After wading through over 250kgs of paper, and scanning 3gb of documents, the process of digitising Keith’s records has come to an end (for now).
I found some amazing documents ranging from a diary of Keith’s early days of teaching through to fully formed high performance plans for elite sport. Keith’s career was clearly a journey of variety, enquiry and effort.
Although a lot of the documents were formal in nature, there were glimpses of the care Keith took for the people around him as witnessed in this note:
and this one (we can thank the postal strike that Keith had a copy of this correspondence)
I had a running joke with Keith that he always felt one of three emotions in his speeches, proud, humbled or honoured, and this was because I had heard him say one of those words so often in speaking. The amazing thing was that he was not just paying lip-service with the use of these words, it was clear to everyone that met him that he genuinely felt those emotions, he just loved being around people and helping in whatever way he could
Just one example is an excerpt from his tour diary on the Zimbabwe-South Africa Tour with Wales in 1998:
Keith was the master of turning defeat in to a positive and of understatement… the “difficult tour” he alludes to above included a 96-13 loss to South Africa, a game that has rather dramatically been referred to as Welsh rugby’s “darkest day”.
Within the quarter of a ton of paper records, the items that gave me the greatest pleasure were ones where I could see the recognition of Dad’s efforts. Ironically, the article below is about defeat but it is also about a remarkable achievement:
I have posted all of Keith’s work to the Analysis Archives, where you can search by year, sport or country to find analysis.
It was great to follow Keith’s journey from his early work in the notational analysis field, to the creation of an analyst community, through to the development of Performance Analysis
As Keith transitioned to working digitally he begun to use floppy disk and zip drives to store his data. I found a box of these disks as well as numerous boxes of videos of sporting events, many of which Keith had taken himself, either from the side of the pitch or the river bank. I hope at some point to add any relevant files to the Archives. I am sure it will be interesting reading and viewing.
To paraphrase Dad, I am extremely proud, humbled and honoured to have been able to undertake the Analysis Archives and have learned so much more about such a wonderful person. So that is it for now, except for one personal file I found. It is a message that Dad sent to me and part of it forms the quote at the top of this post.
Hi Sam, this is just a brilliant thing you’ve done. It was a touching thing to read and a beautiful record.
Julian
I was at university in York with Keith and we played together in the rugby team. He as a very pacy wing (I reecall a last minute long distance try by him to clinch an away victory over our Roses rivals Lancaster Uni) myself at fly half and captain. Both North Walians (I was brought up in Harlech).
For some reason I woke this morning and as one occasionally does as one gets older, I was thinking of people from the past, and will Google a name. I did that with Keith and was saddened to see he is no longer with us but delighted to find out about his life. I had no idea your Dad he did what he did. You must miss him greatly (such a moving father to son letter). I now look forward to dipping into his many writings. Kind regards.
Thanks you for sharing Andrew. It is nice to hear about your memories of Keith.
I hope you are well