Calon (24 page)

Ryan, the only Welsh try-scorer, has broken his nose.
The oil-spill colours of the bruising are already spreading under his eyes.

Throwing his body into a tackle, Sam received a knock to the head. In the twenty-fifth minute he was being sick on the pitch. In the twenty-eighth he once again had to leave the field and watch his team play on without him.

Leigh kicked fourteen of Wales’s points. One of his penalties, though, hit the upright of the post. It was his first miss in sixteen match kicks at goal.

The game itself was tight and riddled with penalties. Twenty-four in the whole match, with many offside calls made by the linesmen.

At half-time, just three points adrift of Australia, with the score at 12–9, the other figures of the match were still stacked in Wales’s favour:

More statistics, however, illustrated how closely the teams were matched:

But as Wales sit in their changing room, their heads bowed, none of these numbers matter to the squad. The only ones that do are those which tell the result of the series: three–nil to Australia.

The Welsh squad embarked on this tour in the hope of winning either the series itself or at least a match. But as the lines and logos of the Allianz pitch are hosed away by the stadium staff, as the spectators walk back to their cars past creeper-hung trees, the squad know they have done neither. The word they most wanted to avoid is now theirs to own: whitewash. This is what the tour has been, and none of them, players or coaches, will hide from the fact, however much they wish it wasn’t true.

At noon the next day the whole squad are having lunch at a seafood restaurant beside the pavilion on Bondi Beach. This afternoon they will fly home. After
landing
at Heathrow, the team bus will take them to Cardiff, where, after their three weeks together, they will disperse. Last night, however, presented with the prospect of their first long break from rugby and rehab for over eighteen months, the Wales squad celebrated and commiserated together. Pooling the tour’s fine money, they bought crates of beer and began the evening drinking and
singing
at the hotel. Then, boarding the same coach that had taken them to and from the last test match, they went out into the city.

The teetotallers in the squad remained as such, but
many of those who’d been on alcohol bans for months on end finally got to break their fast. This morning several of the squad still haven’t been to bed. At this lunch on Bondi Beach, the drinks are still being ordered. When other Sunday diners enter the restaurant, they’re met by the sight of over forty large men in red occupying its entire central area. Some take photos, others frown for a moment before a friend or partner reminds them, ‘Wasn’t there a rugby game on or something?’

At one table at the far end of the room James Hook is holding court. Standing from his chair he points towards Ianto, sitting at another table. Having got
married
in Greece during the first week of the tour, Ianto had to forego his honeymoon to join the squad here in Australia. When he’d arrived in Brisbane he was fined twice, once for joining the tour late and again for ‘being a shit husband’.

Because the rest of the squad missed Ianto’s wedding, James thinks they should restage the nuptial dinner here and now, in the restaurant at Bondi. Pointing at other members of the squad he apportions their roles. ‘You can be father of the bride,’ he says, pointing at Ken. Then, pointing to Adam Jones, sitting beside Ianto, ‘Bomb’s the bride. I’ll be best man!’

One by one the other players oblige, standing and delivering short speeches, thanking the bridesmaids and praising the qualities, or not, of the groom. The
coaching
staff look on from further up the dining room as a
bizarre version of Ianto’s wedding unfolds before an
all-male
congregation in red.

Despite the laughter and the drink, yesterday’s defeat is still here, its resonance carried into the restaurant with the squad. Each of the players bears it individually too, both in the stud marks and bruises about their bodies, and as a deeper ache located somewhere under their ribs. But although it’s still here, it’s also gradually diminishing, being absorbed by the dynamics of the squad, by the
recognition
that the man next to you has been through what you’ve been through and is feeling what you’re feeling.

The mark of a team is not just in how they win, but also in how they lose. How they use the memory of that loss as fuel and as knowledge. And how they use it to come closer, rather than fall apart. For Wales, at the end of this tour and a long run of rugby stretching back to those pre-World Cup sessions in Poland, this is how they are doing that today. Diffusing Thumper’s funereal air of defeat by sharing in this wedding game, played out in a restaurant in Bondi as an Australian sun catches the waves on which the surfers ride, fall and swim back into, pushing themselves against the oncoming tide, to ride them again.

This book would not have been possible without the Arts Council Wales/WRU Artist in Residence scheme, and I am particularly grateful to Dai Smith and Roger Lewis for having the vision to create such a project with the aim of bringing the cultures of sport and the arts closer together in Wales. Over the last year I have been fortunate enough to spend time with both the national squad and several other teams across Wales. I would like to thank all the players and coaches who have granted me interviews and allowed me such a privileged insight into Welsh rugby and their lives. I am especially grateful to the players and coaches of the Wales tour to Australia for allowing me into their camp with such openness, and to Thumper for assimilating me into the logistical details of the tour.

As well as my first-hand research, several books have been invaluable in providing a broader context for
Calon
, including:
Fields of Praise: The Official History of the Welsh Rugby Union 1881–1981
by Dai Smith and Gareth Williams (Cardiff University Press, 1980);
A Game for Hooligans: The History of Rugby Union
by
Huw Richards (Mainstream, 2006);
The Welsh Grand Slam 2012
by Paul Rees (Mainstream, 2012);
Library of Wales, Sport
edited by Gareth Williams (Parthian, 2007);
Rugby’s Strangest Matches
by John Griffiths (Robson Books for Past Times);
Life at Number 10
by Neil Jenkins with Paul Rees (Mainstream, 1998);
Number Nine Dream
by Rob Howley with Graham Clutton (Mainstream, 1999).

I am also grateful to the following estates, authors and publishers for permission to quote from the following material: Sheenagh Pugh from her poem ‘Toast’, (
The Beautiful Lie
, Seren, 2002); Faber & Faber from Ted Hughes’s letter (
The Letters of Ted Hughes
edited by Christopher Reid, Faber & Faber, 2007), from Seamus Heaney’s ‘Postscript’
(The Spirit Level,
Faber & Faber, 1996) and from T. S. Eliot’s
The Four Quartets;
the estate of R. S. Thomas for quotations from ‘A Peasant’ and ‘Song at the Year’s Turning’ (© Kunjana Thomas, 2001); The Blims for quotations from ‘Sidesteps and Sideburns’ (www.theblims.co.uk); V2 Music for quotations from Stereophonics’ ‘Is Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today?’; and Universal Music for quotations from Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and Anthrax’s ‘Refuse to Be Denied’.

I would like to thank, as ever, my agent, Zoe Waldie, and my editor at Faber, Lee Brackstone, both of whom have supported me now for over a decade. I’m also
grateful
to Anne Owen for overseeing a tight production
schedule with such understanding, and to Ian Bahrami for his quick and thorough eye. Lastly, thanks to Ryan for letting me off when I lost at table tennis, and to Katherine Eluned, for the listening, the reading, the advice and for being there.

Owen Sheers is the author of two poetry collections,
The Blue Book
and
Skirrid Hill
(winner of the Somerset Maugham Award). His first novel,
Resistance
, has been translated into ten languages and was made into a film in 2011. Owen’s plays include National Theatre of Wales’s
The Passion
and
The Two Worlds of Charlie F
, which won the 2012 Amnesty Freedom of Expression Award. Brought up in Abergavenny, Owen played at scrum half for Pontypool Colts, Blaine Youth, Gwent u17/18, New College Oxford and the University of East Anglia 1st XV.

Calon
was written under the Arts Council Wales/WRU Artist-in-Residence scheme.

Non-fiction

THE DUST DIARIES

Poetry

THE BLUE BOOK

SKIRRID HILL

A POET’S GUIDE TO BRITAIN (ED.)

Fiction

RESISTANCE

WHITE RAVENS

THE GOSPEL OF US

Plays

THE PASSION

THE TWO WORLDS OF CHARLIE F