REMEMBERING GRAV... THE FEARLESS WELSH WARRIOR WHO WAS A NATIONAL TREASURE
CAN it really be coming up to 14 years since the inimitable Ray Gravell left us?
The great man of west Wales would have celebrated his 70th birthday next weekend, on September 12. To mark the occasion, S4C are showing a special film, Grav, telling the story of his life and looking back on the events that shaped his one-off personality, with actor Gareth John Bale playing the lead role.
Doubtless, it will be well-received, for there surely can’t have been many more popular figures in this corner of the world than Grav, the Llanelli and Wales warrior prince whose valour on the pitch was matched only by his warmth and sincerity off it.
The great cartoonist Gren once summed up his onfield presence by drawing a fan waving a banner bearing the legend: “Gravell eats soft centres.” No opposition midfield player is known to have questioned the essence of those words.
Many supporters would insist they actually saw such hand-made banners at Cardiff Arms Park in the 1970s. And, indeed, if Leeds United football fans could proclaim ‘Norman bites yer legs’ about their fiercely combative No.6 Norman Hunter during that period, then it absolutely seemed fair enough for Welsh rugby followers to laud Grav in such a way, for as a defender, the man from Mynyddygarreg proved a formidable obstacle for other teams.
His hard-running also helped complement the dash and flair of his great Wales backline contemporaries. Phil Bennett may have twinkled, Gareth Edwards may have dictated, Steve Fenwick may have organised and stayed calm under pressure, but it was Grav who knocked back defenders, helping to create the space for the likes of JJ Williams and Gerald Davies to do their stuff.
The old adage that a team has to go forward before it can go wide was as true then as it has always been. Without the bearded one denting opposition rearguards and attracting the attention of defenders, it would have been harder for the great wings to succeed as they did.
But it was Gravell’s character that made him such a unique figure.
Here was a bundle of contradictions. He was a man who played with undiluted ferocity yet he never stopped doubting himself – on the night before he won his first cap, against France in 1975, he famously told JJ Williams he wanted to go home because he couldn’t “take the pressure”. JJ’s response? “Grav. For f***k’s sake. Get back to bed and get some sleep.”
Here was a man of towering achievement who wore his standing lightly. Really, his insecurities should have held him back but he was a rugby player, an actor and a broadcaster, a man of genuine talent who could turn his hand to different things and win people over with his affability.
Pretty much everyone who ever encountered him will have an anecdote.
When this writer first met him, not long after starting at the South Wales Evening Post in Swansea, the handshake was firm as he shouted out “Evening Post!” in the manner of a newspaper vendor on Wind Street back in the day. Within five minutes you felt you had known him years.
JJ Williams, a team-mate and a friend, came up with a gem of a tale in his book JJ Williams’, the Life and Times of a Rugby Legend, with the former Wales, Lions and Llanelli wing relating how his boss had given Grav a job with an industrial cleaning company.
In the book, written by Peter Jackson, JJ tells how he took his pal to Swansea to see the main buyer at the Mettoy factory in Fforestfach, where they made the famous Corgi die-cast metal toys.
They walked into the chap’s office and the first thing Grav did was to ask this gentleman of the “English middle class” if he wanted a Woodbine, an offer he declined.
Small-talk nonetheless ensued. “Grav asks him if he’s going to see the game on Saturday,” recalled Williams, who sadly passed away himself last year.
“The buyer says he’s not a rugby fan, but to keep the conversation going he asks if Grav will be playing.
“This turns out to be a mistake. Grav is worried about his shoulder and doesn’t know whether it has recovered sufficiently for him to play on Saturday.
“For some mad reason, Ray asks the buyer, a shortish man, to stand up. As he did so, Ray hit him with his shoulder, knocking him across the office and up against a window.
“And then Ray, oblivious to the idea that he might have caused the Mettoy executive any physical harm, asked him: ‘Do you think I’m all right for Saturday?’”
No chemicals were sold that day. Frank Keating also came up with a 24-carat Grav story when writing a review of Alun Wyn Bevan’s book, Grav: In His Own Words.
Keating wrote: “I chuckled when, as presenter of the Radio Wales breakfast programme, his script had reverent mention of the House of Commons speaker, Viscount Tonypandy.
“As any boy from Mynyddygarreg would, Ray pronounced the title ‘ Viss-count’.
“The producer’s voice bellowed into Ray’s earphones: ‘Correct yourself at once: it’s ‘ Vi-count’ without an s.’
“So Ray did just that: ‘Sorry, listeners, of course I know I should have said ‘ Vi-count’ but, can you believe it, the slapdash clot who wrote this script I’m reading from spelt it ‘ V-I-SC-O-U-N-T’!”
A startling personal memory was of a postmatch interview after Llanelli Scarlets had beaten the Ospreys to reach the Celtic Cup final in 2005. The Ospreys had just won the league title but their neighbours were too good for them a month later when the sides met at Stradey Park. The then Ospreys coach Lyn Jones acknowledged as much in an interview with Gravell, saying the west
Walians had deserved their success.
Grav looked at him and time stood still. Then he hugged him, while proclaiming: “Lyn Jones, you are a great man.”
Think of Jeremy Paxman in his pomp being on one end of the interviewing spectrum, with Grav on the other.
But would the man have cared one iota?
No, he would not.
He did things his way and not for a single second did he pretend to be anything he was not.
He will never be forgotten, which is why it is so pleasing S4C are marking what would have been a landmark occasion for him.
They are styling it a special drama to a true Welsh hero.
Gareth John Bale has performed the stage show from which the film is adapted in Wales, at the Edinburgh Festival, London and in America. He said: “I also performed the show to the Wales rugby team in the away changing room of the Principality Stadium, and they were sat very close to me.
“I later heard from one or two people working with the squad that Warren Gatland had actually used a line from the drama in training the next day. He told his players to ‘think of the opposition’s weaknesses, not just their strengths’, as was said in the show.
“He then went round every player asking them to think about their opposite number’s weakness. It was fantastic to hear that the drama had had a direct effect on the team’s preparations during that Six Nations.”
Grav himself would have enjoyed that.
When he passed, someone said he was Llanelli made flesh.
In a wonderful eulogy in The Times, Gerald Davies wrote: ‘He was a man, as they say in Wales, of y filltir sgwar -- the familiar square mile of the local community; for all his travelling, he never left his home.”
It’s hard to imagine anyone remembers him less than fondly.
He was someone who made everyone who met him feel uplifted, Mettoy executives aside. Not many people can pull off such a trick.
Watch the film Grav, at 9.00pm on Sunday, September 12, on S4C. English subtitles available.