Flamboyant reds bring a passion for game to stir the blood

Published on Saturday 10 February 2007 00:24

WHEN I was young - and this was long before the golden days of Gareth, Barry, Gerald & Co - Wales were always the glamour team. They didn't, as I was to discover later, always play glamorously. Welsh front-row forwards, on day-release from the coal mines, were, not surprisingly, masters of the dark arts.

We all have our own ideas of what eternal punishment in the after-life might be. Jean-Paul Sartre had Hell down as "other people", for instance, but for those of us who endured the day, the true Hell would be watching endless re-runs of the Clive Rowlands match of 111 line-outs in 1963. Richard Burton once described Welsh rugby as a mixture of ballet, opera and sheer bloody murder; there was no dancing or singing that afternoon, it was murder by sheer bloody boredom.

Nevertheless, in my youth, though France might play the most exciting rugby, though England might usually be the most formidable team, though Ireland had great stars like the matchless Jackie Kyle and the young Tony O'Reilly, it was Wales coming north from the valleys every second year that carried the most glamour. I was never quite sure why. Perhaps it was the hordes of supporters giving life to an Edinburgh where the buildings were still black with coal-smoke.

Perhaps it was simply the strip. England's all-white was menacing, but the Welsh scarlet jerseys, devoid of any advertising logos and with the Prince of Wales's feathers standing out boldly, would light up the dullest February afternoon. But the real reason for the glamour was, I think, that Welsh teams have always promised panache, taking the field with a swagger that suggests that the game of rugby belongs to them. They represent the spirit of the game made flesh.

Even in this professional era, they still do, even if this era has disrupted one great Welsh tradition - the ability to produce twinkle-toed fly-halves in a line of quasi-apostolic succession: Cliff Morgan, David Watkins, Barry John, Phil Bennett, Gareth Davies, Jonathan Davies. Enough to make any opposition open-side echo Macbeth and cry "What! Will the line stretch out to the crack of doom?" But things have changed. The last of the type was that lovely little player Arwel Thomas, but the juggernaut physicality of the modern game did for him.

Neil Jenkins and Stephen Jones, the successful Welsh No 10s of recent times, have been a different sort of player; cool controllers rather than dizzy-making sparklers - not of course that the likes of the dancing masters, Barry, Phil & Co, couldn't control a game too. But their real genius was for setting it alight.

There has scarcely ever been a Welsh team come to Murrayfield without great players, and today's is no exception. Two years ago Wales produced for half-an-hour at least the sort of rugby which in Welsh mythology will be played in heaven, and had the game won before the guests in the hospitality suites had even begun to digest their lunch and turn their attention to the match.

One of the stars that day was young Ryan Jones giving a performance in the back-row that recalled the marvellous Mervyn Davies.

It occurs to me that you could name an all-time XV of Joneses and Davieses capable of taking on the best in the world. Such as this: Terry Davies; Ken Jones, Gerald Davies, Lewis Jones, Mark Jones; Jonathan Davies, Robert Jones; Adam Jones, Mefin Davies, Duncan Jones, Phil Davies, Alun Wyn Jones, Ryan Jones, Mervyn Davies, and... somehow my memory fails me and I can't come up with a No 7 Jones or Davies of comparable quality; but no doubt any Welsh supporter could quickly supply me with one. As it is, the best openside Davies I can think of was Hawick's flame-haired Wat, denied even a single Scottish cap by a stream of injuries, one of the great might-have-beens of our rugby history.

So to this afternoon's game. One thing we can be sure of is that it will be a darned sight more entertaining than that dire Clive Rowlands match, which was so awful it forced the International Board to change the laws of the game. Wales will run the ball, because they are committed to playing that way, and have found it works for them. Frank Hadden's decision to put Phil Godman at number 10 instead of Dan Parks implies that Scotland will do the same, and, despite the view expressed by so many pundits that Scotland lack striking power behind the scrum, I think we are capable of doing so successfully.

The Welsh won't be deceived into supposing we can't because they have all had the experience of playing against Edinburgh and know how on a good day they can score tries from anywhere on the field.

That said, the Scottish backs will have little chance of showing what they can do if the pack doesn't manage to put them on the front foot and give them the ball from an advancing platform.

Even then timing the release of the ball is important. Too often one has seen Scottish packs wait till the maul has come to a halt before letting the ball out, by which time the opposition defence is in position and organised. So it's vital that Chris Cusiter exerts authority and lets the forwards know when he needs the ball. We won't -surely? - spread it wide all the time. I would look to see Rob Dewey coming on a line between Stephen Jones and James Hook, as Gordon D'Arcy did in Cardiff on Sunday. And it would be nice to see Simon Taylor withdrawn sometimes from the line-out in order to lie behind the three-quarters and come on to a pass from either Dewey or Di Rollo at full tilt.

If the weather stays dry it should be a mighty entertaining match. Wales will play with audacity. So, I trust, will we; and if we do, we can win.