by Owen Sheers
Once off the bus Thumper takes the team sheets to the broadcasters and checks through both countries’ lists of players for any changes or errors. Then he travels in the VIP lift up to level five to drop in on the lunch in the President’s Lounge. Checking in with Roger and Dennis, he tells them he’s never seen as many people on the streets to welcome the bus as he did just now. Many of the guests, aware he’s arrived with the squad, ask him how the boys are, how are they doing? Thumper nods tightly, telling them they’re fine, good, calm.
While in the lounge Thumper makes time to see his wife, Kerry, who has been dining with the players’ wives and girlfriends. Whether through arrangement or osmosis, Kerry performs a similar role with these women as Thumper performs with their husbands and boyfriends in the Vale, gently corralling them through the day’s schedule, welcoming new arrivals and easing them into the match-day environment.
As Thumper talks with Kerry and the girls on level five, four levels below Adam Beard, having checked the nutrition tables and written the warm-up timings on his hand, synchronises his watch with the match officials, then goes to see Lee, the head groundsman, to get his update on the hardness of the pitch. Lee will have already sent him a report this morning, but since then, with the roof now fixed and open, there’s been a brief but heavy downpour. Based on his conversation with Lee, and having checked the boots France are wearing, Adam goes back into the changing rooms and advises J.R. on what boots and studs the team should use. This done, Adam’s priority for the rest of the run-up to the match is to steal time.
Once Sam’s huddle with the team is finished, Adam will lead the players through their warm-ups and prematch drills, his aim being to keep them out on the field for as long as possible. He knows the shorter the gap between the end of the warm-up and the start of the match, the quicker will be the players’ nerve conduction, the warmer their muscles and the higher their alertness. In previous matches, as Wales have continued warming up, opposing teams have often already returned to their changing rooms. Match officials will be telling Adam to finish so they can start the entertainment. Even Warren will be looking uncomfortable. But Adam knows how fine the margins are in international rugby, and how a split-second difference in the sharpness of one of his players could end up being the deciding factor between a win and a loss. So, like a chef trying to bring his recipe to the perfect temperature, Adam will steal time, keeping the players out on the pitch for as long as possible.
As the team are getting changed and having their strapping done by Carcass and Prav, and as Thumper goes to level five and Adam goes to Lee, Shaun, dressed in his team tracksuit, takes a stroll on the pitch. The heavy downpour, although brief, is concerning him. The French have requested for the roof to be open, and now, under the recent rain, the Millennium pitch is slippery.
On one of his arms Shaun has a tattoo of his younger brother, Billy-Joe, who was killed in a car crash in 2003, aged twenty. Like Shaun and their father, Billy-Joe was a rugby player. Before the accident he’d recently signed with their home club, Wigan. As Shaun walks on the Millennium Stadium pitch now, feeling the turf with his trainers, he looks up at the clearing sky through the open roof. ‘Someone’s going to slip today,’ he thinks. ‘And it’s going to cost them a try. Please’, he continues, addressing Billy-Joe directly now, ‘just let it be one of them France buggers.’
2.38 p.m.
‘Ten seconds, guys! Ten seconds for Wales!’
The suited event manager, holding one hand to the single earphone of his headset, calls down the corridor at the fifteen men in red standing in line along the wall. Moments earlier, accompanied by a sudden flurry of clapping and shouts from the substitutes, the Welsh team had emerged from their changing room, faces expressionless, their eyes focused beyond the cramped corridor in which they now stand. Lining up behind Matthew Rees, they hold that forward-looking gaze. Mike Phillips jumps twice on the spot. Jonathan Davies rocks from side to side. Jamie Roberts stands stock still. George North, further back, twitches his head in a couple of quick neck stretches. Alun Wyn Jones and several others push short, hard breaths through their mouths and nostrils, like penned bulls waiting for release. No one talks. Under their training tops, in memory of Mervyn Davies, the whole team wear black tape wrapped around the left sleeves of their shirts.
The French team are already on the field, binding in a tight circle against the noise of the stadium. The double doors to the tunnel are closed, but the sounds of the bowl, although deadened, are still audible. The waiting, silent squad can hear the pre-match music heightening to a crescendo, the bursts of giant flares firing at either end of the pitch, the announcer’s excited voice echoing between the stands, stirring the capacity crowd louder and louder.
The event manager, touching two fingers to his headset, listens to an instruction. ‘OK, Matthew,’ he says. ‘When you’re ready.’
The double doors open and the noise is suddenly louder. With a deep breath Matthew Rees, who once pretended to be Neil Jenkins on the streets of the Rhondda, leads Wales out for his fiftieth cap. Walking at first, he breaks into a jog further down the tunnel. Behind him, Sam Warburton, holding the hand of Daisy, today’s nine-year-old mascot, follows. And behind Sam come the rest of the team, stepping up and dropping through those double doors like a squad of Paras jumping from a plane.
In a clatter of studs the team stream down the tunnel, running past two Under Armour banners on either side: ‘PROTECT THIS HOUSE’. Speeding up, they burst onto the pitch, fanning past Sam, who is crouching for a photo with Daisy. As the team sprint past him, all the flares erupt at once, shooting flames thirty, forty feet into the air and releasing a wash of petroleum fumes into the higher levels of the stands. At the same moment 75,000 people rise to their feet, delivering an imposing roar of a welcome as the familiar chant pulses through the stadium like a heartbeat:
‘Waaales! Waaales! Waaales!’
And in the Three Kings in London, and in the Red Lion in New York, and in Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, and in pubs and homes across Wales and the world millions of Welsh applaud and cheer at the same time, foisting their hopes and their ideas of a nation upon the twenty-two young men running out onto the pitch.
And none of it matters. And yet all of it matters. Because for players and spectators alike this isn’t just about being alive, but feeling alive. This is where the known and the unknown meet. This is the arena, the coliseum. Where the present is electrified by its imminent transfiguration into the past. Where, as Philippe Saint-André said to an interviewer before the game, ‘We do not just play against Wales, but against the whole country.’
As George runs onto the pitch he momentarily dips to brush his fingers through the whitewash of the touchline, rubbing them against his thumb as he sprints on into the middle of the field. Raising his hand to his face, he smells the scent. This, for George, is ‘the final clunk in the cog’, the moment when he becomes, for eighty minutes, a different George.
‘Off the pitch I’m not that confident as a person,’ he says. ‘But once I smell that whitewash, once I cross that line I’m in a different zone. I find myself quite aggressive. Confident, but not arrogant, and generally quite mad at everyone on the other team. I don’t know what it is, but it’s like they’ve done something.’
George, feeling that switch of personality come upon him, gathers with the rest of the squad as they line up for the anthems, their arms across each other’s shoulders. Next to them the French squad also come together, each player bringing with them their own hinterlands of past coaches, pitches, clubs and dreams. But as the two sides line up next to each other, they also bring their other histories to this moment. Not the histories of the players, but of the teams themselves. And as rugby histories go, they are as mirrored and balanced as the teams look now, spread either side of the halfway line.
Wales France
15 Leigh Halfpenny 15 Clément Poitrenaud
14 Alex Cuthbert 14 Wesley Fofana
13 Jonathan Davies 13 Au
rélien Rougerie
12 Jamie Roberts 12 Florian Fritz
11 George North 11 Alexis Palisson
10 Rhys Priestland 10 Lionel Beauxis
9 Mike Phillips 9 Dimitri Yachvili
8 Toby Faletau 8 Imanol Harinordoquy
7 Sam Warburton (c) 7 Julien Bonnaire
6 Dan Lydiate 6 Thierry Dusautoir (c)
5 Ian Evans 5 Yoann Maestri
4 Alun Wyn Jones 4 Pascal Papé
3 Adam Jones 3 David Attoub
2 Matthew Rees 2 William Servat
1 Gethin Jenkins 1 Jean-Baptiste Poux
Replacements Replacements
16 Ken Owens 16 Dimitri Szarzewski
17 Paul James 17 Vincent Debaty
18 Luke Charteris 18 Julien Pierre
19 Ryan Jones 19 Louis Picamoles
20 Lloyd Williams 20 Morgan Parra
21 James Hook 21 François Trinh-Duc
22 Scott Williams 22 Jean-Marcellin Buttin
Wales have played France eighty-nine times. Over the course of those games they have won forty-three matches each. France have scored 1,304 points, Wales 1,305.
The more recent history, however, tells a harsher story for Wales. Of the last eight games against France they have lost seven. The last time they played this fixture, in Paris last year, Wales failed to score a single try.
‘No one can take it away from you.’ That’s what Warren reminded the squad at their team meeting in the Vale this afternoon. ‘When you win a Grand Slam, it’s yours. No one can take it away from you.’
‘We know we deserve to win.’ And that’s what Sam told them just minutes ago in the changing room. He used to stress about that team talk, used to write it down. But now he just says what he feels is right at the moment. Which, today, was this. ‘We know we deserve to win, for us and the fans. We know how much work we’ve done.’
The media have been talking all day about the death of Mervyn Davies, another Welsh captain who twice led his side to Grand Slam victories over France. There has been talk of the team being spurred on by his death, being fuelled to play in his memory. But for the squad it’s more simple and, in a way, more personal than that. Sam does mention Mervyn in his talk, and they all know a great player has passed on. But in the hardest moments of this match they’ll be digging in for themselves and for each other; for the pain they’ve shared and the sacrifices they’ve made, and in answer to that banner in the Barn that asks, How do you want to be remembered?
For the next minute, however, it is Mervyn Davies and Jock Hobbs, the ex-All Black who also died recently, who are remembered as the full weight of a stadium’s silence falls upon the pitch. For sixty seconds the two teams, the match officials and the 75,000 spectators all stand motionless as images of Merv and Jock come up on the stadium’s big screens. After all the build-up, the bus journey into the centre, the superstitions of the changing room, Adam’s stolen time, there is, before the violence of the match, this. A strange moment of peace, the loud voice of the stadium silenced.
When the minute ends, the anthems begin. The French who have travelled to Cardiff sing ‘La Marseillaise’ with energy, but when the opening lines of the Welsh anthem are sung – ‘Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi’ (‘The land of my fathers which is dear to me’) – it’s as if the volume control on the stadium has been turned up to eleven. For the players at the centre of the pitch it’s an overwhelming experience. They’ve spent much of the last few hours trying to achieve a careful set of psychological balances: between aggression and discipline, emotion and focus, boldness and caution. And yet it’s as if this anthem has been designed to ambush them. The words of Evan James of Pontypridd and the music of his son, James James, coming together just seconds before kick-off to lay an emotional minefield at their feet.
To keep himself together George finds one point in the stands as he sings, and keeps his eyes fixed upon it. Sam, although always ‘singing out loud in my head’, usually remains silent. But this time even he, his hand on Daisy’s shoulder, sings, albeit in a subdued manner, as if, like in that letter by Ted Hughes, he’s doing all he can not to spill something brimming at his edge. Adam Jones, his eyebrows Vaselined against the abrasion to come, sings with a concerned frown of care. Jamie Roberts, with his eyes shut. Alun Wyn Jones, meanwhile, uses the anthem to take him to the next stage of his day’s preparations. With the sinews in his neck straining and the veins over his temples rising, Alun Wyn screams out the anthem’s final lines, his eyes reddening and his head tipped back.
Tra môr yn fur i’r bur hoff bau,
O bydded i’r hen iaith barhau.
[While seas secure the land so pure,
O may the old language endure.]
The anthem ends in a torrent of applause, cheers and, as the players unbind, the breaking of the team’s chain. Alun Wyn looks as if he’s received terrible news, as if he wants to do someone harm in revenge.
Within seconds, as the field is cleared of banners, bands and choirs, the players are already preparing for kick-off. The French sprint and jog, swinging their arms, performing final stretches. Wales, however, have tipped to the far end of their territory, where the team engages in Adam’s last few seconds of stolen time. In short, concentrated waves, they perform ‘bag hits’, running at Dan Baugh and the subs to smash into the tackle shields they hold before them. With each hit the shield-bearer is shunted a few feet back towards the dead-ball line, before reasserting their position for the next player and the next hit.
Behind them France are beginning to string out along the halfway line, so, turning from their final hits, the Welsh players also walk into position, scattering deeply through their half. Gethin Jenkins, the veteran prop, blows out a deep breath. Adam Jones calls instructions to the other forwards. Craig Joubert, the referee, raises his arm and blows his whistle. A fanfare sounds on the PA system and the crowd responds with a cheer as Yachvili, signalling to his teammates, drop-kicks the ball high and deep into Welsh territory.
The match has begun.
0 min.
Toby, who wears Mervyn’s number-eight jersey today, and whose own father’s playing days brought him from Tonga to Wales as a child, catches the ball and drops his shoulder to meet what it will bring. A sudden blue wave rolls him and his teammates backwards, breaking over them as they form a ruck and Toby lays the ball back. Mike clears, making the first of the six kicks to punctuate this opening minute of the match. The fifth is made by Rhys, searching behind the French line. Alex, with a sprinting style reminiscent of Michael Johnson, comes steaming after it, pressurising Poitrenaud to punt into touch and making Wales the winners of the first kicking exchange.
1 min.
The two packs come together to form the first set piece of the match, the forwards lining up in domino formation behind each other and next to their opposing numbers. The previous week the Welsh line-out seemed lacking, so for the past few days Rob McBryde has put in extra sessions working on their calls and moves. Unlike the scrum, the line-out is a set piece of moving parts: a thrower, two lifters, dummy runners and a jumper. If a call is to be successful, each of these parts must work off and with each other like the intimate mechanics of a watch. For Alun Wyn, lining up at the centre of the Welsh formation, it’s as much about rhythm as memory. ‘A good line-out’, he says, ‘will flow. It’s more art than science.’
If that rhythm is right, then the line-out is also a brief pause button in a match, a slow-motion ballet with the jumper, which Alun Wyn is now, lifted to twice his height and suspended there for a second, held aloft by Adam and Gethin below him.
Catching the ball cleanly, Alun Wyn drops it to Mike at scrum-half, as if throwing it down from a first-floor window. At the same time as his rising, like the un doing of a combination lock both flankers, Sam and Dan, have popped out of the line. Taking a few paces back they both pause, each with one foot cocked, a mirror of each other, ready to spring forward.
It isn’t them, though, who come onto the ball but Alex, char
ging in to take Mike’s pass in his arms, clutching the ball to his chest as if cradling a child. Hitting the French defence, he sucks in two defenders before going to ground.
Mike digs in the bodies and spins the ball free, releasing a chained pattern of breaks, stoppages and passes that revolves through three phases before ending in another French clearance to touch.
Already Matthew, Sam and Jon Davies have all tested the French line, with Jon breaking through it, only to be dragged down by Fofana, clinging to his back like a cheetah jumping on its prey.
2 mins
‘But a line-out’, Alun Wyn also says, ‘is about possession quality, not just percentage.’ As Matthew throws in, the ball is tapped down to Mike, who, having to scramble for it, is enveloped by French shirts. Adam stands in at scrum-half, but the slower ball has given the French time to prepare, so as Matthew receives his pass, he too is hit to the ground.
Just as there’s a kinetic chain in each of the players’ movements, so there is a chain of reaction through every period of play. Mike is back in position, pointing instructions, sending Toby back off a ruck. But the disrupted flow of that line-out is now in the rhythm of the Welsh game too. As Alun Wyn carries the ball into another phase he knocks it on and loses possession.
3 mins
The French scrum-half, Yachvili, kicks downfield, and Craig Joubert announces, ‘Advantage over.’ Just as line-outs have rhythm, so do matches, and it is the referee, as much as the players, who conducts that rhythm. With this announcement Joubert is setting out his stall: in the interest of the flow of the match he’ll be moving on from advantages quickly, trying to keep the flame of the game alight.
