THAT’S SOME CONSOLATION
WALES SEIZE SIX NATIONS TO BANISH PARIS AGONY
AFTER their nightmarish defeat by France last Saturday, the Welsh today wake up as Six Nations champions. While the agony of their 82ndminute loss to Les Bleus, which denied them a Grand Slam, still smarts, Wales can be consoled by the championship after France failed to get the result against Scotland last night that would have foiled them again.
Alun Wyn Jones will lift the trophy at the team hotel today while some of his team-mates play for English clubs — Wales denied the fanfare and fireworks in this weirdest of years.
The players were unable to watch last night’s crucial game together, so looked on from a variety of living rooms.
One of those watching Scotland beat France 27-23 was fly-half Callum Sheedy, who will be turning out for Bristol in the Premiership today.
‘ Winning a Championship is great,’ he told Sportsmail.
‘It still doesn’t take away the pain of how close we’ve come to a Grand Slam.
‘This year is so bizarre — who would have thought a Six Nations would get decided a week after it’s supposed to be finished?
‘It’s a weird, strange feeling but it was meant to be. I had it on, but tried to not get too emotionally invested.
‘The WhatsApp group had a bit of banter on it but no matter how much I wanted to scream at the telly, it wasn’t going to make Scotland score!’
Now, at last, the Six Nations trophy will be with them.
Last weekend’s defeat, when Brice Dulin broke Welsh hearts by scoring at the death in a crazy game won 32-30 by 14 Frenchmen — after Paul Willemse had been sent off — against 13 Welsh with Liam Williams and Taulupe Faletau sin-binned, left the men in red reeling.
‘It’s been a mental few days,’ revealed Sheedy, on for the manic finale having replaced Dan Biggar. ‘It took a few nights to get over. I couldn’t sleep on Saturday or Sunday.
‘That’s professional sport at its cruellest. We had a few hours together afterwards. We kind of needed each other that night — if we all went to bed, we would have stared at the ceiling.’
Reflecting on the end, Sheedy added: ‘ We knew the French wanted chaos as they needed to score twice. We were on a final warning from referee Luke Pearce and were pretty ill- disciplined, giving them ins.
‘We defended for our lives for 15 minutes, but they finally broke us down. At full-time a guy with a clipboard said to me, “You’ve got drug testing”. It was the last thing I wanted — sat in a room with a French guy I don’t know!
‘When I sat in the changing room 20 minutes later, it was still really quiet.
‘It was the toughest changing room I’ve ever been in. I’ve never experienced something as gut-wrenching as that.’
Disconsolate Wales flew home on Sunday and back at base, TV chefs Sam and Shauna — from Barry’s famous Hangfire Southern Kitchen — cooked them an enormous socially- distanced barbecue to fuel their drives home.
The togetherness Wales showed was forged in their in- camp ‘Covid cafe’ over cakes and coffees, or games of pool and darts that wing Louis Rees-Zammit invariably won.
‘All he has to do is touch something and it turns to gold!’ laughed Sheedy.
Rees-Zammit scored four tries in this tournament — a super diving finish against Ireland, two against Scotland including a wonderful chip-and- chase, and a speedy intercept in Italy. Like many of the Welsh, he was involved in big decisions, too.
Rees- Zammit’s ‘ knock- on’ against England, red cards against Ireland’s Peter O’Mahony, Scotland’s Zander Fagerson and France’s Willemse, added to Josh Adams scoring when English backs were turned, saw critics rage at Welsh luck. But they earned every victory.
‘There’s a bit of banter about the cards saying we can only play against 14, but we don’t decide those,’ replied Sheedy.
‘ Considering everyone was writing us off in the autumn, saying we were useless, it was nice to get results — we did enough when we needed to.’
Gethin Jenkins, the defence coach, has been a revelation, and Wales scored a national record of 20 tries this time.
Amid Covid chaos the Welsh do not know when they will meet again — lots will with the Lions — but Sheedy’s focus moves to winning another trophy, this time with Premiership leaders Bristol.
‘We’ve got to take the pressure as a privilege,’ he said ahead of his 100th club game against Quins today.
‘We’re just ahead of the race. There’s still eight rounds to go, every game is a cup final.’