by Owen Sheers
Ryan himself, frustrated by years of ‘travelling everywhere but going nowhere’, encourages some of the other players to use one of their free days to join him on a walk across the top of Sydney Harbour Bridge. Ianto, Alun Wyn, Adam Jones, Gareth Delve and the squad’s sports scientist Ryan Chambers sign up. The following morning the group put on the BridgeClimb jumpsuits and walk through the girders and ladders of the bridge to crest its highest point on a bright afternoon. Several Australians recognise them as they climb. Many commiserate with them for the loss in Melbourne, and more than one even says they hope Wales win the final test on Saturday. ‘You was robbed, boys,’ one man shouts through the wind as he descends the opposite arc. When they get to the bottom, the woman running the BridgeClimb office turns out to be from Llangynidr. She gives them all an extra photo of their climb, telling them, ‘Just beat the Aussies on Saturday.’
Other members of the squad use the time off to visit Bondi and Manley beaches, which is where Thumper heads too, going snorkelling in the shallows. In the evening nearly all the squad go to a rugby-league match, also in Manley, and most take up the invitation to attend a Lady Gaga concert in her Born This Way tour. On the bus on the way to the gig Gethin plays dance tunes from the playlist, while Roger is on the phone to Wales, setting up TV deals and discussing court cases. At the gig itself the squad enter backstage and are impressed, if not animated, by Gaga’s show, tapping their feet and nodding their heads as they stoically remain in their seats while the rest of the arena stands up and dances. The following night a smaller party – Shaun, Ken, Roger and WRU press officer Simon Rimmer – go to a performance of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood in the Sydney opera house. The next morning over breakfast Ken tells Dan, Sam and others about the show, describing the set, music and how the actress playing Mae-Rose Cottage had drawn red lipstick round her nipples.
*
When the squad come together in the team room on Wednesday they are reanimated, fresher and ready to start again. The first briefing of the day will be an assessment and analysis of the match they lost in Melbourne. The atmosphere is akin to a sixth-form common room on exam results day. Music plays – Stereophonics’ ‘Local Boy in the Photograph’ and Tracy Chapman’s ‘Fast Car’, to which Dan silently sings as he reviews footage of the game’s line-outs on a laptop. Then, without warning, and with that osmosis-like communication of the day sheet, the squad gather in the chairs assembled before the projection screen linked up to Rhys Long’s laptop. As the players wait for the briefing to begin, Rhys’s baby daughter, gigantic on his desktop wallpaper, stares down at the assembled squad from the screen above.
Shaun opens proceedings with a review of their defence. Speaking quietly he directs his comments at individuals. Those singled out nod in understanding and agreement with their own shortfalls. Decisions made instinctively at high speed, mid-game, are reviewed, slowed down on the screen and meticulously dissected. ‘We’re assuming’, Shaun tells the players by way of rounding off, ‘the tackles will be made. Don’t.’
Warren has been with the tour since Melbourne, but Rob Howley is the head coach now, so, as he has since he arrived, Warren stays quiet as Rob steps up to speak.
‘We’ve had two days to process last Saturday’s defeat,’ he tells the squad. ‘We’ve seen the sights of Sydney, now it’s time to go to work. We’ve jumped to fourth in the world rankings, and we should be proud of that. But now we need to stay there. We all know the game was ours on Saturday. We lost it because of individual decisions made by players on their own. As the coaches we can set the policies, but you have to play within these policies.’
Rob asks Sam if he has any words. Sam shakes his head, leaving it to Jenks to address the squad and announce the team. An almost imperceptible tremor of attention passes through the squad. One of Wales’s greatest strengths this last year has been the competition for places. Every member, including the senior players, has to compete for his shirt. From this announcement onwards a subtle division will evolve through the following days’ preparations, between those chosen to play and be on the bench, and those not. Roles will be allocated accordingly in training, with increased attention for those selected from the medical and conditioning staff. The team, within the squad, will quietly define itself.
Jenks reads through the team sheet in his usual quick oscillating rhythms, matter-of-fact, down-to-earth. There is just one change – the hooker Ken Owens on the bench instead of Richard Hibbard. It was Hibbard who was penalised for collapsing the maul at the end of the match in Melbourne. Nothing else need be said. His punishment is in his omission; in not, on Saturday, being a part of Wales.
Before the squad disband for training, Warren, for the first time on this tour, stands from his chair and, leaning on his crutch, steps forward to address the players. He tells them just two things. Firstly, if they are to win, then they have to win ‘the battle of halfway’ first. They have to make sure they play their rugby in the Australian half, not theirs. ‘It is’, he tells them, ‘like a game of chess, a waiting game.’ In the first test, he points out, there were just six line breaks made by each side. In the second there were only two. The opportunities are few, he reminds them, so when they happen, make sure they happen ‘between the halfway line and their twenty-two, not ours.’
Warren’s second point is more incentive than advice. ‘There’s a big tour next year,’ he says dryly, referring to the Lions tour of Australia, for which he’s tipped to be the coach. ‘So it’s time to put down a marker.’
*
The training after the team meeting, held between the 1930s stands of the North Sydney Oval, is rigorous, energetic and charged with enthusiasm. The squad look fresher for their time off. Having accepted they’ve lost the series, they’re now hungry for a win. A seaplane flies through the clear sky overhead and a flock of ibises stalk the ground as the Welsh players, harried by Rob and Jenks, hammer into tackle bags, practise miss passes and run through their moves. Warren, sitting in a plastic garden chair surrounded by scattered training equipment, looks on, one hand to his chin, thoughtful. Thumper strolls up beside him. Holding his phone, his glasses are still perched on the end of his nose after sending a text. ‘There’s some bewts,’ he says, nodding at James Hook and Mike Phillips. ‘Now they’re sweating.’
*
‘Remember what this feels like.’
This is what Rob Howley tells the Welsh team as they sit in their changing room at the Allianz Stadium having lost, once again, to Australia, 20–19.
In the second half Wales twice took the lead, only to lose it again in the seventy-fifth minute, when Berrick Barnes kicked a penalty.
Ryan, the only Welsh try-scorer, has broken his nose. The oil-spill colours of the bruising are already spreading under his eyes.
Throwing his body into a tackle, Sam received a knock to the head. In the twenty-fifth minute he was being sick on the pitch. In the twenty-eighth he once again had to leave the field and watch his team play on without him.
Leigh kicked fourteen of Wales’s points. One of his penalties, though, hit the upright of the post. It was his first miss in sixteen match kicks at goal.
The game itself was tight and riddled with penalties. Twenty-four in the whole match, with many offside calls made by the linesmen.
At half-time, just three points adrift of Australia, with the score at 12–9, the other figures of the match were still stacked in Wales’s favour:
Possession: 56 per cent
Territory: 59 per cent
More statistics, however, illustrated how closely the teams were matched:
Missed tackles: Wales – 10
Australia – 10
Line breaks: Wales – 1
Australia – 1
But as Wales sit in their changing room, their heads bowed, none of these numbers matter to the squad. The only ones that do are those which tell the result of the series: three–nil to Australia.
The Welsh squad embarked on this tour in the hope of winnin
g either the series itself or at least a match. But as the lines and logos of the Allianz pitch are hosed away by the stadium staff, as the spectators walk back to their cars past creeper-hung trees, the squad know they have done neither. The word they most wanted to avoid is now theirs to own: whitewash. This is what the tour has been, and none of them, players or coaches, will hide from the fact, however much they wish it wasn’t true.
*
At noon the next day the whole squad are having lunch at a seafood restaurant beside the pavilion on Bondi Beach. This afternoon they will fly home. After landing at Heathrow, the team bus will take them to Cardiff, where, after their three weeks together, they will disperse. Last night, however, presented with the prospect of their first long break from rugby and rehab for over eighteen months, the Wales squad celebrated and commiserated together. Pooling the tour’s fine money, they bought crates of beer and began the evening drinking and singing at the hotel. Then, boarding the same coach that had taken them to and from the last test match, they went out into the city.
The teetotallers in the squad remained as such, but many of those who’d been on alcohol bans for months on end finally got to break their fast. This morning several of the squad still haven’t been to bed. At this lunch on Bondi Beach, the drinks are still being ordered. When other Sunday diners enter the restaurant, they’re met by the sight of over forty large men in red occupying its entire central area. Some take photos, others frown for a moment before a friend or partner reminds them, ‘Wasn’t there a rugby game on or something?’
At one table at the far end of the room James Hook is holding court. Standing from his chair he points towards Ianto, sitting at another table. Having got married in Greece during the first week of the tour, Ianto had to forego his honeymoon to join the squad here in Australia. When he’d arrived in Brisbane he was fined twice, once for joining the tour late and again for ‘being a shit husband’.
Because the rest of the squad missed Ianto’s wedding, James thinks they should restage the nuptial dinner here and now, in the restaurant at Bondi. Pointing at other members of the squad he apportions their roles. ‘You can be father of the bride,’ he says, pointing at Ken. Then, pointing to Adam Jones, sitting beside Ianto, ‘Bomb’s the bride. I’ll be best man!’
One by one the other players oblige, standing and delivering short speeches, thanking the bridesmaids and praising the qualities, or not, of the groom. The coaching staff look on from further up the dining room as a bizarre version of Ianto’s wedding unfolds before an all-male congregation in red.
Despite the laughter and the drink, yesterday’s defeat is still here, its resonance carried into the restaurant with the squad. Each of the players bears it individually too, both in the stud marks and bruises about their bodies, and as a deeper ache located somewhere under their ribs. But although it’s still here, it’s also gradually diminishing, being absorbed by the dynamics of the squad, by the recognition that the man next to you has been through what you’ve been through and is feeling what you’re feeling.
The mark of a team is not just in how they win, but also in how they lose. How they use the memory of that loss as fuel and as knowledge. And how they use it to come closer, rather than fall apart. For Wales, at the end of this tour and a long run of rugby stretching back to those pre-World Cup sessions in Poland, this is how they are doing that today. Diffusing Thumper’s funereal air of defeat by sharing in this wedding game, played out in a restaurant in Bondi as an Australian sun catches the waves on which the surfers ride, fall and swim back into, pushing themselves against the oncoming tide, to ride them again.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book would not have been possible without the Arts Council Wales/WRU Artist in Residence scheme, and I am particularly grateful to Dai Smith and Roger Lewis for having the vision to create such a project with the aim of bringing the cultures of sport and the arts closer together in Wales. Over the last year I have been fortunate enough to spend time with both the national squad and several other teams across Wales. I would like to thank all the players and coaches who have granted me interviews and allowed me such a privileged insight into Welsh rugby and their lives. I am especially grateful to the players and coaches of the Wales tour to Australia for allowing me into their camp with such openness, and to Thumper for assimilating me into the logistical details of the tour.
As well as my first-hand research, several books have been invaluable in providing a broader context for Calon, including: Fields of Praise: The Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union 1881–1981 by Dai Smith and Gareth Williams (Cardiff University Press, 1980); A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby Union by Huw Richards (Mainstream, 2006); The Welsh Grand Slam 2012 by Paul Rees (Mainstream, 2012); Library of Wales, Sport edited by Gareth Williams (Parthian, 2007); Rugby’s Strangest Matches by John Griffiths (Robson Books for Past Times); Life at Number 10 by Neil Jenkins with Paul Rees (Mainstream, 1998); Number Nine Dream by Rob Howley with Graham Clutton (Mainstream, 1999).
I am also grateful to the following estates, authors and publishers for permission to quote from the following material: Sheenagh Pugh from her poem ‘Toast’, (The Beautiful Lie, Seren, 2002); Faber & Faber from Ted Hughes’s letter (The Letters of Ted Hughes edited by Christopher Reid, Faber & Faber, 2007), from Seamus Heaney’s ‘Postscript’ (The Spirit Level, Faber & Faber, 1996) and from T. S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets; the estate of R. S. Thomas for quotations from ‘A Peasant’ and ‘Song at the Year’s Turning’ (© Kunjana Thomas, 2001); The Blims for quotations from ‘Sidesteps and Sideburns’ (www.theblims.co.uk); V2 Music for quotations from Stereophonics’ ‘Is Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today?’; and Universal Music for quotations from Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and Anthrax’s ‘Refuse to Be Denied’.
I would like to thank, as ever, my agent, Zoe Waldie, and my editor at Faber, Lee Brackstone, both of whom have supported me now for over a decade. I’m also grateful to Anne Owen for overseeing a tight production schedule with such understanding, and to Ian Bahrami for his quick and thorough eye. Lastly, thanks to Ryan for letting me off when I lost at table tennis, and to Katherine Eluned, for the listening, the reading, the advice and for being there.
About the Author
Owen Sheers is the author of two poetry collections, The Blue Book and Skirrid Hill (winner of the Somerset Maugham Award). His first novel, Resistance, has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. Owen’s plays include National Theatre of Wales’s The Passion and The Two Worlds of Charlie F, which won the 2012 Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award. Brought up in Abergavenny, Owen played at scrum half for Pontypool Colts, Blaine Youth, Gwent u17/18, New College Oxford and the University of East Anglia 1st XV.
Calon was written under the Arts Council Wales/WRU Artist-in-Residence scheme.
By the Same Author
Non-fiction
THE DUST DIARIES
Poetry
THE BLUE BOOK
SKIRRID HILL
A POET’S GUIDE TO BRITAIN (ED.)
Fiction
RESISTANCE
WHITE RAVENS
THE GOSPEL OF US
Plays
THE PASSION
THE TWO WORLDS OF CHARLIE F
Copyright
First published in 2013
by Faber and Faber Ltd
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This ebook edition first published in 2013
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© Owen Sheers, 2013
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ISBN 978–0–571–29731–3