Gareth Edwards recalls 1978 Grand Slam win

Mar 14 2008 by Steffan Rhys, Western Mail

IT IS 30 years since Gareth Edwards’s Wales career ended with a Grand Slam-winning defeat of the French. As the current crop attempt to emulate the achievement, Wales’ greatest ever player told Steffan Rhys about the emotional moment

WHEN Wales last won the Grand Slam against France 30 years ago, it was a bittersweet moment for one of the country’s sporting icons.

After the final whistle on March 18, 1978, Gareth Edwards was swamped for the last time by the adoring Welsh rugby fans who had followed his every break in the No 9 shirt he had worn illustriously in 53 tests.

The three decades between the scrum half’s final game and tomorrow’s bid for another Grand Slam have seen only occasional delirious peaks – the Grand Slam of 2005 and Triple Crown of 1988 among them – rising from an otherwise barren period for Welsh rugby.

Like the players who will take the field at the Millennium Stadium tomorrow, the class of ’78 had also returned to Cardiff after securing the Triple Crown with a four point win over the Irish in Dublin.

They had also beaten England in a dour match at Twickenham and the Scots in Cardiff.

France, meanwhile, had won at Murrayfield and beaten England and Ireland in Paris, and were also aiming for a clean sweep.

They arrived with established names like flankers Jean-Pierre Rives and Jean-Claude Skrela, and skipper Jean-Pierre Bastiat in their midst.

There had been concern before the game that Phil Bennett, who also made his last appearance for Wales that day, would not play because of injury and a half-back partner for Edwards was being debated in the preceding week.

In the event, the outside-half scored two tries which pulled Wales back into the game (they were 7-0 down after 25 minutes) and ultimately took them to a 16-7 victory.

“It was a mood of obvious excitement but one of sadness because I knew, although I had not put an ultimate date on my retirement, that it was my last season and therefore my last match but I tried to avoid thinking of it like that,” said Edwards, who snapped over a late drop goal on the day.

“In those days the French were immensely strong with players like Rives, Bastiat and Skrela – there is nobody remotely like that in today’s game.

“We always knew it was going to be tight, we had won the Grand Slam in 1976, the French had won it 1977 and we were both going for it this time.

“There was no chance of it being anything other than a hard battle. I wouldn’t suggest for a moment it was the greatest game. There was no quarter given or asked, we had to earn that victory and it was a great moment.”

But for Edwards, it was also the end. In 2005, he recounted the moment that realisation hit home.

“At the end, amid the jubilation of another grand slam, Jean-Pierre Rives said in his broken English, ‘Today, Gareth, you were the old fox. You were the master. This was your day.’

“And he looked at me and said, ‘Maybe next year, in Paris, it will be mine.’

“And I said, ‘Yes, Jean-Pierre, it probably will be.

“As I spoke I suddenly knew. But I just said it to myself, ‘I don’t think there’s going to be a next year.’

“And so it proved.”

The scrum half, who celebrated his 60th birthday last July, said the excitement that has gripped the whole of Wales this week would have been as keenly felt in 1978, though perhaps to a lesser extent.

“There would have been a huge amount of excitement. It was going to be a highlight and we had just won the Triple Crown. It was a special team,” said Edwards.

“But I don’t think we would have had the same amount of attention. And, of course, we had to go to work every day so you felt an everyday sense of comfort to an extent, but at the same time you would always have people with an interest in the match ahead.”

Fans without a ticket for tomorrow’s Grand Slam showdown can watch the game on a big screen in Cardiff’s Civic Centre. Free admission for 7,000 fans will be on a first-come-first-served basis and all three Six Nations games will be shown, starting with Italy v Scotland at 1pm.