Why wasn’t great Gethin suitably honoured?
I’VE been a Welsh rugby fan all my life and had the good fortune to bump into Gethin Jenkins in my local coffee shop recently. I felt I had to speak to him to get something off my chest regarding the way his retirement was managed.
This is a player with
134 caps in total, three Grand Slams and one championship together with three Lions tours. Absolutely phenomenal. No-one in Welsh rugby history comes close.
You can make a compelling argument that this man is the greatest Welsh rugby player of all time.
Yet with this incredible record behind him, when it came to retirement his reward was not a fitting send-off at the Millennium Stadium but a wet Sunday-afternoon game for his region against Zebre. I watched it and couldn’t think of a less appropriate way for this man to end his career.
Contrast this with the way the English FA dealt with Wayne Rooney, giving him a cameo appearance off the bench against the USA in a friendly at Wembley. A fitting and appropriate send-off for a man who has accomplished a fraction in sport that Gethin Jenkins has.
My point is that the WRU needs to look at the way they manage the retirement of international players when they reach the 100-cap milestone and have exceptional achievements in the game.
Surely a cameo off the bench in these Autumn Internationals would have given the Welsh public in their thousands a chance to show their appreciation to a player who has accomplished almost everything in the game. If not a playing cameo, then why not at half-time in one of these games have a presentation to the player and invite him to do a lap of honour? The WRU needs to take a look at this because there are other senior players on the retirement horizon who deserve a fitting curtain call to their careers, and some protocols need to be put in place.
Alan Parker Tonyrefail Memories of wartime
REFERRING to Norman Rendle’s letter (“Who else remembers picking spuds in park?” Echo, November 10), we not only picked, but dug and planted also during the war.
We senior boys at Gladstone Road School in Barry dug up part of Gladstone Park as part of Dig For Victory.
Mr Rendle’s letter brought back lots of memories. Our Dig for Victory plot was just a hundred yards from a sandbagged pill box in the middle of the crossroads.
Beyond that in the car park of the Memorial Hall was a Nissen hut housing a crew of the local barrage balloon. The first time it was inflated half the school watched and the teachers had to usher us back into school.
The same Memo hall was used as a hospital during the war and also caught fire.
American troops were camping out on Port Road ahead of D-Day. Other memories include barbed wire across Barry Island beach and a tank ditch at Porthkerry.
At the end of the war I remember crocodiles of school kids walking to Barry Island for free rides.
RS Petrie
Llandough
Why are our city waste sites closed?
SINCE the closue of Wedal Road and Waungron Road recycling and waste facilities, many areas of Cardiff face fly-tipping problems.
A Freedom of Information request shows that there are 17 incidents of fly-tipping in Cardiff every single day. That’s 3,250 events in six months.
The council recently cleared one site near garages in Llandaff North, but even after clearance there’s still a lot of rubbish left.
People do need to take personal responsibility but our Labour council could make things easier by keeping community facilities open.
Exactly why is the Waungron Road centre closed when the site is still there with no development?
It looks more like politics and less like helping the people of Cardiff or the council staff.
Steffan Webb
Plaid Cymru, Cardiff North
Labour wants the penny and the bun
DAVID Cameron wrote a suicide note when he offered a referendum in the Tory manifesto.
The people put the gun to the Prime Minister’s head by voting to leave the European Union.
As it was, Cameron couldn’t pull the trigger and Theresa May thought she could change the bullets to rubber ones.
Labour now wants a penny-andthe-bun deal from Europe. They think the country can enjoy the same free trading deal that we have now even after the UK leaves the EU.
Andrew Nutt
Bargoed
Poor suffer from migrant onslaught
IT’S a travesty that the likes of Juncker and Barnier have been allowed to take the moral high ground over Brexit. They have been unchallenged when promoting the image of Remainers as the liberal internationalist intelligentsia compared to the uneducated aging populists who voted to leave the EU. They bemoan the rise of the right in Europe and blame it on the working class who oppose unregulated immigration.
The objective truth is that in recent decades the EU has never enjoyed widespread popularity and has a reputation for resisting reform. However, nations felt their complex ensnarement was too costly to unravel. Macron admitted that if France underwent a referendum it would vote to leave, as would Italy and probably Spain. Greece has been ruined by a German-dominated EU. EU policy on immigration has resulted in Poland, Austria and Hungary electing right-wing nationalist governments to protect their borders and cultures.
Free movement and immigration is the dominant issue as the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch and Lily Allen berate the great unwashed for inhumanly rejecting the millions heading north from seemingly half the globe. Such is the German dominance of Europe Angela Merkel unilaterally decided to open the German borders to a million migrants. They will, in due course, obtain
You can make a compelling argument that this man is the greatest Welsh rugby player of all time Alan Parker
European passports and will be free to come to Britain if they choose.
The rise of the right is due to those people who do not share the same world view of the Cumberbatches of the world and whose street wisdom comes from living with consequences of such elitist largesse. They have nowhere else to go. Old working-class communities bear the brunt of the negative effects of migrants, such as added pressure on housing, schooling, health and social services. It’s the intransigence of the liberal elite that has made Europe more divisive and dangerous. As usual it’s the rich wot gets the pleasure and the poor wot gets the blame.