Wallabies World Cup winning coach suffers heart attack

Australia's rugby World Cup-winning coach Bob Dwyer said he was lucky to be alive after suffering a heart attack.

The 72-year-old complained of chest pains late on Wednesday and suffered a cardiac arrest after arriving at a Sydney hospital.

"I'm doing well. I feel fine," Dwyer told Fairfax Media on Thursday. "I was on a monitor and had the doctor with me and (then) I had the arrest.

"They gave me the electrical charge straight away and I came straight back.

"Talk about being at the right place at the right time. If it had have happened at home, I would be dead."

Dwyer had two spells in charge of the Wallabies in the 1980s and led them to their first World Cup victory after beating England in the final of the 1991 tournament at Twickenham.

After stepping down in 1995, he coached English club sides Bristol and Leicester before returning home to Australia for a three-year spell with the New South Wales Waratahs in 2001.