SPECTATOR SPORT
Platform revelries
Frank Keating
GAMES-LOVERS set store by romantic reminiscence, so it was a joy to share the platform with Cliff Morgan and Barry John on Sunday at the Hay-on-Wye literary festi- val. Usually I am fretful about public speak- ing, but on this occasion I had no worries at all, for I knew our chairman, the Indepen- dent and Ammanford's own Alan Watkins, would, for the full 90 minutes, have to be more alert at stemming the full spate of his two delightfully garrulous compatriot wind- bags than bothering about summoning me up for a dullard's couple of penny- worth.
We were to discuss fly-half play and related rugby rambles through boyhood and beyond. And the still glistening reputa- tions of Barry and Cliff packed out our large marquee, which was pretty good con- sidering the simultaneous appearance in adjoining tents of John Charmley, Alan Clark and Andrew Roberts (discussing Churchill), and the man-eating American feminist of the moment, Naomi Wolf, examining 'the chasm that has opened between victim-feminism and women'.
It was nice that unimportant sports nos- talgia held its own, and highly satisfactory to learn afterwards that Ms Wolf's deadly serious treatise had been regularly inter- rupted by the merry mountains of laughter rolling in from rugger's rival encampment. We put the world to rights and generally agreed that rugby was severely under pres- sure from coaches' egos and blinkered eccentricities which were stifling a good game and sterilising players' adventure and instinctiveness. Barry thought his lovely game so caged by defensive caution that it should at once, like rugby league, revert to 13-a-side. 'In my day,' said Cliff, 'a coach was a posh bus.'
On sport and public speaking, that most charming and original of all English sportswriters, Raymond Robertson-Glas- gow, once defined, 'If a fellow gets to his feet and says that he saw Blackburn Rovers beat the something-or-others in 1891, he might just as well have stayed in his seat. But a man who actually saw W.G. Grace cracking them around at Bristol in that same year has news value and a riveted audience. He may be a howling bore but he saw the Doctor in action at the crease.'
This theory was festooned with garlands at Hay on Sunday, for here were two men who, history will show, were a couple of the very WGs of their game. They actually did it — and now they can talk about it. This is Barry, for instance, attempting to describe a sports star's instinct, on the hoof and nowt remotely to do with a coach and his manuals and clipboards. One of the mae- stro's most resplendent solo tries, pale wraith ghosting through a dozen frantic bullies at Athletic Park, Wellington, New Zealand, in 1971: 'I could just sense intu- itively that not one of them was balanced and sort of "ready" for me. So I just went inside one, outside another, as if it was a dream and I'd placed these defenders exactly where I wanted them. "Transcen- dental"? "Metaphysical"? I don't know, it was just marvellously weird, like re-enact- ing the slow-motion replay before the actu- ality itself had happened.'
So that's what it feels like. And later in the evening, when rugger buggers, feminists and Churchill scholars mingled in the bar, another good one was related. Not long after D-Day, Winston was in confab with Monty in Normandy. The PM finds he's out of cigars. "Monty, you wouldn't have a smoke in this caravan of yours, would you?' `Sony, Winston, tried it once, didn't care for it.' Five minutes later, Churchill is thirsty. The Field Marshal wouldn't have a nip of brandy on the premises, would he? `Sony, Winston, tried it once, didn't care for it.' Then in comes Monty's son, David, and he is introduced. 'Doubtless your only son,' says the now tetchy Winston, adding sotto voce to himself, 'Tried it once, didn't care for it.'
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