Charlie’s move to roll back the years
CHARLIE Faulkner will be remembered for his many achievements; from judo black belt to the Pontypool Front Row, immovable elder statesman of the ‘Viet-Gwent,’ big-game hunter who finished off the Lion of Lions.
Above all those tall stories, made taller still by the fact that they all happen to be true, another stands out because it is unique. Charlie Faulkner is the only British player to have completed four consecutive years of Test rugby and grown twice as old in the process.
He started in 1975 at the age of 29 and finished in 1979 a week or two shy of turning not 33 but 38. By then he had won a Grand Slam and toured with the Lions while playing so fast and so loose with his real age that The Big Five were never sure how old, or young, he really was.
Faulkner had flogged himself through the punishing club schedule for so long that he despaired of ever getting the big break. When it came, he was sufficiently long in the tooth to be anxious about finding a way to roll back the years.
The late Mervyn Davies found it for him. As captain, he would advise those of mature years that they would be asked for their date of birth to accompany their pen picture in the match programme and they might like to consider making themselves a bit younger.
Faulkner’s one fear was that the selectors, The Big Five, would discover the truth, convinced they would use it as an excuse to dump him. One of six new caps for the start of the Five Nations in January 1975, the veteran loosehead was more worried about hiding his age than any hiding from the French in Paris.
Charlie had taken his captain’s advice about shaving two years off his age so much to heart that he shaved off twice as much. That ensured his introduction to the big time as a comparatively wet-behind-the-ears loosehead yet to reach 30.
By reinventing his date of birth as February 27, 1945, Faulkner passed himself as 29 when in reality he was rapidly approaching 34. His reunion with Graham Price and Bobby Windsor gave the Pontypool front row a flying start and Wales the platform for a record post-war win in Paris which stands to this day.
“We may go up and we may go down,” he once said of the front row’s collective scrummaging power. “But we never go back. Not an inch…”
Faulkner was there to stay, not that he ever allowed himself to see it that way. The paranoia over his age eased a little for his date of birth to change from 27.02.1945 to 27.02.1943 which meant he suddenly became two years older.
At the outset of a punishing six-week tour of Australia in 1978, the Wales management collected the players’ passports for immigration. Charlie’s secret was out: born Newport, February 27, 1941. The consequences landed me in a heap of trouble.
A story before the first Test in Brisbane acclaiming Charlie as the oldest player in international rugby prompted a heated response. My explanation that it was meant as a tribute to his longevity and fitness was angrily dismissed along the lines of: “Tribute my arse. You’re going to get me dropped.”
His motivation reinforced, Charlie kept on seeing off a host of contenders for his position and Wales kept on picking him until they couldn’t, a spot of knee trouble forcing him to miss the thrashing of England in the final Five Nations match of the golden Seventies.
He was 38 by then, his late blooming decorated by four Triple Crowns, two Grand Slams, a Lions’ tour and a try against Ireland at the Arms Park in 1975 which persuaded the visiting captain Willie John McBride, the only man to make five Lions tours, to retire.
Faulkner, only a matter of months younger than the celebrated Ulsterman, began at roughly the same age as McBride when he finished. He died last Thursday from heart complications, leaving his wife of more than 50 years, Gill, daughters Jayne and Laura and son Jason.
“Charlie trained like a dog mainly because he was older than most people thought,’’ Windsor said yesterday. “The last time I saw him, I said: ‘Charlie, we’ve been friends for 60 years. We’ve gone from rock bottom to the very top. We’ve done our bucket list and we’ve got to be proud of it’.
“I reminded him of how when he was asked to do an interview, he’d always dash back to the dressing room first. He always made sure he’d put his teeth back in for the cameras.’’
Wales never did drop him, maybe that’s the greatest tribute of all…
“Faulkner passed himself off as 29 when, in reality, he was nearly 34”