Posted on 13 March 2007
I saw very little of the rugby at the weekend because we were out on the tandem for most of it.
However, I can think of numerous occasions on which England, going to Cardiff for the last game of the season and with a chance of a championship, have come badly unstuck. Keith Jarrett’s game of 1966 was the first of these. I remember well a player called Novak scoring a try for England in 1970 and the score being 13-0 to England at half time, but Wales won 17-13 (Gareth Edwards was injured and replaced by Chico Hopkins at half time). Robert Norster and Robert Jones between them gave the English a salutory lesson in in line-out play in (I think ) 1988 which was the occasion that England were supposed to end a run of 26 years without a win in Cardiff and the BBC had assembled in the studio the entire 1962 team, all kitted out, to celebrate the fact; and of course there was the lovely occasion that an effigy of Will Carling’s head was impaled on a spike on the ramparts of Cardiff Castle. And didn’t Wales do it again when Scott Gibbs’ try and Neil Jenkins’ conversion did for them with the last kick of the match, this time at Wembley before the millennium stadium was opened?
So although Wales have been very disappointing this season, and particularly dire against Scotland, the other three matches have been reasonably close. Saturday’s game will be a close affair and the bookies, and, most importantly, the media, will make England favourites. That’s just how I like it…
PS. Wales won 27 – 18.