Twenty years have come and all but gone since a Welshman from Blaina prepared Manchester’s champions-elect for their coronation in one of Twickenham’s more memorable Premiership finals: Sale 45, Leicester 20.

Fifteen years have come and gone since the same Welshman, this time on a global stage in charge of Russia’s World Cup baptism against the USA, found a stranger holding court post-match in the dressing-room flanked by armed guards, unaware that the burly bloke in question was Vladimir Putin’s political master.
In the no-nonsense direct approach of his native mining community, the man fr...