ENGLAND ARE BIGGER, SUPERIOR AND LIVE NEXT DOOR!
The whole of Wales (including legend Barry John) is captivated by grudge match with ‘posh neighbours’
YOU do not hear too much of Barry John these days. he can slip in through the smokers’ yard of the Old arcade pub in Cardiff and his group of pals in the back bar greet him without any special fanfare.
there is deep respect, of course. he is, after all, the man they once called the King, a legend of rugby in Wales and beyond. On the wall hangs a picture of him and george Best, two amigos from one of sport’s earlier celebrity ages. Both walked out on big- time games when they were 27.
John did so after a lady curtsied to him. the adulation was more than he could live with. he does not want to talk about that today. he only confirms it was in Rhyl, the seaside town in north Wales, where those knees bent.
he prefers to watch the tV above the bar and Ronnie O’Sullivan playing snooker in the Welsh Open. ‘they should put up a sign,’ says John. ‘genius at work. Silence please.’
Just as they might have done in the Sixties and early Seventies, when Barry John was the greatest fly-half in the world. now 74, healthy and enjoying a flutter for interest’s sake on the horses running on another screen in the corner, a generation do not know him and an older tribe will never forget him.
From new Zealand, still, the pilgrims come to talk the good times and to get his autograph. that little nation he beat as a lion in 1971 has always cherished one of the best it ever saw.
this week comes a grand and ancient collision. Wales and england. neighbours who first met on a rugby field at Blackheath on February 19, 1881 — or 138 years ago this week. So began a rivalry that is unique, not least because, as statistics bear out, it is evenly balanced across three centuries.
‘it is the fixture that really matters,’ says John, who has been writing a newspaper column in the Welsh press these past 20 years. ‘i played five times against england and never lost. JPR (Williams) played them 11 times — won them all.’
that is how it was. then. But since it all began in south- east london during Victoria’s reign, the record reads: england 62 wins, Wales 57, draws 12.
memories are nicely distributed, too. gavin henson’s giant kick in 2005, Bill Beaumont’s grand Slam salute in 1980. John and his half- back partner gareth edwards with JPR and Co routinely slaughtering england, and martin Johnson and Jonny Wilkinson avenging the losses.
Since 2001, in 11 matches at the Principality Stadium, as it is called now, it stands england 6, Wales 5. the ebb and flow brings us to this Saturday. and it is eddie Jones’s england in their resplendent pomp, marauding and marvellous, who carry the expectation to Cardiff.
ask anyone in the streets here and there is one response, along the lines of: ‘i expect england to win… but Wales could do it.’
Underdog status is something Welshmen might have been created for. and the line of Dai Smith, the Welsh cultural historian, gets us near the defining importance of the old enmity. ‘they’re physically bigger, socially superior and often formidably accomplished. and they live next door.’
Wales has changed. the mines have closed. Football has grown. the youth of today would rather be gareth Bale than Sir gareth edwards, and have hundreds of thousands of reasons a week why. and edwards, widely regarded as the finest player of all time, as well as a man who wears his modesty like a prince, has been superseded in the imaginations of modern rugby-loving boys by Sam Warburton. tour de France winner geraint thomas is another hero of now, as attested by the giant crowd that gathered for his triumphant homecoming at Cardiff Castle. the old clubs that spawned Wales’s greatest heroes are reduced to the second rank, or lower — feeder academies for four regional teams that have eaten them up. But for all the aspects that have been diluted down the years, the growing excitement in Cardiff is tangible as the big match nears. the Old arcade, a rugby pub in excelsis with its Western Mail cuttings of Welsh glories and near misses plastered on its walls and proximity to the Principality Stadium, will be cleared of its tables and chairs on Saturday.
the steep- stacked stadium is almost immediately visible from Cardiff Central Station, slap bang in the middle of the city. across the road is the angel hotel, where once marlene Dietrich asked staff to keep her make- up in the kitchen fridge.
it was here, up until the Second World War, that both home and visiting teams changed — no dressing rooms then in Cardiff arms Park. as JPR, amateur full back and professional orthopaedic surgeon, who is returning to running and squash after having a new right knee, recalls: ‘We were closer to the supporters then.
‘We’d train on thursday. Break up again to go home. meet again on Friday at the angel, have a meal and go to the cinema. We would walk to the stadium the next day with all the people. now players arrive on a bus and walk straight in.’
money has done it, of course. Professionalism is not to JPR’s liking. all his children played sport to a high standard. none for moolah. if he were young now and given a choice between a medical career or full-time rugby, he would reach for the scalpel.
times change, but it’s still england on Saturday, an old grudge with the posh neighbours. and they still care about it round here.