Terry Yorath obituary: Ex-Wales captain and boss touched by tragedy

Former Wales captain and manager Terry Yorath, who has died at the age of 75, was the first Welshman to play in a European Cup final, but was deeply affected by two off-field tragedies.

He played for Leeds United, Coventry City and Tottenham Hotspur, skippered Wales in 42 of his 59 international appearances, and later managed Swansea City, Bradford City, Cardiff City and Sheffield Wednesday.

Yorath will however perhaps always be most closely associated with the Wales team he managed that just missed out on qualification for the 1994 World Cup as a result of an agonising defeat by Romania.

He is survived by three children – son Jordan and daughters Louise and Gabby, the BBC Sport presenter who married Scotland rugby union international Kenny Logan in 2001.

Another son, Daniel, died suddenly at the age of 15 in 1992 from the genetic heart condition hypertrophic cardiomyopathy.

Yorath was also player-coach of Bradford in 1985 and was at Valley Parade when a fire killed 56 people.

Born in Cardiff, Yorath was a combative midfielder and a natural leader after emerging in Don Revie’s Leeds United team in the early 1970s.

He joined Leeds as a schoolboy in 1965 and signed on as a professional two years later, but his early first-team chances were limited by the presence of Billy Bremner and Johnny Giles in Revie’s famous line-up.

But he was a regular when Leeds won the First Division title in 1973-74, and was in the side that lost 2-0 to Bayern Munich in the 1975 European Cup final.

Sold to Coventry a year later, he captained the Sky Blues for most of his three seasons there before joining Tottenham in 1979.

After Tottenham, Yorath played for Vancouver Whitecaps before joining Bradford as player-coach. Later, for a time he combined club management at Bradford and Swansea with managing Wales on a part-time basis, before eventually taking the Wales job full-time.

Yorath was twice involved with taking Wales to the brink of qualification for the World Cup finals – a feat that had only previously been achieved once, in 1958.

He was captain in 1977 when Scotland controversially beat Wales 2-0 at Anfield with the first goal coming from the spot after Scotland striker Joe Jordan appeared to handle the ball in the Wales penalty box, but the decision went in the Scots’ favour.

Jordan, who had been a team-mate at Leeds, was also godfather to Yorath’s daughter Gabby.

Then, as manager in 1993, Yorath steered Wales to within a win of reaching the 1994 finals in the USA, but his team lost 2-1 at home to Romania in agonising circumstances.

Paul Bodin missed an opportunity to put Wales 2-1 ahead when he hit the crossbar from the penalty spot, although Yorath refused to blame the defender.

«It wasn’t Paul’s fault we lost the game. People forget [goalkeeper] Nev Southall made a hash of it for the first goal from [Gheorghe] Hagi,» he told BBC Radio Wales.

The match was Yorath’s last in charge of Wales as he was not offered a new contract.

He was inducted into the Welsh Sport Hall of Fame in 2017.

At the time of the Bradford fire in 1985, Yorath was assistant coach with the Bantams, and helped evacuate supporters – including his own family – during the disaster.

Talking about the events of that day at Valley Parade on BBC Radio Wales in 2017, Yorath said that after warning people in the directors’ lounge to get out, he had to «break a window and jump out of it».

He added: «The first thing I saw when I got outside was this old guy with his hands folded across his chest and you could see the burns on his arms.

«It was horrendous to go back there the next day and see the devastation. It was horrible, horrible… shocking.»

On the same BBC Radio Wales programme, Yorath was asked how he had coped with the death of his son Daniel, who had undiagnosed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and said: «I didn’t, really.»

He added: «I started drinking more. I would go up to his grave every night and do the things people say they do when they lose someone. I’d go into his room and smell his clothes.»