Six of the best
FRANK KEATING
Spring is springing ... and the ancient rugby rituals are under way once more. Cardiff is en fête and the little land on tenterhooks, for surely the brightest of all dawns has truly risen at last and we are bound to beat England this time, aren’t we, boyos? Scotland go to Paris fearing the worst, but then, in rugby, we never know which France will turn up, do we? Will it be the good, the bad, the ugly, or the exceedingly, handsomely, ravenously irresistible? We shall see. Sure, it has been a long ten years of singing the blues to pipe laments since that uplifting springtime in Paris when a breathtaking sleight of hand by midfield sprite Gregor Townsend sent Gavin Hastings on his glorious gallop to the posts for 23–21 to Scotland. Meanwhile on the Sabbath, Ireland kickoff in Italy and you can guarantee — is the Pope a Catholic? — that an awful lot of the thick black stuff (doubtless with Strega chasers) will be downed in all those Irish theme pubs which infest Rome, from Flann O’Brien’s in the Via Napoli to Rosie O’Grady’s in the Via della Cava Aurelia (if they are still standing from last time, that is).
The Six Nations’ favourites are France and Ireland, last year’s best teams by far. Who’d have thought that England, the world champions, would be so insecure and unconsidered? Back from Australia to parade around London with the Cup, the sages wailed that with England at last convinced of its brutal dominance, the old domestic tournament which lights up northern Europe’s five great capital cities each winter’s end would henceforth be a one-horse race, an annual and literal whites-wash and a case of ‘Inger-land! Inger-land!’ forever. Not a bit of it. Just 13 months on and it is France and Ireland with the seriously superior strut. England have suffered not only from retirements (voluntary or otherwise) but from such an unremitting crop of crocks that the new coach might have considered ordering up an ambulance to take his XV to Cardiff. If Wales don’t beat England today, I daresay they never will. Their strategy will be to loose their redhot terriers to run the English off their feet — but that’s too cockily optimistic and simplistic a ploy; and if Wales can’t first win the toe-to-toe hurtful and heavyweight hooley up front, then all their running will be backwards and yet another new dawn will be squandered to gloom and Celtic melancholy.
When push comes to shove, Wales have to grab the initiative. Too often they have funked it of late against haughty England. And not only of late. I first witnessed the annual barney 40 years ago — England 6, Wales 6 with only seconds to go. Wales win a penalty under the posts to win the match. Kicker Grahame Hodgson, nice Neath fullback, has already missed two easy conversions and, as the vast throng falls silent, he suddenly starts limping. A severe attack of nerves. He says to captain Clive Rowlands that he can’t take the kick. ‘Topcat’ Rowlands rudely tells him to grow up and get on with it. Under the posts, a sitter ... but the quaking Hodgson slices it horribly wide. England 6, Wales 6 — and once in the doom-silent changing-room Llanelli hooker Norman Gale approaches poor Hodgson with meaningful tread, the match programme in his hand, and slowly, sinisterly, he rips from it the page containing Hodgson’s ‘pen portrait’ photograph before, with a tragedian’s measured malignity, tearing it into little pieces under the nose of the still quivering fullback.
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