Hull FC began one of the greatest seasons in their history 70 years ago this week. Roy Francis guided them to their first title in 20 years with a desperately tight 10-9 win over Halifax at Maine Road. Not only was Francis an outstanding coach but he was black and this was the 1950s. In his majestic new book Rugby’s Forgotten Black Leader, Tony Collins calls Francis “quite probably the only black person to be a leader of white people in any walk of life in Britain”. He really was extraordinary.
No one had written in great depth about Francis and then two books came along almost at once. Peter Lush’s Ahead of his Time focuses on his tremendous playing and coaching career, whereas Collins widens the lens to take in Francis’s remarkable life.
He was born in the Welsh town of Brynmawr in 1919. His mother, Alice May Evans, was the 19-year-old daughter of a farmer and his father, Lionel, a 37-year-old from Trinidad, was as unique as his son became. Lionel was a preacher and miner in Wales, a civil rights leader in New York City and, finally, a politician in Belize. Leadership and flair were in Roy’s genes. His half-brother Arthur Dibbin became a successful jazz singer and trumpeter who played with Snakehips Johnson. Not your usual rugby league family.
Francis was a really good player: a teenage recruit at Wigan, a prolific tryscorer at Barrow – where he formed an all-black partnership with the veteran former England international wing Val Cumberbatch – and Warrington, then an influential veteran at Hull. He played five times for Wales and once for Great Britain.
The England army team, including sergeant Roy Francis (front row, second left), before a match against Wales in April 1944. Photograph: Getty Images
Like most players born in the decade after the first world war, Francis spent what should have been his prime serving in the second world war. It took seven years of his career. When the Lions went on the Indomitables tour of 1946, he was not selected. Was his exclusion a racist decision? Collins makes the case that Francis did not deserve selection but that, given his race, would not have been picked anyway. In 1947 he became the first black man to play for Great Britain but he never experienced a Lions tour. Billy Boston, his fellow Welshman and protege, became the first black Briton selected to tour Australia in 1954.
War derailed Roy’s playing career but, in retrospect, it forced him down a path to a glorious future. He became a physical training instructor in the army. Given his natural inclination to instruct, cleverly cajole and support, that was great preparation for a coaching career. The war was his apprenticeship for becoming British rugby’s first master coach – and the first black man to coach a top-tier team in Britain, in any sport.
Francis was an innovator and an adopter of others’ ideas, with vast emotional intelligence. At Hull FC, he introduced an eight-week pre-season training programme; he issued players with spikes for sprint training so he had the fastest backs and forwards in the game; and his squad practised other sports, such as basketball, boxing and football (with two balls), to improve their movement and awareness.
Roy Francis playing for Hull FC in the early 1950s.
He watched films of matches and showed clips to his players decades before analysis was a thing in British sport. His management style was supportive and instructional. He kept it simple. Before his Leeds side played Wigan in a semi-final, he took them to watch Wigan play, and gave them only small coaching points to repeatedly rehearse before the big game. They won easily.
There were no bollockings. Team spirit was paramount under Francis. He looked after players as if they were his sons, their wives like daughters-in-law. He installed family bars at Hull and Headingley, encouraging lock-ins after matches, inviting players and their families back to his pubs. The young Hull forward Johnny Whiteley hung on his every word. “I loved Roy, loved him,” he recalled.
In his first season as captain-coach, 1951-52, Francis took Hull to the championship semi-finals for the first time in 16 years. Soon finals were his currency. Hull had top-five finishes in six of his first nine seasons at the club, winning the title in 1956 and 1958. Thousands stood outside the Guild Hall to laud them. As Collins writes: “Roy had become a black leader in a white world.”
This was not only a significant achievement, but it was also a heavy burden. Francis was dogged by an undercurrent of racism in club boardrooms and a nagging notion of often failing on the biggest stage.
There were plenty of disappointments along the way. When he took Hull to Wembley in 1959, he sorely underestimated the emotional and physical toll a Challenge Cup final takes on teams. On the morning of the biggest match of their lives, he held a full training season in sapping heat in front of the watching press. Unsurprisingly, Hull faded and Wigan racked up a record 30 points. On the same stage a year later, his injury-wrecked Hull side conceded 38 points to Wakefield. Those humiliations never left him.
He won the Challenge Cup with Leeds in 1968 but even that success was tinged with regret. As Francis presented his players their jerseys before the match he simply said: “The final act is down to you. You are all prepared. You are all good enough.” John Atkinson was in tears. Little did Francis know that outside the sea was falling from the sky. Leeds still won that Watersplash Final, but it was a hollow victory. The biblical flood stopped them from playing their thrilling champagne rugby to toast their inspirational coach. The rain had ruined it for Roy. He considered that three opportunities missed.
Leeds players celebrate with the Challenge Cup in May 1968. Photograph: Trinity Mirror/Alamy
What became known as the Francis Formula – fit, quick, expansive on the field; united, organised and fun off it – was underpinned by a tenacity that saw his Hull team once go eight games without conceding a try. He took the same methods to the North Sydney Bears, who signed him in what was reportedly the biggest deal in rugby league history, be it for player or coach. While at the club he offered to babysit for players and put on pre-match barbecues for their families. They would call it cultural architecture these days.
But two years of racism from Sydney society and the rugby league press eventually drove Francis out. He returned to England but short spells at Hull and Leeds also proved mistakes. A lingering lack of respect for him repeatedly undermined his career. Indeed, there were several elements reminiscent of other great managers: his charisma finally catapulting big clubs into successful ones (Bill Shankly), his originality failing to have the same impact on his return to clubs (José Mourinho), even his alcohol-fuelled decline (Brian Clough).
Roy Francis playing snooker with English prop forward Jim Mills at North Sydney in November 1970. Photograph: John M Manolato/Fairfax Media Archives/Getty Images
A week before he died in 1989, aged 70 after heart surgery, Francis attended the unveiling of the Leeds Wall of Fame at Headingley. He was the pride of the place. At that time, British rugby league had an array of world-class black players. Martin Offiah was on his way to becoming the highest try scorer since Boston and Ellery Hanley was the Great Britain captain. But since Francis there has been only a trickle of non-white coaches. No black Briton has led a Super League team for a full season since Hanley at St Helens a quarter of a century ago.
Francis would be pleased to learn that the next Bears coach is also of mixed heritage. Being an historian of the game and an honourable man, Mal Meninga will surely see that the Bears pay suitable tribute to Francis, a fellow groundbreaking natural born leader.
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