Thorburn calls for a restart ‘at every level

PAUL Thorburn has seen Wales take a few batterings since his touchline goal put them on the World Cup podium for the only time; bronze medallists behind France and the All Black untouchables.

- PETER JACKSON

They have never been back among the global top three since their fullback’s conversion of Adrian Hadley’s last-minute try against Australia amid the hot springs of a city in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty almost 40 years ago. The rotten state of their national sport post-Rotorua is such that the chasm between where Wales stood then and where they lie now feels all of 12,000 miles wide.

Long before England finished filling their boots last Saturday, Thorburn had never been afraid to criticise World Rugby’s lack of leadership and alert the Welsh Rugby Union as long as eight years ago to the ‘deep-rooted problems’ gnawing away at the ‘precarious’ condition of the game at all levels.

“What happened to Wales last weekend was a long time coming,” he says. “It was only a matter of time until the day came when the cracks split open and the whole thing fell apart. That day came last Saturday.

“The question now is: what do we do about it?”

He answers the rhetorical poser with the zeal of a man who sees Welsh rugby as a shipwreck and cares enough to man the lifeboats required to drag it off the rocks. Thorburn has experienced crushing defeats in various guises: as captain of a Wales squad wracked by internal bickering when the world-beating Wallabies won 63-6 in Brisbane in 1991; seven years later as World Cup tournament director when France ran Wales ragged 51-0 at Wembley to clinch a Grand Slam.

He experienced similar setbacks during periods as a management executive at the WRU and the Ospreys until they made him redundant in 2010. He believes the regional teams, born from a series of shotgun marriages between rival clubs, have failed.