Aberavon, where rugby and life were indivisible

Brendan Gallagher delves into some of rugby’s most enduring images, their story and why they are still so impactful What’s happening here?

It’s Thursday February 19, 1976 and in the background and along the skyline the massive steelworks at Port Talbot are belching smoke, a satanic scene of industrial hell. A mighty, living, beast that since it was built in 1923 had helped sustain Great Britain during the last years of Empire not to mention World War 2 and then provided much of the steel for a burgeoning car construction industry. We have no way of telling whether it’s morning or afternoon, the sun is obliterated by the ever-present smog. It also smells poisonous although we are spared that sensation. A sweary man’s world of long shifts, insufferable heat, danger but also camaraderie, quality banter and teamwork. And in the foreground is their place of refuge and recreation. The Talbot Athletic Ground – where Aberavon rugby club had played since time immemorial. The Wizards. A place of magic.

What is the story behind the picture?

The photographer, Patrick Jarnoux, was the chief photographer at Paris Match for many decades. The creme de la creme, an artiste as well as a snapper. Jarnoux photographed everything and everybody – pop stars, Hollywood legends, Tour de France champions, corrupt politicians, exhausted ParisDakar drivers, famous French vendee globe sailors, scenes from French colonial life and, for a few weeks every year, the Five Nations. Rugby was his first and enduring love and many of the classic French rugby shots from the 1970s and 80s and even later tend to be his work.

Jarnoux looked at rugby differently to those who covered it every week. He came at it afresh every Five Nations. Perhaps flying in from a Hollywood film set, or the ski slopes of Gstaad or a Ferrari testing session ahead of the F1 season.

Here he had been sent to Wales in ‘76 ahead of the Grand Slam decider with France. The French were fascinated by the great Wales team of the era and he wanted to get under their skin and understand the Welsh rugby culture. He photographed small clubs, famous rugby playing schools and the Wales team training but – having previously spoken to actor Richard Burton he had saved Aberavon for last.

Burton’s schoolboy dream, as Richard Jenkins, was to play for Aberavon and Wales and his much older brother Iifor did indeed play for Aberavon and Neath. When Jarnoux met him they talked rugby and Burton impressed on him how some clubs were virtually extensions of the local steelworks and coal mines. And that applied to other clubs nearby – Aberavon Quins, Aberavon Green Stars (formed by Irish dockers), Cwmavon, Taibach and Burton’s own home village Pontrhydyfen. They were all part of one community.

The result was this wonderfully murky, moody, savage image taken with a long lens high on a local hillock where the main TV transmitter is stationed.

What happened next?

The trite answer is that Wales won the Grand Slam, beating France 19-13, although the game is best known for the shuddering shoulder charge JPR employed to send Jean-Francois Gourdon into touch and prevent a try.

But historically the picture captures a moment in time that says so much about Welsh rugby, or at least our understanding of it for the first 100 years or so. Not long after this began the industrial decline of the heavy industries and with that Wales’ reliance on the players from the rugby clubs such industrial towns spawned lessened a little.

Why is this picture iconic?

Jarnoux the artist employs a large canvas very deliberately to tell his story. The steelworks, then the biggest in Europe, drew the eye and dominates an industrial complex that fuelled and sustained many other local enterprises. Even in the 1980s it was quite astonishing when driving to a night game in Aberavon or Neath along the M4 and to turn a corner and suddenly be hit with an intense furnace-like, unworldly, blast of light on your left. Spectacular.

So dominant is the steelworks and its influence that I am guessing that only after taking that in did you absorb the two up, two down terrace houses that housed the workforce and then finally, almost as an afterthought, notice Talbot Athletic ground in the bottom third of the picture. Like everything in Aberavon it was dwarfed by the works but at the same time annexed to them. They were indivisible. Workers went straight from work to the ground to train, play and drink. Spectators followed them from the works to watch, drink, reminisce about their playing days and relax.

This was a large slice of Welsh rugby writ large and mimicked on a less grand scale by the mining towns of Gwent and the Rhondda Valley. The same umbilical cord that saw entire communities connected to heavy industry.

Footnote: Burton once wrote: “I would rather have played rugby for Wales than Hamlet at the Old Vic. And to that town, Aberavon and its rugby team, I pledge my continuing allegiance, until death.”

Iconic Rugby Pictures: PART 100 The mighty steelworks overlooking the Talbot Athletic Ground February 19, 1976