Помогите перевести DAVID BROOKS, who has died aged 77, was one of the most popular figures in Rugby Union; he was manager of the British Lions when they toured South Africa in 1968, and he later became President of the Rugby Football Union.

David Kenneth Brooks was born at Merton Park, south west London, on March 12 1924, the son of a wholesale fruiterer. After attending Rutlish School, he saw wartime service with the Fleet Air Arm.

"I flew Swordfish," he later said, "you know - an aircraft of ponderous design and purpose. Quite suitable, I thought."

His introduction to serious rugby came in 1945, when he joined the Harlequins and established himself as a backrow forward. Mobility, he liked to say, was not his greatest asset. "But if I waited long enough," he would add, "or the referee didn't interfere, play invariably came back to me."

For two seasons (1952-54), "Brooky" - or "Wrecker" to his teammates - was Harlequins' captain; he also played for London Counties and for Surrey, whom he captained for two years (1950-52).

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In his 16 years with Harlequins, he played 161 times for the 1st XV, scoring a total of 43 points, including 13 tries.

But it was Brooks's off-the-field skills which brought him wider recognition. He was an able press officer for Harlequins and for Surrey, and his skill in committee work - and his enjoyment of it - eventually took him to the highest administrative post in the game.

In 1966 Brooks managed the Harlequins' tour of South Africa, a useful dress rehearsal for the British and Irish Lions tour of the same country which he managed two years later.

Although the Lions squad included such great names as Mike Gibson, Willie John McBride, Gareth Edwards, and Barry John, South Africa emerged the victors, winning three Tests, with one drawn.

The tour was, nonetheless, judged a success - though it was not without controversy. After the second, drawn, Test at Port Elizabeth, Brooks castigated some of the referee's decisions as "disgraceful"; and in East London, some members of the Lions team were accused of "unmitigated drunken revelry".

"Rugby tours," Brooks mildly observed, "are invariably boisterous, but until half way through this one I imagine that the 1968 Lions were among the meekest ever to go abroad."

When he was presented with a bill totalling some £900 for damage allegedly caused by his players, he remarked: "Couldn't have been much of a party."

Brooks was president of the RFU in 1981-82. He had always firmly believed that British rugby, in its amateur days, needed to become more competitive if sides such as the All Blacks and the Springboks were going to be matched or overcome; and he was a staunch supporter of the introduction of a club championship.

"Other amateur sports, such as athletics and show jumping," he once observed, "have benefited the right way from sponsors - in other words, for the good of the game."

Yet Brooks never forgot that sport is something to be enjoyed. "Rugby," he insisted, "is a leisure pursuit, not a business."

Brooks was president of Surrey RFU from 1971 to 1973. He became life president of Harlequins in 1990.

Away from rugby, he made his living in business, first in his family's wholesale fruit business, and then as managing director of the London office of the banana importers Geest Industries. Finally, aged 52, he set up his own fruit importing business with three partners; he retired in 1990.

Brooks married, in 1950, Anne Jefferson, who died in 1996. They had two sons and two daughters.