Life with Lions not the same without scribe Bale

FOR the first time in more than 30 years the Lions are on the road without a scribe whose knowledge and understanding of the game was second to none.

Steve Bale has retired, on the reasonable basis that 23 tours and seven World Cups are enough for anyone. His decision to abide by the finest showbiz tradition and leave his readers clamouring for more makes the sport all the poorer for the loss of a sharply educated eye, as befitting a critic born and bred in the crucible of the Welsh game, Neath.

Bale’s decision severs another link to a time when reporters could talk to whomever, whenever before the advent of the ‘prevention’ officer, a state of bliss preserved by Fran Cotton’s smart management of the 1997 Lions but shot to bits in the 20 years since by control freakery.

How the landscape has changed since the early Seventies when Bale covered his first match for the weekly Neath Guardian where he followed another wordsmith Tim Glover.

Like Glover, Bale gravitated to London where he became a founder-member of The Independent in 1986, instantly recognisable as The Man In Black, a choice of clothing that had more to do with Neath than a love of Johnny Cash.

After 18 years as the main man for the Express, Bale returned to Wales for the Sunday Times, his caustic wit as sharp as ever. He used it to shuddering effect during a Wales-England game when a reporter squeezed into a lift ahead of a woman asking: “Who’s the bird?”

“That is the award-winning Carolyn Hitt,’’ said Bale. “And I don’t suppose she knows who you are either.”

He made a legion of friends in an occupation notorious for losing them. One of his closest, the inimitable Chris Hewett, late of The Independent, recalls how Bale would always say the same thing before every EnglandWales match: ‘Remember, it’s a class thing….’

Bale should know, a class act from start to finish.