Like so many schools, it took a Welshman to spur Plymouth

Brendan Gallagher continues his series looking at rugby's great schools

BEFORE the mid-1970s Plymouth College, although competitive enough locally, had no great pretensions as a rugby school – but that changed radically with the arrival of Roly Jones, one of the hundreds of fanatical, rugby-daft, Welsh school teachers and educationalists who breathed fire into the English schools system in the 70s.

I'm not sure English rugby has quite acknowledged this huge debt and if Wales have occasionally nicked some of England's most promising schoolboy players I'd say that is still a small price to pay.

Jones, a former Wales Youth and Ebbw Vale hooker, arrived from Monmouth School where he had worked with the redoubtable Rod Sealy and immediately realised he had some decent raw material to hand. His candid rugby notes and player assessments each season are a delight if you can track down old copies of the Plymothian.

There were promising signs during the 1974-75 season and a free-booting two-match tour to France in the summer which consisted of one heavy defeat against a pick-up team from the local rugby bar and one lastminute win over better suited teenage opponents. They returned to Plymouth much more streetwise and battle hardened.

A very fine season followed with lineout giant Paul Ackford making the South West England Schools XV while five other first teamers made the Devon county side including precocious young prop Michael Piccirillo who was starting the first of four straight seasons in the Plymouth first team.

The Plymouth pack normally dominated all comers although a 12-3 home defeat at home to Reigate, who had also beaten Millfield the previous day, was a rude awakening and caused Jones to note “Reigate showed us just how good we have to be at forward”. On the Sevens circuit a team including Ackford and Piccirillo made it to the quarter-finals at both Rosslyn Park and Oxford.

The following season – 1976- 77 – Plymouth began to deliver in spades with an unbeaten record against schools, ten wins and an exciting 7-7 draw with Millfield. Ackford had originally intended to return in the 7th form but took up a place at Kent University instead. Such was Plymouth's growing strength up front that they plowed on regardless.

All those involved were awarded caps to celebrate Plymouth's ‘greatest' season to date but the attentive Jones, having criticised his team the previous year for a lack of belief and trust in each other, again pulled no punches:

“Dare I mention the word ‘belief ' again? The players had it in each other; they don't always like each other particularly but my word they did have mutual respect.”

This was the season that the late Tony Brooks – one of Plymouth's finest – started to make a full impact although he had starred in some games as a fifth former the previous season. A phenomenally hard working, raging bull of a backrower, Brooks, below, played for England Schools U16 to U18 and along with Piccirillo was the college's totem pole player.

This was also the season of a remarkable Sevens campaign with four trophies en route to Rosslyn Park. There they lost in the semi-final of the Festival to Ampleforth and promptly entered the Open the following day. After losing in the first round there, they won their next seven games that day to win the plate and after driving to Oxford that night they finished runners-up to King's Macclesfield in that tournament the following day. Twenty Sevens games in three days!

The following season saw Plymouth at their absolute best with 13 wins and a draw with Wellington.

Four Plymouth pupils played for the South West Counties against the all- conquering Aussie schools, four more represented Devon while two others played for Cornwall and Somerset.

Jones declared Brooks to be “the greatest schoolboy forward I have seen” with Piccarillo, who was capped by England Schools against the Aussies, not far behind. Jones also insisted the team's 58-9 win over a strong Taunton side to be Plymouth's finest ever performance.

Brooks toured Australia and New Zealand with England Schools in the summer of 1978 and returned for another season while earning a place at Oxford. He had a very youthful callow team to skipper but Plymouth were still a force with only defeats against Monmouth and St Brendan's where his head-to-head with Dave Pegler is still spoken about in awe.

It was a long time before Plymouth reached that high water mark again and then another Welsh coach was at the helm, Richard Edwards who arrived from Llandovery in the midnoughties. The culmination of that very strong era was the 2010-11 season with Henry Slade directing operations from fly-half.

Alas, they were denied an unbeaten season when they met red-hot favourites Whitgift in the quarter-finals of the Daily Mail Cup and lost 24-10 with Elliott Daly setting the Croydon school on their way with two early penalties from his own half. Whitgift went on to win the final.

Still Plymouth could look back on 17 wins in 18 games, a points total of 663 for and just 117 against and a thumping 39- 3 win over perennial rivals Kelly College in the final of the Devon Cup.

Edwards says: “It meant you could take momentum from one season to another and live up to a fixture list which got stronger and stronger.

“We had a great season in 2009 and our only defeat that season was to eventual winners Truro College 9-3 early on in the Daily Mail.

“It was much the same story the next year when we were very strong again but this time lost to Exeter 19-12 in round six and then came probably our best ever season in modern times with just that one defeat against Whitgift.

“Henry was our standout, he was a level above everybody but it was far from being a oneman team. We had high quality players throughout.”

The hard work continues. There was a semi-final appearance in the Daily Mail Vase in 2013 when they lost to Tiffin while 2017-18 was another strong group – with the likes of Charlie Short and Seb Tooke to the fore – that benefitted from a summer tour to New Zealand.

Edwards says: “We are in transition right now but then again all schools are with so much missed rugby. It's been great to be back and we have tried to keep it simple. The talent is still there but as with all schools we are playing catch up.”