Can Wales half-backs hit it off like Gareth and Barry?

AN UNCANNY piece of Celtic history will be repeated in Cardiff next Saturday after exactly 50 years. When Wales and Scotland lined up in the same city for the start of the Five Nations championship on February 3, 1968, the hosts had united a young pair of half-backs at the Arms Park for the first time.

They will have to do the same this week against the same opposition for the opening round of the Six Nations. If the new pairing – Rhys Patchell or Gareth Anscombe in tandem with Gareth Davies – proves half as good as the old one, there is every chance Wales will be rejoicing at a winning start.

Half a century ago marked the home advent of a partnership still revered today, Barry John and Gareth Edwards, now Sir Gareth. They had survived a testing joint initiation a fortnight earlier at Twickenham where an Edwards try and a John drop allowed the visitors to get away with a draw.

By the time they reappeared in Cardiff, Wales were under a very different leadership. Edwards succeeded the veteran Llanelli hooker Norman Gale and, at the ripe old age of 20, set a record as Wales’ youngest captain which still stands today.

True to form, he made a winning start to a role that proved relatively short-lived for a player whose durability can be gauged from the fact that over eleven years he never missed a single Test.

Time with its knack of lending enchantment to the memory has long shrouded Edwards and John in halos of gold. For a pair who made their reputations dealing in one marvel after another, the nature of the win on their home debuts could scarcely have been more mundane.

They scraped home by the only score of the game, a try from Llanelli wing Keri Jones which the history book records as having come from a forward pass apparently missed by the English referee, Air vice Marshal Larry Lamb.

“Forward pass?’’ Edwards said in response to being reminded of it the other day. “What forward pass?’’