Cardiff’s defeat brought a call from the Vatican

As befitting a goalkeeper during his youth in pre-war Poland, Pope John Paul II took a passing interest in footballing matters whatever the shape of the ball. His Holiness granted audiences to a number of rugby teams, but only one club can claim to have had a hotline straight into the Vatican. St Peters RFC is unique, not least as authors of a David-and-Goliath story of such biblical perfection that it could have come straight from the Book of Samuel.

While ‘The Rocks’ slaying of Cardiff has long passed into history, the Vatican’s role in the story has been shrouded in mystery but no longer. Exactly how the Holy See came to acknowledge ‘The Miracle’ of Cardiff Arms Park, as engineered by one of the Welsh capital’s more resourceful junior clubs, can now be told.

It happened 28 years ago this coming Saturday – January 23, 1993. The fifth round of the Welsh Cup threw up the most local of local derbies, sending St Peters from the inner-city suburb of Roath to the Arms Park barely a mile-and-a-half away on what appeared to be the ultimate lost cause.

Cardiff, self-styled in all immodesty as ‘The Greatest’, decreed, as undisputed leaders of the First Division, they could afford to take a few liberties against opponents from the nether regions of the Third. Alex Evans, their Australian head coach, rested nine of the first team who had beaten Plymouth Albion 107-3, an all-time club record.

St Peters had no sooner rocked up in an old double-decker bus than they were confronted by evidence that their hosts had cleared the way for another century of points.The scoreboard read:

Cardiff RFC 000 St Peters 00 Second row Chris Newton remembers how it changed attitudes: “We were warming up when we saw the scoreboard. Mikey Baldwin (tighthead prop) went off on one: ‘Look, they think they’re going to score a hundred’.”

For Simon Harris, full-back and captain, it confirmed pre-match sushappened picions that Cardiff had fallen into the trap of not taking the tie seriously: “They underestimated us and we made sure we had the last word.’’

Slowly it dawned on the no-hopers that the rugby gods had begun work on evening up the score. For a club based on St Peters Roman Catholic Church and a primary school founded by Father Lorenzo Gastaldi who would become Archbishop of Turin, that had a special relevance.

The help from a higher power began with the weather. “It was a horrible day,’’ said Newton, now St Peters’ secretary. “A real heads down, arses up kind of day. We just kept ploughing on through the mud. The longer it went, the more we believed that the impossible might be possible. I still dine out on it.’’

‘The Rocks’ were clinging on for dear life to Gareth Snook’s try and Andy Edwards’ goals at 16-14 when the tie went into injury time. What during the seven-minute eternity can be seen in retrospect as two more signs from Above.

Adrian Davies, the Test fly-half summoned off the bench to get Cardiff off the hook, lined up a penalty inside the 22 a tad right of the posts, to win the match 17-16. He missed.

St Peters still had to survive one more crisis. A rapid Cardiff heel gave Davies a drop shot out of the quagmire which Rocks’ scrum-half Jamie Churcher charged down.

“We get to high places at St Peters and no mucking about,’’ says Mike Thomas, former fly-half still serving the club as groundsman at 82. “Sometimes the world works in mysterious ways and He wasn’t going to let them take it away from us.’’

Cardiff took it badly. Instead of congratulating the giant-killers, Evans criticised the man in the middle, John Groves (‘a five pound referee in a £50,000 competition’).

The late Derek (CD) Williams, a wing forward in Cardiff ’s 1953 win over the All Blacks, told St Peters head coach Lawrence O’Brien: “You’ve just cost this club fifty grand.’’

“I just laughed,’’ says O’Brien. “They were in shock. Playing Cardiff on the Arms Park, being Cardiff boys and Cardiff fans, was the stuff of dreams.”

They haven’t forgotten their hosts’ rude reaction. “We idolised Cardiff but the way we were treated left a sour taste,’’ says Thomas. “Cardiff now are a shambles but then they were probably the most famous club in the world. Only two of their players, Mikey Rayer and Michael Budd, came into the dressing-room. We left half an hour or so after the finish and went back to our clubhouse.’’

There, a rota of committee men manned the solitary line of communication, a pay-phone on the clubhouse wall. Vince Nolan, now vice-chairman, remembers it well.

“We were getting inquiries from newspapers all over the world. I took a call from a quietly-spoken priest who said he was Father so-and-so calling from the Vatican.

“I have never forgotten what he said. He said: ‘I understand there has been another miracle. Did it really happen?’

“I told him it had and talked him through the highlights. Then I thought: ‘Wow. We’re only a parish rugby club but to come off the rugby field and then take a congratulatory call from the Vatican, how amazing is that?’”

Lockdown is not the only reason why there can be no anniversary celebration next weekend. Last Friday St Peters buried the inimitable Mike Evans who died on Christmas Eve at the age of 64.

A former hooker who presided over the Arms Park miracle as team manager, Evans employed many of the players in his electrical business. “Without Mike Evans there wouldn’t be a St Peters rugby club,’’ says Thomas. “He kept us going financially. Our church holds 1,200 people. We could have filled it twice over for his funeral….”

“I understand there has been another miracle. Did it really happen?”