OBITUARY: Ex-international Alun Carter passes away – Welsh Rugby Union

The captain of the 1983 Welsh Schools Grand Slam winning team, he went on to enjoy a 15 year senior career of more than 300 first class games that ended in April 1999. In that time he played for Pontypool, SO Millau, Newport and South Glamorgan Institute / UWIC.

He won two Welsh caps in 1991, played for Wales A and a World XV in 1999. He also represented the Barbarians, British Police and Combined Services, Welsh Students and Police, Monmouthshire, Crawshays and Welsh Academicals. He spent five years as a policeman on the beat in the Gwent force while he was playing for Newport.

After hanging up his boots he entered a new phase of his rugby career after securing a first-class honours degree in Sport and Human Movement Studies as a mature student at South Glamorgan Institute gaining a first-class BA honours degree in Sport and Human Movement Studies.

It was during that time that he came under the wing of Dr Keith Lyons, who pioneered sports analysis at the Cyncoed establishment. He became an Applied Researcher working for Centre of Performance Analysis and got his first taste of international work with he acted as an analyst for the 1994 Football World Cup.

Working in tandem with Lyons at the world-leading performance analysis unit at Uwic he became the Great Britain Women’s Hockey Analyst  on a two-year contract from 1995-97. That covered the Olympic qualifiers and 1996 Olympics and led to him becoming the lead analyst for English Hockey from 1996-98.

His work with the men’s team during that time took in the Commonwealth Games in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 and the World Cup in Utrecht. Then came the link up with the Welsh Rugby Union.

Having played under Ray Prosser for Pontypool and Ron Waldron for Wales, he went on to work alongside six Welsh national coaches in Kevin Bowring, Sir Graham Henry, Sir Steve Hansen, Mike Ruddock, Scott Johnson and Gareth Jenkins as a lead analyst. He also joined Henry’s British & Irish Lions back room staff for the 2001 tour to Australia.

He went on to become team manager at Worcester Warriors once again working alongside Ruddock for five years and then became director of rugby at Pontypool between June 2014 and January 2015. After that he spent six years outside of rugby as a manager with the Littlewood Group 2015-2021 organising the delivery of solar farm projects throughout England and Wales for two years and then industrial style fencing projects including HS2 project 2017-21.

For the past four years he had been a Lecturer and Employability Lead in Sport Performance Analysis at Cardiff School of Sport and Health Sciences at Cardiff Met, where he returned to help develop the next generation of sporting analysts in much the same way as Lyons had done 30 years earlier.

Among the other jobs he undertook during his lifetime, he spent eight months working for the French cheese company Roquefort Societe as part of his playing contract with rugby club Stade Olympique Millau in 1990.

He wrote for both the Independent and Western Mail newspapers during World Cup and Six Nations periods and was the author of the award-winning book ‘Seeing Red: Twelve Tumultuous Years in Welsh Rugby’. He also collaborated on writing ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: The Rise and Fall of Pontypool RFC’.

Born at St Joseph’s nursing home in Malpas in 1964, Alun Jonathan Carter was adopted when he was 10 days old. He spent Carter spent the first seven years of his life in Wilhelmshaven, in northern Germany, where his father was teaching British Forces children.

There was another seven year stint in Staffordshire before his father got a job at Risca Comprehensive School. That meant a return to his roots and his first rugby honours came when he played for Wales U16 against South of Scotland and Italy.

He was at West Mon Grammar School at the time, but then moved to Kelly College, in Tavistock. From there he played for two seasons in the Wales Schools U18 teams, captaining the 1983 side that won the Grand Slam and went on a highly successful tour to Canada.

The winner-takes-all clash with unbeaten England in Pontypridd was his first big representative occasion. The Welsh coaches had kept the same starting XV throughout the campaign and Carter was one of five players who went on to gain senior honours, along with Rob Jones, Glyn Llewellyn, Rowland Phillips and Owain Williams.

The English side arrived at Sardis Road led by Kevin Simms, who had another future England cap Will Carling alongside him in the centre. Future British & Irish Lions prop Victor Ubogo was in the front row against them and they arrived having not conceded a try in their three previous games.

Paul Aden spoilt that record and Steffan Jones kicked the rest of the points in a notable 13-12 triumph.

In an interview with the Western Mail three years ago he outlined how his long wait for a cap finally came to an end.

“The game that did it for me was we played Neath at Rodney Parade at Christmas 1990. They had gone 50-odd matches unbeaten and it was one of those days where everything just went right for me,” he said.

“Two things happened. The game went well for me and Martyn Morris, who was the Welsh openside at the time, got sent off and banned.

“Richie Collins had broken his wrist, so the two incumbents in the back row were out. I was called up to the Wales squad for training and I was fit as a fiddle at the time.

“I was a runner, I was lightweight, and the training week went really well and then there was a game at the end of it where I was in the Possibles – it went as well as it could have done, and I scored a try.

“At the end of the training camp, Ron Waldron announced the team to play England. I can see myself now in the room at Sophia Gardens.

“He read it 15, 14, 13 and the 7 was the last, because he went 6, 8, 7, and I was the last name that was read out. It was a good moment, one of those that stays with you.”

Wales new caps Alun Carter, Neil Jenkins, Scott Gibbs and Glenn George in 1991

Teenage tyros Neil Jenkins and Scott Gibbs also got their first taste of international action with George and Carter that day.

“Glenn was superstitious. He said I could play openside, but he was keeping the 7 jersey,” Carter explained.

“The anthem was a proud moment, an emotional moment. Even when I was working with Wales in later years, I would always sing the anthem loudly.”

“England were kicking off, but they didn’t line up as you normally do. They stood in one big group, with virtually the whole team behind Rob Andrew,” he added.

“Scott was just behind me on the ten metres line and when Rob kicked off, he put a high kick up just behind me, on to Gibbsy.

“Gibbsy caught it and I got in behind him and the whole English pack just ran over the top of us and kicked hell into the pair of us. They gave a penalty away straight away, but the intention was to say ‘boots and saddles and here we are’.

“It was a hell of an England team, with Guscott, Carling, Underwood, Winterbottom, Brian Moore, Ackford, Dooley, Dean Richards and Teague. But the frustrating thing was we missed something like five or six kicks at goal.

“England was always the game to win, the game that meant more than any other, so it was dreadfully disappointing to lose. But my mum and dad were in the stand that day, close friends that I’d been in school with, all my mates from Pontypool, colleagues from the police force, people who had been with you on the journey.

“It was just wonderful, everything around it. It was everything that I’d ever wanted to do. You grow up thinking ‘Perhaps one day I can do that’.

“We went up to Scotland and then I was sub for the Ireland and French games and that was it that was my experience. That was my year, I guess.”

If the 25-6 defeat stuck in the craw for many years, he was able to gain some measure of revenge by being the analyst for the Wales team when they won at Wembley in 1999 and then beat England again on the way to the Grand Slam in 2005.

The WRU sends sincere condolences to the friends and family of Alun Carter.