Former Welsh rugby union youth international, Mr Leslie Griffiths, has died in Airedale General Hospital in his 91st year.

Mr Griffiths, who had lived in Cross Hills for 24 years, played top-class rugby for LIanelli and obtained his international cap against France at Under-19 Level.

He later played for Coventry and Moseley, the two top midlands clubs of the time, after training as a teacher and moving to Brimingham.

He joined up in 1939, becoming an RAF Officer with a base in the Majestic Hotel in Harrogate. He met his wife Barbara Harrison, daughter of John Harrison of Colne, the great opera singer, during a dance at the hotel and they married in 1943.

They shared a house in Harrogate with Leslie Ames, the renowned England and Kent wicketkeeper-batsman, and his wife.

A succession of other well-known sporting personalities became close friends when he was in Yorkshire in the early part of the war or when he was posted to Italy. They Included his Squadron Leader Walter Winterbottom, the great England football coach; Freddie Maxwell, the Lambourn racing trainer who specialized in winning Ascot Gold Cups, and the Bedser twins, Alec and Eric, of Surrey and England cricketing fame.

With his huge sporting interests he naturally gravitated to such people, who could justifiably be referred to as gentlemen of sport and who shared his immense sense of fun.

Whilst in Harrogate he played rugby for the RAF and turned down an offer from Hunslet Rugby League Club. What he considered to be one of the worst experiences of his life was having to play at Cardiff Arms Park against the full Welsh side.

Also when in Yorkshire he had to go to check the defences at Scarborough, only to find that they consisted of a single telegraph pole pointing out to sea!

He lived in his youth in the village of Heolgerrig, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, the son of a miner and whose mother was from farming stock.

His early lessons were in Welsh, so he learned English as a second language.

After being demobbed, he joined the staff of Colne Grammar School in 1946, moving to his wife's home area, and they lived together in Higherford, near Colne.

His hobbies included shooting, fishing and watching Burnley FC as a season ticket holder.

His next job was running Further Education in Barnoldswick and his final appointment was as Area Principal of the Calder Valley Colleges of Further Education until his retirement in 1976.

His final years were spent in Cross Hills involved with Malsis School which his daughter and son-in-law ran for 19 years. He was never on the pay roll but voluntarily taught woodwork at evenings and weekends.

He shared his ponies, a boyhood interest, with any pupils who were interested and some learned to drive them in the two spindle backed gigs and the Battlesden Car -- a four-wheeled dogcart -- which he had made.

His horse-drawn vehicles carried Father Christmas and Gala Queens in such places as Todmorden, Cowling and Lothersdale. At this time he was a member of the British Driving and Yorkshire Driving Societies and of the Shetland Pony and Welsh Stud Book Societies.

Mr Griffiths was a great raconteur and loved exchanging jokes with his friends and associates, jokes that even latterly he never forgot.

In his later years he was confined to the house, but he never lost his sense of humour nor his interest in everyone and everything.

He had been married for 59 years and leaves a widow, Barbara, and a married daughter, Pamela Clark.