A dashing centre who played for Wales, the British & Irish Lions and the Great Britain rugby league team, he spent the majority of his playing career in the ‘North’ after heading to Oldham in 1962 for a fee of around £8,000 – which equates to around £210,000 today.
He learned his rugby at Abersychan Grammar Technical Scoool and was a product of the Pontypool Youth system. He captained Wales Youth against Germany and France in 1956, and included in those two teams were two other future Wales caps, Aberavon prop Phil Morgan and Ebbw Vale prop Denzil Williams.
He made his senior debut for Pontypool in a 18-8 win at Blaenavon on Monday, 16 April 1956, scoring a try, and played for his hometown club between 1956-1962, captaining the side in in the 1960-61 and 1961-62 seasons.
He also skippered the Combined Pontypool-Cross Keys side against South Africa in 1960, helped Monmouthshire win the Welsh Counties Cup in 1960, twice won the Inter-Services title with the RAF while doing his National Service and also played for the Combined Services and the Barbarians.
He was one of the glittering stars in Pontypool’s Welsh Championship winning side in 1958-59, when they had Colin Evans and Benny Jones at half back and another future Wales cap, Fenton Coles on the wing. Scrum half Evans also transferred to rugby league after winning one Welsh cap.
Price became the breakthrough player in Welsh rugby in that season, playing in all three Welsh trials and winning the first of his nine caps in a home win over England in the opening game of the 1959 Five Nations.
Malcolm Price’s debut v England in 1959
The game ended in a 5-0 win for Wales and Price was one of seven new caps in the Wales XV – co centre Haydn Davies, wing Dewi Bebb, outside half Cliff Ashton and forwards Ian Ford, John Leleu and Derrick Main.
He played throughout the Championship, which saw Wales finished joint second behind France, and scored tries in back-to-back games against Scotland and Ireland. His outstanding form for both club and country earned him selection for the 1959 Lions tour to Australia and New Zealand, the youngest at 21 of the nine Welshmen in the squad.
He became a global star on the Lions tour, featuring in five of the six Tests and scoring four tries against the Wallabies and All Blacks. The Lions won the series 2-0 in Australia and Price featured in three defeats in New Zealand before the Lions hit back to win the fourth without him.
Even so, he enjoyed a great tour and scored 14 tries in 19 games, including a hat-trick against New Zealand Universities. He even reverted to outside half for the second Test against the All Blacks, which the Lions lost 11-8. The first Test ended 19-18 to the home side and the third was lost 22-8.
The 1960 Five Nations campaign saw Price once again play in all four games as Wales finished third, but he felt out of favour in the 1960-61 season. His form in the Welsh Trials ahead of the 1962 Five Nations series saw him earn a recall and he once again played against England in a 0-0 draw at Twickenham.
He was picked for the next game against Scotland on 3 February 1962, but instead signed for Oldham RLFC for a “substantial fee” five days after the draw at Twickenham.
He scored a try on his Oldham debut in a 13-7 win on 3 February 1962 against Liverpool City at Knotty Ash. Three weeks later he fractured his ankle against Widnes, the first of a number of injuries he suffered in rugby league.
Worse was to follow later that year when he went to hospital with a severe concussion after sustaining an injury in a game at Rochdale on 29 August 1962. While he was in hospital in Manchester his condition deteriorated, and he underwent emergency surgery on a life-threatening pancreas injury.
“Through perseverance I got myself back and in 1964-65 I went to Rochdale Hornets,” recalled Price in 2019, when he was inducted into the WREX Honda Hall of Fame.
He didn’t play again in the first team until December 1963 having played two comeback games in the A team a few months earlier. In November 1964 he wrote to Oldham and said he was retiring, but they transfer listed him and he moved to Rochdale Hornets.
He only made 23 appearances for Oldham, scoring 14 tries, but the club still regard him as the best player ever to leave the Principality to turn pro for them. During his time at Rochdale, he returned to his best form and even earned himself two Test appearances for Great Britain against the touring Australians in 1967.
When first-choice centres Neil Fox and Geoff Wriglesworth withdrew through injury, Price got a call-up with to make his first international appearance as a rugby league player alongside Ian Brooke at centre. Paying outside him was Bill Burgess, who he had played with for the RAAF in the Inter-Services tournament.
GB won the first Test, Price scored a try in his second appearance, but the Kangaroos took the series 2-1. He had one final move, to Salford in August 1968 and finished his career at that club. After handing up his boots he went into coaching at Littleborough amateur rugby league club and also became a keen badminton layer well into his sixties.
Having been a Corporal in the RAF during National Service, when he went ‘North’ he worked in co-operative store management before and eventually becoming a regional manager for Norwest Co-operative Society. He retired in 1977 and lived in Rochdale for the rest of his life.
In 1992, he started working at the Rochdale Pioneers Museum as a warden and was there for more than a decade.
The Welsh Rugby Union passes on its most sincere condolences to the family and friends of Malcolm Price.
Malcolm John Price – 9 Wales caps / 5 Lions Tests: Wales Cap No: 638 / Lions: 405; B: 8.12.1937 in Pontypool; D: 7.1.2024, aged 86.
