Kevin Bowring, who has died of a heart attack aged 70, was the first full-time professional coach of the Wales rugby union side, a position he held for three years in the late 1990s.
His dismissal at the end of 1998 eventually threw him into the arms of the Rugby Football Union in England, which appointed him as its head of elite coach development in 2001, a post he occupied for 15 years and in which he was responsible for bringing forward a number of top-line coaches, including England’s Stuart Lancaster, who cited him as “the biggest influence of my career”.
Although not an international player himself, Bowring had made his name as a highly regarded flanker with London Welsh in the 1970s and 1980s. Once his playing career ended he moved into coaching with the Wales Under-20 and Under-21 teams, followed by Wales A and then the full national side, arriving in that role just as amateurism was being dismantled. With no template to work to he had a tough job helping his players meet the new demands of professionalism, and he was upset that he was discarded so quickly.
Later the WRU reclaimed Bowring as one of its own after he had retired by employing him as a part-time mentor to young Welsh coaches.
The son of a carpenter, Kevin Bowring was born on May 9 1954 in Neath, south Wales, where he lived next to the Gnoll, home of Neath rugby club. After A-levels at Neath Grammar School he began a degree in business studies at Portsmouth Polytechnic, travelling back to Wales on a regular basis to play for Briton Ferry, whose youth side he also coached despite being only 20 himself.
The course at Portsmouth turned out to be a disappointment, and he dropped out after two years, opting instead for teacher training at Borough Road College in Isleworth, west London. There he captained the college team while continuing to travel home, this time to appear for Neath, for whom he made his debut as a No 8 before moving to flanker.
Bowring’s first PE teaching job, in Reading, led to a friendship with the Welsh international winger Clive Rees, who was working at the same school. Rees was playing for London Welsh in Richmond-upon-Thames, and Bowring saw that it made sense to follow suit, not least to reduce his travelling time.
He played for the Exiles for nine years, from 1977 to 1986, captaining the club for three seasons and clocking up 268 appearances, including the 1985 John Player Cup final, a 24-14 defeat to Bath. He also appeared on three occasions for the Barbarians before retiring at 32 in order to make a move to teach at Clifton College in Bristol.
Across a decade there, Bowring developed a burgeoning reputation as a leading schools rugby coach, and he was invited to help with coaching camps for the Wales Under-17 and Under-18 teams. That led to his appointment as the Under-20s coach, leading to three years with the Under-21s followed by a further three with Wales A. When the Welsh Rugby Union advertised for their first full-time professional coach in 1995 he was in pole position for the job, and was duly appointed.
Wales were at a low ebb, having just lost nine of their previous 10 matches. Bowring began to ring the changes, blooding some younger players, re-introducing a freer style of running rugby and re-integrating returning rugby league players into the union set-up.
After a promising start with wins over Fiji and Italy, defeats in the Five Nations to England, Scotland and Ireland revealed the extent of the task ahead of him. Over the following two seasons Wales failed to attain any degree of consistency, and despite notable wins against Ireland and Scotland in the 1998 Five Nations campaign, two thumping defeats to England and France led to his dismissal after 29 games that had delivered 15 wins and 14 defeats.
Bowring conceded that “results were never good enough” but was surprised and dismayed to lose the job, especially as the WRU had refused to take on board his carefully devised road map towards a new future, based around the need for a more competitive structure in Welsh rugby and a revamp of national coaching.
To make matters worse, Bowring’s successor, the New Zealander Graham Henry, was given £250,000 a year compared with Bowring’s £50,000, after which the WRU promptly approved a development plan that was largely the same as Bowring had advocated. “The new coach gets paid five times the amount I did, asks for the same things I asked for, and gets them,” he complained afterwards.
Bowring was, however, not one to bear grudges. Calm, softly spoken and widely admired as a deep thinker, he returned for a time to teaching, at Cardiff Metropolitan University, while writing for the Western Mail newspaper and coaching at Newbury RFC as he waited for a bigger opportunity.
That chance came in 2001 when the RFU gave him responsibility for appointing, managing and developing more than 20 England National Academy coaches, working to the kind of long-term plan the WRU had spurned when he suggested it.
After his retirement from that job in 2016 he was coaxed back by the WRU to do his mentoring work in the Welsh regions, and gave advice to Welsh professional clubs as a consultant.
In addition, he was a board member of UK Coaching (formerly Sports Coach UK), a support organisation for British sports coaches.
Kevin Bowring is survived by his wife, Wendy.
Kevin Bowring, born May 9 1954, death announced October 11 2024
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