by Owen Sheers
Leigh receives Yachvili’s kick and returns a high, mortared ball back to the French. Yet another kick comes back, into touch in the Welsh half. This time it’s Ianto, already over two metres tall, who rises even higher from the line-out to drop the ball to Mike, who spins it to Rhys, who puts yet another high, hanging kick into the air.
*
Last night Rhys went to the cinema with Jon, Mike and Jamie. They knew the roof of the stadium would be open today, and they’d seen the forecast for rain. Jon asked Rhys what was the highest number of kicks he’d ever made in a game. Rhys said he couldn’t be sure – maybe forty? ‘Well,’ Jon said, ‘I reckon you could be kicking all day tomorrow.’
And so far Jon’s been proved right. The rhythm of the match is being set on the boot, not through the hands. ‘Play in their half’ – this is the Welsh policy. Kick and put them under pressure, no silly mistakes. It’s a good policy for a match like this, in which France are trying to slow down the play. But sometimes for Rhys, wearing the iconic number ten on his back means that ‘good’ policy isn’t always seen as the right policy by fans in Wales. Such is their expectation of a ‘national’ style that he’s had complaints about him not ‘playing in a Welsh way’. But the quietly spoken Rhys is a reader and a strategist of the game. Part of his role is to look for space on the field, to test their opponents’ pressure points. And today, with a greasy pitch and a wet ball, this is how he’ll be doing that – by skying kicks that send everyone’s heads tilting back, and that give his backs time to chase and harry upfield.
4 mins
Another Welsh knock-on sees the setting of the first scrum, the two packs kneeling and binding in preparation to knit together at the referee’s command.
The etymology of the word ‘scrum’ has violence at its every root. Derived from ‘scrimmage’, itself a corruption of ‘skirmish’, its origins lie in the old High German ‘skirmen’ – ‘to protect, defend’ – and the Middle English ‘skirmysshen’ – ‘to brandish a weapon’.
Where once the scrum was the most basic of territorial contests on a pitch, in the modern game it has, in Rob McBryde’s words, ‘become more of a hitting contest than a shoving contest’. Changes in the rules, and the relaxing of others such as feeding, mean the scrum, for all its base qualities of weight, power and aggression, is now also a subtle tactical arena of sleight of hand and one-upmanship. Where once a scrum was used to win the ball, they’re now frequently used to win a free kick or penalty instead.
5 mins
The two packs, loaded with the potential kinetic tension of their combined force, crouch and face each other. Gethin holds his free hand in a fist; Adam holds his open. The heads of the opposing props and hookers are inches apart, ready to mesh into the spaces between each other’s necks, hitting shoulder against shoulder, driven together by the full weight of the packs behind them. The force of that collision is around 14.8 kilonewtons, 150 kilogrammes per 0.09 square metres, the equivalent of dropping a cow onto a person’s shoulders from a metre’s height and enough total force to uproot a small oak. For Adam’s wife, Nicole, this is the hardest part of the game to watch, both because of that force and because she knows this is when Adam, at tight head, although unseen, has to perform the dark arts of the front row, when he has to dominate and pressurise his opposite number.
Craig Joubert, standing over the two packs, gives them their instructions.
‘Crouch. Touch.’
The props flick their free hands forward to lightly tap the shoulder of their opposite number.
‘Pause. Engage.’
*
Earlier this week, as they packed down against a scrummaging machine on a mist-covered Castle pitch at the Vale, the Welsh forwards heard these exact instructions, spoken in the same rhythm by the same voice. Craig Joubert was not at that training session, but his voice was, emitted from an iPod dock held by one of Rhys Long’s analysts crouching beside the pack. Such are the margins in modern rugby that a referee’s intonation, the length of his pause, the rhythm of his speech can be enough to turn a game. Which is why all through that session in the mist the Welsh pack scrummaged with Joubert’s voice in their ears, timing the wave of their drive, from Toby’s first nudge to the impact of the front row, against that single repeated phrase, fuzzy but consistent in their ears.
And now, as the two packs engage at the Millennium Stadium, as they hit shoulders and sixteen pairs of legs brace and flex against the pitch, the timing laid into the muscle memories of the Welsh pays off. The scrum caves in and the French are penalised for early engagement.
Mike immediately goes searching for the ball, finds the mark, then taps and spins to Toby, who once again launches himself at the waiting French.
6 mins
Wales move through the phases, but with France barely committing to the rucks, their defensive wall remains strong. Gaining possession, Beauxis, their number ten, kicks upfield. Leigh returns with another high, lingering kick. Dan gathers the ball when it goes loose, the Welsh move finishing with Rhys grubber-kicking into space. A French drop-out from their twenty-two is returned with another high kick from Rhys, Jon’s prediction of last night becoming more true with every unfolding minute of the game.
7 mins
When Rhys’s kick lands, it’s Welsh hands that collect it. Sam, dropping his shoulder, drives into the French line, with Alun Wyn lending his weight in support. But when he fails to keep that weight on his feet, France win a free kick, and then the line-out after it.
8 mins
With the echo of that iPod in their ears, the Welsh pack win another free kick from a scrum. This time Mike taps and goes himself, skirting round the still bound front row and piling into the French defenders.
*
Unlike his attack coach, Rob Howley, who had to fight for his position at scrum-half against those who thought he was too small, Mike had to fight for his against those who thought he was too big. Scrum-half is a position rich with association, those two words conjuring the image of a shorter, stocky man, terrier-like at the heels of the bigger forwards. A mini-general, commanding the game, who probes and darts at the gaps in an opponent’s armour. For years scrum-halves have had their positions guessed by strangers in bars, simply by sizing them up in comparison to the other rugby players they know.
Until he was fourteen Mike fitted this idea. But then he grew, eventually reaching six foot three. Aware of his own size, it wasn’t a Welsh scrum-half Mike admired when he was playing for Whitland and St Clears, but the tall South African, Joost van der Westhuizen. People telling him to change his position was just fuel to the fire, convincing Mike he had to prove them wrong and remain a scrum-half.
Mike displays a similar dogged quality now, as he drives on into the French defence and is brought down, only to get to his feet and continue again, barging into the bulk of French lock Maestri.
There is a feral quality to Mike’s play, and to Mike too, off the pitch. This has been mostly to Wales’s benefit, providing Warren with a dangerous player big enough to be a third flanker, yet still possessed of that scrum-half guile and tenacity. But the modern game is about balance too, something Mike acknowledges as one of its biggest challenges. ‘I’ve tried different stuff,’ he says about his preparations for a game. ‘To work myself up, or to chill myself down. But that’s what makes rugby so hard. You have to be on the edge; you have to smash someone twice your body weight, then next minute you have to be composed, think about what’s best for the team.’
The whistle blows. This time Mike got the balance wrong by half a second, not releasing the ball when he was brought down briefly. France are awarded a penalty, and the Welsh retreat to await the French kick for touch.
9 mins
The ball crosses the touchline inside the Welsh twenty-two. France, with one kick, are in their best position of the match so far. After winning the line-out they suddenly find their rhythm, rolling a maul towards the Welsh posts. Adam tackles Servat, bringing him to ground in a brie
f spiralling embrace.
10 mins
Dan goes for a different technique on Harinordoquy, cutting him down below the knees and spinning him onto his back. But Gethin, who joined Dan in the tackle, doesn’t release his man before going for the ball. Joubert blows his whistle and raises his arm, awarding a penalty to France in front of the Welsh posts.
11 mins
The Welsh players line up under their posts in a strung-out echo of their anthem formation.
*
When Joe Lydon, the WRU’s head of rugby, was playing for England under-18s, his coach told him before a fixture against Wales: ‘Just remember, they’re not defending their tryline, they’re defending their border.’
That metaphorical border still remains unbreached, but from their position standing along their tryline the Welsh players have to watch, after all their effort, as Yachvili strikes the ball with his left foot and sends it clean between the uprights. A swelling cheer follows it over the crossbar.
Wales 0 – France 3.
From the restart Harinordoquy, the French number eight, gets under the ball and readies himself to carry it upfield. George, however, has pursued the kick and is there to haul him in, as if he’s netting a struggling shark.
12 mins
Leigh catches a French clearance just inside the Welsh half, but this time he attacks on foot, not with his boot. As he sprints towards the French, his smaller frame makes his limbs appear to move quicker than other players. Approaching the first French defenders, he slips on the wet pitch, but rebounds to spin through a tackle and drive on another couple of feet.
*
It was a Welsh full-back of the 1970s, J. P. R. Williams, who came to embody the attacking potential of the position. It was a Welshman, too, who first demonstrated that the last line of defence on a rugby pitch could also be the first line of attack.
Vivian Jenkins came from Bridgend. Having learnt his rugby at the same college in Llandovery as George, he won three Oxford Blues at centre before being selected for Wales at full-back in 1933. At the time the required qualities of the position were meant to be a safe pair of catching and tackling hands, with a good boot to kick for touch. But in 1934, during a match against Ireland in Swansea, Jenkins initiated an attack from his own twenty-two, finishing the play seventy-five metres later by collecting a pass from his winger to cross the Irish line. The purists were not impressed and it was suggested Jenkins had played beyond the boundaries of his position. It would be twenty-eight years before another full-back would score in the championship, in 1962.
*
As if in homage to Jenkins’s inversion of his role, in the next Welsh attack Jamie, known for his crash ball and bulldozing of defences, delicately chips the ball past the French instead. Toby wins the line-out, but without clean possession, resulting in a slow ball eventually being birthed from a maul to Mike.
13 mins
For the next minute the Welsh rhythms feed the game as they go through eight phases of play. But the French defence, varying their drift with different currents of opposition, sustain attacks from Alex, Ianto, Dan, Matthew in a repeated pattern of French blue extinguishing fire after Welsh fire. The last to attack is Leigh, once again turning out of a tackle like a spinning top, finally to be quashed under a deluge of French bodies.
*
As 75,000 spectators follow Leigh and the ball, the TV cameras tracking his route upfield, focusing the gaze of millions, several other pairs of eyes are looking elsewhere. Up in the stands in the coaching box Wales’s attack coach, Rob Howley, is watching the spaces away from the contact area, following his players off the ball. ‘My mantra about attack’, he says, his sentences rising at their ends, ‘is it isn’t what you do with the ball, it’s what you do without the ball. Your ability to get off the floor, to get to a support player. The ball needs a lifeline and someone to help, so the more bodies you have around it, the more successful you’re going to be.’
In front of Howley, Rhys Long is looking at his computer screen. With six dedicated analysis cameras around the pitch, and another stitching images together to provide a floating, bird’s-eye view, he’s watching the same match several times at once. And he’s also watching it on more than one level. Andy and Rod, his primary coders at pitch-side, are inputting the team’s key performance indicators – line speed, timings, gain lines and clusters of activity. Another five analysts, meanwhile, are coding three players each as they watch the game remotely from their homes around the country. All of this information is coming into Rhys’s computer live, so as he watches the players’ movements on its split screen, he is also tracking the vital signs of the game; reading the rucks, breaks and kicks happening on the pitch in front of him as figures, maps and graphs. ‘People always say to me,’ Rhys’s mother once said to him, ‘“Why doesn’t Rhys ever smile on the TV?”’ ‘Because’, Rhys explained to her, ‘I’m in my office, working.’
Down on pitch-side Prav and Carcass are running a touchline each for the duration of the game, their eyes trailing three seconds behind the action. Like Prof. John sitting with the subs, they are watching for players left on the field after a collision or a ruck, observing their movements after a hit, ready to run onto the pitch if they see anything of concern. The subs, too, are watching the positions they might replace, ready to start warming up at the first sign of injury. Ken tracks the movements and tackles of Matthew; Lloyd Williams those of Mike.
In the south-eastern corner, meanwhile, Lee, the head groundsman, and his assistant Craig are watching the pitch itself. After their months of dedication, their weeks of coaxing the turf to grow, their long nights slow-walking its length, they are now observing its destruction. Making mental notes of the scars and gouges, they watch as scrums churn at their mown patterns, boots and studs send divots flying, and tackling players cut thin trails of mud in their wakes.
14 mins
Yachvili is penalised for not rolling away and the game, having had its pulse quickened, pauses. Jenks and Adam bring on water for the players, and also messages, both men running communications from the coaches in the box.
The coaching team have noticed that the French are varying their use of a tail-gunner in the line-outs. All the Welsh models have been built on France’s number seven being in the line, but he frequently isn’t, positioning himself instead inside his number ten, ready to stop an attack from Jamie. Rhys Long discusses this with Rob McBryde. They hope the players have picked up on the change, but just in case they send a message on with Adam for the forwards: if Bonnaire is inside his number ten, then drive through the line-out itself instead.
As the team drink their water and Adam relays this message to the pack, Rhys Priestland lays the ball on the kicking tee for Wales’s first opportunity to level the scores.
*
When Rhys was at Bristol University, Jenks would travel to the city specifically to help him practise his kicking. ‘I was stunned I was getting that kind of treatment,’ he says. ‘Without Jenks most of us wouldn’t be able to kick the way we do. And he always had time for me too, telling me, “Any issues, give me a ring,” that kind of thing. He’s a great bloke.’
That depth of history between the two men came into play during the England match, not in terms of Jenks’s knowledge of Rhys’s kicking, but in terms of his knowledge about his personality. Rhys was having a tough game, and for a while nothing was going his way. From up in the stands Warren discussed with Jenks at pitch-side over their radios if they should replace Rhys with the veteran outside-half, Stephen Jones. It was a crucial match and some would say there was more than enough reason. But they didn’t. After the match Warren told the press conference he thought it was better for Rhys’s development to learn on the pitch. Which is exactly what Jenks, having known Rhys since he was eighteen, had said at the time. ‘He’s not going to learn anything here sitting beside me,’ Jenks told Warren over the radio.
So Rhys stayed on, his game improved and Wales won the Triple Crown. Those last few
minutes on the pitch, though, were definitive for Rhys beyond his personal development. As with the end of the Ireland game, it was, he says, when he felt the belief of the team. In both matches ‘we never panicked. It was quite strange being on the field. Myself, not being one of the senior players, if it’s tight I’ve been used to people shouting, “We gotta do this, we gotta do that.” But there was none of that. Warby would speak, Gethin too, just saying, “Don’t panic, we’ll get down there, no silly mistakes.” I think it’s because we’d trained so hard and we’ve got a lot of trust in each other as a squad.’
15 mins
Rhys stands and steps back from the ball, still studying it, like a sculptor getting distance from their work. Turning his back on it, he walks further away before facing the posts once more. This time, as he looks at the ball he seems to have developed a more inward gaze. He takes a breath, licks his lips, blinks rapidly, before turning his focus to the posts. To his right Ianto is breathing heavily, his hands on his hips, sucking in the air he needs to recover.
Rhys looks at the posts as if they are a puzzle to be solved, as if he is trying to understand something about them. He glances at the ball one more time, then back at the posts. Straightening his shoulders, as if coming to attention, he returns his gaze to the ball again. Taking four steady steps towards it, he strikes it cleanly, with the sound of a cricket ball against a bat.
A sigh cascades from the stands as the ball hits the slender upright of the right-hand post. It rebounds to the French below and Yachvili clears it upfield and into touch.
