There is one cast-iron certainty that every single human being must accept, sooner or later, willingly or reluctantly: it’s a hard life. Oh yes, it really is. And there can’t be many better examples of this timeless truth than the life of Cardiff-born footballer Terry Yorath, who died in January. Random twists of fate forced him to endure a sequence of devastating bombshells that would have destroyed a lesser man, but he never crumbled. The Grangetown boy kept right on to the end of the road.

As a schoolboy he was a star scrum-half at rugby-playing Cathays High School before serendipity saw him switch to soccer after he travelled to Rhondda to watch his brother playing football for Cardiff Boys against Rhondda Valley Boys. The Cardiff lads found themselves a player short so Terry was roped in to fill the vacancy in a pair of borrowed boots and went on to give a fine performance. He soon won four Welsh Schoolboy caps as a left-winger and at age 17 was signed by Leeds United’s innovative and canny manager Don Revie (1927-1989). Leeds were then the giants of English football and it took Yorath six years to become a semi-regular in the first team as a utilitarian, ball-winning work-horse. Often he was more likely to play for Wales than for United. In a barren era for the national team, he won the first of his 59 caps – 42 as captain – in 1969.

Never a favourite with the Elland Road fans, accustomed to creative midfielders of the quality of Billy Bremner (1942-1997) and Johnny Giles, Yorath was criticised for his lack of pace and became the butt of pitiless barracking despite winning a championship medal with the club in 1974. He also appeared in the 1973 European Cup Winners’ Cup final, which AC Milan won 1-0 in controversial circumstances: Greek referee Christos Michas (1933-2010) gave a scandalously biased performance (he was subsequently banned for life by UEFA) in an early example of harsh reality that Yorath had to swallow. Consolation was promised in 1975 when he became the first Welshman to appear in UEFA’s most prestigious match, the European Cup final (Cliff Jones of Tottenham Hotspur had been the first Welshman to play in a European final, the 1963 European Cup Winners’ Cup). He played in all eight of Leeds’ European games but it ended very badly with a 2-0 defeat to Bayern Munich in Paris in which a pumped-up Yorath inflicted a dreadful 3rd minute late tackle while the ball was out of play on Bayern defender Björn Andersson. Andersson’s leg was broken in two places and yet French referee Michel Kitabdjian (1930-2020) inexplicably didn’t send Yorath off. In a perverse twist, the ref’s leniency was a disaster for both Yorath and Leeds. Overcompensating like crazy for the blatant injustice, Kitabdjian proceeded to deny Leeds a deserved victory with decision after decision wrongly going in Bayern’s favour – meaning Yorath didn’t just lose, he was treated as a pariah across Europe and personally blamed for the defeat by Leeds’ own supporters. Years later, in his 2004 autobiography, he wrote that he was “deeply ashamed of that foul” and that “it would have been immoral for me to come out of the match with a winner’s medal.” He was always a fair, decent man. The tackle was in fact not malicious, just mistimed over-eagerness in the early minutes as he stuck to the specific instruction of manager Jimmy Armfield (1935-2018) to make life difficult for Bayern’s brilliant players.

Yorath, never appreciated at Elland Road, was relieved to leave in 1976 after 141 League games and 10 goals, and join Coventry City. At Highfield Road he was immediately made captain and was a key factor in one of City’s best periods in the English top tier, inspiring the average players around him. He was still captain of Wales also, and in that capacity he was put through cruel torment in 1977 during a World Cup qualifier against Scotland played at Anfield in Liverpool after the FAW ceded home advantage to increase revenue. The score was 0-0 with just 10 minutes left. Wales had been the better side in a pulsating match, knowing a draw would leave them in pole position in their group to qualify for the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. But attention-seeking French referee Robert Wurtz shattered that dream when he incorrectly awarded a penalty to Scotland for handball having been conned into the appalling blunder by Scotsman Joe Jordan who was actually responsible for the handball. The odious cheat Jordan, who had been a team-mate of Yorath’s at Leeds, grinned and kissed his fist when Wurtz fell for his brazen scam. The penalty was converted, Wales were robbed by an outrageous injustice for which Jordan never apologised, Yorath and his men were devastated.

He went on to play 99 League games, scoring 3 goals, for the Sky Blues before he was transferred to Tottenham (48 League games, 1 goal) in 1979 for a couple of seasons, during which he ended his Wales career, and then spent two summers in Canada with Vancouver Whitecaps in the short-lived North American Soccer League (29 League games, 2 goals) before becoming a player-coach back in England at tier three Bradford City in 1982.

In 1985 he was sitting in the dug-out at Valley Parade when fire broke out in the dilapidated wooden main stand during Bradford City’s last game of the season, killing 56 spectators in scenes of indescribable horror. Terry Yorath played a heroic role helping a number of people to escape the inferno as people went up in flames before his eyes and only saved himself by smashing a window in the players’ lounge under the stand and jumping through it, injuring his leg. He then left Yorkshire after 27 League appearances for the Bantams to return to Wales and take up his first managerial job with Swansea City, and in 1988 led them to promotion from the fourth to the third tier in England. At the Vetch Field he played one last League game in 1986 – bringing his final figures in the English League to 314 games and 14 goals.

He was appointed part-time manager of Wales in 1988, but Swansea’s owners quickly decided they didn’t want to share him and so in 1989 he returned to Bradford City, where there were no such objections, becoming their assistant manager. The Welsh team was showing signs of improvement and when City sacked him in 1990 he returned to struggling Swansea – the club’s board now having no problem with his dual role. But that appointment was also short-lived. After a run of defeats in the English League, Yorath left Swansea for a second time in 1991 while the FAW, encouraged by great wins over Germany and Brazil, at last took the plunge and made him full-time manager of Wales.

Wales had embarked on the qualifying campaign for the 1994 World Cup when an unspeakable tragedy hit Terry Yorath in the summer of 1992. He was having a kick about in the back garden of his Leeds home with his 15-year-old son Daniel, a Leeds United apprentice, when the boy suddenly fell flat on his face and literally dropped dead in front of him. He had died from an undiagnosed heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. There can be no getting over such a bereavement; for the remainder of his life it was as much as he could do just to staunch the flood of tears.

He threw himself into work to navigate his grief and the Welsh players responded with a series of results that saw Wales rise to a highest ever FIFA ranking up to that point in time. This meant a win in the last qualification fixture at home to Romania would see Wales qualify for the World Cup for the first time since 1958. On a November night at the packed National Stadium in Cardiff, the match stood at 1-1 when dominant Wales were awarded a clear cut penalty with under 20 minutes to go. Romania looked a beaten side as full-back Paul Bodin stepped forward to take the kick. He missed: his overcooked shot smacking into the cross bar so ferociously it ricocheted all the way back to the half-way line! Romania, needing only a draw to qualify, had a new lease of life and with Wales desperately throwing everyone into attack they broke away in the last few minutes and scored the killer goal. The nation was devastated, poor Terry Yorath was inconsolable – but it immediately got much worse. As the final whistle blew, two idiots from Wrecsam stupidly fired a marine flare across the arena from high up in the South Stand. It scythed into John Hill (1926-1993) in the opposite stand and killed the Merthyr postman outright. His son, sitting next to him, never went to a football match again. Andrew McAllister and Kerry Still were sentenced to three years in prison for manslaughter. And Terry Yorath was, once more, required to deal with unfathomable tragedy.

The FAW, in turmoil itself at the time, callously didn’t renew Yorath’s contract and he then had a short stint as manager of tier three Cardiff City before being sacked. This was followed by two years in war-torn Beirut as manager of Lebanon. Often under armed guard, he miraculously lifted the Lebanese national side over 50 places in the FIFA rankings. By this time close proximity to death must have felt almost reassuringly normal. Back in England, he had undistinguished spells as a coach at Huddersfield Town and as assistant manager then briefly manager at Sheffield Wednesday, before he finally bowed out of football involvement for good in 2009 at Margate, a Kent non-league club where his older brother Dai Yorath (1948-2024) had played between 1968 and 1981.

Through these years of sorrow and increasing dependence on alcohol, his marriage to Christine, his wife since 1971, was dissolved in 2007. Terry battled on with courage for as long as he could and, although there can be no such thing as a happy ending for any of us, at the very end death must have come as a blessed release for the kind and gentle man. The incurable agony of living was over.