It all goes quiet as Powell rides off into sunset

ANDY POWELL could reasonably claim to have done for the humble golf buggy in South Wales what Mac and Dick McDonald did for the hamburger at their pioneering café in southern California.

The Wales and Lions No. 8 retired this week, resigned to being remembered more for his inebriated trip along a threemile eastward stretch of the M4 than anything in his specialist field. Taking an electric cart from the Welsh team’s base just off the motorway and on to the nearest services shortly before six o’clock in the morning on St Valentine’s Day in 2010 had not been done before as a way of celebrating a Six Nations win the previous afternoon.

Powell had been arrested when a message from ground control came through on the radio: ‘Some headcase is going down the M4 on a buggy.’

After a colourful ten-club career, he retired last week at 35. His last employers, Merthyr RFC, said it was due to knee trouble. Powell, true to form, said it was due to depression. Everyone will wish him well. ■A late change to the Stade Francais bench at the Stoop on Thursday evening spared the tannoy announcer a tricky bit of pronunciation and denied the crowd an oldfashioned titter. The name in question? Faraj Fartass, a highly rated 19-year-old Parisian centre of Tunisian descent with an outside break that never fails to put the wind up the opposition.