The game will truly miss this rugby man

BRISTOL is a rugby town as much as it is a football one: it has a well-financed Premiership team at the top end of the table, two clubs on the third rung of the ladder, another operating at level four and a heavily-populated combination scene blessed with sides of all shapes, sizes and abilities. What it no longer has, distressingly, is Matt Salter, below, whose sudden death at 49 was announced last weekend. Matt was a high-level back-row player of the heart-on-sleeve, blood-on-shirt, tackle-till-you-drop variety – he also played rugby league, which tells a tale – and his four-year tour of duty as Bristol captain was, by the standards of the club at the time, wildly successful: promotion from the Championship, survival in the top flight, a Premiership semi-final, a decent run in the Heineken Cup.

But his contribution to the local scene did not end with his retirement. Far from it. An astute, articulate rugby thinker with an enviable grasp of the game’s possibilities as well as its realities, he drove significant improvements as head coach at Clifton, the city’s “second team”, and made a proper splash at Clifton College, which established itself as a major force in the schools game under his leadership.

More than that – and this is where his loss really hurts those of us lucky enough to have spent time and chewed the fat in his company – he remained wholly positive and optimistic about the future of a sport fighting major battles on so many fronts. Matt was convinced of rugby’s potential for good – that it is a sport worth playing, whatever the level; that there is something in it for everyone, however distant from the professional game they may be.

Bristol will miss him. So too will the whole of rugby, which needs every Matt Salter it can find.