by Owen Sheers
Wales win a penalty fifty-two metres from the French posts, three metres further than the kick Leigh missed against France in the World Cup. Removing his skullcap, Leigh places the ball on the tee once more. As he does, a rendition of ‘Hymns and Arias’ begins to swell from the stands, serenading him as he steps back to study the posts like a mystery. Dropping his eyes to the ball, his inward gaze transports him back to Gorseinon once more.
And we were singing hymns and arias,
‘Land of My Fathers’, ‘Ar Hyd y Nos’.
Leigh strikes the ball clean and true, sending it end over end through the posts. This time he watches its trajectory and, when he knows it’s good, allows himself a brief explosion of relief and pleasure, grabbing at the air and shouting in celebration. Wales 13 – France 6. Wales are by no means clear, but they are safer than before.
Yet again Wales have to defend from the restart against waves of French attack. Scott Williams, the saviour of Twickenham, briefly comes on as a blood replacement for Jon. Gethin, Toby and Dan all make more tackles. As the pack scrums down, Ryan crouching into Sam’s position at seven, the statistics show the story of the half so far. Despite the score, it isn’t pretty reading:
Possession
Wales – 40% France – 60%
Territory
Wales – 33% France – 67%
Wales choose a closer game, taking route one from rucks and mauls, picking and driving, picking and driving. The crowd rouse into ‘Bread of Heaven’, their voices willing the players forward. Inch by inch they chisel at the French defence, but France still aren’t committing at the rucks, leaving their lines of blue solid on either side.
Alex eventually manages to break through, barging through two defenders in a row. But then, within minutes, the man who gave Wales their try gives France a penalty. Caught in a breakdown as the French attack, Alex is penalised for handling on the ground. Up in the box Warren and the coaches look on anxiously, expecting a French kick at goal to bring them back to within four points of Wales. But as Alex and the rest of the Welsh team drop back for the attempt, France surprise every-one with a kick to Buttin sprinting down the left wing. France want seven points, not three.
Buttin, however, is stopped short of the line by Dan. The attack continues, with Gethin and then Jamie putting in hits to slow its advance. The game pauses for a scrum, and for Jon to return from the blood bin. When the scrum finally hits, France are penalised for early engagement, the rhythm of Joubert’s instructions catching them off-guard once more. After all Wales’s earlier inch-work, nudging upfield, Rhys now, with a single kick, sends the ball deep into the French half and into touch.
The teams continue to trade attacks and kicks. George rises to meet a high ball. Leigh, Toby and Jamie all make ground with runs into the French line. When France return fire, Joubert’s microphone picks up the sound of Dan’s tackle on Buttin: a crunching thud of an impact, like a punchbag filled with wood swung hard against a wall.
When the play finally halts, players are on their knees all over the pitch. Gethin falls to his back and is treated by Carcass. Jenks, Adam and Prof. John bring on water. There is just over fifteen minutes left, enough for either Wales to secure their lead or for France to come from behind and deliver a defeat.
Taking advantage of this pause in play Wales replace a fifth of their team at once, bringing on Luke Charteris, Ken Owens and Lloyd Williams, son of Brynmor Williams, who also played scrum-half for Wales. Although Lloyd’s father never pushed him towards rugby and his old position, once he saw his son had fallen for the game he advised him to refine his passing by watching videos of Rob Jones, who’d played for Wales through the 1980s and 1990s. Lloyd followed his father’s advice and, as he takes the field today, he brings with him more than a pinch of an older method of Welsh scrum-half play, not just in his passing, but also in a style more reliant on quick service and sniping, rather than Mike’s more physical flanker-type play.
As Mike, Alun Wyn and Matthew touch hands with their replacements jogging onto the pitch in Cardiff, in New York the opera singer Bryn Terfel, watching in the Red Lion on Bleeker Street, gets to his feet and sings, the pub’s wooden floorboards resonating with the depth of his voice. Encouraging the crowd to join him, Bryn leads the early-morning drinkers in a rendition of ‘Bread of Heaven’, as if even from there, three thousand miles across the ocean from Cardiff, their voices might rouse the team to victory.
Back in the stadium Wales continue to try and find a way through the French defence, while also fending off the increasing pace of their attacks. In the sixty-eighth minute, after a sustained push close to their own line, Wales are finally playing in the French half again. Up in the coaches box Thumper has joined Warren, Rob Howley and Shaun. All three, no longer able to sit and watch, are on their feet. A faster, more urgent pulse of ‘Waaales, Waaales, Waaales’ washes through the stands as Ken drives through a tackle to make ground and Jamie, the ball held close to his chest, crashes forward.
Wales’s efforts have brought the figures for the half back towards parity:
Possession
Wales – 49% France – 51%
Territory
Wales – 52% France – 48%
But then, with less than eight minutes of the game remaining, Wales are penalised in their own twenty-two for pulling down a scrum. France are awarded a penalty in front of the Welsh posts. From their own tryline Wales, looking battered and exhausted, watch Yachvili return France to within four points. Wales 13 – France 9.
Within a minute of Yachvili kicking that penalty, Wales are awarded one of their own, deep in French territory. As Alex bundled Trinh-Duc into touch, the French player deliberately threw the ball away. So now, with Joubert telling him, ‘No need to rush, but no delay either,’ Leigh once again finds himself placing the ball onto his kicking tee.
In the last pause in play Prof. John was treating Leigh for cramp. Just seconds ago he made a break through the French line, spinning through tackles until he was downed by Dusautoir. And now here he is with white-wash on his face, trying to slow his heavy breathing, once more lining up a penalty in the dying minutes of a crucial game against France.
For Leigh, his teammates and the crowd, memories of that final kick in the World Cup briefly resurface. Wales, only four points in the lead, are still vulnerable. They need him to kick this penalty.
Leigh himself is still nervous. The anxieties he shared with Jenks this morning have remained with him throughout the match. The kick is close to the posts, but also from a similar angle as the one which hit the upright earlier. But Leigh has a job to do, so as another rendition of ‘Hymns and Arias’ fades away with his steps backwards, he stops, rocks himself steady, eyes the ball, the posts, the ball again, then takes himself, as ever, back to that training pitch in Gorseinon.
The TV cameras pick out a woman in the crowd. As the other spectators around her stare towards the posts, she alone has turned her back on the kick. Bowing her head and with her chin against her knitted hands, she is praying. Her lips move as, down on the pitch, Leigh begins his slow advance upon the angled ball.
The sound of his strike is deep and true, the ball’s trajectory clean. The linesmen’s flags are raised and, as the stadium cheers, its thousands of voices as one, Wales go into the lead by seven points. Wales 16 – France 9.
The woman praying in her seat turns back to the bowl, looks at the score and slowly stands, unclasping her hands in thanks.
Leigh, replacing his skullcap, runs back into position, as France, still only a converted try away from a draw, restart.
*
For the last four minutes of the match the pulsing heartbeat of ‘Waaales, Waaales, Waaales’ ebbs and flows but never ceases. The stadium begins to rise to its feet in anticipation as Wales kick, run and drive up towards the French line. A line-out is lost but Ryan charges through. Lloyd’s head is bandaged and Toby’s shirt is ripped at the shoulder. Rhys tries for a drop goal, but it floats wide. The coaches in the b
ox all look on, powerless, arms folded. France are slow to take their twenty-two drop-out, but when they do, Ken secures the ball. The forwards pick and drive, pick and drive, before briefly being driven back. Wales spin it wide, then drive on again. With thirty seconds left on the clock, ‘Hymns and Arias’ swells from the stands once more:
And we were singing hymns and arias,
‘Land of My Fathers’, ‘Ar Hyd y Nos’.
With ten seconds left, the ball goes loose. Welsh and French players dive upon it, and with just five seconds to go Joubert blows his whistle to penalise France. Jamie and Gethin thrust their fists above their heads. Alex, out on the wing, jumps for joy. Dan collapses to the floor, close to tears. In the box Rob Howley punches the air at hip height, as Thumper applauds between Shaun and Warren, who both keep their hands locked under folded arms. Down on the pitch Ryan points up at the fans in the stands, as Rhys makes one last kick to send the ball spinning into touch. The clock goes red, and the crowd goes wild. Wales, as the Blims and the country had hoped, have won the Grand Slam.
*
Immediately, the Welsh players, all smiling, look younger, the relief of their victory rejuvenating them. Unlike the Grand Slams in 2005 and 2008, this one hadn’t been about surprise, but about expectation. About coming true on a promise they’d shown and keeping a promise they’d made.
On the pitch, between their hugs with each other, the squad shake hands and pat the shoulders of the French players. Welsh flags give birth to dragons throughout the stadium, the crowd itself suddenly active, with fans jumping and applauding. Up in the stands members of that crowd reach across to shake Warren’s hand, while Gerald Davies, a winner of three Grand Slams himself and a teammate of Mervyn Davies, wipes at his welling eyes. Down below him on the pitch three more players with three Grand Slams now to their names – Adam, Gethin and Ryan – come together to be photographed. In the 1970s it was three backs who achieved that feat. Today, perhaps as a sign of how the game has changed, it is three forwards.
The players continue to celebrate as the presentation platforms are built between them and the victory banners are erected. From this moment on, the rest of the day and the night will be all about celebration. Later this evening the squad will attend a black-tie dinner at the Hilton, where the efforts of this match will begin to tell upon them. Dan will struggle through the after-dinner speeches, just wanting to go home and lie down on his bed. Alex’s back will be giving him pain. Lloyd will have five stitches above his eye. Sam, still drinking Coke, will continue to cradle his arm, while for Leigh the release of those day-long nerves will prove just too much. After the meal, when the others are still drinking and making plans for where to go next, he will already be back in his hotel room, ‘exhausted and ill as hell with all those emotions coming down on me’.
For now, though, the team will celebrate together, here on this pitch, with champagne sprays and victory laps, with medals, interviews and Status Quo’s ‘Rocking All Over the World’ blasting from the stadium’s speakers. Ryan’s son, Jacob, and his father, Steve, join him, all three generations binding in a hug. Ryan cries a little, then, carrying his son around the field, points up at the stands towards his mother. Adam, seeing Ryan and Jacob, finds he needs a moment alone. He’s overwhelmed by the win, but he’s thinking of his own daughter Isla too, and how much he’d have liked her to be here. In the middle of all the thousands of faces he finds his wife in the crowd, and they share a private look of gratitude and promise.
By now Roger Lewis and the coaching staff are down on the pitch too. Dan Baugh is hugging anyone he can find, while Warren walks steadily through the squad and the still-falling ticker tape with his son Bryn beside him. Raising his hands, he applauds the crowd and occasionally allows himself the slightest of smiles. Roger, meanwhile, in an echo of that other walk they took together five years ago in Nantes, is strolling towards the centre of the pitch with Dai Pickering. Both are smiling broadly, everything they’d hoped that first walk would bring made manifest around them.
Once the squad finally leave the pitch they take their champagne bottles, medals and trophy back into the changing room, where J.R.’s order is, once again, undone by victory. Half undressed, they pose for photographs, as Gethin puts on the winning playlist, leaving Geraint, standing outside their changing-room door, in no doubt as to the result of the match. Breaking into song, the players celebrate not only their win, but also the hard work and the friendships that led them to it, their country which plays and supports like a club, and the feeling it gives them when they do – of being alive, now, and of being remembered.
Beyond the changing room the stadium itself is beginning to empty, the crowds spilling into a city already fevered with jubilation. At Gate 3, where ‘Sweet Child o’ Mine’ rings out from the bars around Cardiff Athletic Club, everything seems transfigured by the win. In the dying light the boarded Inland Revenue building, the old Queen’s Royal Garage, the County Club are all lent a more majestic air by the grandeur of the occasion. Even the strip lights of the NCP car park, burning magnesium white, seem to shine in tribute to what has just happened.
The tide of people who washed up this entranceway before the match are now flowing back down its incline, thousands of them ebbing from the stadium, taking their shared experience of the last eighty minutes into the city and across the country. Rising above them once more is the statue of Sir Tasker Watkins, his hands behind his back, looking out over the filling streets and alleys. On the plinth on which he stands his words are written on a plaque:
I did what needed doing to help my colleagues and friends and saw more killing in 24 hours than is right for anybody.
From that moment onwards I have tried to take a more caring view of my fellow human beings and that of course always included my opponents, whether it be at war, sport or just ordinary life.
Sir Tasker’s words remain unread by the thousands streaming past him, the spirit of celebration keeping their heads up, not down. All their energies, which for the last two hours have so charged the stadium behind them, are now directed outwards. Like returning travellers rushing down a ship’s gangway, they are eager to leave and tell of their adventures. For many this will be the sweetest moment of their country’s victory: when what was so powerfully hoped for has been secured, and when the purity of that second when the clock turned red and the whistle was blown is still vibrant within them. Because already, even as they flow onto Westgate Street and St Mary’s, it is fading. As the stadium empties and its crowds disperse, so too does the essence of that winning moment. As Yeats says, Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Within hours the stadium’s crowd will be unravelled throughout the city, their celebrations often a perverted inversion of everything which brought about the source of their revelry. Bodies will lie in the streets, too much will be drunk, and the honour and cymeriad – character – of Wales’s victory will be blurred under beer and kebab boxes.
But it will still be there, held by the stadium itself and in the collective memory of those who watched and those who played. Like Warren told the team before the match, ‘You win a Grand Slam and it’s yours. No one can take it away from you.’ As the fans crowd at the bars and the players change into their black ties, this is true for both of them. However brief the lap of victory, however diffused in drink Wales’s win may become tonight, however unread Sir Tasker’s words, they are all still there, and will remain so, quietly resonant at the heart of this evening at the end of this day.
AUSTRALIA
A winter sunlight washes amber over the Sydney coastline as the Wales bus pulls away from the lawns, cafes and broad sands of Bronte Beach. Inside, the squad sit in their familiar formation, their red hoodies and training tops pressing against the windows on either side. The cuts and grazes of those who played in yesterday’s test are still stinging from the salt water of the beach’s ocean pool. The swim was brief but, together with the winter chill in the air, enough to have left all of them with a sea tightness to their ski
n, an ocean cold lingering in the bone. Which is exactly what Adam Beard wanted: a recovery swim for their bodies; a cold dip to promote healing and reduce swelling. But he also wanted it to be more than that: to be a different kind of recovery session, one that would help heal another kind of hurt. Which is why he brought the squad here, to Bronte Beach, to swim in the saltwater pool at its southern tip, to take in the rocky and residential cliffs and to watch the surfers ride the riffs of white-tipped breakers.
The bus reaches the top of an incline, pauses, then turns right to drive on through the suburbs of Bondi, heading north towards the harbour and the Intercontinental, the team’s hotel. As the driver steers with one hand he puts on the tour playlist with his other, a collection of songs compiled from two choices by each player and member of staff. As the boys look out of their windows at the easy-going evening of a Sunday in Sydney, Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ begins to play through the bus’s speakers.
Yesterday, on a pitch marooned in the middle of an Australian Rules stadium in Melbourne, Wales lost their second test against Australia. It was an intense, tight game. As Robbie Deans, the Australia coach, said at the post-match press conference, ‘We had to win the game three times, because we lost it twice.’ Within four minutes of kick-off George had scored under the posts and Wales were already 7–0 up. The Welsh forwards dominated the Australian scrum in what Ken Owens called ‘the old-fashioned way’. For the last ten minutes of the game Australia fought desperately against a Welsh lead of 23–22. At full time that scoreline remained unchanged. And yet Australia still won, with a penalty kicked at eighty minutes forty-three seconds by Michael Harris, a substitute who’d taken the field just minutes before.
Wales, after putting their all into the match, thought they’d finally won a southern scalp on southern soil. They thought, with the clock turned red, that they’d kept the final outcome of the three-test series alive; that perhaps, having beaten Australia at home for the first time in forty-three years, they might yet go on to be the first European team to win a southern-hemisphere test series. But they were wrong. When Wales were penalised for collapsing a maul in the final play of the game, Harris, on to replace Berrick Barnes, stretched his kicking leg, held his nerve and slotted the penalty to win the match. Australia 25 – Wales 23. It was the most painful of losses, summed up by Rob Howley in a single comment over breakfast this morning: ‘It’s a cruel sport.’