The Welsh team have been the surprise package of this Rugby World Cup.
Rob Griffith/AP
In Mud In Your Eye (1973), the best book about rugby written by a player, Chris Laidlaw related an anecdote that illustrates Welsh rugby’s self-absorption and its tendency to live in the past. As guest speaker at a Welsh club’s annual dinner, Laidlaw offered some thoughts on the game before inviting questions.
A “wizened Taffy in a cloth cap” stood up: “You’ve told us all you know about rugby, boyo, and you seem to know it all. Well, answer me this if you can: who was the winger who scored the winning try in the return match between Cardiff and Newport in 1927?”
Not surprisingly, Laidlaw didn’t have a clue. When he admitted as much, the old boy paused for dramatic effect before shrieking, “Bloody me!”
There’s further evidence in the quasi-official status accorded the so-called golden eras of Welsh rugby, although what constitutes a golden era is sufficiently hazy to allow debate over how many there have been.
The most recent was the 1970s when Wales had half a dozen truly great players, including perhaps the finest inside back combination of all time in Gareth Edwards and Barry John. These stars and a decent supporting cast kept Wales at or near the top of world rugby for a decade.
But standing on the shoulders of these giants has proved enormously difficult. More often than not their successors have languished in their shadows. As former England captain turned coach Martin Johnson put it: “The legacy was like a millstone around their necks. History weighed them down rather than inspired them.”
Since those heady days there have been periods when the combination of an ineffectual national team, an outdated governance structure and crushing debt incurred in building the Millennium Stadium has threatened to consign Welsh rugby to permanent second-tier status.
The players have been prone to losing their way, literally in the case of loose forward Andy Powell who was arrested for being drunk in charge of a golf buggy on the M4 motorway. After a heavy defeat on a tour of Australia, Welsh players staged an internecine brawl at the after-match function. Loyalty to the cause reached such a low ebb that on match day a group of discarded and disaffected players would gather in a Cardiff pub to cheer on whoever Wales was playing.
There were also regular false dawns when the Welsh rugby community’s yearning for success caused them to become intoxicated by a mere whiff of it.
Wales finished third at the 1987 World Cup without convincing anyone but themselves, helped by Wallabies flanker David Codey getting himself red-carded within the first five minutes of the bronze medal game. Far from being sheepish about their one-point win, the Welsh saw it as the harbinger of another golden era.
When Wales returned here the following year as joint Five (as it then was) Nations champions, their flimsy pretensions were ruthlessly exposed by a superb All Blacks team at the height of their powers.
But Wales has got its act together. Even though it can’t get the green, green grass of home to grow there, the Millennium Stadium is proving a cash cow and Welsh Rugby is now a profitable enterprise, which is more than some can say. The club system has been streamlined to consolidate talent in four teams, and its Kiwi coaches – Graham Henry, Steve Hansen and now Warren Gatland – have instilled greater structure and organisation without inhibiting the traditional flair.
Wales has been the surprise package of this World Cup, combining style with fitness, resilience and supreme confidence, attributes not always associated with its teams. Not many saw them coming, perhaps because of their modest results in recent Six Nations tournaments: since achieving the Grand Slam in 2008, they’ve finished fourth each year.
Poet RS Thomas wrote, “There is no present in Wales, and no future; there is only the past.”
That’s certainly not the case with Welsh rugby right now. This vibrant young team looks very capable of emerging from the long shadows of the past.