Lion-heart Lyons was coach guru to the best

On Friday, February 17, 2017, Keith Lyons awoke before dawn to an alarm call from the Fire and Rescue Service in Braidwood, a 19th-century gold-mining town 150 miles south of Sydney.

- PETER JACKSON

Within an hour, he and two other volunteers were confronting a bushfire scorching anything and anyone in its raging path. The trio had been called out to prevent the inferno engulfing a property occupied by a pregnant woman and her four children.

By the time the Carwoola fires were brought under control two days later, eleven homes had been incinerated, twelve more damaged but hers had been saved intact thanks to the skill and courage of the firefighters. The crew included a pioneering Welshman long acclaimed as ‘The Godfather of Sports Technology’.

Lyons blazed a trial followed by a coterie of renowned coaches on a global scale.

He was so good at inspiring those in charge of international teams to find their way out of the tightest corners that the Australia Institute of Sport poached him to run their Performance Analysis unit.

Fifteen years later on that Friday morning, the trail-blazer found himself endangered by a force of nature blazing a trail right at him. In his understated way, Lyons did confess that the experience reduced him to tears but left it at that.

Scott Hart, the captain of the Braidwood crew, used the same unvarnished language when he told me how they stood between the flames and the house that Friday on the longest day of their lives.

“We used what little water we had to guide the fire around the house,’’ he said. “Our initial tactic was to slow the fire down but when that didn’t work we changed tack and drew in close to the house.

“The fire was coming at us from all directions as the wind changed. The people in the house were nearing the end of their tether.

“The lady was six months pregnant and she begged us: ‘Please, don’t go.’