into my hands and knock my thumbs backward causing Basal joint problems which steroid injections keep at bay. Would I change anything? No way.

This morning my friends and I mourn Cliff but we do so with joyful memories, without the inspiration of him and his ilk we would never have taken up the sport, they inspired us. I remember seeing two giants of Welsh rugby deep in conversation at Murrayfield while their wives waited patiently for them to "get it out of their system." Nobody interrupted them, yet we all recognised them and gave them their space.

Cliff Morgan was a brilliant and admired after dinner speaker. We exchanged letters over the topic of Eagles. He knew a chap who had spent time with eagles and related how the birds flew so majestically. I told him about the day I flew into Glen Clova west of Forfar, discovered a Golden Eagle soaring over it's territory at 1000' and reduced speed to hover alongside it. That bird looked at me as an intruder, it was not frightened of the huge machine beside it, rather it was disdainful of my own inability to match the beauty of it's flight.

So, Cliff Morgan has hung up his boots, handed in his red shirt and gone off for a couple of quiet pints. Rest easy lad, oh and by the way, thank you.