Wales can win an arm wrestle at Twickers

Jan 28 2008 by Delme Parfitt, South Wales Echo

WIND the clock back 20 years and Mark Ring is in a London nightclub with Ieuan Evans, Mike Hall, Glen Webbe and Staff Jones.

Pontypool prop Staff is unwittingly ruining a thousand chat-up lines, but the beer and champagne is still going down a treat.

The Welsh boys are in good heart, and it’s not surprising.

They’ve just kicked off the Five Nations with an 11-3 win at Twickenham.

OK, so Mick ‘the Munch’ Skinner hasn’t taken it well, getting embroiled in a shoving match with Glen Webbe at the post-match reception – an altercation finally settled when Webbe thrashed him in an arm wrestle in full view of amazed guests in the hotel foyer – but you can’t have everything.

And so what if Rowland Phillips had a Black Forest gateau slapped in his face as the table wine started to take effect?

These are heady times, to be savoured and then remembered. Wales have beaten England at Twickenham.

Amid all the euphoric mayhem though, nobody knows that it will not happen again for at least another 20 years.

And yet Ring believes this Saturday could mark the end of a fallow period that now threatens to extend even beyond England’s old Arms Park hoodoo that ran between 1963 and 1991.

The reason? A combination of factors really.

First, Ring has little regard for the Brian Ashton version of the Red Rose, his stinging criticism of them during the World Cup triggered Angry of Gloucester to protest via the Echo postbag on more than one occasion.

Second, he believes that even with only 10 days preparation time Warren Gatland might just be able to complement Wales’ strike-running threat with greater solidity at set-piece and in defence.

Third, Ring, is a notorious believer in fate and reckons the 20-year anniversary of the 1988 exploits might just see the Gods smile on the men in red.

“I have a feeling Wales might just do it,” said the former Cardiff and Pooler wizard, who wore the number 13 jersey in a dazzling Welsh back line two decades ago that had Jonathan Davies pulling the strings from fly-half.

“To me England just seem trapped in a negative zone. Ashton tries to come across as strong but I think he lost the plot at the World Cup and much of their progress was down to the senior players.

“Gatland has said he doesn’t know how England will play. Well, for me, they will yet again revert to type and just try to rely on set-piece domination and Jonny Wilkinson kicking penalties.

“It’s a strategy that is ingrained in the players anyway because of the need to get results in the Guinness Premiership.

“This is where Wales have a chance in my view. If they can hold their own up front they have the skill and the invention to tear England to shreds.

“I hope they can do what the Ospreys did to Gloucester the other night.

“The key will be in whether they believe from the start they can do it.

“That was us back in 1988 and it showed in the manner of our victory.

“That is Gatland’s biggest challenge.”

Ring hasn’t ever worked with Gatland, but like so many others in the game he has watched his work from afar and been impressed.

And having worked for the last two seasons in Ireland with Limerick side Old Crescent, he knows the Wales coach isn’t short of admirers in the country he coached between 1998-2001.

“When he was appointed Wales coach I remember getting a taxi in Limerick and the driver was a rugby fanatic,” Ring recalled.

“He went on and on about how highly regarded Gatland still is in Ireland for what he did for their team.

“He spoke of how most supporters were sorry to see him go and that Gatland is still seen as the architect of Ireland’s revival.

“My own feeling is that he and Shaun Edwards will get the basics right and then build from there.

“It really does depend what England bring to the party on Saturday and how much Gatland has been able to get into the minds of the Welsh players.

“But I am confident – and I haven’t said that about this fixture for a long, long time.”

Not, in fact, in the entire professional era. Which is why the biennial recollections of the class of ‘88 will continue to get an airing.

That the game back then continues to take on such resonance only magnifies in the time it is taking to repeat it.

Ryan Jones and his boys will be entitled to beer and champagne should they manage to do so in five days time.

But they’ll probably give the gateau and the arm-wrestling a miss.

delme.parfitt@mediawales.co.uk

20 Years Of Hurt - England 390, Wales 116 - page 2