THIS IS NOT A FILM OF HOMER’S POEM. And even that sentence spins about as much sense as a pasta sandwich. The OG work has survived, triumphantly, for nigh on three millennia. It’s survived translation, adaptation, plagiarism and parody for 150 generations. Every derivation, every pot, every song, every play burnishes the source material. Surely it’s OK to be a movie?

WHAT’S THE FILM ABOUT?

William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar is about politics and succession, legitimacy and integrity in Elizabethan England. Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey is no more a film about the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean than Shakespeare’s play is an account of Rome in 44BC. It’s a movie about America, and its torrid sagas of intervention, atrocity and retreat and the cost to its people, its prosperity and its conscience. Nolan takes the universally familiar frame of Homer’s epic poem about a homecoming, a Nostos, and re-presents it through a modern sensibility and a contemporary matrix of references. He’s making a movie for an audience that is at least as familiar with the heroes of the Marvel cinematic universe as it is with Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and the MAGA-verse. And for an audience that’s taken 3,000 years to morph gods into angels into saints into superheroes, heroes and villains.

THE ODYSSEUS COMPLEX

There is a LOT of running away. Running away from the rocks hurled by the blinded Polyphemus looks like a caper. Running away from the Laestrygonian cybermen looks like self-preservation. Capping this with running away from the incorporeal ghosts of your fallen friends from the underworld hammers home the point that Odysseus and his men are running away from themselves. So tell me, my King, why did it take you 10 years to get back to Ithaca? There’s an Odysseus Complex right there, just waiting for the right analyst. Dr Nolan, I presume.

I struggle with the idea of an omniscient, benevolent God. If there were a God I suspect that a capricious, rapacious, careless and cynical Zeus would better fit the God Shaped Hole in the pattern of how human history plays out. But unlike Homer, Nolan is working in an age of reason, and of – at best – disputed religion. We don’t have gods to steer us. We need to see humane resilience, yes? I like it that Nolan gives us an answer to why it takes Odysseus so very long to get home. In the poem he spends seven years as Calypso’s sex slave. Readers see the power of narrative gender reversal, the mirroring of both Helen and Athene, and the piquancy that eternal rapture is less appealing than the desire to return to his wife, Penelope. Nolan doesn’t have time for Calypso’s lust and fury. But he does give us Charlize Theron’s glamorous therapist, medicating PTSD. I don’t know how much this is due to American piety. Hollywood is wedded to monogamy, more so perhaps than America’s IRL actuality, though that’s a whole other story… But it works in the cinematic world he’s imagined, and it makes sense that it is to her, in therapy intimacy, that he tells his story. It is good, and rare, to see the dawning of self-awareness and horror. Of consequence.

CASTING

Nolan casts Matt Damon as Odysseus not because he’s a plausible Achaean warrior, but because, firstly: he can give us, instantly, the darkest resolution of Jason Bourne and the context of The Martian. Secondly: he is surely the most American screen hero you can think of for the role. Hanks, Ford and Freeman are too old; De Niro too old too and has already played The Deerhunter; Clooney too handsome and he’s already done Oh Brother Where Art Thou; Cruise too Cruise-y; The Ryans are too young; Streep too obviously a goddess. Thirdly: he’s a fabulous actor whose greatest strength is stillness. If you were playing around with the sexy trickster of Homer’s poem you might cast Di Caprio or Depp, but that’s not the film Nolan’s making.

I love the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen. She is epically, credibly, thousand-ship-launchingly beautiful. The scarring does not detract one jot from that. But it challenges the inciting point of the whole Iliad and Odyssey saga to have her play Clytemnestra too. I get that Nolan wants to make Agamemnon’s impetus the trade routes and economy, but Helen having an identical twin seems to betray the essential nature of this particular story. It kinda depends on her beauty being unique enough to launch a war for. No?

I’m puzzled by Zendaya too. I think I just missed something important. Is she Athene? She’s got that one great line about the gods - “Who doesn’t understand thunder?” Or is she Odysseus’ projection of Cassandra, the priestess of Athene’s temple, raped and murdered in the sack of Troy? There’s a shot of her in that role that echoes exactly the way Iphigenia looks up into camera as she is carried to sacrifice by her father Agamemnon at the beginning of the movie. Maybe she’s all of these things, but without the other gods, and with the other mortal dead stuck under an Icelandic beach, I can’t grasp why she is onscreen. She is mesmeric on camera. But what is the script giving her?

PANTHER MAN

The other internal logic that batfoggled me was Samantha Morton’s wondrous Circe. Her transformation of Eurylochus’ men into the pigs of their true natures is – for me – the creative highlight of the whole movie. But then you do have to wonder about the other men she made into magnificent big cats. What were they like as humans? Presumably fabulous?

LICENCE TO QUIP

This is really another casting point but bless Robert Pattinson’s cotton socks for turning this movie into his 007 audition. Given the total absence of humour in the rest of the script we have to assume that he came up with the “bring me his ears too” line himself. It’s an outrageous piece of vintage villainy that threw me right back to Alan Rickman’s Sherriff cancelling Christmas. He delivers it drily enough for a Timothy Dalton-era Bond line. And we know he looks great in Black Tie.

FIVE STARS

I loved the film. I’d watch it again just to see Anne Hathaway at her loom, to see Samantha Morton wrangling those faces into snouts, to see Lupita Nyong’o stoop to whisper news in Telemachus’ ear, to watch Elliot Page lock the movie from Hades, and to hear the twang of Matt Damon’s bow.

I went into Waterstones to get a copy of Emily Wilson’s translation of the poem for a young friend who’d loved the film and wanted more. They’d run out of stock. No Wilson, Mendelsohn, Fagels, Fitzgerald, Lattimore or Armitage versions. All on re-order. For the third time. They did have a copy of Derek Walcott’s Omeros, so I snaffled that. It is fucking brilliant.

For a rugby context – though qualified by parentage for Wales, South Africa, Scotland, and Ireland and by residence for England, Mog was in spirit a French or Fijian player.

MORGAN FLORENCE

‘This is wrong. We shouldn’t be here. I don’t want this. I want Mog to be sashaying into the kitchen wrapping his mum in his great arms. I want him playing wild games with his brothers around the table late into the night. I want to hear him and his twin brother Jacob – Joe to us – his first thought, his fellow traveller, his best man… squoggling in the garden and telling (intriguingly differing) tales of their adventures together across Europe. I want to watch him dancing on the beach with his darling Clara…. I miss the sureness, the groundedness of him. I miss the sound of his voice. The way he listened to everyone. His strength. What fun it is being with him.

Morgan died of a sepsis, a week after we’d celebrated his and Joe’s twenty-first birthday in Bath. A combination strepA, meningitis and flu infection attacked his internal organs and caused a cardiac arrest that cut oxygen to his brain. He was tended on life support with love and astonishing dedication by the NHS nurses and doctors in the ICU at Bristol Royal Infirmary for five days. And they cared for us too.

I know, rationally, that we are on a journey from: Not wanting to live in a world without Morgan, to: Wanting to live in a world with Morgan’s ideals. But it’s brutally hard. And I know that we can only do it with the love and care and lasagna of the people here. Thank you for all of that and for being here, here in St Laurence’s.

Mog loved this building – for the spectacular Plantagenet kaleidoscope up there, for the material and social history in the fabric of the building, for the guilds and crafters, the generation upon generation of rites of passage. He loved visiting cathedrals, and mosques and sacral places. From Bristol he made excursions at weekends to see the scissor arches and the chained library at Wells Cathedral, and to visit the Cistercian Abbey at Tintern, the great icon of Romanticism. For my 60^th birthday he mapped out a 20km tour of his 12 favourite mosques in Istanbul [no.1 The Rustem Pasha Mosque]– and his 12 favourite falafel houses. Last year, en route to Chalke History Festival, he guided me around Stone Henge and it’s pagan light, and took me on a pilgrimage to Salisbury Cathedral – a pilgrimage, I should clarify, to see one of the original 1215 Magna Cartas, specifically the one with the clearest name of his hero, William Marshall – the second son, tournament MVP who became Europe’s Greatest Knight, protector of the realm, Earl of Pembroke and patron of the greatest of medieval bards – Marie de France. When he was at Sixth Form in Hereford he volunteered at the Cathedral, largely so he could spend as much time as possible with the Mappa Mundi – Oh Mog and Maps – that’s a whole other story you’ll hear later from Clara.

Monotheistic Religion, Mog was, at best, ambivalent about. He tended towards a Tim Minchin vein of scepticism. What kind of God …? He first encountered Faith through the study of the Levant at the time of the Crusades. Not any religion’s finest hour – or century, centuries and millennia. God’s Forever Wars. But as Clara says: as his own humanist conviction grew stronger, he grew more and more respectful and generous in his appreciation of other people’s beliefs. That’s why we have the music and the poetry – the prayers – that we have in this memorial. There’s an addition to the programme. We buried Morgan this morning up in the Black Mountains at Michaelchurch, in the shade of a yew tree, surrounded by birdsong, nestled under Cefn Hill where he grew up, roaming across the common mountainside. Raph played Vaughan Williams’ Lark Ascending at the funeral, and we couldn’t not include it again this afternoon, just after Beck reads the Wordsworth and before Ru’s eulogy.

Amazing Grace. There’s a version of John Newton’s great abolitionist anthem that Mog particularly loved. It’s in Obama’s eulogy for Rev Clementa Pinkney and his bible group who’d been gunned down by a white supremacist at a methodist church in Charleston in 2015. We listened to it in preparation for an English-Speaking Union Debate competition. Mog loved the theatricality of Obama singing, but it was the contextualising of the politics, and the inclusivity of the language, the soaring rhetorical power that caught his attention. The speech is about injustice and forgiveness and time, and about sacred and secular meanings of grace. His favourite line I’ll come back to in a minute, but there’s a zinger that spoke to him about fairness and open-mindedness and “othering”. He used it in the debate, arguing for environmental rights. It’s the line where Obama quotes Reverend Pinkney: Across the South we have a deep appreciation of history. We haven’t always had a deep appreciation of each other’s history.

That absolutely defines what Mog cared about. Whose history are we hearing and telling? I think it’s significant that he first fell in love with history through that classic revisionist tale of freedom-fighting insurgency: Asterix the Gaul. He could trace a path of great narrative fact and fiction that tells more than one side of the story all the way to the book he bought himself with his 15^th birthday book token – Procopius’ The Secret History. If you know you know… It’s why his favourite medieval historian was Thomas Asbridge who blends and balances the sources of the Frankish, Byzantine and Arabic chroniclers of the Crusades so generously. And those chroniclers are why he devoted the time he did to campaigning and protesting against war in the Middle East, and arguing for Palestinian rights and British government action.

Mog’s a big man. On the marches in London and the Saturdays in Hereford market square he was the one carrying the heaviest Palestinian flag. And he got a lion’s share of abuse and aggression and spit, all of which he dealt with, with unfailing courtesy, and quietly articulated argument. He was happy to step between others and trouble too. And in our family Mog’s the peacemaker, the diplomat, who talks us all down from rage or despair, from whatever ledges we’re teetering on, who sets us right, and simply makes things better.

He spent the money he earned as bar manager at Wild by Nature and the Old Electric (it’s delighting that alongside all the love, and the anecdotes about his kindness and empathy, his compassion and calmness and capability, that so many of you have written to us to toast his skills as a cocktail mixologist. I think he’d want me to share that the secret to his aphrodisiac negronis is a tiny sliver of fresh ginger in the bottom of the glass. And it’s really good to know that from Santiago in Chile to Costa Rica and Indiana, from Brussels and Sarajevo and Rome to Auckland in New Zealand there are people toasting Mog today as we are gathered here)… He spent his money on travelling across the world with Clara, on books, so many books, and on Arabic lessons through SOAS so he could communicate better with the Iraqi and Syrian refugees he worked with at the Asylum hotel in Hereford.

During those five days in the ICU, there were moments of hope and – more – moments of despair, but we always thought he’d be ok because this was Mog. He’d been here before. When he was 2 we learned that Mog had Supraventricular Tachycardia. The electrical current surges through pathways and causes the heart to race uncontrollably fast. When he was big enough and strong enough – almost five years later – he had an ablation operation at Birmingham Children’s Hospital performed by an extraordinary Maltese surgeon called Joe de Giovanni. Until then the only way to calm the heart was to get to hospital and to give a shot of adenosine. It’s like the reverse of adrenaline. It stops the heart, which then, after a few seconds, reboots. Doctors describe it to adults who have the shot as being like dying and then you come alive again. It’s not a concept you can explain to a child, but a child experiences it, and it happened to Morgan many, many times. He came back from death. Clara says this technically makes him an angel. Yes. It made him deeply aware of mortality, and perhaps underpinned the gravity, the grace with which he perceived the world, and his compassion and kindness towards others.

It made him strong – spiritually – and he matched that physically. There was a time when I could pretty confidently take him – table tennis, wrestling, running, log splitting. But then he turned 8 and all meaningful competition was over. Ru will tell you more about playing games with Mog, but it bears repeating that, a phenomenally gifted ballplayer – easily good at any sport he tried – although he was committedly competitive, outside of fierce fraternal rivalry, he was blithely indifferent to winning. Maybe it’s the preserve of the world’s natural athletes not to invest false pride in it, but he genuinely cared far more about having fun and playing with a cavalier joy than about who got the most points, hoops or goals.

The only thing he did care about winning was political debate; as anyone who ever tried arguing with him learned. At college he once won a debate proposing that Anarchy was a better system of government than Democracy, which I suspect he might also have partly believed. That ESU debate prep he did on Obama worked, by the by. A regional competition which he won – It shouldn’t matter, but the first state school winner.

It seems perhaps futile to speculate on what Mog might have done. He joked with Clara that he would have made a great medieval Pope. But the potential is there from what he was already doing. He cared about justice, about marginalised people and about stepping up. He was idealistic and incredibly persuasive. He made people feel seen and feel safe. I think he would have made a great social worker or Green Party Prime Minister. Sooner rather than later.

His absence is – also – an invitation to us to fulfil his presence in our lives. The bit he really loved from that Charleston speech was the two lines that came after the singing, after the recital of names: The obligation and the blessing of humane Grace – and it applies here today to him too. Obama said: “Through the example of their lives, they’ve now passed it on to us. May we find ourselves worthy of that precious and extraordinary gift, as long as our lives endure.” I can hear Mog say: Damn Right. Get on with it.

To have endured the repeated trauma of SVTs in childhood was extraordinarily unlucky. To have sustained an undefendable fatal blow from a bacterial infection that causes most people at worst a sore throat is so improbable that the chance that anyone in this room will ever hear of such a death again is infinitesimally small. To be afflicted twice, in just 21 years, seems incomprehensible. How much can one soul take? And why? It raises misfortune to the realm of cruelty. I want to scream NOT HIM, Not again...

Morgan was born into our family, and that made us the luckiest parents, the luckiest brothers, grandparents, cousins, godparents. And there is one way in which he is the most fortunate of men. He’d cracked it. He understood what life is for. Love. True, joyful and enduring. He loved Clara. For the three-and-a-half years since they first met the sound of their laughter has been the music of our lives, and it’s lit up everyone around them.

Their great love is also the measure of Clara’s loss, and she and we will live with that forever. But if there is one consoling thought here it is that Mog, who had great purpose, also knew deep happiness. There’s a beautiful poem – a prayer – that says this powerfully. It’s by Raymond Carver. It’s a four-line dialogue, called Late Fragment. It goes:

And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on this earth.’

Saturday 23 September 2023, Ireland vs South Africa

Home Farm, Co. Waterford

The ferry from Fishguard docks a few minutes early at Rosslare. We’ve dozed on chairs in the Nordica’s “Hygge Lounge”, figuring that four hours is too short for a bunk and that we’ll get a kip when we get to the farm before Georgia vs Portugal. The reality of the reclining seats is a little crankier and beery-er than the Scandi hygge wholesomeness and steaming mugs of hot chocolate on the Stena Line website, but hey – we’re heading for the good stuff. Isaac’s phone rings as we’re rolling onto the quayside at 5.30am, and he passes it to me in the passenger seat. It’s Orla. I smile at the contact listing of “Erasure One” and the profile pic filling the screen: a tilted head, mad hair, laughing at the camera as she winks a cartoon of herself. She’s checking we’re awake, we’ve arrived, and that we will not consider for one single solitary second stopping in Wexford or Waterford for breakfast because she’ll be done milking in an hour and the bread’s in the oven and there’ll be Home Farm bacon and chanterelles and she and Ginger can not wait…

I first met Orla at a college game I was reffing in 1986, standing in for a friend with an essay deadline. She’d come to cheer on her boyfriend who was on tour with Galway University, where she was studying Agriculture and French Literature. I was reffing. She was skipping up and down the touchline yelling rapturous encouragement of her team and creatively coarse criticism of every decision I made. She was raucous and rude and right about everything I did wrong.

At half time both teams had oranges in their huddles. Galway also had black water bottles with harp logos. I was pretending to make notes to cover my embarrassment at my mistakes when I realised she was striding across the pitch towards me. “Ref, ref, can I have a word or fecken’ several?” She stood a yard or so from me, but I still had to lean backwards to look up at her face. “Where’s your fecken’ goggles? You’ve bolloxed every scrum in that half and blew up every fecken’ ruck for no fecken’ reason at all. I mean, it’s not that you’re fecken’ biased or anything. There’s a consistency to your staggering incompetence. You’re even-handedly shite to both teams.” This is delivered without pause for breath or response, with an astonishing sweep of vocal range and an underlying bubble of laughter. “Do you have any fecken’ idea what’s going on in the front fecken’ five? Or is this your first fecken’ game in charge?” She cocked her head inviting a reply, and it seemed best to be brutally frank. “Well, no, I have no idea, not really; and yes, it’s my first game reffing. Really.” “O feck. Right.” The mocking laugh dialled down to a smile. “Straight up?” “Yeah.” She glanced over to her Galway team who were watching this altercation with unconcealed amusement. “Right” she said, and she bowed her head towards me and spoke quietly. “Galway have got the edge in the boiler room and that’s putting the knackers on the blue tight head in the scrum. But our hooker is taking it down on their put-in. He’s a tricky little fecker. Now both teams are taking the fecken’ piss because you keep calling it the wrong fecken’ way.” I am staring now, and nodding. “So, listen. Here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m here with my man, there, the Galway 5.” He was huge. Nice eyes. Smiling back at her as she pointed him out. “If I shout ‘For Feck’s Sake, Cal’ when the scrum goes down or the ruck gets messy – that’s means you give the decision to the home side.” Nodding. “If I don’t shout you wave play on, and if I shout ‘Yes, Calum, Yes’, then it’s Galway. OK?” She’s laughing again, and so now am I. The second half was OK. I had to send Calum off for punching his own hooker, but she took that pretty well (“Feckssake, no, Cal, ye brainshite neanderthal, no!”). And we’ve been friends ever since.

What with covid and schooling and all, I haven’t been to the farm since Ginger’s 50^th birthday in 2013. The apple tree saplings we all planted that day in the field by the gate have grown into an orchard, and today it’s laden with fruit. As she has done for almost 40 years, Orla lifts me off my feet in a great big welcome hug. “Too long, too long, you boys” she cries, “breakfast’s on the table. Eat, sleep, rugby, I say to you, Big Flo! And Isaac, we need to talk about TB…” As she puts me down, Ginger scoops me up one-handed, and with Isaac under his other arm, he helicopters us both around, roaring with laughter, as if 28 stone of father and son were toddlers in a playground.

I’m tireder than I thought. And older. And in a light and airy bedroom I sleep through what Orla and Isaac tell me is a fascinating catch-up on bovine epidemiology and a belter of a Georgia vs Portugal game that ends in a down-to-the-last-kick draw. A perfectly-matched and thrilling contest. Proper drama. Unlike England and Chile, which is so one-sided it becomes drearly dull. We kind of half-watch it on the big screen in the kitchen as Ginger makes the burgers for tonight.

Onscreen the wunderkind winger Henry Arundell scores five tries. Four of them are walk-ins. He’s literally walking as he places the ball over the line. The fifth he chips and chases. Orla watches the last replay and observes wryly: “He makes it look really easy. He really does. I mean, it is unbe-fecken-lievably difficult to be in the right place at the right time that often.” Ginger smiles. “I’ve never seen him. What’s his name?” Orla: “Henry Arundell”. “OK, but 71-0 doesn’t tell you anything about England.” Orla nods and laughs. “I wonder if he’ll get another game. They’ll not want to score tries like that again. It’s not what England do. Can you believe it?” Ginger: “If he were eligible for Ireland, Henry Arundell, well then yer man, you know…” he looks to his wife, who interjects without a beat “Mack Hansen”, and he picks it up: “Yeah, Mack Hansen’d be stressed for his shirt.”

Two men arrive at the kitchen door, each carrying a 50-litre keg of Guinness through the door with much the same effort as I had brought a 1 litre bottle of Penderyn Welsh malt whisky when we arrived. I’m quietly expecting Ginger to pick them up, a keg in each hand and swing them onto the stone worktop but he doesn’t. We’re introduced to them and the eight others who arrive as “Saffas from over the water”, and to be kind to us because we’re about to get our asses handed to us by the Kings of Leinster. And they are all lovely. They all seem to be called Fitzgerald “apart from Bridget who’s an O’Connell now she’s married”. The first keg is tapped and the Guinness is flowing. I tell Bridget about my grandmother Magdalena Conlyn, the daughter of a Connemara missionary priest who ended up in Cape Town, and she confirms to general hilarity that in that case we are almost certainly cousins and Isaac and I definitely can be Irish tonight if that’ll help at the final whistle.

The room is robustly confident about Ireland’s prospects. The only shadow is the one cast by the calamity that has befallen the French team and the whole tournament in their Namibia game the day before yesterday. Antoine Dupont is lying in an oxygen tent in a Paris hospital room, waiting for the swelling of his broken face to subside enough for surgeons to even begin to operate. It’s a shadow for Ireland because Dupont’s face was broken in an accidental clash of heads in the second half of a barely competitive game he needn’t have played in for even a minute. Johnny Sexton is arguably even more crucial to Ireland’s hopes than Dupont is to France’s. He doesn’t do as much as Dupont. He kicks his goals, sure. But he sets up everyone around him. He manipulates space and time in midfield that allows Garry Ringrose and Hugo Keenan to glide and Bundee Aki to drive around and through defenders. Andy Farrell has played Sexton back into fitness in the romps against Tonga and Romania, but he’s not one hundred percent yet and he’s a grey-haired 38 or 48 or whatever he is, and tonight he’ll be the chief target of the most aggressive defence in the game.

And do Ireland need to win tonight? Well now, there’s a question. Technically in terms of tournament progression – no. They have no fear of Scotland in their final group game, and after a series win in New Zealand and a 2023 Grand Slam victory, they needn’t mind which opponent they face in the Quarter Finals. But there’s the momentum thing and their consistency and their own sense of how they win. The All Blacks and the French will always have the potential to pull off some unimaginable open play, some piece of counterattacking wizardry and daring that trumps every defensive system and flips a game. The Springboks will always have the grinding attritional power to close a game down and force you to concede kickable penalties. Rugby death by suffocation and infringement. It’s not magnifique but it’s la guerre. The Irish have Total Rugby. Their game depends on relentless fluency, predators’ patience and butchers’ accuracy. There’s one play they call that is designed to break the gain-line on the 4^th, 7^th and 10^th phases of attack and to score on the 11^th. Every one of those phases comes with myriad options and adaptations to their opponents’ responses. Winning this way, which they are doing everywhere they go, is also a demonstration of innovative virtuosity. No-one attacks like this. Psychologically, a coach might reasonably say that every win drives home the message that your opponents will have to conjure a new way of meeting your challenge, and so yes, they do need to win tonight.

Tankards and beer glasses that make me think of Viking flagons. More Guinness. And food. Ginger is ladling chunky broth into huge bowls. He smiles across the kitchen and raises a tumbler in a toast. He takes a tiny sip of whisky and beams at me, raising an eyebrow to say – hmmm, it’s not Lacken Farm, but this Penderyn stuff is good! Orla is overseeing Isaac flipping burgers on a griddle: “Fifty minutes to Ireland’s Call. Erasure Cakes for everyone! Come and get ’em all you Fitzes.”

Ginger says that Orla fell for him because he twirled her round. Let me scroll back a bit. Orla always loved to dance. At twelve years old she was already taller than her classmates, too tall said the teachers for the line of step-dance “riverdancers”. Anyways, she said she liked her arms and hands. At Limerick Latin and Ballroom, she was the best dancer they’d ever had. And she was queen of disco. At fifteen years of age, she stood in bare feet what her mammy called “five foot and twelve inches tall”. And she loved her Cuban heels. Basketball not being a thing in 1980s Ireland, she scoured the ranks of rugby clubs for some seriously tall athletic guys to dance with. Along the way she picked up more about the game than anyone she dated. Ginger, towering over her from six foot six, lithe party groover who’d been an under 20 international lock, was the great partner that she’d always longed for.

But I was going to tell you why hereabouts and to their friends they’re known as The Erasures. Orla’s erasure came first. Her parents moved to Wexford. She joined a new Ballroom club and brought along Hugo, a rugby player from her new college tall enough to dance with. He wasn’t a great dancer, but she really was. A month before the All-Ireland competition he broke his leg in a bike collision with his best mate, the male dancer in the only other Wexford couple – Molly and Mick – entered in competition. Orla and Molly were distraught but determined. Orla scraped back her hair, padded her front to disguise her breasts as a barrel chest, and learned to do forwards in flats with Molly what she’d done so effortlessly backwards in high heels with Hugo, and off they went to the ball. They won the Cha-cha-cha, the American Smooth, the Waltz, the Rumba, the Polka, the Jive and the overall title. The chair of the judges, Father Ignatius Trey, deemed “Orlando Murphy’s tango to be too aggressively macho” and placed them second in that one. They smiled for the cameras and got the trophy engraved. Ireland in the 80s. Nobody talked. Wexford Ballroom was a bit conflicted but secretly thrilled. So thrilled that Orlando and Molly went back to Dublin the following year to defend their title. Which they did. Toning down the tango they got that too. An unprecedented clean sweep.

It all went wrong at the reception after the presentation. Father Ignatius had come round to Orla’s masculinity more than anyone realised. When he covertly ran his hand up her thigh, she was so astonished, so appalled, that she froze. Not finding what he’d lasciviously expected, he freaked out. She laughed at him. Because her scream of rage came out like that. It was the laugh that broke him. He resigned from his parish and from his lifetime jury post that same night, saying that he “could not bear the shame of having been mistaken about the dancer he so admired”. Sic. Ireland Ballroom banned Wexford Club for five years and replaced their head judge and the Cup. The years 1982 and 1983 are missing from the roll call of winners on the new trophy. Erased. To this day, no other couple has won two years in a row. Father Ignatius disappeared from the electoral roll in 1984. Internet search reveals an I. Trey listed in the staff roster at the Vatican archive. Orla became something of a hero to all her friends, who in honour of her Astairly achievements dubbed her “Fred”. She gave up ballroom and started clubbing. When she eventually hooked up with her future husband – and he could really move – her friends nicknamed him “Ginger”, despite the fact that he is pretty much the only Fitzgerald with dark hair, blue eyes and not a freckle on his handsome face. As I look at him now, the eyes are a bit cloudy, his hair is white, but I see him in my head twirling her around a dancefloor, spinning yarns in bars, being his endlessly generous self.

Ginger’s erasure was curiously similar. He was captaining his club side in the regional cup final, a brutal local derby. They were emulating the infamous 99 call from the third Test of the 1974 Lions tour to South Africa, when Willie John McBride’s team planned that if anything fruity kicked off they would all, every last one of them, punch the nearest opponent to start a mass brawl. The reasoning being that the referee would not be able to send everyone off and so would let them all stay on. Well, referee JK Reilly was having none of the Port Elizabeth laissez-battre, not on his field of dreams. When it kicked off between the front rows in Waterford and Ginger called 99 and the fists started flying, JK sent everyone off; all thirty players on the pitch, including five, Ginger among them, who were knocked out cold, and both reserves who’d been his touch judges. This became quite the story. John Banville wrote about it in the Irish Times. As a result of that, the Late Late Show decided to come and do an OB shoot of the rematch the following week for a segment on the live show. Everyone behaved impeccably. They shook hands, smiled, played well. There was a winner. RTE got their pieces-to-camera about brotherhood and the healing power of sport. Afterwards Ginger invited the film crew into the changing room. The players went into the showers and as they do, then they all jumped into the big baths. Thirty guys in two big baths filled with a fifty-fifty mix of water and beer. A film crew looking for material about male bonding. What could possibly go right? Perhaps, if the director had not asked the men to “show what it meant to be friends again” after such a violent punch-up the week before, the men would not have started their rendition of the Village People hit YMCA. The combination of so many naked men, so much water, such tuneful singing and such drunken choreography made for great television. Perhaps, if the director had managed to mute or cut altogether Ginger’s spectacular voiceover, they both would have had a future in television. “And now ladies and gentlemen of the Late Late Show, you, Mr Gay Byrne, may God bless you, and for all your viewers we’d like to dedicate this performance of rugby harmony and camaraderie to Cardinal Daly and all the kiddy-fiddling Catholic priests who’ve ruined lives up and down this country. God Bless us all! And Fuck the Pope!”

Do this in the time of social media and Ginger becomes a global icon and guests on the Best of Tim Minchin. Do this in 1985, the tape gets wiped, the segment for the live show is replaced with Bob Geldof singing Banana Republic (fair play to Gay Byrne) and you never get invited back onto the television. But folk memory is deep and true, and by last count of all the folk in Waterford who tell this tale, there must have been close to three thousand people in that bath that day. Anyway, I like it that they are called the Erasures, not the Heretics or the Knob Gags.

“Game time in five, everybody. Beer and Bog right now.” There’s a queue for the loo by the back door. I nip up to the one by my room upstairs. That too is in use, so I pop into Ginger and Orla’s en suite bathroom opposite. Big bathroom. Two pints of Guinness take a while these days. I am struck by a smell that triggers clear recall of the boys’ infancies. The antiseptic plasticised nappy recycling bin that looked like a small Dalek. You had to pack the nappies down, then twist the lid which would pod each nappy in this sweet-scented sausage packaging and then when it was full you’d double wrap and bin them. By the all-too-familiar bin near the bidet there’s a pile of fresh nappies, nappies bigger than my boxers. From downstairs:

“Come on, y’all! Anthems!”

I’ve blathered on about national anthems and Welshness and that Marseillaise scene in Casablanca, but there is nothing quite like the sweetest aspiration and sheer mongrel mess of the Springboks anthem to bring a tear to the eye. After they hosted and won the World Cup in 1995, Madiba’s grace and political smarts came into play. They made the traditional symbol of white supremacy into the new icon of the rainbow nation extend to reworking the anthems of the ANC and the Afrikaaners into one Springboks song in five languages. Nkosi Sikelel i’Afrika starts with couplets in Xhosa and Zulu appealing to God, then has a verse in Sesotho (more God). Key change, and Die Stem van Suid-Afrika starts in Afrikaans with a hymn to landscape, and it closes with abstract unity in English. It’s poetically and musically incoherent, it’s bloody hard to sing, and it swells and breaks my heart every time I see Siya Kolisi belting out every word and meaning it. Ireland’s Call, written for a sport that brings Northern Ireland and the Republic together in the same “national” team, aims for the same noble unity-of-apartheid pitch, but with even blunter lyrics and shoulder-to-shoulder solidarity. In this room and it seems at Stade de France, the anodyne positivity is drowned out by a joyful rendering of the much darker and more wonderful Cranberries’ “Zombie”, with its stark reminder of what you actually need to stand shoulder to shoulder against, and its true call that the chance to put the bombs and the guns behind us all is genuinely in your head. If you’re going to run a two-syllable word over three notes, you really should yodel it like Dolores O’Riordan.

For all that liberté, logic and Ladbrokes have until now suggested no-one will prevent Antoine Dupont meeting his glorious destiny in the final, wouldn’t it be the craic of all craics, and a transcendent moment not unlike Mandela’s and Kolisi’s, to see Munster’s Tadhg Beirne lift all his Leinster teammates onto his shoulders as they carry the Webb Ellis trophy back to an island united in rugby? It’s just me mythologising. No-one here will mention this out loud, or even admit to dreaming it. But still…

Kick off. Fifteen minutes in there’s a slightest inkling that Total Rugby isn’t working. The attack machine is just not purring. The speed of the Boks’ defensive blitz is an upgrade on anything that we’ve seen before. The monster pack of monsters is monstering away, but it’s Manie Libbok, Damian de Allende and Jesse Kriel who are shutting down Ireland’s midfield tempo, flattening Garry Ringrose who is taken off for Head Injury Assessment that he – how?? – clears, and forcing Sexton to mistime passes. He never mistimes passes. They’re toe to toe. The collisions are brutal, but ruthlessly legal. Then Hansen scores the first time Ireland go wide ­– an opportunist, poacher’s try. Ireland in front, and the confidence in the room soars high. The faith is strong. Zombie, Zo-om-bie. Half time. Guinness. Singing. I join Orla in the kitchen. She’s replacing the first keg. “What do you think?” I ask. She pauses. “I think they’ve found the antidote. And we’re going to have to come up with something new.” Isaac joins us. He’s come to get a top up for Ginger’s tumbler; just a thumb of that Penderyn. “I’m glad he likes the malt. Is Penderyn the Merthyr riots place, Dic Penderyn?” “It is.” Of course she’d know. She smiles again. “So how’s he doing in there?” asks Orla, lightly. Isaac replies: “I’m not sure he’s that keen on the Cranberries, but he’s nodding along. I guess he’s watching Etzebeth and Beirne with some degree of pride.”

Second half, and almost immediately Faf de Klerk is winding up for a penalty from inside his own half. That’s ballsy, but strange. I’ve never seen him kick at goal, ever. Libbok’s goal kicking is inconsistent, but he can flight a ball to touch with phenomenal power and accuracy. Given the Boks’ lineout success rate it is really very odd not to kick for the corner and maul to the line. Incredibly, from more than fifty metres, Faf hits the post and the ball bounces back into play. The crazy thought flits across my mind that he might actually have intended this. The Irish are batfoggled by the rebound as the Boks follow up. The ball’s ripped and recycled seven metres out, and then the room is momentarily silenced, in bewildered awe.

Time restarts and everybody is leaping and roaring; full-throated, bestial bellowing.

What just happened? Did we really see that? No. No way. Replay comes up. We’re half expecting a correction to the video, but no. What the actual…? I look across at Ginger, who is sitting with his hands holding his head still, his gaze riveted to the screen. Replay again. Ben O’Keefe, the ref is screaming “Bring him down, careful! Careful!”

This is a guy, 6 foot 8, 18 stone and some; in a strong field, the most nakedly aggressive rugby player in living memory; lineout leaper, monster-mauler, brutal ball carrier. This is the guy who broke the bar-bells in the gym, who curls 75kg in each hand, who eats three buffalo for breakfast. And Eben Etzebeth, Bok of Boks, the talismanic snarling face of South African rugby just got owned. James Lowe, 6 foot 2, 15 stone, just picked him up and drove him, legs akimbo, flailing helpless in the air, back five metres. There’s a stats thing called a Dominant Tackle, a tackle that reverses momentum. Well this was something else. This was a Tackle of Total Supremacy; a tackle of myth-busting, reputation-shaking, rout and ridicule. Irresistible Force meets irresistibler force wearing a shamrock above the heart. Newton’s third law of motion just got amended.

Seconds later, 48 minutes into the game, coach Rassie Erasmus hooks Etzebeth, subs in Jean Kleyn. 6 foot 8, 19 stone. And he’s not the biggest guy to come on. The Boks destroy the Irish scrum three times in a minute and Manie Libbok’s 35-metre pass sends Cheslin Kolbe over for the mirror image of Mac Hansen’s first-half try. The killer pass whipped out so far and fast that only the crowds highest up in the stands with a gulls-eye view can see it coming. I glance at Orla. She shrugs back. The manner of that try was a super flex. The Springboks saying – not only can we upgrade our own game but we can play yours too. The momentum has been irrevocably reversed. So much so that Rassie now hooks his captain too. Siya Kolisi leaves the field at 51 minutes. What kind of fuckery is this? He’s not injured. He’s leaving because there’s nothing more to learn today. Ginger gets up and waves his glass as he heads to the kitchen. Libbok misses the conversion, as he will miss another penalty. Faf too skews another Hail Mary longshot.. Why? 11 points discarded. Ireland kick their goals. They win by five. The room is jubilant. Zombie is chorused. The second keg is drained.

It was a helluva game. Skill, speed, and far, far fewer fouls than in any other game so far. Who won? Everyone. Ireland maintain their aura of confidence. South Africa now know what to do if they get to rematch in the final. The crowd loved it. But two things we thought we knew for sure are gone, before our very eyes. The fluent speed and grace of Ireland’s backline can be checked, and the overdog intimidatory power of Etzebeth is no more. The Lowe tackle will rack up views on every video and social media platform. The more eloquent image is of Siya Kolisi in the dugout, warmdown coat draped around his shoulders, 25 minutes of the game still to play out, surveying the endgame, impassive, calculating.

The guests depart into the night. Zo-om-bie. Having slept all morning, and not being on for the milking tomorrow, Isaac and I are on washing up, which is soothing and happy. We’re chatting about the likelihood that Ireland’s win means that they’ll play the All Blacks in the Quarters, when Ginger appears wearing a dressing gown. “Hey, Peter!” “Ginger, hey. What can I get you? Cup of tea? Hot chocolate? Isaac’s having one.” He thinks for a moment, then he says “Who won?” I am non-plussed. “Who won the game?” he asks, and then “I left when Etzebeth was taken off.” “OK”, I say remembering him being in the room when Kolbe scored. “Kolisi, I mean, the captain”. OK. That makes sense. “I just needed a lie down”. That doesn’t. Ginger needing a lie down in the middle of Ireland’s biggest world cup match is more bizarre than Erasmus subbing off his star players twenty minutes early. “Ireland won”, says Isaac, “13-8. Sexton and Crowley closed it out.” “Ah, right. I thought as much. Was Etzebeth OK?” Orla appears behind him, dressing-gowned as well. She wraps her arms around him. It’s almost as if she hasn’t noticed we are there. “Let me get you water, love.” I pour a clean glass from the tap and hand it to her, wondering as I do so why I’m not handing it to him. “I tell you what it was like, Ginger. It was like that Five Nations game at Lansdowne Road when we came to see you playing England and the whole game they led because you let them, and the final quarter Ireland scored three tries. Do you remember that? Well this was like that but the Springboks just stopped scoring when they’d proved their point.” Ginger scowls, “I never played at Lansdowne Road.” OK.

Ten minutes later Orla comes back down. We’ve been friends for almost forty years. “Tell me, please.” And so she does. The last five years of headaches, scrambled memories, bladder dysfunction and the nappies, loss of dexterity; the struggling for words and thoughts. It comes and goes. There are good days, but they are poisoned by the fear of the bad ones that will surely follow. The fear of physical decline. The fear of your own past, erased. I’ve heard him speak at dinners as often as I watched him play. He is as charming and hilarious as he’d been formidable and spectacular. “What do the doctors say?” They say that she should keep him dancing, well fed, properly engaged. And she does. They say that with no family history of dementia, that this is probably the result of multiple unmanaged concussions over twenty years of playing competitive rugby.

“He doesn’t watch much rugby now. The big hits are a trigger. An HIA will shut him down. That hit on Ringrose will have been a thing. I think that’s why he asked you if Etzebeth was OK.” She takes my hand. “They’ve asked him to join this class action lawsuit against the game, claiming the national Unions had a duty of care to protect the players from head injuries, but he won’t.” “Why not? Wouldn’t he be a great ambassador for the cause?” She smiles again “He fears not. On a good day he’ll say that Ireland should be focusing on compensation for the kids who got raped by the church rather than young men who chose to play a combat sport.” I ask, “Surely there’s room for both?” She looks down. “Yes, you’d hope. The bottom line is that he might be a huge liability for them. A gift to a hostile barrister. Aside from that tackle on Wade Dooley, what he’s best known and loved for in this county is calling thirty players into a fist fight in which he was knocked out. Well, to be fecken fair to him, for that and for shouting Fuck the Pope while waving his beautiful cock at the cameras.”

The Erasures is part of a longer, fiction project. See also A Drinking Game from March last year.

Cymru 0 – RSA 73

A transcript of the squad’s whatsapp group messages on Saturday 29 November 2025, edited for kindness to several of the family members who should be spared reminders of their less articulate (tears and tantrums) moments.

The XV group:

Buff, a bass player from Cape Town, hooker, 64

Ham, a schoolboy from Edinburgh, full-back, 16

Magnus, his brother, a banker now in Frankfurt, full-back, 24

Orla, a farmer and diamond rugby brain, married to Ginger a former Irish international lock, 60

Scarlet, a student at Hartpury College, flanker, 19

Q7, a fellow Hartpury College student and flatmate of Scarlet, winger, 20

Mitch, a painter from Auckland, flanker, 63

Leyla, a restaurateur from Bordeaux, mother of French international winger, 60

Brett, a charity accountant from Earl’s Court/Melbourne, centre, 59

Owain, a civil servant from Neath, prop/hooker, 52

Flo: Me, a failed librarian, fly-half, 62

It would take a long and happy night in a warm pub to explain how we’re all related. And we should really do that. We will, we will, we will, as Orla would have it. The short of it is that these are the people I watch rugby with, sometimes on touchlines, sometimes in the stands, once or twice in corporate boxes, and usually in watch parties gathered around screens across the world. I love em all. Except Q7, who’s new. And the jury’s out. But I’m open to persuasion.

BUFF: This is Cape Town calling. Are you receiving me in the Old World, in the frozen wastes of the North, in the dragon-less lands of the leeks and daffodillies? [🖐🏻✊🏻👊😍🖐🏽😘]

SCARLET: Fuck you, Buff. Y’arright? [😘]

BUFF: I am indeed “arright” my poppet, in myself, but I am dreading, in the darkest corners of my heart, the impending catastrophe that will be vented upon my Cymric cousins when Sacha gets his groove on. [😝😝🙃💪🏽💪🏽]

HAM: OMFG he is the dogs... I LOVE him. [💪🏽 💪🏽]

OWAIN: He really is. Massive upgrade for you guys, like you need it!

BUFF: Well yes. What can I say? Best thing about him is…

SCARLET: He ain’t no Handre Pollard? [🙃🙃🤣😘]

BUFF: Hahahahaha – Indeed. But I would remind you, young lady!

SCARLET: Who are you calling a lady??? [adds Q7 to the group] Hey, team, this is my mate from Hartpury. 16 tries this season. Top gal. [🖐🏼🖐🏼👊🏻❤️❤️💕]

Q7: Hi everyone. [🖐🏼🖐🏼👊🏻❤️💕 ⁉7️⃣❓]

ORLA: Welcome to the ruck, darlin. What’s your weapon?

SCARLET: 11,14.

Q7: and a 9 sometimes.

MAGNUS: Does that get complicated, numerically? #crazynamecrazygal [😘🙃😝]

SCARLET: Fuck off Mag.

Q7: Sorry. I got this phone off my nan and she had it registered with BT and no-one knows how she set it up as Q7 and now we can’t change the ident. And Q7 has kinda stuck.

ORLA: Ginger’s asking what your real name is? [‼️]

SCARLET: Fuck off Ginger. [😍]

ORLA: Ginger says Feck Off Scarlet. [😍😍]

You know, Buff is only called Buff because the band played naked at a wedding. [‼️‼️‼️😍]

BUFF: That is completely true.

HAM: WTF? I thought it was because his nickname was Buffalo?

BUFF: That is completely true too. [😍😍😍😍😍😍😍]

Q7: It’s Buddug. “Bu” as in big, “dd” as in the, “ug” as in big. Buddug Jones.

ORLA: OK!

Q7: In my class at school there were 8 Ceryses 3 Nessas and 5 Anwens. 1 Buddug. So Q7 kinda works for me.

MAGNUS: That’s Welsh for Boudica right? [❤️💯]

MITCH: Hey team! Good morning from tomorrow. Howzit going? [✊🏻👊😍🖐🏽😘🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿🇿🇦]

OWAIN: What time is it there?

MITCH: It’s 4am in Auckland and we just got back from a late bbq. But I wouldn’t miss this one for the world. Not after last week.

ORLA: Mitch, you are insane. What in BOD’s name from last week makes you want to watch this game?

MITCH: Just wanted to hang out with you guys again. [❤️❤️❤️]

OWAIN: I thought the boys were good last week against the All Blacks. At 6o minutes they were in the game.

MAGNUS: If that team was playing today they’d be looking at maybe just a 30-point margin.

MITCH: It’s not a done deal. Wales looked really good in attack. I like that boy Hawkins. They just ran into a bunch of All Blacks on a last hurrah. And its gotta be said: the Boks were just terrible in Dublin against 12 men of Leinster. I say game on! What you say Flo? This is your parental match? [🇿🇦🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿]

FLO: My Welsh eyes loved it. Fast and skilful. It’s just thrilling to see them throw it around and play again. But they are lightweight. And it was a helluva gig. Real pleasure to watch Damo. But you’re right, with my Saffa hat - Dublin was just horrible.

ORLA: Two drunks fighting! And not in a good way. They gotta do something about the scrum and the penalties and the cards. And I love Bokke scrums.

MITCH: The laws don’t get the game moving. And I LOVE scrums, but you want to see some footy. Little bit of spark, little less sumo. [💯💯👊🏻👊🏻]

MAGNUS: That spotlight haka in Cardiff was dirty on tv. What did it look like in the room?

MITCH: ROFL. They made the haka into a showdance. I was waiting for the judges to hold up their paddles. [🤣🤣🙃🙃🕺🏽🕺🏽]

FLO: They always go a bit Dr Who with the VT. After the Twickenham crowd drowning it out I think the WRU went full on Puccini with lashings of respect and melodrama. It was awesome in the room. Scar’s there now.

HAM: Where you sitting, Scar? What are you wearing?

SCARLET: FFS Ham! What am I? Onlyfans Rugby Fangirl 06! [😘😍]

HAM: I meant so we can see you!

Q7: We’re top of the stand above halfway opposite the tunnel. Best view ever. £10 tickets thru College. Bangin! [‼️]

BRETT: Hey there. Sorry I’m late. You know – stuff… we had an away match and one of the parents didn’t turn up to collect. [🖐🏼🖐🏼🦘]

OWAIN: Perfect timing. Did you win?

BRETT: We got hammered. 48-10. But they walked off tall. Good kids.

SCARLET: Brettster, Are you officially the worst coach in the world? [🤣😝🙃]

BRETT: Well if you’re only measuring by results, I’ve gotta be top 5. [🤣😝5️⃣5️⃣❤️‍🔥]

MAGNUS: There’s you. There’s Eddie Jones – I mean, Japan couldn’t even beat Wales. [🔥🔥🔥🇯🇵]

BUFF: I think some questions need to be asked of Rassie how come he lost the second half in Dublin to 13 Irishmen. [🙀🫠]

BRETT: Ow, when did you become Cymru instead of Wales? I like it, but what does it mean? Is it Welsh for Wales?

SCARLET: Wales is the old English word for “foreigner”. Cymru is the old celtic Brythonic word for “together”. [❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿]

OWAIN: Anthems! OK - Wales C vs Boks B – final whistle?

MAGNUS: Boks by 50

MITCH: 20-40.

ORLA: 12-55

SCARLET: Wales by 20 lol

HAM: cricket score [ 🏏🏏‼️]

BRETT: I can’t see any way they score. 0-60

LEYLA: 0-66. I adore the way he sings, Kolisi. [🎶💯❤️❤️]

FLO: Leyla. Great to see you. I think Blair Murray will get one. 7-60.

OWAIN: 10-55 but if there are scrum cards it could be much much worse. Q7?

Q7: we’ll get some tackles in, but – yeah, cricket. [🏏]

BUFF: Let’s wait and see. This is such a strange match up. Shit could happen. I’ll be one happy hooker if everyone comes out alive.

OWAIN: Come on Buff. I’ll be another happy hooker if you give me two numbers.

BUFF: 2 red cards, 4 yellows. I don’t know half these Welsh players, so maybe 28-28 at the whistle. But, man, it should be cricket. [🙃😘]

LEYLA: Here is the question the most French I can ask, but… what is it: cricket? [❤️🤍💙]

OWAIN: Anything over 100 points. OK, here we go.

FLO: 5 minutes 0-0. So far so good.

OWAIN: Just need an Act of God to stop it now and we’ve basically won the expectation game.

ORLA: Well, that was feckn inevitable.

MITCH: They are big men.

ORLA: And smaller boyos. [💥]

HAM: Hooker! I’ve not seen him before. He’s something.

BUFF: 6^th choice, but he’s silverquick.

MAGNUS: Fuck, that SFMs got a boot on him.

MITCH: There’s really nothing he can’t do.

ORLA: It’s like they took all the best bits of every Springbok 10 and then made him bigger and faster and cleverer. [💥💥💪🏽💪🏽💯]

FLO: Wiese is so strong. It’s all so well drilled.

LEYLA: This is not a match. It will not end well.

OWAIN: I’ll take 0-21 at half-time.

MITCH: Who does van Rensburg play for? He’s good.

HAM: ooooooh that was slick.

OWAIN: I’ll take 0-28 at half time… [🙃🙃🙃]

FLO: You ok, Scar?

SCARLET: Fuck off all of you. I spent £10 on this ticket. [🙃😘😘✅💲‼️]

Q7: £10 invested in national pride and prejudice, and what have we got?

BUFF: I’m still holding out for 28-28. I tell you, I have a bad feeling about this game.

OWAIN: Jeesh, Buff. We’re all with you there. Look at that bench. [👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻👊🏻]

BRETT: Etzebeth on his own has got more caps than the entire Welsh starting XV. [💪🏽💪🏽]

BUFF: I don’t know why he’s playing today. What is Rassie’s thinking? There’s nothing to be learned. It’s been a long year. He was off the edge last week. I love the guy, but give him a break.

BRETT: I mean – what a servant to the game. And he’s a lovely guy, apparently. Did you see that reel of him dancing? [🕺🏽🕺🏽❤️❤️❤️]

OWAIN: That clip’s him and Ox and Buff! In the party video.

HAM: Wha?

MAGNUS: Wha?

SCARLET: NFW! Buff? Fuck OFF!

BUFF: This is also absolutely true. Eben moves well for a big guy, right Orla? [❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️ ❤️]

ORLA: He is beginners shuffle, maybe intermediate pogo. [🕺🏽❤️]

OWAIN: And we’re off again.

Q7: Oof!

HAM: Oof!!

MAGNUS: M-N-G-O-M-E-Z-U-L-U!!!!!

BUFF: Ja, man.

FLO: Wow. Just wow. Untouchable. I haven’t seen that since Christian Cullen.

ORLA: That Canan Moodie too. How is it possible to have these two and Willemse all in the same side?

MAGNUS: Beautiful rugby.

OWAIN: Dear God, he’s bringing on an entire new pack? It is going to be cricket.

MAGNUS: Uglybeautiful. [🥷🏻]

Q7: Oof!

ORLA: Oof!

HAM: Oof!

MITCH: You know, it’s a bit like watching Tyson Fury in a streetfight with a high-schooler.

OWAIN: Odd thing, right, is that they’ve actually slowed down since the bomb squad came on. Got a bit scrappy. That Nortje try was the first for quarter of an hour.

BUFF: And there it is. Eben, you beaut. That’s what he does. [😍 😍 😍]

MAGNUS: class

HAM: just fabulous

OWAIN: good try.

FLO: WTFFF?

ORLA: Jesus…

HAM: he’s gonna blind him

BRETT: Stop! Stop!

MAGNUS: Fucking hell

OWAIN: What just happened?

MITCH: Christ, it’s actually worse in slow motion.

OWAIN: What is he thinking of? That is clear gouging.

MITCH: Straight red and a long ban.

BRETT: Can you see Alex Mann?

MAGNUS: Straight red, lifetime ban and civil prosecution.

SCARLET: JFC.

Q7: That’s on the screens here played over and over. Man in front of us just threw up.

FLO: Yes.

BUFF: I don’t know.

That’s not him.

Has he been provoked?

OWAIN: Seriously, Buff? FFS..

BUFF: It makes no sense. Eben, man…

LEYLA: Look at his eyes. He is gone crazy.

Sorry, I mean – look at his face.

FLO: I think he’s still standing, Mann. Can’t see him on the screen now. Scar?

SCARLET: Can’t see him. Etzebeth’s off.

Q7: Helluva first date Scar. Seriously memorable. Mngomezulu, 73-0, and actual GBH torture!

ORLA: Q7…

Q7: Too soon? [👎🏻👎👍🏼]

OWAIN: How is Rassie going to spin this?

MAGNUS: There’s nothing to say.

Q7: Maybe – “He didn’t see it?”

FLO: Q7 – TOO SOON. [👍🏼 👍🏼 👍🏼 ]

BRETT: That’s another few thousand parents who’ll never let their kids pick up a ball.

LEYLA: The eyes will recover. They are strong. But his name - Etzebeth? I do not think so.

ORLA: Jesus Christ. That’s a mighty long fall. He’ll be punished, and rightly. If that boy’s blinded, it’ll be life.

BUFF: Yes, it should be. Man, I’m afraid it should be.

Postscript

Alex Mann recovered and is playing again for Cardiff. Eben Etzebeth received a 12-week ban. He will not miss any international matches

.

I want to find a precedent, a model, a comparator, but I’m not sure that rugby can provide one. Well, maybe David Duckham at full tilt? Christian Cullen had a similar careering gait. Dupont and Kolbe conjure that magic but their interventions are more violent. Have you seen Cathy Freeman run? Mikaela Shiffrin ski? I think perhaps some force or grace of nature feels closer to the grain. There are mountain streams that find their way downhill. They’ll navigate pebbles, stones and rocks. They’ll find their way inexorably, elegantly, cutting a groove. Gravity. And the property of water that is a flow. That’s what she’s like.

THE CATCH

There’s a moment when the ball is in the air, moving towards her. You see Mo Hunt’s pass arc past Zoe Harrison. And all around you, you can hear the catch of breath. In the lash-bat before her hands cradle to receive the ball, you realise the collective breath has lifted you to your feet. Everywhere we leap up, open-handed, open-mouthed. She takes the ball standing still, two onrushing defenders are within 5 metres of her to close her down. There’s really nothing on. Ladies and Gentlemen, girls and boys, the next trick is impossible.

MOVING PICTURES

The thing is with these superstars that it’s not just the fans, the crowds, the stadiums that are awestruck by their potential. No, it’s their opponents too. Look at this photo. 18 players in shot, stock still and watching a single moving runner move past two flailing defenders. And now you find your voice. You are yelling in delight, a joyous howl of admiration. There was no gap but she is through it and now she slaloms to the line. Rugby fans have seen sidesteps that made them laugh out loud. Campo, Gerald Davies, Jason Robinson could all drive off an outside leg and change direction without slowing down. Ankle breakers, they are called. They could do you inside, outside, upside down. But the mechanics of this are different. Ellie swerves off the inside foot. She leans, she drops a shouder, cocks a hip, she’s gone. And there’s her gravity trick: she just keeps accelerating away, flowing around one, two, three of the best defenders on the planet towards the try line. The terminal velocity of Ellie Kildunne.

PACK MENTALITY

And it’s not just the lithe power of the run, nor the beaming smile as she touches down, it’s the timing of the try that confounds Canadian confidence. Just after Canada have leapt ahead exposing the Red Roses only weakness – defending out wide. The try somehow refutes the well-worked and beautifully executed logic of Canadian back play with an instinctive and unforeseeable conjuring of wonder. There are other individuals’ moments in this world cup final that lock the game. Three times Hannah Botterman turns over a Canadian attack, jackalling for a penalty in her own red zone. Best case: that’s probably 21 points saved. Though on her balance sheet will be the 14 that the Canadians scored when she was yellow carded to the sin-bin for a tackle that can be chalked into the column marked Disproportionate Response. Net gain, but still… But this team play a team game. The overwhelming sense is of a complete team performance, or perhaps more precisely: a complete pack performance. And I mean pack, not as in pack down or pack tight or any of the ways we describe the tightness of binding in scrums or in the loose – though there is that too. I mean pack as in wolves, hunting. These England forwards move as if guided by a single, shared intelligence. How the hell did they pick a single player of the match? Kabeya was brilliant. But she was exactly and indivisibly as brilliant as Aldcroft, Mitchell, Ward, Talling (especially Talling), Muir and Cokayne, as Galligan, Atkin-Davies, Bern, Clifford and Feaunati, as brilliant as all the starting and finishing England forwards.

INTERFLORA XV

How about from now on Interflora rethinks the cliché of a dozen red roses, and upgrades the declaration of love to a full XV? I’d say 23 or 32, but actually the point of this World Champion squad is that any 15 selected here would do the job. It’s an extraordinary thing that you can sub in a bomb squad front row, towering tight five or belligerent back row, the rock-solid half-backs, meat-packing centres or flairing back three, and STILL be an undiminished unbeatable Red Roses XV. Has there ever been an international outfit so consistent and reliable? It’s not just like-for-like replacement. Ellie excepted, every player from 16 to 23 (and 23 to 32) has 90% of the same capability as whoever they’re coming on for but adds a 10% of individual difference that makes it a nightmare to combat. Which weapon does England use to kill you? They can take their pick, and they all have the same endgame. Some of this is John Mitchell coaching a style of play that works for everyone, and that “everyone” depends upon the sheer depth of available talent, but for the most part it’s a culture of shared purpose and ambition.

YEE-HA

My phone buzzes with an incoming alert. Nessa Jones. Seeing Monster’s face pop onto my screen makes me smile already. My bi-tribal, fanzone friend from Clydach is radiant, and if the world wants to paint a St George’s cross on anything, please God just make it this laughing face. The video is a mad rush of crowd and sky and flags and faces, captured from her hand that has apparently been waving to the music.

The text message simply reads: “na na na na na nana nanana nana… best team EVER 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹🌹 🌹 🌹 🌹”.

As we pass Wrexham, we smile at the thought of Wales’ sweetest sporting success story, the fantastical and romantic journey of Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ investment in the world’s third oldest professional football club, Welcome to Wrexham. It’s a poignant reminder that anything is possible. Well, that anything is possible if you have heart and a sense of humour and a love for your club. Bucking the laws of Hollywood, I don’t think even the most ardent fan wants Wrexham to top the Premiereship. That’s not the point. The best season was the first one where they didn’t get promotion. But we fell in love with the team, the management and the idea of their story.

We’re banking some good Celtic vibes en route to Cymru’s opening match in the Women’s Rugby World Cup – pretty much a home game in Salford, home of Sale Sharks.

Earlier, we’d toyed with the idea of following the A5 to Llangollen and a pilgrimage to my grandfather’s home in Pentredwr. Generation after generation of Cadwaladr Lewises and Lewis Cadwaladr Lewises, all of whom married women called Ellen or Elinor, registered by the census takers as “scholars”. Apparently, in C19th Wales this didn’t mean student or schoolgirl, but teacher or someone who also spoke and wrote English. I love the idea of all these farmers and quarrymen marrying up. Though one of my Taid’s cousins, from Llanystumdwy, had joined the police force and gone to London.

Some 35 years ago, the internet tells me the exact date was 1 November 1990, I was heading to the Houses of Parliament to have lunch with a friend of mine, the then Plaid Cymru MP for Nant Conwy, Dafydd Elis Thomas. It was a helluva job to get in, and when he met me in the lobby, Dafydd told me that the whole place was rammed because Geoffrey Howe was to be making a resignation speech that afternoon and the whole place was on high security alert and that rather than eating in the canteens we should go out to get some food in Victoria. As we left the gates the policemen greeted Dafydd and I warmly and wished us a happy day. In Welsh. Dafydd explained that ever since Lloyd George had brought his North Walian mates, including my 4^th cousin Lewis, down to get jobs at Westminster, on maximum security days even now the Met had a Welsh language detail. Are we particularly good at security? Well, yes, in one way, he explained. The Welsh language was as safe a comms code as anyone could invent. Unless the threat was from militants from Aberystwyth, the police could talk freely on open radios without fear of being understood. There’s a shaggier dog to yarn about Welsh language commandos from 2 Para in the Falklands meeting Patagonian Argentinians, but honestly I can’t put off the rugby any longer. Sorry.

Cymru / Wales are just terrible. No spark, no daring, no fun. I cannot imagine what the match stats show, but I should think they would betray that they missed more tackles than they made, that they couldn’t catch, pass, or run with the ball without crumpling into abject submission. It’s not that they play poorly, it’s that they play as if they have never been taught the most basic rules of rugby, nor that the most fundamental point of sport is entertainment – of players, spectators and commentators.

Samoa lost 73-0 to Australia in the lunchtime match. It honestly felt like a close game. The Samoans played with passion and joy. The (largely Scots and Welsh) crowd (and quite a few Aussies) roared them on and cheered every attack, every courageous tackle. Spain lost 54-8. I’ve never seen wilder celebrations than the Spanish team and crowd when they scored their only try against the mighty New Zealand Black Ferns in the 82^nd minute. Fiji scored what may yet be the try of the tournament when they lost 65-7 to an awesome Canadian team, ignited by Julia Schell’s double hattrick of tries. Six tries. In one game. If there is anyone who can trouble the splendid procession of England’s magnificent Red Roses…. But that’s for another round, another day, another round. My point is that you can lose heroically, IF YOU PLAY.

The crowd at the stadium is not gonna be repressed by the direness of the Welsh rugby. They are here to party. They are younger, funkier and a lot more female than the fans of the men’s game. When the classic stadium remix of Gala’s Freed From Desire hits the sound system they really groove, and when the DJ samples the “up, up, up” from Loreen’s Euphoria it feels – well – euphoric.

“Happi, Happi! Look! It’s them from the train! Oh. My. God!” I’d know that voice anywhere. And somewhere in the happier recesses of my mind I think I must have been half expecting to see her here today, and here she is in the halftime queue for the curried chips. We first met the glorious dancing queen of Clydach RFC on the train back from Edinburgh after this year’s Six Nations jaunt. Monster is still rocking a mane of green hair, but she’s had it curled and is sporting a big pink and well-fringed Stetson. She’s wearing an England Rugby shirt enhanced with the graffiti, O Meg!, a tartan miniskirt and silver Doc Martens. Her friend Happi wears a daffodil hat and a rainbow patterned t-shirt dress with a big home-made love-heart badge proclaiming “Hots for Bots”. Monster and Happi (they are both called Ness, obvs) go into a spontaneous cowboy dance of reconnection.

“You look fantastic!”. They really do. “But, um, Nesses – have you formally defected, or have you lost a bet?”

“Fair play, I can see why you’d say that...” Monster lifts a finger to dramatise her pause. She nods to where the Welsh team are beginning to reappear for the second half. “We loves these girls, we really do.” Keira Bevan jogs past and both girls pump supportive fists at her. Monster turns back to me, with a wry and generous smile. “But we love rugby,” and pointing at her hat and her hair, she asks, reasonably, “and have you ever seen anything as fabulous as Ellie Kildunne at full tilt?”

I’m nodding so I miss the chance to mention Stacey Waaka.

“Or Hannah Botterman driving for the line?” adds Happi. “I mean, THAT is rugby.”

“But, that’s — you know, that’s England rugby…”

Monster strokes a hand across ‘O Meg!’ scrawled on her shirt. “Yes! But…. See this? When England win, it will be because they have Meg Jones, a Cardiff-bred, Welsh-speaking, dragon-wrangling, beef-eating, amazon at 13. And she wouldn’t even beat Fiji playing for Wales…”

It's a high bar. We’re one Test and a handful of routine midweek games into the 100% win-rate 2025 tour. And the abiding highlight reel will have Tom Curry smoking Wallabies with ferocious vindication and Tadgh Beirne dominant jackaling like Shrek. And it’s deeply satisfying. But it ain’t joyful.

While we’re here, it would be a helluva lot happier to watch the rugby without the wearisome horror of grievance commentary. Andy Farrell is Lions coach because he’s better at coaching and selecting and motivating than anyone else. His son Owen is an extraordinary competitor, whose greatest asset is his aggression. He may not be charming enough, elegant enough, Welsh enough, Irish enough or sufficiently Scots to be everyone’s pin-up, but his two performances on field so far have been exemplary, and if his dad picks him for the bench ahead of Aki and Smith for the second Test the team will be stronger than otherwise it might be. Who knew? Andy Farrell. And every one of his team mates. Fans not so much.

Andy Farrell is watching every player every day; he is planning a three Test series victory in a brutally attritional sport that has already left broken bodies aplenty across Australia; and he knows what he is doing. Look what he did with Ireland. Then just imagine what he might do with a team fielding an actual, peaking and proven genius at 10. Finn Russell proves that vision is a superpower, that the word mercurial can be an admiration not a slur, and that as every Scot has claimed for years – he really is world class. Well, yes. I think he is now, up there with peak Barrett and Ntamack. The time he has, the space, that looped pass to Tuipulotu, the kicking consistency, the risks and the rewards... He makes players around him better and he’s good to watch.

Here's the thing. The British & Irish Lions should always win Test series. Combining the talent of the four home nations should always be a fantasy no single national side could counter. But in the last 50 years they’ve won 3 out of 12. Because, if ever we needed reminding, rugby is a team game where understanding and guileful experience will beat raw talent every time. You could make a persuasive case that those indomitable world champion teams from South Africa and New Zealand had more talent as well, but their trusted teamwork was what won them the series against thrown-together squads of British and Irish “stars”.

I love the idea of the Tour. I love the stories of unlikely room-mates and new friendships. I just can’t quite work out why I find it hard to really care about the Lions phenomenon. Maybe it’s that the 75% lose-rate makes fans care less. But the 18/18 losing streak didn’t make Welsh fans care less about Wales. Maybe it’s that SKY is not a universally accessible platform to watch the games? Or that following the tour live costs thousands of pounds more than most fans can ever afford? Maybe it’s that the hype is too contrived to stomach? Or the fact that they don’t really seem to be able to play more than 55 minutes. Guys, just watch the Lionesses! I don’t know. I admire the principle of a united nations team, but I care more about Wales, about South Africa, about Ireland and Scotland and England.. (and truth to tell I would rather watch the game as played by France, New Zealand and Fiji..) than I care for the British & Irish Lions. Maybe it's a thing about rugby as an expression of national culture, of identity, of heritage? I don’t think it’s as political as that. I don’t know. It’s a gut feeling. If you’re going to throw together an international team let them play with the free-flowing spirit of the Barbarians. This isn’t Test Match rugby. We have enough of that already. This is big box-office entertainment. I want the Lions to be the smash-hit, superstar Harlem Globetrotters of rugby. So do the finance directors of the international Unions who host the tours.

Winning isn’t everything. It’s not even the big thing. But it sweetens the experience. I get that. But come with me on this…. I want more than a series win over the 6^th-ranked side in the world. I want magic. I want entertainment and wonder and joy. Finn Russell might yet burnish that highlights reel this weekend beyond brute force and dominance.

Andy, make it happen. Go on. Wouldn’t it be fun?

[* What’s that Mr Florence from Cape Town? Seriously? Come on, man.. Yes, Cheslin Kolbe is the best winger there’s ever been. Yes, yes, Kolisi, Du Toit, yes, but come ON, you know these Kiwis were the GOAT team.]

It’s not that the team aren’t trying. They are doing their best, and they don’t give up, ever. It’s not that they are out-scaled. The packs are 5kg different. It’s not that they can’t be creative and effective. They score two elegant tries putting Ben Thomas silkily through midfield gaps they’ve opened with guile and persistence. No. They take the most brutal hiding in Six Nations memory because they cannot match, even for two minutes, the relentless momentum and purpose and intensity of the England team. And when intent goes, every skill, every nuance, every break of luck goes with it. You drop balls over the line, you miss touch, you can’t even get the restart to go 10 metres, though heaven knows by now you’ve had enough practice. And in this pit of despond, even your tormentors’ mistakes come good, as the wild knock-ons come off heads, not hands or chests.

There are two sides to this. All the Welsh misfortune is inflicted by the most superbly conceived and prosecuted England game plan. They do everything right. It is an almost (14-64) flawlessly efficient performance, like I’ve never seen before. It seems invidious to pick out any individuals from such a complete team effort, but this, surely, was the game in which the captain finally delivered on his promise and lifted himself into the Etzebeth/Retallick/Eales/Johnson pantheon of second row superpower. And I suspect that in 50 years’ time Isaac will say he was there when Henry Pollock won his first cap and scored two tries.

He might also remember the little fucker’s made-for-reels shithousery debut, sneaking an arm out from under a ruck and pulling back Gareth Thomas by his sock. In a very small corner of my heart’s rose garden, near where I tend the blooms of Duckham and Guscott and Jason Robinson, I am quite glad the mischievous spirit of Joe Marler lives on.

Dear AI, show me an ideal England rugby game. In order for this to be a great game you’d need a real contest, and it’s England’s loss that they were playing pretty much solo. It wasn’t a Springbok UFC rugby victory. And it wasn’t the exuberant, improvised and super-skilled champagne rugby we now expect from Bielle-Biarrey’s France. But it was the most balanced, relentless, assertive England we’ve seen since their world cup semi-final triumph in 2019. They are, almost like the magnificent Red Roses England women’s team, good to watch. It’s possible that by the end of this match, given that this is a game of rugby not just a replaying of ancient and righteous nationalist grievance, that there are, indeed, more England fans than Wales fans in the stadium.

In Wales you make a wooden spoon for your beloved.

A 10-point Plan for Welsh Rugby – for Abi Tierney and Eluned Morgan, with love.

There have been innumerable reviews in the last few years to address the chronic failings of the game’s equalities, financial viabilities and win ratios. They appear to have had some success in the inequalities crisis. Otherwise, not so much. The reviews are not available to fans, so without the benefit of detail or fact, here are a few wild wishlist pleas.

1. Make playing sport a core part of the education curriculum three afternoons a week from primary through to A-level in every state school. Rugby, football, cycling, hurdling, taekwondo, salsa, canoeing, mountain walking – all of it. Make sport in Wales’ state schools as rich a resource as it is in England and Ireland’s private schools. Deploy our international athletes to inspire the young.

2. Connect all schools more directly to the rugby clubs that are the community hubs covid proved them to be, and invest in this social cohesion. As with 1 - pay for it with the savings you’ll make on health-care in a fitter society. Watch Stella. Draft Ruth Jones, who got more cheers than any of the rugby players whenever she appeared on the big screens this afternoon. Welsh Rugby needs ambassadors.

3. Fund two development clubs and two properly competitive regions. Call the regions Taff and Tawe, Morgannwg and Dyfed, the Diff and the Daff, Llywellyn and Owain, Buddug and Nest... it really doesn’t matter.

4. It’s time to rethink the gameday offering at the stadium. Draft Cerys Matthews as musical director; sort out the inadequate big-screen replay and decision analysis; remember to introduce the referee and match officials; double the price for corporate boxes and halve the price for under 18s; Cardiff is gelato rich, the Principality isn’t; Welsh is a Saxon word for “foreigner”, Cymru is the inclusive Brythonic word for “compatriot” – linguistically, let’s align with the national anthem; and please bring back the regimental goat.

5. Cardiff University has a far more prestigious medical school than Exeter, yet Manu Feyi-Waboso now plays for England. Introduce corporate sponsored sporting scholarships at Welsh universities for credible candidates and a GoCompare sponsored Rugby degree at Cardiff Met following the Hartpury or US football model. Focus the academy and pathway care for 20 rising stars in each cohort of 17–22-year-olds with as much personal attention as is possible. Jerry Maguire it.

6. Establish an international Coaching College at Cardiff Met with a clear Welsh pathway for teachers and local club members.

7. Losing is as addictive as winning. Schedule some games in which we can be competitive: Portugal, Fiji, Georgia, Samoa, as well as the Tier 1 nations we have so spectacularly failed to beat of late. The Japan tour looks perfectly timed.

8. Watch the Cymru 23 England 13 u.20s victory from Friday night every day until you understand what they did there. Hint: skill + intensity = ??

9. Appoint Squidge as Director of Rugby.

10. Remember that Rugby is a game that is meant to be played. It is also the most intentionally violent team sport still legal. Enjoy it while you can. Whilst you are sponsored by an insurance company then cut a deal for rugby veterans with brain debility.

Afterwards

Isaac and I sit, stunned, at the end of the game, as Chandler Cunningham-South does his triumphalist Are You Not Entertained try celebration. I wonder, idly. if he too, like the Curry brothers, has a twin, who might be called Chandler Cunningham-North.

This has been a helluva Six Nations. We’ve seen some of the greatest tries of the tournament live, before our very eyes. One of them was even scored by Wales. We’ve hoped and dashed and believed and gasped, and sung and roared.

“So, Dad, I have an idea for your 70^th” says Isaac with a smile. “I think, in the interests of family balance, we should maybe think about following your father’s team for a season of the Rugby Championship.”

This is actually more complicated than it might seem. My father came here from District Six in Cape Town in 1958. In Apartheid South Africa, like many families from the Cape Malay (Cape Coloured then) community, he supported the Maori-inclusive All Blacks rather than the all-white Boks. And he liked the way the Kiwis played catch-pass. Then he married my Welsh mother and fell in love with Cardiff, Barry John and JPR. He died in 1996, having seen Pienaar and Mandela raising the Webb Ellis trophy together the year before. Didn’t 100% lock him in as a Saffa. But his best friend was called Vincent Kolbe. And my cousin Wayne’s boy, Josh... well, he’s playing for UCT now and he’s on his way.

Isaac says “Buenos Aires, Brisbane, Eden Park and Green Point?” That’s a cheery reason to stay alive another decade. Though in my heart of hearts I wonder how we would enjoy a tour with the absolute expectation of victory at every stop. Wales losing is one thing. South Africa losing is another.

As we start to make our way down the gantry I hear a familiar voice from the block below. “Over here!” she calls, her green hair blowing in the wind, “It’s us from the train last week, remember?” And yes, of course I recognise Monster and Happi, the Clydach RFC Nesses from the Scotland game. They’re waving and mugging. “Y’alright lads?”

“Yeah, good. How about you two?”

“Well underwhelmed, if I’m honest. Still, we’s back for the Blods in a fortnight with the Red Roses. That might be worse, mind!” Wild laughter.

“What are the Blods?”, though I think I can guess, I am unsure how to get there.

“My mam calls Wales Women the Myfanwys. But the Myfs sounds too much like the Muffs, and well, you know... And the Buddugs is just wrong, cos by all accounts Boudica was an Essex girl, so more of a Gavin than a Stacey. So we re-named them the Blodwens, so: the Blods.”

“Diolch. Blods it is.”

“You coming to that then, or are you only interested in the men?” Ouch. “Fuckssight cheaper than this shambles. And we’ve got a decent shot at Ireland, Italy and Scotland if Jaz is fit.”

My lovely son looks at me, tosses his head back in an answering peal of laughter and says “Yeah.” Nodding to Monster and Happi, “We’ll be here. Catch you then.”

WORLD CLASS

There’s a great line in The West Wing, Aaron Sorkin’s political fantasy set in a White House staffed by noble people trying to govern with integrity. The press secretary, CJ Cregg, briefing in the aftermath of the season one finale assassination attempt, says something like… “if anyone thinks that more guns are the answer, I’d only remind you that the President of the United States was shot last night whilst surrounded by the best trained armed guards in the history of the world”. Well, in Dublin this afternoon, the world’s best player was carried off on his shield, with what looked like ruptured ligaments after getting stuck in a ruck that had 130kg men hurtling into it at 30kmh. It only reminded us that even for the greatest of the great, rugby is a very hard game, where you can still get broken even when no-one does anything wrong. Dupont down. He’ll be back. And in his absence, France still have Aldritt, Bielle-Biarrey, Penaud, Moefana and Meafou each of whom are quite literally unstoppable, and Ntamack and Ramos, both of whom have the rarest gift in all team sport, the ability to give time and space to everyone around them. To get any inkling of how good Ntamack is, watch the game against England that France threw away when he wasn’t playing. Actually, don’t. It’s a dull game. But you get my drift.

Anyway – we’ve just treasured one of the most exhilarating performances in Six Nations memory. Standing in the car park area at Murrayfield stadium gazing at two vast outdoor screens, about 10,000 Scots and Welsh rugby fans have watched, awestruck, as France have married relentless forward power and ruthless three-quarter speed to completely dismantle the mighty and until now unbeaten Irish. Actually, that’s a false distinction. The forwards all have exquisite handling skills and flair, the backs run and tackle like Berserkers. It’s not that they’re bigger and heavier than their opponents that lets them break the gainline, it’s more that they run faster and at better angles and with better timing so that the gainlines return to their entirely notional status. The first half is a demonstration of flawless defensive creativity and precision. They are making up new ways to close gaps and control space as we watch. And with every repelled move they push the exhausted Irish attackers back and away from any hope of scoring tries. The second half is when they start to play catch-pass. They throw elegant, graceful, arcing lines over every inch of the pitch. This win is not just the moment they win this year’s championship; it’s a statement win about maxing every aspect of the sport. France have moved the game on again, to something we might know as Total Rugby. I cannot wait to see them play again. And I look forward to the response in Ireland. Was that a one game decline and fall? After this comprehensive defeat, this negation, they’ve got to rethink much sooner than they knew. They’ll be back. And maybe now they’ll let Jack Crowley play, really play because they’re short of stars. And when the game is raised as high as this, being the “Team of Us” doesn’t cut it. The stark truth is that by the measure of “is there anyone playing for any other team in the Northern or Southern hemispheres who you’d pick, if you could, ahead of this guy?”, Ireland have no “world class” players. None. France have 8, and that’s not including Thomas Ramos, their leading scorer and Antoine Dupont, the injured GOAT.

HOOTS McGANDY

I can’t remember the last time I was at Murrayfield, but I’m pretty sure it was for a Proclaimers concert in the late 1980s, maybe early 90s. The thing that caught my heart then was that everyone in the crowd knew every word to every song from Sunshine on Leith and belted them out rapturously. I could see the Reid brothers onstage but I’m not sure they needed to sing themselves at all. It felt like both a pub-night singalong and a communion. I get the same buzz this afternoon when for the second verse of Flower of Scotland the pipes and drums cut their excruciating droning, and the crowd sings unaccompanied. It’s spine-tingling drama. The kilts, the pipes, the tartan, the whisky, thistles, Rabbie Burns and haggis... the Scots are so very good at the symbols of nationalism. And, as ever, I wonder if part of the joy of Six Nations rugby is that it is the most benign form of patriotism I know.

The Scots and Welsh packs are evenly matched. Dafydd Jenkins gives Wales some advantage with lineout steals. It’s out in the back line that the wild mismatch becomes instantly and confoundingly glaring. By the same measure applied to Ireland and France, Scotland would not exchange Huw Jones, Darcy Graham or Finn Russell for anyone on earth. Jones and Graham blitz opponents with elusive magic. Finn Russell has turned up, and turned on. He throws passes that beat three defenders, he makes 50m line kicks look easy, his goal-kicking is 100%; he plays with a surety that swaggers “this is my court and here I rule”. And I haven’t even mentioned their best player. It’s not just Scotland that would turn first to Blair Kinghorn. There’s a reason that he wears 15 for Toulouse ahead of Ramos and Capuozzo. He’s the most thrilling attacking fullback since Christian Cullen, one of maybe two nailed-on Lions test starters, and a joy to watch as he gallops into space like a giraffe. Between them, they win the game in 50 minutes, and then Russell is withdrawn – to preserve him in a velvet-lined weapons case until next week’s game in Paris. And then something wonderfully unexpected happens. As the Russell spell is lifted, Wales start to play freely and with daring, almost as if Finn has bequeathed his magic to his opponents as a parting gift. Isaac and I dance with delight, as terrific tries are scored and bonus points accrue. There are reasons to be cheerful for Welsh fans, prime of which are the rediscovery of playing with hwyl, the savage way captain Jac cancels the threat of Duhan van der Mac, and the fact that by some stroke of cosmic luck we are all watching rugby at a time when, even as the losses rack up to record levels, we still get to see Taulupe Faletau play with grace and guile and guts and glory. I wouldn’t have Savea or Aldritt in his place at number eight. There’s a thing he does that you can see live in a stadium, but that never gets onscreen: He drifts to where the ball is going to be in three moves time. Dupont does it too when he’s attacking. Faletau anticipates attack and defence. Just watch him move to where his team-mates will need him to be. Set a tracker. It’s mesmeric. Alas, it’s somehow emblematic of Welsh rugby today, that he finishes off, brilliantly, what will probably always be known as everyone’s favourite disallowed try. As he touches down in the 77^thminute, with a score that could quite possibly trigger a most unlikely last-minute win for Wales, before of course the refs decision to deny it, the tartaned fan beside us turned his head and smiled in appreciation. “That man Faletau…” he says with warmest admiration, “Hoots McBloody Gandy!” Indeed.

Quietly – that Blair Murray? He’s fun to watch! He’s not a 15. But, good news, Cymros! Surely, he’s a 10.

SWIPE, PICK, SELFIE

On the train south we try to watch the England vs Italy game, but the reception’s dodgy. We’re sitting by a table of four women in their early 20s who are all watching on their phones too and filling in the signal dropouts with commentary of their own.

Monster is about six-foot with bright green hair and a radiant smile. She wears a Clydach Rugby hoodie in black. Happi looks a little shorter and is wearing an Admiral-sponsored Wales shirt. They’re both originally named Ness, but – well, rugby and nicknames. Gwen has a red Ruby Tui streak in her long hair, and is wearing a red ball gown and a white fluffy bolero top. Jaqs is sporting a vivid Stewart tartan puffa coat over a Clydach rugby shirt. Their table is covered with tins of Red Bull and coffee cups, empty packets of chocolate hobnobs and Tunnocks teacakes.

Monster doesn’t really rate Tom Curry. “Maybe a selfie if it was both of them”. She does like Maro Itoje, a lot. “Swipe, swipe and swipe again!” I figure Monster for a lock.

Happi would defo pick Eliot Daly: “He’s class. Can play anywhere”, and really wants a selfie with Jamie George – “THE NICEST guy in rugby”.

Gwen does not believe “that moron doesn’t build his bloody team round Marcus Smith. If he was Welsh, the team would dance with him and we’d be winning everything.”

Jaqs might want a selfie with Tommy Freeman “in a schoolboy crush Robert Pattinson sort of way”, but would give her best friend (Happi looks anxious) to play with Tommaso Menoncello. Chwarae teg.

To precis a long and delightfully candid digression on male rugby stars selfie-/pick-/swipe-ability, whilst Ange Capuozzo “would always receive a welcome in the hillsides and the valleys”, what they’d much prefer is going for a cider with Marlie Packer, supper with Sarra Elgan and clubbing with Keira Bevan.

Monster, Happi and Gwen think Jaqs’ coat is amazing. Jaqs is pissed off that she couldn’t get it in the new Witches tartan off the news.

They all agree that it is seriously crap of the Scottish Rugby Union to play Delilah on International Women’s Day, but Monster feels that there is a real problem with needing to sing the chorus and can’t Amy Wack rewrite the lyrics. “Just get Tom Jones to re-record it! Fuckssake! The hook is just one six-note phrase… Maybe ask Lizzo and Megan Thee Stallion?” And whilst we’re on it Gwen’s sick of Hymns and Arias as it makes us sound “pathetic and so Twentieth Century!”

“What do you think?” asks Monster as she turns to me and Isaac and we are lit up by her smile.

“Yeah, I think you should ask Lizzo…”

“No, no - about next week… and England?” Jaqs clarifies.

“Well, I don’t know that we can beat England. We’ve just had two games with one fantastic half each, so maybe put them together, catch a few lucky bounces and anything can happen. Winning would be feeling that they’d done their best and we’d had a blast. What do you think?”

“I think it’s written in the stars” says Happi, “like Jaqs and Menoncello.. At the whistle: Cymru 30, England 3. Like it was before.”

And they laugh. And we laugh with them.

16 March, 2019, O’Reilly’s Bar, Brussels, England vs Scotland 38-38

“Why is it called The Calcutta Cup?” Lieve asks, reasonably, really. I have no idea. I am slightly surprised that Lieve doesn’t know, only because she normally knows at least one answer to whatever she asks. Early 40s, 6ft tall, she played handball for The Netherlands at the Sydney Olympics. A career diplo/arto-crat, she runs the Utrecht Early Music festival and is now Chair of the European Cultural Convention. We’re here in Brussels because she’s convened a two-day meeting about greening arts festivals. Earlier this afternoon I bunked off the final lunch session to watch Wales win the Grand Slam in a WhatsApp watch party with my Welsh (euphoric) and Irish (euphoric and sorrow-drowned) family, except my laptop’s jammed and I can’t watch and join in on my phone and to be honest sitting in a hotel room on your own with a dodgy phone connection is just a bit sad. Playing rugby with your mates is one thing. Going to rugby games with your mates is another thing, and so is going to watch rugby in the pub with your mates and toasting every score. Watching rugby games and texting is a new thing, and it should be as much fun as Eurovision, but today it’s only a bit less crap than not watching rugby at all. I want to follow the plays and chat shit with Jake and Isaac and Orla, but I can’t.

We’re here in O’Reilly’s Tavern because last night we all sat through (half of) a concert of Norwegian minimalist music at Bozar and I’ve persuaded these sporty-arty (it’s a very small Venn overlap) colleagues that rugby, which none of them have ever seen before, will be more fun. They’re not my mates, yet, but they are all much smarter than me, and I like them, and I want them to have a good time.

“Since you ask” says Leon, with a flourish of his hand, conjuring a story, “the Calcutta Cup was originally a polo trophy donated by the Maharaja of West Bengal. Like everything else in India, it was stolen by two officers of the East India Company, Sir Roderick Carpetbagger and Lieutenant Jock the Frock McHaggis, who presented it as a trophy to the Queen Victoria to celebrate Anglo-Scots adventures in the newly invented game of rugger…” Leon is an opera director, decorated infantry commander and Balkan cultural legend who ran the Sarajevo Festival throughout the Yugoslav wars. He’s in his early 70s, but still goes clubbing a couple of times a week. In his youth he was a Greco-Slavic wrestler - (“like Greco-Roman, but with biting”). And actually, his version of the Calcutta Cup origin story is not a mile wide of the mark.

“Is it true that Scotland have never won the Calcutta Cup, Jamie?” Sanna, producer of last night’s concert, one-time road manager for heavy metal band Draganfyre, director of the Malmo Rhythm & Greens festival, her two sons play for the Swedish Farjestad ice hockey team.

Jamie is authentically Scots. It is a thing that in every group of festival professionals (collective noun – a giddiness? A glee? Or, maybe lately, a howl?) there has to be someone from Edinburgh. Cos, you know… Edinburgh. Jamie’s young, and he’s a big lad, son of a distiller from Rothes. He has been known to toss a caber, which is a good thing as he’s brought a fair-sized holdall with him emblazoned with a saltire. And props to him, he has shown up wearing the kilt. And he’s done some prep and he’s relishing rising to Sanna’s bait.

“It may well appear so in the English press. But in actual fact, proportionately” delivered with a wry grin, “we win more than our fair share. And we win the ones that matter. I myself was born in 1990, the greatest rugby year. Hence my middle name is Stanger. Named for Murrayfield’s favourite son.” Lieve raises an eyebrow in curiosity. “Oh, Lieve, it’s like a Dutch kid being called Sarina ‘Cruyff’ van Blonck. Now, no arguments, the first round is on me. You’ll all be having a wee dram?”

Leon and Sanna start with his whisky, Lieve orders a ginger zinger thing in a tall glass. We’re in an Irish bar so I take a Guinness. Jamie has got himself what looks suspiciously like an espresso. It’s an Irish bar in Belgium, so we also have big, big baskets of chips and a massive bowl of mussels. The bar is filling up. There’s a screen the size of a bus. We’ve got a table by the bar.

At the booth next to us sit four lads who have loaded the table with 24 glasses of different Belgian beers. Two of them have matched medieval St George’s tunics with what can only be described as QEII Brexit hats – that fabulous number fashioned out of an EU flag that Queen Elizabeth wore to the State Opening of parliament after the referendum catastrophe. We all have our own way of protest. Hers was hats. They have become popular among the Europhile Brits who still live and work in the political epicentre here. It’s quicker than a mumbled apology, which however British, still feels inadequate. The other two are sporting ginger wigs under capacious tartan Tam O’Shanter’s. Their shirts, jackets, trousers and shoes are all tartan; crazily vibrant, violently clashing tartans. Enough to induce severe headaches. Sanna suggests sotto voce that whatever their last bet was, these two lost it and this is their forfeit. They eye Jamie’s elegantly conservative blue/green Campbell kilt with grudging appreciation.

Jamie smiles at the rich mix of beers. “That’s a deliciously full table, gentlemen, but a little light on shorts.”

One of the tartan chaps replies. The accent belies the clan clothing. Sanna was right. Here is the unmistakeable sound of expensive English private education. “OK! We had tickets for Twickenham. Gutted. But here we are, getting in the spirit. We’ve got every ale on the menu. I’m Roderick…” Leon locks eyes with Sanna who covers her giggle with a slug of her whisky. “This is Marcus, Toby and Splodge.” They all grin and lift a toast.

“Why all the beers already?” asks Sanna

“Got to be primed” says Toby “for the game.”

“Got to be” agrees Marcus, “primed.”

“For sure” says Lieve. And she smiles, inclines her head. As surely as vocabulary and intonation can indicate the exact level of privilege of an Englishman, the strategic deployment of the phrase “for sure” and its inflexion is the key to interpreting Euro-English. It takes a phrase unknown to anglophones to the point of self-parody. West Wing fans might translate it as “what’s next?” We, her colleagues, know that this is eurocrat polite finality. Splodge doesn’t know this, and indeed why should he? So he offers up the detail on the beers.

“So, yeah – the game is: like, me and Roddy, we’re Scotland and Tobes and Cus are us, OK?”

“Tobes and Cus are you?” – Sanna, seeking clarity, not unreasonably.

“Sorry, sorry, yes, absolutely, sorry. Tobes and Cus are England. I mean, it’s a bit tricky, cos we’re all English, us chaps, obviously. Anyway, there are three Trappist beers and three Abbey beers. Those are the blonde ones. Is that right Tobes? And the Trappists are, the darker ones, are, um, brunettes.” He stops. But then ploughs on. “Well, anyway, right. Every time there’s a penalty, either way, we have to bumper a blonde, and every time there’s a try we do a brunette.” I cannot look at either of my female colleagues. Jamie is moving slowly away.

There’s a pause. And Leon says: “It’s not enough! You need some kind of jeopardy in the drinking game. Winner strips? Or perhaps the loser buys a round every time the other team scores?”

“Yeah, no, yeah that’d be brilliant! But we’ve already got all the beers. But we should definitely do that. Thank you. Sorry. Brilliant idea.”

“Good Luck” says Sanna. “For sure” we chorus.

Reconvening our own table, Lieve asks “tell us again: a penalty is 3 points, a try is 7 points?”

“Sort of” I say. “A try is 5 points, but you get 2 extra points for a conversion, which is kicked just liked a penalty, from a line drawn from where you scored the try. You’ll pick it up, it’s simple really.”

Leon leans back. “It’s a war game. You have 8 big guys and 7 fast guys, and the big guys fight each other, and the fast guys run away from each other, right? It’s like wrestling meets football. We’re fine with this.”

“Actually, Leon’s pretty much nailed it. The big guys, the forwards, look to exert dominant pressure, so the backs, the fast guys, can do the flashy scoring stuff. These international games are pretty tight. The scoreboard will go back and forth. Rugby’s all about momentum. These teams are closely matched. There’s a key duel between the two playmakers at 10. The English bloke is a super-efficient hard-nosed bastard called Owen Farrell, the Scots 10 is a mercurial improviser called Finn Russell. They’re both talismanic for the way their teams play. Brute force versus canny cunning.”

Except it doesn’t work out like that. For half an hour everything England try works.

“England are dominant in everything. This is not really a fair game. It’s horrible for Scotland” says Sanna. She’s not wrong. Though it’s more than dominance. It feels like bullying. Owen Farrell is precise, relentless, pressurising. Kyle Sinckler beasts his way through the Scotland defence. The chaps in the next booth get to down all the darker beers. Roddy and Splodge seem to have taken Leon’s strip forfeit to heart and are wearing a lot less tartan than they came in with. They are jubilant and drunk enough to raise a chorus of Swing Low Sweet Chariot, complete with unsubtlest hand gestures.

It’s 24-0. “So this brute force you talked about. It works, no? It’s not really good to watch, can they do cute? When do we see the “canny cunning”?” and as Lieve speaks, as if she has summoned a charm from the sportosphere, Ben Youngs takes a quick tap, and Henry Slade conjures a sleight of hand, no-look, out-the-back off-load to Jonny May that is so guileful, so sly, so sweet that she catches her breath and yelps her approval. “Oh my God, Yes!” 31-0.

The England fanboys have exhausted the Trappist ales and set about quoffing the blonde beers too. Roddy and Splodge are down to their Union Jack boxers and Red Rose t-shirts. The camera in the stadium zooms in, close-up on Owen Farrell’s face as his conversion sails between the posts. Brow set, eyes gimleted and shining, he can-, does-, will not suppress a smile, a smirk of triumphant satisfaction. Tobes and Cus and Splodge and Roddy are roaring their approval. “A point a minute! A point a minute!” they cry. “England go 80! 80-0! 80-0! We love you Faz! We love you Faz!”

Jamie, I notice, has moved on from espresso and knocks back a dram, shaking his head. He looks at us, and cannot help but laugh. “It isnae over ‘til it’s over, sure enough, but there’s a bastard long way to go…” Leon laughs ruefully with him, Sanna nods in sympathy, Lieve tilts her head. “I don’t like the way he did that. Farrell. What is the word in English? Cocky? Or, how would you say – smug?”

In Greek myth there are two sure and certain ways to really fuck up your life, two ways to bring down the implacable and madly disproportionate wrath of the gods. Piss off Hera and you’re as good as dead. Actually, death would be preferable to some of her vengeful retributions. The other route to ruin is to claim, whisper, think, even for a nano-dream that you, mere mortal hero, are as talented as the gods. Hubris. Well, those Greek myths endure for good and consistent reason. And Owen Farrell’s smile just flipped the table.

England go again, deep in the Scottish half. Faz shapes to kick, but this time he’s charged down. The Scotland hooker, captain, lovely bloke but not a runner, blocks the kick then picks it up, and then, like the star of some silent era comedy, he Oliver Hardys off towards the very distant English try line, as England’s defence slapstick into each other, fluffing every chance to tackle him as he ambles 60 metres, completely unopposed. Even our four merry chaps are laughing in bewildered delight at this. “31-7! 31-7! Give the dog a bone!” they cry. They decide this is entertainment worth draining all the remaining beers on the table.

Half time.

“You promised us this would be close” says Leon with a gruff chuckle “Jamie, what has happened to your magic man, Finn Russell? I have not heard his name.”

Jamie winces. “Excuse me just now. I’ve just got to see the bar manager, Dirk a while. I’ll be back in five jiffies.” He mooches off to the bar lugging his big bag.

“I think perhaps you need to change the rules to make it more even” says Lieve. “Every time someone scores that team take a player off. Good?”

“Excellent” cheers Leon, watching our neighbours who are counting glasses and trying, clumsily to gather them all up, “and perhaps less clothing too. Strip rugby!”

“Particularly Henry Slade” says Sanna with a guttural laugh that passes the threshold for filthy. And Lieve hoots with approval. Sanna’s drawn-out Jaaaa has us all in stitches.

“The conversion thing is very strange, no?” suggests Lieve.

“In which way?” I ask.

“Well first: It’s a team game, and everything is about different roles, and anyone can score a try, yes? But the rules put extra game pressure on just one player, the one who has to do the conversion. That feels strange.” That’s a fair point. “Then: it’s much harder to kick from the sidelines, so a try in the middle is probably worth more than a try on the side, but the best tries are scored in the corners.” And that. “It’s so English. You score and then you want a little bonus too.” Ouch. “And I don’t understand what is a penalty and what is a free kick?” Hmmm, where to start? “Apart from that, it’s a cool game.” She’s been watching rugby for 40 minutes and she’s already nailed the flaws. “I love how tough it is. But it’s amazing how seldom they get hurt.”

“Well, the hurt tends to come out later, decades later mostly, but let’s stick with how to improve it for now. What do you think?”

“Fewer players might make more space, or being able to throw forwards as well as backwards like in handball or American football. If you can kick forward why can you not also throw forward?” Lieve suggests.

Sanna joins in “I’m with Leon. Play naked. Or in national costume.”

Leon suggests: “Yes! The Scots should play in woad, the English as the Yeomen of the Guard. The French head to toe in Jean-Paul Gaultier! And I’m with Lieve. Take a player off every time they score. By now there would be about 5 Englishmen. We want Scots fire and passion.”

Then with no warning the windows blow out and the roof comes off the pub. Sanna, Lieve and I hit the floor. For a fraction of a second I see the shocked faces of the England boys and then time stops, and then restarts. In the stop time I see Leon staring open-mouthed in awed wonder and I remember Jamie heading for the bar. I blink and there he is again with the awful contents of his holdall under his arm.

For 500 years Scots warriors have deployed their fiercest weaponry in battle. Charging their English enemies, or some blood-rival clans, they have struck terror into the hearts and heads of foes with bagpipes. On open battle ground, on moors, on mountains, by valleys, burns and brooks the sound excruciates the senses. In the closed space of a relatively cosy Irish pub its potential for sonic assault is amplified beyond imagining. Somewhere in my severely compromised consciousness, I know that Jamie is playing Scotland the Brave. It is so loud I can feel it rather than hear it. Sanna, the thrash metal producer, is nodding approvingly, Leon is smiling broadly, his hands over Lieve’s hands over her ears. Maybe the best way to enjoy this is to be as drunk as Toby, Marcus, Roderick and Splodge, who appear, inexplicably, to be loving the pipes. They mime bowing down to Jamie, forgetting they are all still holding many, many beer glasses. Miraculously, not a one gets dropped.

“That is like the best music ever!” It really isn’t. “Play it again, play it again…” and though they are sincere with the earnestness of the truly pissed, Jamie thinks he’s being teased again. “That is the most Scottish thing I have ever heard” admires Toby. Jamie half-smiles. Toby pushes on “I mean, brilliant for the jocks to get a consolation try. Brilliant for them. But they should hear you play! ”

“I have no doubt that it will turn the tide” says Jamie, and with the greatest charm that I have ever seen, he bows right back to them.

“Oh God, can you imagine?” Roderick is just a decibel or so too loud, and is not slurring, really, but it’s like he’s in a movie where the soundtrack’s out of sync with his mouth. “No, no, it’s gonna be, it’s gotta be – at least – the same again. 31-7 first half, 31-7 second half. That’s erm. That’s 68-8 at full time. No, hang right on. That’s 62-7 at full time. Or something like that. Tobes help a chap out here?”

“62-14, mate.” says Toby. “Final whistle”. Though he doesn’t sound entirely convinced.

“Look mate, I’m really sorry for your team, but Scotland are so fucked. So. Fucked. So, look, as a gesture of goodwill, my good man, a gesture of good English will, I would like to take your funny friend here” and Roderick nods at Leon, “I would like to take you, sir, up on your point about leopards.”

There’s a silence for a moment as we all consider leopards.

“No, hang on. Wrong word. Wait a mo. Sounds like leopard. Means dodgy, risky…”

Lieve’s face cracks with laughter. “I think perhaps you mean “jeopardy”.” English is her fourth language. And she plays scrabble.

“Jeopardy! Thank you, ma’am. Thank you very much.” He mimes slapping his forehead. “Of all the words!”

There is a gleam in Leon’s eye. He tilts his head and watches.

“Yah, jeopardy, leopardy. So Mr McPiper,” which is not Jamie’s name, and is probably Roderick’s biggest mistake so far, “may I propose a wager with a touch of leopardy about it?”

Jamie says nothing. This could go either way. But, “Splendid!” says Leon. “Propose your wager. Give us your best shot.”

“Splendid indeed” says Roderick. “I say we go with your suggestion, sir. Loser buys a round every time the other team scores.”

In slow and deliberated Scots drawl: “So you are suggesting that I buy you boys a round every time England score, after a first half that ended 31-7, to England? That doesn’t sound like jeopardy, though it does sound like hospitality.” Jamie’s scepticism is well founded.

“No, no, no – that is the very point. The jeopardy is all ours. Hang on. Hear me out, here. If England score, which is what we all expect, you don’t have to pay for the round. Because odds on we are going to win by another 37 points, right? But we do get to drink a beer for every try. So hooray. But if Scotland score, we buy the beers.”

We all look puzzled. Jamie is about to reply.

“Tell me first” Leon interjects, that eye gleam burning like a lightning bolt, “what are four nice English boys like you doing in Brussels at this time of year? Is one of you getting married? Are you here buying chocolates?”

“Oh no” says Tobes, the least drunk of the four.

“Oh no” says Splodge, the most, “we’re negotiators. With the Brexit team.” And he beams with pride.

In the field of human conflict, man-made wars specifically, there are two golden rules: 1. Do not invade Russia in the winter; 2. Do not invade Afghanistan, ever. They’re not hard. For gamblers there are two too: 1. The house always wins and 2. The house always wins. To this trove of survival wisdom, let me add a third not unrelated pearl: do not, ever, never ever, ever challenge a Scotsman to a drinking contest. The absolute nature of this law is multiplied many times over if 1. you have already drunk six pints of beer, if 2. your body is still in the aftershock of bagpipe trauma, and if 3. the Scotsman you target has grown up in a distillery.

“Okay” says Jamie, and the second syllable arcs down an octave. He glances round at each of us, takes a deep breath. “I’ll take your wager. If your score, or we do, either way, you’ll buy the beers. But so no one can say we screwed you on the deal, may I propose we raise the stakes, just a wee bit.” And here he raises up a hand and stalks off to Dirk at the bar, returning seconds later with two golden bottles and four short glasses, which he places on their table, and a bucket he places on the floor. “Every time Scotland score, I’ll match your beers with a dram a try. And just to make it interesting, for me, a dram a conversion too. And I will stand for those.” Backs are slapped. Hands are shaken.

Kick-off, second half. And the game is comically upside down. England cannot put one foot in front of the other. A wand has been woven over Scotland. Passes land perfectly, everyone is where they are supposed to be. Played at this speed, rugby is a game of balance and lash-bat opportunity. Dip a shoulder, turn your head and the gap is open. And if you change direction at full tilt like Darcy Graham does, you will leave defenders sprawling. Try after elegant, inspirational try. The beers are sunk, the bottles are opened, the whisky goes down. Beer, whisky, whisky. Beer, whisky, whisky. Bucket. Second bottle. Beer, whisky, whisky. The last thing Roderick and Splodge see before drinking themselves into oblivion is Finn Russell intercepting a wayward pass from Owen Farrell and racing 50 metres to draw level at 31-31. Beer, whisky, whisky. Farrell looks as far from smug as it is possible to be. The words “get me out of here” hang in a thought bubble over his head as he flails about the field, full capitals with an exclamation mark. Finn Russell does some more crazy shit that works.

Tobes and Marcus see the nightmare/fairytale spin as far as the 77^th minute when, impossibly, Scotland take the lead with yet another 50-metre run-in. Beer, whisky, whisky, then they both stagger outside to throw up, politely taking the bucket with them. Which is a great shame as they do not see Owen Farrell’s replacement, George Ford score in the third minute of free play after the 80 minutes is up, to tie the game at 38-38. They would have loved it. I did. Jamie and Lieve and Leon and Sanna did.

As we tumble out into the square Leon and Jamie are arm in arm, footworking a complicated dance step. Sanna and Lieve join them in a celebratory reel.. “So rugby is fantastic. Thank you for making us watch.” says Sanna. “I love it. The ball will bounce in many strange ways.”

“It is a mad, mad game” laughs Lieve. “Don’t change a thing! Here’s to brute force and canny cunning!”

“When’s the next game?” asks Leon

It’s been a helluva day. This morning we came up with a plan for hundreds of thousands of people attending hundreds of festivals across Europe to plant trees to capture carbon. This afternoon Wales won the Grand Slam in Cardiff; at Twickenham England and Scotland drew one of the craziest matches in the history of the sport; and in a bar in Brussels four English boys started a drinking game they will never remember and five festival colleagues made friends they will never forget. The experience, the stories, the laughter… the pretext. It could have been a concert, or a book festival or a fun fair, but today it was rugby. For sure.

x

And, just like that, we fell in love with them again. I want to say yes. Yes, hope so. Because what we loved was that they ran our hearts out and it worked. They beat defenders, they closed gaps, they scored tries. They attacked. They had plans A to F, and the flair to improvise. They played rugby. Yes. Yes, because clearly, the new coach Matt Sherratt can inspire confidence and ambition. It FEELS good. Yes, because he selects attackers and plays them in their favoured positions. Yes, because Ellis Mee has got the thing about him. You know – the Dai Duckham thing, the how-the-galloping-fucketty-whaaaaaaat thing, the just pass me a glass and watch this kid run thing. Yes, because for 10 of these boys they’ve never tasted this whoomph before, and they’ll never want to go back.

It’s gotta be said that Wales-Ireland is always the friendliest game of the year. The crowd must be as close to 50-50 as any international match will ever be. You’re basically hanging out, talling tales and buckling swashes with your better-travelled and, recently, better resourced, better beloved and better betrophied family. It’s a heady fusion of craic and hwyl, the sure and certain knowledge that one of us will beat England, and the forever tested proof that there is no city on earth, and certainly no city on either side of the Irish Sea, with enough beer on tap to fully quench the thirst of these two parties. No-one’s going to bed till we’ve all sung Zombie, and they’ve all got the opening lines of Cerys belting out International Velvet. We, they, us. Cymru.

PROPS TO THE PROPS

The writing on the wall down there in the guts of the stadium, scripted in granite by a dragon’s claw in the home changing room is the mantra DAL DY DIR – a stentorian command to “hold your ground”. It’s fair to say that everyone but Warren Gatland knew Nicky Smith to be a formidable scrummager and tireless wrangler, a sure foundation who should be starting. I’m not sure anyone but Adam Jones knew that WillGriff John would have the bettering of Andrew Porter, arguably the best loosehead prop in the world. And when I say the world, I mean, fair’s fair, the world outside of Durban, obvs, for truly Ox Nché is the man. Just whilst we’re here, let’s take a moment to consider that the three best rugby players in the world are all 5’8” tall. So, back to WillGriff John, who’s pretty big. When I say “the bettering of” I really mean the breaking of, the monstering of, the please-God-don’t-make-me-scrum-him-again-we-can’t-afford-the-three-points of. Adam Jones used to do that to opponents too. Takes one to spot one, to coach one, to know one. WillGriff John has come from nowhere. No, he plays for Sale, before that Racing 92, he’s got form. WillGriff John is the son of Barry John the dancing King. No. Look at him. Different species. WillGriff John is called WillGriff because in the summer he likes to wrestle grizzlies in the Tundra. Yeah, maybe. It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. Really it isn’t. Well apart from there not being many grizzlies in the Tundra. More your polar bear manor, but anyway… The thing is – Dal Dy Dir, dum dee dum, do or die; these boys and their mate Elliott Dee did not take a step back all day. They much, much more than held their ground. They advanced, and from that, everyone could do their building, grafting and playing.

GRAND SLAM?

Ireland, though. What a squad. They are unshakeably, patiently and consistently sure of their ability. They have time. They are, in the immortal words of Paul O’Connell, the best at everything that doesn’t require talent. On top of which, they’ve got a worldy; an actual talent so spectacular that he gives them the calm certainty of success. If Jamison Gibson Park (5’9”) were an inch shorter he’d make the Dupont, Kolbe & Nché club perfectly aligned. Cherrying on top, Sam Prendergast’s game control is looking ominously like an upgrade on the Jonny Sexton 10 model. If there are flaws, they’re very few. Perhaps one’s that without Tadgh Furlong, they are not fully grounded; another that Garry Ringrose 2025 is not as sleek an operator as Grand Slam Garry Ringrose of the immediate past; and oddest of all, that their star wingers, Lowe and Hansen, attack with glory but defend with, well, what do we call it? Less imagination. All this is fine, and manageable. Unless of course your defining match needs to contain the super-fluid grace and power of Bielle-Biarrey, Attissogbe, Penaud, Ramos or Barre, and your alpha 9 meets the alpha-est 9, the 9.99, the 9-10-11-12 we’ve ever seen. Game on. For my money in Dublin on 8 March, France by 12.

WHAT TO SAY

I have a school-gate friend who told me once the best thing you can say to your child after their game. We were standing on a touchline on a winter’s day at a blustery primary school in Herefordshire. Our boys were taking a drubbing. I’m not saying that the ref missed a clear and obvious opposition knock-on before their first try, nor that he was unduly harsh to rule out a practically perfect try that looked to all the world like the ball was sweetly grounded on the line not rolled towards it. No indeed. But a 5’8” nine-year-old baritone with facial hair, well, anyway… none of that really matters. Tim’s dad told me that the great Australian cricketer, Greg Chappell taught him when your beloved kids win, lose, draw or collapse, parent spectators should best avoid praise, sympathy, after-the-fact coaching, any of that. Just say, and mean: “Thank you. I loved watching you play.”

Well, Matt Sherratt’s regenerated Wales, (and by-the-by, all those who screamed abuse at Abi Tierney for not firing Warren Gatland might reflect that Matt was her choice, her delivery and her triumph too …), I say just that, and together with everyone I talked to:

“Thank you. We loved watching you play.”

I waited all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday. That Abi Tierney – she doesn't text, she doesn't phone… If the WRU won’t appoint me to coach Wales, then at least make it Squidge*? No, we have to wait for Simon Easterby and pay the Irish how much? Would they accept Bardsea Island “in kind”? They want us to throw in (sore point) Michael Sheen?? Ah well.

It’s the fallow weekend of the Six Nations. England are pinching themselves and scouring the land for more people called Smith; France have locked the wine cellar again; Scotland are filling every Kirk and tavern to give thanks for the safe-ish return of their two dancing wonderweavers; on their gilt-edged practice pitch Ireland’s forwards are running new variations of attacking moves off 12th-phase possession; Italy are still partying; Wales are wondering what progress would look like, and where the fabled gain line might be. Well, until next weekend, let me take you back not-so-long-aways to France and their World Cup. Time passes. Come closer now…

[*Squidge - Robbie Owen, superstar rugby analyst, YouTube sensation]

THAT REALLY DID HAPPEN, 10 September. Wales 32 Fiji 26.

That really did happen. A nigh-on flawless Welsh game of sustained pressure and prosecution. Has there ever been a game where every single player maxxxed their game? That is “be your best self”; that is coaching perfection; that is peak Gatland. And in that team, alongside the big guys standing up (Yes, you Josh Adams, in the air and over the ground; and you, Gareth bach, you daring, darting, diehard little devil; and you, dearest Taulupe, thank you, as always – really - always) there’s the quiet joy of seeing the perennially dissed Adam Beard achieve total control of the set piece, and the comically underrated Nick Tompkins inject an artfulness into centre play that makes you smile, and wonder, and think – you know who he reminds me of, with his sweet hands and his positioning and timing and rugby wit? John Dawes. And there’s a moment to recognise that somehow the front row that has always been a cause for concern, anxiety and penalties for Wales, that same Trinity is now a cause for concern, anxiety and penalties for our opponents. And Jac! O Jac. You make me laugh. Is there anything you can’t do on the field? Let’s just say that the nation now knows, that you could jump at 2 or 4 if called upon, and we’d get the ball back; though God knows we are blessed with goalkickers, that you could if needed knock ‘em over from the touchlines; and that watching you play makes us happy. You know why they introduced the 20mph speed limit throughout Wales? Because Jac Morgan might be walking through your town, and if you run into him at 30 you’ll wreck your car.

Reality check, just for a moment. Every single player at full throttle. Hmm. Almost. When we’ve done everything right, made ourselves a bloody hard team to beat, then there’s the other thing that Wales wants. Jarrett, Gerald, Shane.. THAT thing. You know it when you see it because it’s impossible, and yet there it is. The hour cometh, Louis. We might get Ireland in the semis. You want to be a legend? Show us.

GREEN ON GREEN, 1 vs 2

23 September, Stade de France. South Africa 8 Ireland 13.

What just happened? Did you see that? Replay. WTF? Replay. Shit. I mean, I know it was billed as a big game, but, good grief. Replay again. Wow. End of an era. Calling Cape Town. The ravens have left the tower!

This is a guy, 6ft8, 18 stone and some; in a strong field, the most nakedly aggressive rugby player in living memory; lineout leaper, monster-mauler, brutal ball carrier; This is the guy who broke the bar bells in the gym, who curls 75kg in each hand, who eats three buffalo for breakfast. And Eben Etzebeth, Bok of Boks, the talismanic snarling face of South African rugby just got owned. James Lowe, 6ft2, 15 stone, just picked him up and drove him, legs akimbo, flailing helpless in the air, back 5 metres. There’s a stats thing called a Dominant Tackle. A tackle that reverses momentum. Prime example: Josh Adams vs Fiji. Well this was something else. This was a Tackle of Total Humiliation, a tackle of myth-busting, career-shaking, rout and ridicule. Irresistible Force meets irresistibler force wearing a shamrock above the heart.

It was a helluva game. Skill, speed, and far, far fewer fouls than in any other game so far. Who won? Everyone. Ireland maintain their aura of confidence. South Africa now know what to do if they get to rematch in the final. But two things we thought we knew for sure are gone, before our very eyes. The fluent speed and grace of Ireland’s backline can be checked, and the overdog intimidatory power of the Boks pack is no more. The Lowe-Etzebeth tackle will rack up views on every platform. The more eloquent image is of Siya Kolisi in the dugout surveying the endgame, impassive, calculating.

Good men in tartan calibrate their task, gird themselves for their dreams. Never has it been truer that to win the World Cup you have to beat the best teams.

In a bunker full of screens Fabien Galthié is re-watching the 7 video feeds and talking dark and low with Shaun Edwards.

In another quiet room in Paris, the RWC MVP is checking his patient, who lies still under a cloth of gold, as his cheek knits back together, and the gods watch over him as he sleeps.

In Dublin’s fair city the party has started.

CHWARAE TEG: ENGLAND ARE THROUGH. GOOD. HEAR ME OUT, NO REALLY…

Here’s a list: Antoine Dupont, Tadhg Furlong, Siya Kolisi, Tadhg Beirne, Cheslin Kolbe, Waisea Nayacalevu, Gregory Aldritt. A definition of “world class’ drawn from: could oust the incumbent in any and every team on the planet. If you loosen it up to, say from those appearing at the RWC, would arguably make a World XV, maybe: Thomas Ramos, Cheslin Kolbe, Jonathan Danty, Waisea Nayacalevu, Damian Penaud, Jonny Sexton/Damien Mackenzie, Antoine Dupont, Gregory Aldritt, Jac Morgan/Peter Steph du Toit, Siya Kolisi, Tadhg Beirne, Eben Etzebeth, Tadhg Furlong, Rónan Kelleher, Uini Antonio. Grab a beer, pull up a chair, let’s argue…. but you get my drift. The bar is pretty high.

Here’s a list of players considered world class by the English Rugby media and fanbase: Owen Farrell, Maro Itoje, Ellis Genge, Manu Tuilagi, Tom Curry, Jamie George. Today, I’m not sure any of these guys get into any of their Six Nations rivals’ XVs. Not one of them would make the bench for England 2003.

By all accounts, Owen Farrell is a lovely guy. Welsh Lions big him up as a decent bloke and a dedicated team player. He’s a really good line and goal kicker, and he passes long and accurately off either hand. Here’s the thing: For a decade and more he’s been saddled with expectations and comparisons to Jonny Wilkinson, another lovely bloke by the by, who kicked England to their finest rugby hour in 2003. The problem with this is that it’s just not fair, and it misses the point of Jonny Wilkinson. He was a good kicker. No Neil Jenkins, but he was good. What he was brilliant at was cool thinking, subtlety, peripheral vision that knew not just how but when to pass, and he was perhaps the best defensive 10 who ever played. Wilkinson’s competitiveness was not relentless aggression but unbending will and constant strategic recalibration. He also had the privilege of playing behind Martin Johnson’s irresistible pack, being served by Matt Spit-Second Dawson, and serving Will there’s a Way Greenwood and Jason Robinson – who could dance toe to toe with David Campese and Gerald Davies.

What’s my point? Well, Farrell’s a liability. Poor tackler. Too many penalties. Too many cards. But his absence made England much better to watch. Ford is a much closer model of a Wilkinsonian catalyst (though the aptest similarity is with our 80s vintage 10, Gareth Davies). And Farrell watched from the stands. The footage of Farrell watching was as compelling as Ford’s catching and kicking. He even smiled a couple of times. When he returned to 10 for Chile he was fluent, and was just as fluent when the three 10ers were playing on field together. It was good to watch. It looked fun. It looked a little like they were channelling pomp and prime New Zealand. It looked very much the fulfilment of Squidge’s love letter to Eddie Jones early last year.

England are not going to win the world cup. Not this year, not in 2027. But they can move on from the yoke of expectation and legacy. There’s a possibility, remote though it might be, that they just might play their Chile game against Fiji, and wouldn’t that gladden the heart? Being cosplay 2003 ain’t going to work, but becoming a post-Farrell-ban England 2023, even with Farrell at 12 might just make them happy, make their fans stop crapping on them, and even make them friends.

We might yet play England in the last week of the tournament. If we do, I hope they play their best game, and that Farrell is playing and dipping and that no-one gets hurt. And that we play our best game too. Cos that’ll work out just fine.

More likely there’ll be two re-matches for the ages that week – Fiji vs Wales and South Africa vs Ireland. But that’s all in the hands of a Parisian surgeon.

Week Four – the Week Five Prelude

There’s a moment in the 69^th minute of the Italy vs New Zealand game. Worth noting that by this point in the game, everyone involved has run about 15 miles. Will Jordan (he will, he will, and he probably will again) breaks over halfway, 2 vs 5, he chips and chases towards the line. There’s a high bounce on the 5m line, confounding Tommaso Allan and Michele Lamaro. Ardie Savea leaps to catch it. He takes it maybe 11 or 12 feet off the ground. As he lands, tackled front and back, he turns his body left as he flips a no-look pass over his right shoulder into Jordan’s hands, who touches down the umpteenth try. Watching the replay is a joyful thing. The physics-stressing wonder of Savea passing Jordan on the chase is captivating. The height at which he takes the ball at the top of its bounce is NBA-astonishing. But somehow the absolute certainty of the pass, the confidence of that improbable ball handling, doesn’t surprise you at all. In a week where there’s been precious little jeopardy; where the only mildly unlikely victory was Australia’s triumph over Portugal (I know, strewth); there’s a breath to take here, a pause, to enjoy the two most magical ingredients of international rugby – ball skill and speed.

All the focus on power, collision and dominance has, perhaps understandably, skewed the conversation towards the merits of the French, Irish and South African teams. I’d somehow forgotten that this other thing, this catch-pass, breathless, ball-beats-eye rugby is what the All Blacks do better than anyone. There’s something else here too. I was banging on last week about iconic, “world class”, star players, and in my World XV there were no All Blacks at all. Yuh-huh. And yet, as a team of equal, integrated parts, they are phenomenal. They are seamless. Watch the shared effort, the oh-so-many selfless last passes that put teammates into try-scoring space, the commitment to high-tempo, super-skilled athleticism. Warren Gatland lauds Wales’ fitness. He’s armed his team with endurance and resilience. But this Kiwi thing is about speed. Can they outrun every other team in France? It’ll be good to see them try.

Scotland beat Romania 84-0. Nothing to see here. But that Darcy Graham is living proof that a good littl’un can score way behind you whilst a good big-un is still flailing at the air where Graham was but a nano-step ago. He may not be the fastest player in the world cup, but he is almost certainly the fastest over 5 metres from a standing start. The McBoks have a dash and swagger that is reliably entertaining. There is little but wild romanticism to suggest they will prevail next weekend against Ireland’s total rugby, but this generation of Scots have wild romanticism woven into their tartan. Can they trick and batfoggle their way past the tightest defence they’ll meet? It’ll be good to see them try.

In the Champions camp Rassie Erasmus has perfected his man management skills with his classic Manie Libbok Pull Your Kicking Shit Together ploy of bringing Handre Pollard over to France. Now he’s got two 100%ers. Watch that ball in the air, the way it hangs, the way it curls, the growing anticipation and recognition in the roar of the crowd behind the posts. Pollard and Libbok, Mounga and Mackenzie, Sanchez and Healy offer a healthy reminder that it’s possible to make perfect goal-kicking sexy. And they blaze a klaxon to all their opponents that offering up penalties within 55m of your own posts can lose you the game just as surely as missing tackles will. Whilst the rules still equate unfair infringement with cynical foul play, can referees be consistent with offsides, jackalling, not-releasing, crossing, scrum tension and tackle height? It’ll be good to see them try.

Everyone has everything to play for. After this, there’s elimination and departure for half the participants, and relentless tension and crushing expectation for the remnants. With all the fandango about a lopsided draw, the World Cup has delivered a pool climax where pretty much every game this coming week is massively significant for every nation. Can all these teams make this weekend the greatest rugby festival the world has ever seen? It’ll be good to see them try.

JEOPARDY vs PREDICTABILITY

Ian Foster, the All Blacks coach, last week asked the press room which sort of rugby game the public preferred, New Zealand’s flairing demolition of Italy or Uruguay or whoever it was that they’d just landed a gazillion tries on, or the tense, titanic face-off between no.1 in the world Ireland and reigning champions South Africa. To be fair, it was a kind of reasonable question from a coach who’d belatedly remembered that Damian McKenzie, a man he’d mostly ignored, is the most exciting player in the world. The final weekend of the Pool stages gave us a pretty resounding answer. It’s a helluva lot more fun to watch a game between two sides who are well matched than it is to watch a great team pulverize good teams. And in a stroke of scheduling magic, the last day of the round, featuring only one of the top eight teams in the world, gave us the two best matches of the tournament, and many of the best tries. If Argentina’s defeat of Japan in a winner-takes-all contest for qualification lit the fire, Portugal’s glorious, last minute match-winning try against Fiji fanned the flames into a beacon for the game.

It's worth noting that this last game provided the only genuine shock result of the tournament. Pundits may have expressed mild surprise that Fiji beat Australia or that England beat Argentina, but no betting chains lost money there. After hugely vocal complaint about the lopsided-ness of the draw, the Quarter Finals feature 8 of the top 9 sides, 4 matches that pitch Southern Hemisphere countries against North, and 4 matches all of which could go either way, and one match with two teams who have Welsh speakers! Yes, the top 4 sides meet a round early, but each of them believes they will win, and if they lose, none of them will care whether they lost at quarter- or semi-final stages. The knockout rounds will have 5 close matches rather than just 3, and both losing semi-finalists will be thrilled to have got there.

There were some iconic moments this weekend captured on camera, that might yet make the highlights reels of RWC23 roundups, but even the less appealing ones are worth noting just for now: The scenes of wild joy among the Portuguese players and fans after their first ever RWC win; the look of horrible understanding on the faces of the Georgian backs as Louis Rees Zammit collects the loose ball and looks up into open space 75 metres from the tryline; the spectacular buckled swash of Scottish tries that almost counterbalance the ugly despair of being brutally outclassed by Ireland; Owen Farrell’s look of confusion at his shot-clock fiasco; the dancing feet of Mateo Carreras.. but for me, the moment of the weekend is a guy in a suit and tie walking onto the pitch. Someone calls his name. He looks up. We see the dark bruising under his right eye. A wolfish smile. “Antoine!”. Ça va.

PS – actually I don’t know whether Emiliano Boffelli speaks Patagonian Welsh, but I’m sure he has a cousin…..

FAIRYTALES & NIGHTMARES – The Quarter Finals Preview

With analysts crunching tackle counts, box kicks ticked, penalties conceded and win-predictor probabilities in these closest of too-close-to-call quarter finals, let’s just think for a minute about the mythologies at play here. What’s the best and worst that can happen for each of the last eight?

For France, the worst that can happen is that at some point in the game Antoine Dupont’s reconstructed face connects with a South African boot, knee, shoulder, elbow, hand… any part belonging to a Bok, and that the world watches the greatest living player stretchered off the field. This would be worse, much, much worse than losing the game. And, for the avoidance of any doubt whatsoever: It would be catastrophic for the tournament, the management and players of every team, and ultimately the game itself. This is rugby’s worst nightmare. No parent will ever take their child to a club again. He’s going to play because without him playing, even at 80% capacity, the French might not win. So let’s just hope.. because the fairy-tale for France is, obviously, that their shining hero returns to marshall the indomitable Gaulish forces, at the end of which he removes his new scrum cap and smiles that smile.

The nightmare for South Africa is the same as the French nightmare, PLUS that they are forever tainted and condemned to crawl the earth in ignominy as the men who went after Dupont’s face. It’s a rough old game, huh? But they have other worst-case scenarios too. This is probably the most elegant, lethal backline South Africa has ever produced. It’s not just the wildcat grace of Manie Libbok and the unbridlable power of Damian de Allende and Lukhanyo Am, though that would almost be enough. Their back 3 barely touch the ground, except to change direction. But none of that matters if they don’t get monster ball from their monster pack of big Bok monsters. And after finally meeting their match in the Ireland tight 5, now they are facing the unthinkable, identity-scrambling horror of being out-monstered up front by monsters of a fresher, fiercer, Frencher force… If the Boks are out-Bokked, then who the hell are they? But the Springbok fairy-tale is potent too. Their 2019 Final was near perfect, and this team is faster, cleverer, freer, just - better.

New Zealand know that nightmare too. Tight 5 look, hmmm – not weak exactly, no, not that. But – shall we say, cautiously and with due respect – “not forbiddingly strong”? What if it’s over, busted, gone? The All Black Magic stripped away. Because no matter who is No.1, world champion, top dog, superstar… the All Blacks are the mystique measuring stick, the dream, the grail. The whole point of the All Blacks is invincibility. It is the certainty that they will pull the last black cat out of whatever bag is thrown at them. The series loss at home to Ireland shook the faith. They lose again on Saturday and shazam, that’s it. For good. Flipside: Damian McKenzie, or – as we must call him under Ian Foster’s management: “Damian McKenzie, if he plays”. In a world of Kings, wizards still have powers.

What powers can quell the purring, looping, fronted-up Ireland Total Rugby Experience? We don’t know. We might find out. We might find unicorns, or pots of gold. The fairy-tale is this: Jonny Sexton does his job of masterminding space and time and bounce; the Tadhgs do things that only Tadhgs can do; and Garry Ringrose does some things that no-one’s seen since Philippe Sella played the game, and then some other stuff conjured by James Joyce and Finn MacCool. The nightmare goes like this: Sexton strains his groin. No, even then, they’ll prove that Conan can play 10, or some such Farrelly fix. Perhaps that Aki, Gibson-Park and Lowe have citizenship revoked and have to switch sides back to Black? No. They’d cope. Rugby’s a strange game. Anything can happen. Unicorns. Yeah, right. What’s Gaelic for hubris?

What’s Welsh for “throw it to the middle”? There will be Argentinians who know. In 1865, setting sail from Liverpool, the Mimosa took Welsh settlers to pay homage to Patagonia. They took bibles, the Welsh language, and they took rugby too. For both these teams the fairy-tale and nightmare read like this: Fairy-tale: play well, like you want everyone to have the best afternoon imaginable. Kick your goals, give the ball to your wingers in space. Win. Or lose with verve and flair and grace. Hug everyone at the end. Smile. Make your country proud (You already did). Nightmare: lose your shape, your basic skills, your confidence. Get sent off. Sulk, complain. Blame the ref. Don’t get to beat England or Fiji in the bronze medal playoff. Wales have Gatland. As Ireland prove, you can’t have too many Kiwis in your corner.

England’s fans and friends dread Owen Farrell fucking up. Don’t get carded. Don’t hurt anyone. (Probably in that order.) Don’t invalidate all the tremendous good you’ve done for 10 long years; don’t ridicule that nice Steve Borthwick’s faith; Faz, please just don’t, you know… don’t do it. You are English Rugby, the captain 10, the missing link to Jonny. Be your best, Saracen self. With the player-base, the attitude, HQ, the coolest (we play cricket in the summer) strip, the, lets-not-beat-around-the-bush, the money - England should be perennially magnificent. And having played a blinder so far out in France (thank you and good night, George Ford), well, played and won, at least, their pool games, it might be that young Marcus Smith, young Henry Arundell and old Danny Care could add a dash of glamour and adventure to the yeoman stolidness of England’s game. That would be fun.

Not quite as much fun as when Fiji just let rip. See these Fijians fly. See men play ball. I say men, really they are gods of some kind, Botia, Nayacalevu, Radradra, Habosi -- supreme athletes, bringers of joy. (Have you read The Half God of Rainfall by Inua Ellams? If you have – yeah, right? If you haven’t yet, take it from me sportsfans, one of the great hours of your life is right there in the library.) Their Fiji fairytale is playing their own game of daring, risk, reward and entertainment. Their nightmare has already struck in all-too-human form, the shocking truth that life goes on until it stops. How can you play through grief? What can we ask of Matavesi and Tuisova as rugby players, and as men, as sons and fathers? Perhaps only that in this extraordinary time of global rugby family, that we might send them our deepest sympathy and love in their bereavement.

WHAT DO WE KNOW NOW?

It's 50 years since that January day in Cardiff and THAT Barbarians vs All Blacks game with THOSE players, THAT try. Now, too, we’ll tell our grandchildren that on an October night in 2023 for 40 minutes we watched the Springboks play France in Paris with levels of skill and intensity and verve that we wouldn’t believe if we hadn’t seen it live. Children will play back the moments that Arendse and Kolbe take their tries at warp factor 5 and have to blink their disbelief away. Coaches will study each frame of the turnovers and counterattacks, and they’ll say THIS was the game that changed rugby, that consigned to the stale-beer-pit of history the truck-it-up, hoist it high and back and high and back, pods, mauls, chuggy-chuggy game that bored everyone to tears. Maybe. We should be so lucky.

The quarter-finals seem something other than just the titanic top four reversals we witnessed in Paris. This goes deeper into rugby lore; the lore that whispers softly and surely that world cups are not four year cycles, one-tenure projects for elite coaches, but that they are built on fundamental rugby cultures, of generations in the making. Ireland and France have raised the game of elegant, dashing rugby. New Zealand and South Africa have met the new wave and out-thought it and out-defended it – they have had to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield. Because that is what the All Blacks and the Springboks do, both of them, drawing on reserves of experience and heritage. They’ve found a way. It ain’t always pretty, but it’s bloody clever, and to the subtlest degree researched and planned and drilled; and if you have the player pools and physio resources to regenerate your squad, then you will be the last men standing when 39 phases in the 83rd minute have brought your gallant opponents to a literal standstill. At the level these four teams were playing at victory comes when you eliminate mistakes and your opponent drops one ball, shanks one kick, blinks at the wrong millisecond. Next time… The world cup came, cruelly, a year or two too late for Peak Sexton and so a year or two too soon for Jack Crowley. Antoine Dupont is 26. Romain Ntamack’s cruciate ligaments will mend.

Argentina wrangled a thoroughly deserved victory. Solid. The manner of Wales’ most un-Gatlandish capitulation will no doubt be the subject of review, regret, and let’s hope no recrimination, but they have given us a helluva ride through the pools. Defeat is nothing like the spirit-crushing agony of thwarted expectations for France and Ireland. Honestly – it’s been a blast. We’ve seen the emergence of a core of youngsters here who will have learned some invaluably hard lessons and lifted their sights. Jac, Daf, Rio, Dewi, Christ and Sam (what do you bet me he masters that loop and taunts the world with it?) are also amongst the most genuinely likeable players a fanbase could hope for. Louis Rees Zammit is not the new Messiah, but Gerald Davies is President of the WRFU and Shane Williams is available on YouTube. Hashtag: #canchangedirectionwhilstacceleratingandkeepingholdoftheball. And Morgan Morse. Just that. For now.

Which team would you most like to see play your team every year? Fiji should be box office in every major stadium around the world. Playing with passion and daring, they scored four tries and won a worldwide base of friends and fans. England won the quarter final.

OK, OK. Ben Earl is phenomenal. He’s got a bit of Richard Hill and Dean Richards about him. His late solo charge was a perfect and ironic metaphor for how far ahead of his teammates he is. Except for Courtney Lawes, who is just utterly brilliant and appears blessed with that rarest of England attributes, total hardness and genuine humility.

Let me slip back to Fiji for a moment and their try count. It’s insane that a side can score twice as many tries as their opponents and still lose. All four games were won by missing conversions and kicking penalties, some of which resulted from intentional or careless foul play, most of which came from technical or arcane rucking infringements. Maybe we should look at this again? Rethink free kicks and penalties, maybe tap and go a-la-League. 7 points for a try, wherever you touchdown. No conversions. 2 for a penalty. 3 for a dropped goal. And any team whose numbers fall off the backs of their shirts has to get tattooed and play shirtless for the rest of the season. Whaddya say?

We have semi-finals of the Rugby World Cup with teams from four continents. That’s pretty wonderful. Only a fool would bet against a superheavyweight final or put money on a winner. If Am plays the second half and Willemse the full 80, the Boks by 3. If Damian McKenzie gets a half, well, yeah, foolish, but hell.. New Zealand by a wing, a prayer and some All Black magic.

Fazball, Pollarding and how to win the final

So that was peak Fazball. Steve Borthwick has been consistent in his faith in his captain, and here, finally, was the full realisation, a strategy built around his star player. Owen Farrell kicked superbly all afternoon, as did his half-back partner, and his back three played their height advantages brilliantly in the air. England grafted with absolute commitment and purpose. It very nearly worked. It failed, ultimately, not because of Farrell’s stealing of the ball that walked the penalty back within kicking distance; nor even because his game management and captaincy were foiled by the impact of the Springboks bench; but just because the game’s moved on. Five kicks, no matter how good, will not beat the world’s top teams today. When you Sexton a 50-metre dropped goal in the dying seconds, you can seal the game. When you land it early in the second half, you are flagging that you cannot break the line. It’s a Beta flex. If there is a lesson from the last four years, and especially from the last seven weeks, it is surely that when all defences are so good, to score tries and rack up points, (and to play with flair and elegance) you need to be able to think and counterattack at breath-taking speed, and you need to empower your centres, which you really can’t do if they never touch the ball.

England have fast-tracked an incredibly promising new generation. Martin and Earl and Dan and Lawrence and Mitchell and Smith and Chessum and Arundell and Steward need and deserve a new plan.

Who knows what these Boks can do? They seem to contain all opponents and then trump them. They can play champagne rugby against the most elegant team in the tournament and win with a 50m Handré Pollard penalty in the dying moments of the game, and then they can play abysmally against the least elegant team in the tournament and win with a 50m Handré Pollard penalty in the dying moments of the game. Honestly, it was a dire game, mis-matching the best of England with the worst of South Africa. If they can eke out three minutes of highlights they will probably consist of Owen Farrell’s dropped goal, Rassie Erasmus gesticulating to his bench and a loopy thread of Ox Nché destroying scrums. Nché is 8cm shorter and 8kg lighter than Kyle Sinckler. Vincent Koch also gives up a couple of kilos to Ellis Genge. So you have to figure that, with every penalty they exacted from the English front row at every scrum in in the last 20 minutes of their semi-final, they are simply infinitely superior scrummagers. Those successive penalties turned the match result. But, actually, maybe it’s worth asking: is being stronger and more skilled in your rugby role worth a penalty every time you do your stuff, or should it just be the purpose of your game – like leaping higher and catching, or selling a dummy? England weren’t seeking unfair advantage at the scrums, and if they were endangering their opponents by being weaker, then perhaps it’s the very idea of scrums that is the problem.

If it seemed as if South Africa were dragged down to England’s game plan for 60 minutes, Argentina scarcely interrupted the fluent joy of All Black exuberance in the earlier semi-final. One of the intriguing things about the final is how the Boks will seek to contain the sheer speed of ball. No doubt they’ll have a plan that involves Handré Pollard in the dying moments of the game, but it’s hard to see how they contain the All Blacks, who have pretty much nixed the handling errors that cough up scrums. And even if that changes, their front five have grown resilient throughout the tournament, and Sam Cain is making Peter O’Mahony’s taunt – “you’re just a shit Ritchie McCaw” into the fuel he needed to prove a point to more than just Ireland. It’s just possible that of all the RSA A-list 12s and 13s, Lukhanyo Am and Canan Moodie could match up to Jordie Barrett and Rieko Ioane in midfield, but Aaron Smith passes faster, Richie Mo’unga surges faster, and Will Jordan just moves faster to wherever he needs to be, than anyone they have yet met. New Zealand as a team think faster. And Ardie Savea. Just that. Ardie Savea.

Whoever wins on Saturday night will, unusually, have played all three of the other great sides in the tournament. South Africa have also beaten the fifth and sixth ranked teams, and had a day’s less rest. It could well be that it is not Scotland who have been most disadvantaged by the draw, but the reigning champions.

The 2023 Rugby world Cup has thrown up too many “training ground” victories, a few brutal and ugly ones, and five or six absolute belters. The dramatic arc of the tournament, and the global showcase of the game, needs the two greatest rival rugby nations to deliver a final of spectacular skill and daring and wonder, and, as the game has moved on, that is perhaps the only way to beat either of these sides. At the very crux of the tournament, we’re all faced with the sly reality that it’s not the taking part, nor the winning, but how you play the game that really matters.

WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT RUGBY

So 200 years after William Webb Ellis picked up the Rugby School football and ran with it, the trophy that carries his name is awarded, ultimately, to the side most able to convert a 50-metre penalty kick in the final moments of a game. For the third time in their four tournament triumphs, the champions won their title without scoring a single try in the final. No-one has yet worked out how to win this tournament by playing champagne rugby. Messieurs Galthié and Robertson – find a way, as your bicentenary resolution.

Or how about: a nation that has been historically defined by its fault lines and separations comes together joyfully, in celebration of its national sport that is the most visible manifestation of resilience, interdependence and pluralist unity of purpose. The Victory is led by a man of such humility and grace, of such extraordinary eloquence and empathy, and of such granite-hewn hard-bastardy, that his name will be spoken with respect and love in the world of sport forever. And he sings. Man, how he sings. He out-sings the Haka. Is he the best player in the world? No. Is he the best player in South Africa? No. Is he the best player in the South African back row? No. Would he be the first name on the team sheet for any coach anywhere on earth? Unequivocally yes. He wears the 6 of Pienaar and Mandela. The game has been holding out for a hero for decades. There are many, many reasons not to love rugby. That the sport has given us Siya Kolisi might trump them all.

Kolisi aside, why did South Africa win? Rassie Erasmus and Jacques Nienaber are the most adaptive and pragmatic coaches in the world. Nienaber is a physiotherapist. They understand better than anyone else that World Cups are won by season squads of 33 – or 35, not by first XVs or matchday 23s. They know that playing in the pack is more tiring and more likely to result in injury than playing in the backs. They know that the flow of the modern game is ruled by infringement and territory not possession, and that infringements yield penalties. None of this should be surprising. South Africa won by designing a defensive system so aggressive that it shut down their opponents’ ability to attack them. That is confounding for everyone else. South Africa won by managing the emotional load of championship sport, and having just 1 player with the ability to shut that down for periods of 90 seconds when he needed to kick. And that is mind-fuckery of the highest order. And South Africa won because at no point in any of their knockout matches did they admit the possibility that they might lose. They always believed they would win. And that is truly extraordinary.

But let me slip back a couple of sentences. The Blitzbok defence couldn’t contain the intricate, relentlessly probing phases of Irish attack in the group stage. Ireland showed how a comprehensive attacking system might out-play the South African comprehensive defence system. That France didn’t follow through is maybe down to the vulnerability of Dupont’s face and Ntamack’s knee; that England couldn’t exploit it is more likely because they simply don’t have the verve – you can’t fight fire with slightly lesser fire; that New Zealand didn’t prosecute their own gloriously fluent game plan, even when they had faced down every variant of the Springbok pack, can only be understood in terms of that absolute belief. No team that includes the wit of Telea and Savea should ever lose. The try that was disallowed was glorious; the try that should have been disallowed was glorious; Damian McKenzie’s 4 minutes of play were glorious. But they started playing opportunist All Black improv far too late, as if they hadn’t believed in their own destiny. Why does all this matter? Perhaps it’s because when we talk about rugby, we like it that it’s complex and diverse and inclusive; a game that recognises many different roles and sizes and shapes and skills of players; that blends force and guile, strength and skill; that can make you catch your breath in wonder as well as knock the stuffing out of you. And it seems as if somewhere in the rules and in the application of them that the balance has tipped away from elegance and lightness. And when the world has tipped away from both those things, I guess we grieve that games, the magical escape space, have tipped too. In a world cup final that pits flawless structure against instinctive flair we (surely – everyone) want the unpredictable to prevail.

I watched the games on ITV, whilst texting and zooming cousins across the time zones in Cape Town, Auckland and Dublin, and mates in Melbourne and Auchtermuchty – well, Galloway, but the spirit of Bill McLaren resonates down the years. My one Fijian friend now lives in Brecon. We all played long ago. We’ve touchline parented. We follow the game. And what we talk about more often than I dare admit is time. Time caught on film, in still photography, in stories. Moments and memories of delight. Brett has Campo breaking would-be tacklers ankles, John Eales knowing how to nudge a metric tonne of mauling forwards as easily as if he’d pushed a beer across a table. Mitch chuckles at the thought of Christian Cullen’s slipstream, smiles at some McCaw shit-housery. Orla will talk for hours of how BOD leaned this way and that, bewildering the poor slow souls who meant to hold him up, just for a second, on his way; the twinkle in his eye for her and her alone. For me: the sight of Benny, hooped in black and white, catching, feinting, dancing across the Arms Park turf, and then some. My ninth birthday outing. And Habana flying through the air, untroubled by gravity until the ball touches the Argentinian try-line. We have an English friend who was in Sydney for their golden moment twenty years ago. He bought a drink for Richard Hill that night. The hand that palmed that ball then palmed his own. And with each game we watch today, we capture back a sliver of those thrills from yesteryear, hoping to see again some flickering wonder that will burnish our internal highlights reels; some human moment of deft skill that defies impossibility. It’s not nostalgia. Not a reaching back to childhood. It’s not. Well, maybe just a little. But more it is enjoyment of those stories that we know make up each other’s history, and more than that, the history of our friendships. It conjugates: I was there. We were there. We are still here. And maybe our kids will say they too belong to a global rugby family that (also) gives thanks on highdays, holidays, Six Nations, Rugby Championships and cycles of World Cups.

Re-reading through that litany of treasured rugby nuggets, I am struck twice. Firstly, I cannot remember a single game in its entirety, nor even who it was that won. I ring around. Only the Wilko World Cup Final memory is about a match result. The rest is feelings – of astonishment, of joy, the moment that you toss your head back, roar with laughter and admiration that focus on a moment, a passage of play, perhaps an end-to-end extravagance. Until now. And those of us who watched France play the Springboks just three weeks ago. For forty minutes we sat down and wept – tears of delight at rugby from the gods. Every player shone, pulled off some flat-out, superhuman, unprecedented sleight of foot and hand. The second half reverted to the grim attrition of tension mastery. Yeah, well. We had those 40 minutes. That’s enough.

The second blow is that we talk more than we should about our own. Most places, rugby fans love grassroots clubs (including la Rochelle, Toulouse and Bath) and national sides. It’s hard to love a franchise, region, superclub. The quasi-Medieval tropes of Saracens, Crusaders, Chiefs and Stormers seem quite as empty as they are contrived. We need the national anthems and the dances: the Fiji Cibi, All Black Haka and Samoa’s Civa Tau. It’s not just that you can’t out-anthem Wales. Unless you’re French. (Tell it not in Neath, but whilst Flower of Scotland is a funeral dirge, there is nothing to touch the crowd at Murrayfield when they cross-stadium proclaim the chorus of their syncopated version of 500 Miles.) (Whilst we’re here, it cannot be beyond the wit of Sheers and Armitage to set new, better words to the tunes of ‘Chariot and Delilah. Any football crowd chants wittier than us.) But it’s an ironic kind of nationalism that plays with styles of play and the idea of pitting tiny nations against international powers. 15 Fijians on the field play 15 French, South African or English opponents - countries 60 times their size. Samoa’s population is half that of Cardiff’s, Tonga’s - one tenth of Soweto’s. This is a chance to say: here we are equal. And we’re going to show you how we take your game and play it our way. If 5 million Kiwis can fly rugby’s flag then so can we. The beauty of world cups is that they let you pick (at least) a second affiliation based on style and heart. In 2023 we’re all part Portuguese, and just a little bit Fijian in our rugby nationalities.

The rugby-tariat of former pros who fill the airwaves, pod-to-pod, will comment on the stats, gains, losses and results with insight and with glee. Young Robbie Owen in his Squidge persona will de- and re-construct the plays and ploys of coaches who have maxed the possibilities their players can perform. We rugby public look on wonderingly and thank our lucky stars that Pieter Steph du Toit is not targetting our loved ones, nor that we have to suffer the slings and arrows, death threats and wild abuse that referees are menaced with. We can talk amongst ourselves about the fact that England have done rather well despite the boos and jeers and post-colonial antipathies, and that we all wish well to Marcus Smith; about the fact that Wales and New Zealand will be back next time, that we’ll see France and Ireland soon enough again, that WXV looks great and that Stacey Fluhler’s playing Sevens now and that looks great as well. Hooray.

And we’ll talk about mythology and character, pluralism and nationalism, violence and elegance, about what matters and what doesn’t. And we’ll watch the news and think: thank God and Faf and Ardie for the drama, play and inconsequentiality of rugby.

BIG thanks to Gary Raymond at the late and much lamented (not my fault) Wales Arts Review who published this first.

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Almost from kick-off Tomos Williams grubbers an elegantly weighted kick into our corner that Josh Adams will pounce on and score a breathtaking early try. Ah, no. Bobby smiles ruefully. “He was in there. How did he…?” Kar flashes him a look – “Robert….”, and he stops himself.

Wales lose their lineouts. The scrum collapses. Penalty to Italy. It’s mad.. In Paris they held their own. Bobby again: “It’s that Fischetti. Class act. What a prop. Perfect timing. Irresistible pressure. And look at that angle. And that Italian pack are absolutely in sync.” There’s kicking. More kicking. Wet ball.

“Did you see anything good this morning, then?” We tell them that we went to the Colosseum and loved the scale and the drama of it. The scrum buckles. “We did that last time. Awesome building. Tell you what” says Kar, “it’d make it a helluva lot more interesting if they had wild animals loosed off in here every time it got this dull.” Ben Thomas kicks us level. “Thank God for that” says Bobby. “Least we can’t be nilled again.” Yeah, small mercies. “That poor boy hasn’t a clue what he’s doing at 10, love him. No experience, no instinct, and no support.” Josh Adams underpounces again.

“How about you? Good day ‘til now?”

“We sang along with the massed Welsh choir on the Spanish Steps, then we went to the Vatican. Amazing. It’s like a fortress, isn’t it? Soldiers everywhere. More guns than crosses. To be honest… O, bastardly bolloxing…!” and the crowd goes wild. “Robert …” Garbisi has put an elegantly weighted kick into the corner for someone to chase. Azzuri joy. We look to the big screens now filled with the ridiculously handsome face of Ange Capuozzo celebrating his try. Bobby looks lovingly at his wife who’s throwing her head back in delight. “Kar and Ange!” he says, smiling. “Big, big fan. What can I say?”. Kar is grinning. “O, I tell you, I’d do him on the bonnet of his Ferrari..” Bobby howls with laughter. “Yeah, me too.” “Robert Charles Graham!”

Robert Charles Graham, Robert Charles Graham? Something is clicking in my memory. Welsh rugby, pub quiz, trio. Bobby, Charlie, Gray. No, Graham. Got it. Trinity, not trio. “As in Bobby Windsor, Charlie Faulkner and Graham Price? Really? That’s hardcore christening.” Bobby grins.

“I know, I know. What can I say? My dad was a hooker. He named me after the entire Pontypool Front Row. And that was before the dementia set in…”

Nothing Wales do is working. “I dunno know what your dad would make of this” says Kar.

“I think he’d have said ‘some you lose, some you lose’…. But it’s not that really. It’s the way they’re losing. Like they’ve never played the game before.”

“It’s not really disappointing, as such,” says Kar. An over-hit kick, a knock-on, it’s hard to keep track. “Though it’s that too, course it is. It’s more, you know..” she’s searching for the kindest word, “pathetic.” The big screen cuts away to a cruel close-up of a face – haggard, grey, darkest thoughts churning behind slow eyes like a gorilla in a zoo. “Oh Gats, Gats. What is occurin’ in that head of yours? It’s time, Taid. Really.”

At half-time we go looking for something to drink together. Bobby’s found the best bar in the stadium – “The beer isn’t really beer at all is it? But neither’s the coffee – it’s out of this world”. Kar’s a plumber, she’s been crazy busy with the flooding lately; Bobby manages a car reclamation operation outside Swansea. Their teenage boy, Shane is playing today in Ebbw Vale, the first game they’ve missed in two years, but Six Nations away in Rome is their special weekend. Shane has clubmates who’ve gone on to Hartpury and Clifton College in Bristol for 6th form. It’s the only way he’d get to train and play every day. There’s a brutal logic to this but it seems a real shame to them as parents. Back in the golden age, Gareth Edwards and JPR Williams went off on scholarships to Millfield, and it seems like most of the Leinster and England teams today are on similar pathways. From institutionalised abuse to problematic entitlement there’s a whole lifetime of psychotherapy coming from English public schools to fuck you up, but they don’t get everything wrong. Maybe Eluned Morgan might land a huge win by drafting the games teacher at Whitchurch High School that nurtured the generation of Sam Warburton, Gareth Bale and Geraint Thomas to lead a new 5-day a week athletic strand of the national curriculum in the State sector in Wales. STREAM: science, technology, rugby, engineering, arts, maths.

The mis-match is nearly done. Aaron Wainwright’s bullish arrival has polished this shambles of a game into an almost decent scoreline. Bobby laughs ruefully, “Brightsides – we have a bonus point loss, and we’re still on for the triple crown!” and we all laugh with him. Then the horrid truth sinks in. It’s going to be tight at the top of the table. If England beat France and France beat Ireland it may well come down to points difference, and points difference means who racked up most points against Wales. Even as we speak sadistic statisticians are looking at three figure record margins.

This may not be the nadir then. But I am thrown back to the fundamentals. Everything is experience. This is where we are today. What do we know now that we didn’t know this morning? What’s the best way forward? Tougher questions for management and players, for some of whom this may have been an ending. Josh. But for us, Isaac’s right, as ever. These lads have never needed our support more. Caelan Doris is coming to Cardiff in a fortnight. Fabulous. Can’t wait.

Still, when in Rome, eh? “What are you doing tonight, Bobby?”

“We’re at our favourite place to eat, L’isola della Pizza in Prati. Got engaged there. Never miss it.” Bobby beams at Kar. “Then we’ll get ragged and set out for a club. And then, family tradition dictates that at the stroke of midnight my plumber wife is going to engage her professional interest in her favourite tourist attraction.”

I look to Kar for help. She cackles lustily and beams right back at him. “I am going to get glammed, I am going to get totalled, and then I am going to Anita Ekberg the fuck out of that Trevi Fountain!”

Ciao Tutti.

#sixnationsrugby #cymru #italia #rom

e

It starts in the Metro. The buzz, the fervour. We’re three hours from kick-off, changing lines at Porte de Clichy. The platform for the train to Stade de France is mauling 8 or 9 deep, packed in with the happiest fans I’ve ever met. It’s pretty clear from the accents and Basque-inflected language that at least half the crowd has come up to Paris from the South-West rugby heartlands of Occitane and Nouvelle Aquitaine. And they’ve put aside generational local rivalries to revel in the national gloire of les Bleus. Here are Toulousains adopting Aldritt and Bielle-Biarrey, Bordelais admirers of Ntamack and Ramos, and every one, everyone, every one of them lit up with giddy anticipation of what He might do tonight. It’s not like a crowd travelling to a game. It’s like a lover rushing to an assignation. Who am I kidding? When I say “every one of them” I mean every one of us. The Dai hard men from Pontypool and Neath are here to see Him too. Yes, we’re here for Jac and the lads, we want to see them full of dragons, but truth be told, not gonna lie, we’ve all come to see Antoine Dupont do things no-one has seen before. Heresy warning – not even the golden generation who saw Gareth Edwards in his pomp. We’re here for the moment of wonder. Moments.

This is the first leg of my 60th birthday present from my eldest son. The complete Welsh Six Nations. Rugby mates, even those from Wales, tease me this is highly likely to be a tour of international humiliation. I know the real gift is Isaac’s company for the next 6 weekends, but we both know there is some rugby to be seen as well. Perhaps Wales won’t win, not a single game. But actually, that doesn’t matter. Ask the Italians, ask the Scots. What we want to see is never giving up, the second half against Scotland last year; we want to see the boys have fun and play as if the game was full of joy. That’ll do. Big ask tonight though, chwarae teg.

Since I first made the pilgrimage to Cardiff Arms Park in 1973, the national stadium has been a sacred ground. Roof or hatchback. It grates to have a corporate name, and grates the more that the building society sponsor enshrines Edward Longshanks’ colonising superiority, but it’s a temple. Stade de France is not. It’s a party venue: a gaudy, pumped-up discotheque. These are the people who first came up with Son et Lumiere and they are smashing it tonight. The flame throwers are blazing, the videos are pulsing, the match DJ is razzing up the roll-call and response. As the French team is introduced onscreen one by one, he offers up the first name and the crowd roars out their heroes’ surnames in ever louder joy. By the time they get to Thomas RAMOS it is getting wild. They chant along rapturously but lyric-less to Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. Great tune. Big ending. Love it. The world’s best national anthem. Except for what follows. Whilst Wales is hymning bards, hiraeth and the ancient language, la Marseillaise is venting enemy blood into the soil with more descant than Whitney Houston. Then afterwards, “Allez les Bleus” at 100 decibels. Go France!

There’s stuff to say about Wales. The forwards are bloody brilliant all game. Not a step back in the scrums against a monster pack of monsters, and an almost faultless line-out. Given that Wainwright is gashed off in the first five minutes, this is heroic. Daf and Jac must be topping every tackle count in Six Nations history. But from 9 out… and going forward -- nothing. Not a jink, not a loop, not a feint or offload or any part of the game of rugby that belongs to the word “attack”. It’s bizarre. It dawns on us all that they are anticipating Dupont’s genius as much as we are.

He drifts about the field languidly. From up here in the stands we can see the team’s moves shaping with strategic precision, but with the eccentricity of Dupont taking his time, wandering, dancing at ease, scoping. He gives the pass then loops around appearing, improbably, outside the outside centre, as if he’s playing 9 and 10 and 12. He actually slows down with the ball in hand, ambling as if he’s still playing Sevens, then arcs around defenders probing space and time. The first Moment is elegant. He moves to his right from a ruck, drifts a bit to invite defenders to come and have a go. I can see it happening from here. I want to scream “Noooo he’s got you all….” Just as he’s about to pass we see the ball flighting 30 metres crossfield from his boot. And my “he’s got you all” howls into a “What the…..???” Even from up here we hadn’t seen Théo Attissogbe on the touchline. Only He had. And he gifts the debutant winger a perfect try, straight into his hands. I turn to Isaac who is laughing with delight. So are the fans around us. It was classy, visionary, witty.

Half an hour in and we are there again. Wales’ ten-yard line. Ruck, pick-up, a step to the right and time warps. A lash-bat later and Dupont has surged past defenders through a gap that wasn’t, isn’t, cannot possibly be there. He leaves another sprawling in his wake. And hurtles inexorably towards the line. The overwhelming feeling is one of irresistible force. He has covered 30 metres before anyone else has moved. There is a tiny gap between Tomos Williams and Josh Adams that surely even he cannot make. He does. Of course. All he needs to do is dive. Five metres out he leaves the ground. His arms go forward with the ball and then… No! What? Why? How? Man, he must love this kid. Instead of reaching down to score a try (he eventually lands 5 metres over the line), he flicks a no-look pass over his head, 20 metres to his right to Attissogbe once again, ghosting into the exact spot on the pitch he’d need to be to catch that ball. This time it’s not a laughing matter, it’s a howling, joyful realisation of impossibility. Everyone is dancing in the stands. It’s a wonder, sure, but it’s also an assertion of absolute power and purpose. We’re awestruck. And yes, this is what we came for. Next to me my new friend from Perpignan is shouting not “Allez France!” but “Allons France!”. Oh that first person plural. This team is not them or you. For the fans it’s US. Let’s Go. We keep on dancing.

Now boarding for Roma. Forza Cymru!

#sixnations #cymru #france

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