True believers still worship with King James version

Thursday marks, unbelievably, a quarter of a century since Carwyn James died of a heart-attack aged 54. Rugby football was his game, but his legacy survives as the philosopher-king of all sports' team coaches. You can come across inscrutable Chinese rowing coaches or earnest American basketball bods and they recognise any mention of him with solemn reverence and awestruck smile.

James was an unlikely one-off all right. A West Walian miner's son with a passion for cricket and snooker; a scholar who could translate Chekhov and Turgenev into Welsh, the Mabinogion into Russian and Dylan into Italian; a Plaid Cymru evangelist and Eisteddfod arch-druid who chain-smoked and drank gin and tonic; he played fly-half for Wales, coached Llanelli to four successive Welsh cups, and, epically, the 1971 British Lions to their (still) solitary series victory against New Zealand.

He also wrote a Guardian column. I spent the weekend fondly tweezering out a few aperçus from those now parchmenty, print-faded pieces. Rugby has seismically changed since his death, but his remarkable percipience still shines. Here's a delectable dozen:

· If I had my time again I'd be a soccer manager, not coach of a rugby club where half a dozen or more committeemen interfere with selection. As well, money now permeates rugby's administration. Rugby must always be our aristocratic heritage, never a trade.

· The boring, unthinking coach continually preaches about mistakes. The creative coach invites his players to make mistakes. Adventure and error go together. I loved Lewis Jones's way - "I may concede two, but I'll score four!"

· I have relished studying coaching methods at Manchester United - heresy in rugby union - and also rugby league at Wigan - even more heinous heresy. The transfer of skills from one ball game to another should forever occupy the mind of a responsible coach.

· Mini-rugby too often substitutes fun for fear-of-error. It was created for youngsters with the best of intentions, but screaming mums, doting dads, and competitive coaches give it the image of a monster.

· Most memorable tries are launched from deep positions; great counter-attack always has an element of the adventurer's daredevil desperation.

· Successful man-management is no more than demanding your team's "cocky blighter" remains outrageously full of himself, and ensuring your morose grumbler can moan as much as he wants. Express yourselves, I tell my teams, not as you would at the office, but as you would at home.

· However "brilliant", a young player must think and rethink his game many times over if he wants to graduate to a brilliant career. If he does not, it will be all too short, sharp and painful and (to round up Dylan) "we shall see the boy of summer in his ruin".

· The most telling of any pre-match team-talk consists of just three words: "Think! Think! Think!"

· This new midfield "crash-ball" is disaster - hunks of manhood with madness in their eyes, battering-ram bulldozers happy to be picked off on the gain-line by just-as-large hunks from the opposing side. For what? Just to do it all over again.

· The laws need simplifying. The minor offence is, incredibly, still equal to the major. Referees strut and talk far too much; they must become less and less important.

· Back play at speed is becoming a pathetic apology, an insult to those who have graced it for a century. Flat-footed forwards now stand at centre: I ask you! And crowds clap aimless kicks-ahead - and pay £12 for the privilege.

· We are breeding robots. Is it the drudge and monotony of training sessions where everything's done by numbers? Fly-halves even call moves before the scrummage forms - "miss one", "dummy scissors", "high up-and-under" and so on - regardless of the quality of the emerging ball. Coaches treat players like puppets on a string.

I was reminded of Carwyn at the extraordinary gathering at Stradey Park for the funeral this winter of his beloved protégé Ray Gravell. Both would have laughed at my memory of Carwyn's memorial service, higher up the steep sheep-speckled mountainside above Llanelli in Cefneithin's whitewashed little Tabernacle. Late, I'd driven at full-pelt from London, only to find a huge throng of mourners around the already burstingly cram-full chapel. Desperate, I implored a kindly steward: "I've come all the way from the Guardian to report the service." Valiantly, he muscled me through the complaining multitude to the chapel elders' jam-packed front pew, insisting: "Make room for this man, he's very important - he's from the Ammanford Guardian!