Chasing the Dragon

On the road at the 1999 Rugby World Cup

At the end of last summer, I was driving on Long Island’s Southern State Parkway when a car passed by me with a sticker on its rear bumper that read CYMRU AM BYTH — or, translated from the Welsh, “Wales for Ever.” My heart leapt. It’s rare enough in New York to meet another Welsh person, let alone one prepared to announce it the whole world. I sped up to the car and drove by, honking my horn and pointing behind me. The other driver–like me, a man in his early 30s–looked slightly aghast. Some crazy road rager, he obviously thought. But after I overtook him, he understood. On the back of my car was another sticker–the flag of Wales, a red dragon on a background of white and green. As I checked my rearview mirror, my fellow countryman flashed his lights and gave me a big smile and a hearty two thumbs up.

That brief encounter persuaded me to go home to Wales for the 1999 Rugby World Cup, where twenty of the top rugby playing nations were to meet, a month or so later, in a six-week-long competition. Rugby is immensely important in the United Kingdom, South Africa, France, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, and the South Pacific Islands, but in Wales, it is the national sport. After years of following the game from afar, I decided I had to be part of the action.

But it wasn’t just the prospect of attending the World Cup that excited me. After decades of decay, Wales was coming to life again. A principality of only three million inhabitants, Wales had recently been granted “devolution.” For the first time since 1283, in other words, Wales would not be directly ruled by England. Along with Welsh politics, Welsh culture also seemed to be flourishing : a brace of Welsh rock bands were dominating the British music scene, classical singers such as Bryn Terfel and Charlotte Church were gaining worldwide recognition, and Welsh actors like Catherine Zeta Jones and Ioan Gruffudd were breaking into Hollywood. Suddenly, it was cool to come from Cymru.

As I drove into Cardiff on the first day of the World Cup, for Wales’s opening game against Argentina, a gigantic structure suddenly rose before me–an enormous red, white, and blue oval pod with four huge white support arms jutting out. The building–the Millennium Stadium, which had been constructed specifically to host this World Cup, and which had replaced the old national stadium–dwarfed the surrounding office buildings. But architecture was the last thing on the minds of the estimated 100,000 Welsh rugby fans who were to descend on the city that morning.

By eleven o’clock, the fans had set about drinking the city’s pubs dry; according to the South Wales Echo, Cardiff’s local paper, they consumed some 500,000 pints of beer before the day was over. Streets all around the stadium had been closed off since early morning, and now they were awash in a human sea of red and white–the colors of the Welsh team. Outside the overflowing pubs, young men and women were singing the chorus from the Welsh team’s de facto anthem, “Cwm Rhondda” (“Bread of Heaven, feed me till I want no more”), and bastardized verses of “Delilah,” in honor of that favorite Welshman, Tom Jones. On the streets around the stadium, face painters did a brisk trade adding dragons, leeks, and the Welsh coat of arms to the already ruddy visages of burly grown men who at any other time wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing make-up. The city was engulfed in an expectant, celebratory, and yet nervy Welsh hysteria. All of Wales wanted to see its rugby team reclaim a sporting paradise once considered lost.

My formative years as a rugby fan coincided with a decade-long golden period, from 1970 to 1979, when Wales dominated International rugby. In those days Wales played with a flair and elan that would take your breath away and make the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. The Welsh team ruled the world, or so it seemed to me. Its stars were storybook heroes who (my bias aside) will be remembered as among the greatest to ever play the game. There was the scrum half Gareth Edwards; his mercurial halfback partner, Phil Bennett; the indefatigable and indestructible fullback, J.P.R. Williams; and the lightning-fast, staccato-footed wing, Gerald Davies, whose trademark sidestep I used to practice in my bedroom.

Today, Davies is a writer for London Times. Looking back on the 1970s, he says, “They tell us now it was the best of times. It was a period to be in, because it added to the Welsh identity, it gave us confidence as a nation. It was a fabulous time to be involved because it was the same gang that played from one season to the next and we all became friends.” Still, he adds, “It’s only when the time was over that people come and tell you, ‘You gave us a great feeling, you made us feel so good.’ No one tells you that at the time!”

Success evaporated in the 1980s. One by one, my heroes retired and there was no one to take their place. Sure, Wales still produced a few exceptional players, and the team won a few matches. But Its defeats were embarrasing: Romania in 1983, and Western Samoa in 1991. (“Thank God we weren’t playing the whole of Samoa,” went the joke at the time.) Then, in the summer of 1998, Welsh rugby reached its nadir: a humiliating 96-13 loss to South Africa.

Half of Wales probably contemplated committing suicide at this point. After all, Wales was going to host the World Cup in twelve months. Why bother if we couldn’t even compete anymore? Bereft of any better plan, people in Wales prayed for a miracle–and they got it, in the form of a new coach, Graham Henry, a canny New Zealander with bloodhound eyes and what many thought to be the perfect qualification for the job, an ironic outlook on life.

Many within the insular, curmudgeonly world of Welsh rugby hoped this usurper would fail, but when South Africa and Wales met again, three months after that crushing defeat, he guided Wales to within three points of victory. The score was impressive, but so was the attitude of the team – for the first time In years, they truly believed they could win.

In February came the Five Nations – a two month long annual competition between England, France, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. The final match pitted Wales against England, the eternal enemy. For nearly the whole game the English dominated the Welsh, but then, with two minutes to go, the Welsh Inside center, Scott Gibbs, received the ball. He crashed through one tackle, evaded a defender’s desperate lunge at his ankle, sidestepped another defender, then executed a right-angle swerve that belied his rhinoceros-like frame, flatfooting yet another defender, and then dove over the goal line, finger raised in salute. The game was ours, and Henry had a new nickname: “The Great Redeemer.”

Wandering among the fans in the Millennium Stadium on that first day of the World Cup, I felt out of place. For months, I had dreamed about this scene: finally back at home, I would soak up the pre-match atmosphere and get in touch with my roots. But I hadn’t been to a game for more than ten years, and now I was experiencing culture shock. Eager to feel more Welsh, whatever that might be, I went to the nearest shop and bought myself a new red-and-white scarf. This made me feel a little better but earned me some disparaging looks in the press box–at least until the Argentinian reporters arrived, dressed head-to-toe in blue and white, and began chanting “Argentina! Argentina!”

“Call themselves bloody journos!” a Sunday Times of London writer in the seat next to me grumbled. I tucked my scarf under my coat.

If it was Welshness I was missing, I needn’t have worried. The atmosphere inside the stadium was incredible, fueled by 72,500 roaring fans and a seating design that made you feel like you could touch the turf. At the end of the opening ceremony–an unabashed display of Welsh singing and celebration of past rugby glories–the crowd let out a thunderous roar of support for the Welsh team. I had never seen Welsh people so proud to be Welsh. It was both exciting and a little unnerving.

Wales played pitifully. So revved up were they, so keen to impress the now-adoring masses, that they reverted to exactly the type of timid, insecure play that coach Henry–now officially dubbed “The Messiah” by the Welsh press–had worked to eradicate. The supposed stars–the scrum-half Robert Howley, the man-mountain Scott Quinnell, and the hero against England, Scott Gibbs–all failed to impress. Only two snatch tries and Neil Jenkins’ kicking helped Wales prevail, 23-18.

The final whistle had hardly blown before the critics started griping. What they complained about wasn’t so much the team’s performance–a win is a win, the relieved masses seemed to feel–as It was the opening ceremony. “When will we learn that this self-importance and silly nationalism that has marked Wales for so long is very unattractive to the rest of Britain and the world?” one incensed reader wrote to the Echo. “What a load of rubbish,” was the succinct opinion of another reader.

Even Eddie Butler, a former Welsh rugby captain, joined in. Now a journalist for the London Observer, Butler caustically wondered what the song “Everyday I Thank the Lord I’m Welsh,” which the hit rock band Catatonia played at the opening ceremony, had to do with welcoming nineteen other nations. “Wales is now that little place,” he wrote, “that has swapped its feet on the ground for a puffed-out chest and which is currently floating like a blimp somewhere over the Irish Sea.”

Typical Welshman, I thought. Never celebrate something if you can have a go at it first.

Lack of confidence was not something the English needed worry about. Their first game had been against lowly Italy, and they had stuffed them, 67-7. The three other favorites–New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa–had also all won their games easily, but France had struggled to beat Canada. England’s next game would be against the New Zealand All Blacks–the toughest match in the competition so far–and most of the English newspapers were already referring to it as a dress rehearsal for the final itself.

The following week, in Wales’ second match against Japan, the Welsh fullback Shane Howarth ripped the Japanese defense to shreds with a series of rapier attacks from deep in his own territory, and Wales won easily, 64-9. The stadium was packed and the singing was inspired. But Wales had been expected this match to be a romp. Now, as the fans filtered out of the stadium on another beautiful sunny afternoon–almost unheard of for Cardiff in October–there were more pressing matters to attend to, like getting to the nearest pub in time to watch the England-New Zealand game.

I sprinted across Cardiff’s pedestrian streets and made it to the Bar Essential, where some friends were gathered. The pub was filled with Welsh fans, except for one small group of English university students who had reserved a couple of tables close to the television and were politely cheering on their team. They had no idea what they were in for. When Jonah Lomu, the six-foot six-inch, 260-pound All Black winger ran through three England players to score the winning try, the pub hit fever pitch. The All Blacks defeated England, 30-16 and the Welsh crowd was exultant. “I have to bloody work with them five days a week,” one Welshman said of the English after the game, smug with pleasure. The English fans looked bewildered and crestfallen. How could the Welsh hate England that much?

The truth is, we don’t–except when it comes to rugby, and then every buried resentment against England and their assumed superiority over the Welsh (and the Scots, and the Irish, for that matter) comes to the surface. Although rugby in Wales has long been seen as the game of the people (it was introduced In Welsh grammar schools at the end of the nineteenth century and soon became an essential focal point of Welsh small-town life), English rugby will forever be associated with the privileged English elite. For the Welsh in rugby, for the Scots in soccer, and for the Australians in all sports, beating England has centuries of baggage attached to it.

“The worst rugby day I can ever remember,” said Peter Stead, a co-editor of Heart and Soul, an anthology of insightful essays devoted to Welsh rugby, “was the Ringer sending-off at Twickenham.”

I had arranged to have lunch with Stead and his co-editor, Huw Richards, a rugby writer for the Financial Times, and now, as we sat in a restaurant that was South Wales’s answer to Tex-Mex, Stead was recounting the infamous 1980 match in which the Welsh forward Paul Ringer was sent off for a late tackle on John Horton, the English outside-half. Wales lost 10-9 that day, and the defeat marked the end of Wales’ s rugby domination. “I think it was Orwell who said,” Stead continued, “‘If you dropped a bomb on the West car park at Twickenham you would end any danger of fascism in this country.’ That day, the English middle class never looked more arrogant. They were there in their shooting breaks with their games pies and their champagne, and there we were in our duffle coats. We looked like poor cousins.”

As we chased some dodgy tacos away with pints of lager, I asked what being a Welsh fan meant to them. “For me,” Stead answered, “it works on so many different levels. There is a sense of national identity, or cultural pride. There’s enormous pride in the singing, and in the fact that although you’re only a hundred and fifty miles from London, there’s another language. Then there is the sight of the red shirts. As you grow older and more sentimental, you wipe a tear from your eye.”

On the surface, the idea that one nation should need to define itself so completely through one sport can seem fairly ridiculous. But when you take a closer look at the loosely stitched patchwork that is modern Wales, it’s obsession with rugby becomes understandable.

There never has been a united Wales. The last time the Welsh people can claim to have been independent, in the late thirteenth Century, a new English king, Edward I, exploited the infighting between the ruling Princes of North and South Wales and took the spoils for himself. Wales, has been ruled by England ever since. Today, distrust between the traditionally insular, conservative North and the more anglicised, cosmoplitan South continues – and the situation hasn’t been helped by centuries of institutional neglect by London. It’s pretty tough to unite a north and south divided by mountains when there is no major road link between the two, and when the hub for all Welsh railway connections is in England.

In recent years, politicians and the media have sought to promote the Welsh language as a future symbol of unity. But only 20 percent of the nation speaks Welsh, mostly in the North and in mid-Wales, and, so far, the push to expand it and establish it as the language of government has only succeeded in alienating the English speaking Welsh in the South. In 1997 Wales voted to establish an autonomous national assembly by a margin of less than one per cent. This down-the-middle split is reflected in the views of my friends and family. There is, for example, my friend Helen, a Welsh speaker and a firm believer in the new Wales. “I feel Welsh European,” she told me one evening. “I never refer to myself as British anymore.” Then there is my English-speaking father, who voted against the devolution, which he considers a waste of his time and money. Given the differences, it’s no wonder the Welsh are fixating on their grievances against the English rather than trying to unite themselves.

“There’s no doubt at all,” Peter Stead had remarked over lunch, ” that the state of the game is hyped and created by the media. A Welsh elite, and particularly the broadcasting elite, has decided that rugby is going to be the new expression of our national identity.” It seemed true during my visit.Stories about the national team led every newscast. The local paper covered little else, and this, my parents told me, had been going on for months. Even North Wales, traditionally a soccer bastion, had caught the rugby bug.

On the morning of Wales’s third match, against Samoa, the city was once more throbbing with anticipation. The face painters were back on the streets and young women were enjoying the unseasonably warm weather in dragon dresses made from the Welsh flag. Another win and Wales would be guaranteed a place in the quarterfinals.

The Samoans, however, had the reputation of being big, hard players, and as they took the field, it was clear that this team was no exception. Within minutes of the kickoff, Shane Howarth, the hero of the Japan game, tried one of his traditional darting runs up the middle of the field–and was knocked flat by a Samoan tackler. A groan went around the stadium. Still, the players were running well, and soon they were awarded a penalty, about thirty meters from the Samoan goal posts. The crowd went quiet as Neil Jenkins, the Welsh outside half, lined up the kick.

For eight years, Jenkins–a balding redhead with jug ears who bore little resemblance to the image of the modern sports star–had been a controversial choice at outside half. In the view of many, Jenkins, a prolific goal kicker, nevertheless failed to live up to the mercurial running and passing talents of the great Welsh outside halves of the past-“King” Barry John, Phil Bennett, and, in more recent years, Jonathan Davies. When Graham Henry took over as coach, many assumed Jenkins would be discarded, but instead he was reborn. (Behold, the touch of the Messiah again!) Now, if Jenkins made this kick, he would break the world record for most points scored in international matches–911. He steadied himself, looked up at the posts and down at his boots, took a few steps forward, and kicked. The ball sailed high in an impressive arc towards the posts but then hit the left upright and bounced back into the arms of a Somoan player. The crowd looked on in horror. It was going to be a long game.

Jenkins broke the record with his next kick, but Wales could do little else right, and despite an all-out attack in the final stages, the team went down 38-31. Gloom descended on the crowd. One man walking behind me as I left the stadium summed it up. “Bloody typical,” he said. “I’ve been coming twenty years to see them play, and always leave disappointed.” Wales felt united that afternoon, but not in the way I think the politicians envisioned.

Wales’ progress to the quarterfinal was no longer guaranteed. With some frantic consulting of the tournament rule book and some quick calculations, I was able to figure out that if Argentina defeated Japan in the final group match by fewer than 69 points, Wales would be declared the winners of the group and would meet Australia (which had waltzed through its qualifying group) a week later. Argentina would meet Ireland, and Samoa would have to play Scotland. So it transpired that two days after the Samoa debacle, fifty thousand Welsh fans returned to the Millennium Stadium, this time reinvented as Argentinian fanaticos. And nos compadres didn’t disappoint: they turned in a 33-12 win and allowed all of Wales to breathe a little easier.

Wales-Australia was the big one, without a doubt the most important match that Wales had played in many years.

Coach Henry wasn’t taking any chances. He had talked Wales’s chances down so much that one worried his team might need collective therapy. The former Australian great David Campese was sure of it. “I know the Welsh love to sing their hymns, and ‘Land of My Fathers’ (the national anthem),” he told The Times, “but I hope they can hum as well because there are no words to the Death March.”

There wasn’t a sober person in Wales who really thought we could beat Australia–but by kickoff time there were very few sober people in Wales. The Echo had set the tone with its headline call to arms: “COMETH THE HOUR, COMETH THE MEN.” It didn’t matter that Australia had won the World Cup in 1991, or that they had yet to lose a game in this World Cup. When the crowd rose to sing the anthem, they belted it out with such vim that I thought I might cry. Instead, the heavens did: as the game got underway, with the Millennium Stadium’s fancy new retractable roof open to the elements, the players were subjected to the sort of driving tempest only Wales can offer. The Welsh team seemed to revel in the quagmire that the field soon became and attacked Australia from all angles. At half time, Wales trailed by only 10-9.

Incredibly, Wales continued to match Australia in the second half. Surely this couldn’t be the same team that had lost to Western Samoa? Then, with less than ten minutes to go, reality hit home. Stephen Larkham, the Australian outside half, put through a deft kick that on any other occasion would have been intercepted by Shane Howarth. Instead, the ball stuck firm in the mud, allowing the Aussie wing, Ben Tune, to reach the ball and touch down for the try. Several minutes later, the referee compounded Welsh misery by awarding Australia another try, even though the scorer, Tim Horan, had obviously dropped the ball forward – an infringement of the rules. At the final whistle, Wales had been convincingly beaten 24-9, but the crowd, bitter, and dejected, booed the referee all the way off the pitch.

That night I met up with an old friend, Andrew, for a couple of drinks. The mood in the city was one of exhaustion. After having been force-fed a constant diet of expectation by the media, the Welsh people couldn’t quite believe the tournament, for them at least, was over. Where did that leave Welsh rugby’s revival, so central to the new national sensibility? We couldn’t be sure. “If we’d carried on losing after Henry took over,” Andrew said, “and the World cup had been a complete embarrassment, that could have been the death of rugby in Wales. It certainly is an interesting question: If Graham Henry went tomorrow, what confidence would we have in the team in six months?” Maybe the two of us were just guilty of that classic Welsh pessimism, and of still craving the lost glory years. “The problem,” Andrew went on to say, “is that sad gits like us who got spoiled are now the ones running the media.”

The new Wales didn’t collapse with Wales’s defeat, and now it was time to sit back and watch the competition unfold.

Thankfully, England lost to South Africa. Scotland lost to New Zealand. The following week, Australia beat South Africa in one semifinal, and in the other France shocked the rugby world by upending New Zealand. That defeat not only cost the All Black coach his job but also contributed to the reelection defeat of New Zealand’s prime minister. (And people say the Welsh are hung up on rugby!)

On November 6, Australia met France in the final. An estimated 150,000 fans came to Cardiff that day. The event was a true international fiesta, and all the Welsh seemed to be relieved the pressure was off. As with so many major finals, the Australia-France match was a disappointing affair: Australia soundly defeated the French. As the sound system played, “I Am a Wallaby,” the Australian captain, John Eales, accepted the trophy from the Queen of England. Just a few hours before, Australia had narrowly voted against removing the Queen from her position as head of the Australian state, and Eales, a staunch Republican who had made it clear he wanted her to go, must have bit his tongue a little during his royal encounter. It was a situation that no Welsh captain need worry about for some time.

This story ran in Doubletake magazine in 1999.