RUGBY WORLD CUP: Dogged Evans is a strong influence

Clem Thomas hears how the Welsh coach plans to lead his adopted nation to glory

AS MUCH as for any Welshman or Irishman, today's match at Ellis Park will be of immense importance to an Australian. Alex Evans, the Welsh coach born in Queensland, is anxious that those in the Principality who disapproved of an Antipodean being placed in charge of the national side are answered by a victory to take Wales into the quarter-finals of the World Cup.

Evans, as a 56-year-old fifth- generation Welsh Australian and a second-generation Scottish Australian, has a considerable amount of Celtic blood and was, he says, "honoured" when the Welsh Rugby Union turned to him after the whitewash debacle of the Five Nations' Championship.

He believes that Wales had lost their way and the players had become dispirited. "I wanted to instil confidence back into them before the World Cup, which is a tough job but an honest one. I know we were comfortably beaten by the All Blacks and I really believed that, at the least, we would run them close. The problem is getting the team to believe that after 42 years of losing to New Zealand.

"There is tremendous talent in Wales, and although there is criticism of the athleticism of some of the squad, the players are learning, getting tougher and are achieving more each day. I still say we are capable of beating the All Blacks.

"Australia think they know everything in rugby," he added, "but I have learned a lot in Wales. Nevertheless, the passion of the club game is sometimes not a good thing for Welsh rugby, for it overrides the skill factor."

Evans has impeccable credentials for the Welsh job, having taken Cardiff from rags to riches in three years. Their investment in him, in salary, air fares, accommodation and transport is about pounds 70,000 a year, but it has already paid a huge dividend, the club having won the Welsh Cup in 1994 and the Heineken League this past season.

According to his great friends Bob Dwyer and Bob Templeton, the Aussie coaches, Evans earned the nickname "Mad Dog" in his days as a wild, hard man when playing for Queensland between 1959 and 1973. He started as a flanker and finished at prop, went on to coach Queensland with Templeton and taught physical education in Brisbane Grammar, where Alan Jones was also a teacher. When Jones became coach of the 1984 Wallabies, who achieved a Grand Slam in the British Isles, he chose Evans as his forward coach.

Templeton says he is "a bloody good coach, technically very proficient, a good motivator and a hard task master" and there is no doubt that the Australian camp have a great respect and affection for him. But then so have the Welsh. Gareth Davies, the Cardiff club manager, said: "He has the skill of being a disciplinarian without being a schoolmaster. He is very demanding, and he has lost Cardiff a few players like Mark Ring, Ritchie Collins and Robert Howley because they could not get on with him. But he has developed other players like Derwyn Jones, who was on the scrapheap. He has no time for committees at all but he's intensely loyal to his players."

The Welsh players, who call him the smiling shark, know that second best will not do, as evidenced by the rocket Evans fired in the direction of the captain Mike Hall during a training session in Bloemfontein.

Few people will count themselves luckier than Evans just to be at the World Cup. In 1991, he was given six months to live when he contracted haemochromotosis, a blood disorder which deposits metal in vital organs. He went home determined to fight it.

Here he is again, fighting, this time for his rugby life, for the losers of today's game will be flying home tomorrow night. Nobody has a stronger conviction than Alex Evans that it will be the Irish.