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nathjonesey-75 · 7 years

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The Day The World Champions Were Beaten

One of the very few perks about being out of work is occasionally you can make the utmost of your time and good weather. In particular if it all coincides with a special occasion.

As it happens, today I have the weather and the jersey to commemorate a significant day in my existence, along with those of my family, friends and circle of people with whom I grew to my adulthood (notice I didn’t say maturity).

It is now twenty-five years to the date where my home town of Llanelli defeated the world champions, Australia – in what would prove to be the last of its kind for a famous rugby club and community, entrenched in challenging politically and industrially-changing times. More than just that, it became more timely for my family and I, as it was the first time I’d lost someone close to me.

And what a place to do so. At the very end of the first half, the stadium was sent into rapture with a world-class back move leading to a try, under the posts for Ieuan Evans. One moment I’ll never forget.

Yet it was the drama which followed that even today’s top scriptwriters would struggle to invent. An ambulance, upon the half-time whistle boarded the playing field which was rocking with expectation and excitation for the second half to come. One of my crew of school friends; as we stood behind one set of posts, recognised my mother and her unmistakeable pink puffer jacket climbing aboard the back of the ambulance.

No sooner had Ryan’s words alerted me – a tannoy announcement asking for my father and I to come to reception, immediately. Something unrelated, yet clearly occurring at this monumental match; something serious had happened. Something the seventeen year-old in me couldn’t have predicted.

In the unbelievable excitement of Evans scoring what would prove to be the winning (and only) try of the match, my grandfather had suffered a severe heart attack. Up in the stand, among another twenty-thousand people.

A numbness fell over the seventeen-year-old me. I was due to start work for the first time, part-time work at the local Co-op Supermarket at 4pm, after the match. Scarlets were beating the world champions and my grandfather was being rushed to the hospital. It was as though time had stood still. In the days before mobile phones, today’s medical technology and professional rugby, I can only imagine how it could pan out today. Regardless; on Saturday November 14th, 1992 at around 3:40pm, my father took me to the Co-op.

We explained the situation to the assistant manager, who was very sympathetic. He kindly gave me the option of not working. I declined as I had absolutely no idea what I should have done. Had it been another job in this era or today; it would certainly have been a different outcome. Still, as we listened to the end of the match on the radio in the Co-op staff room, the jubilation of beating Australia felt a bit muffled inside me.

Before the big showdown at Stradey Park – the curtain-raiser match (as was always the case before a big international touring team visited) was Llanelli Under-11s playing against another South Wales team. That day it was the Vale of Glamorgan Under-11s. Both my father and grandfather were the coaches, so were involved in not only the pre-match event, but had raised some of the match-winners playing against Australia in the main event, during their previous twenty-five years as coaches there. Colin Stephens (who kicked two drop-goals putting the match beyond Australia’s reach), Mark Perego and Nigel Davies – all of whom represented Wales during their careers – all stood tall against the world champions. Yet as my “student shift” of four hours seems now to have flown by, it was an anaesthetised following twelve hours among the ecstatic and celebratory town centre.

My parents had told me not to come to the hospital, as the man I called “Dats” was a mass of tubes. So I am forever grateful to my great friend Karl who stayed as not only my company for Saturday night, but then let me stay at his parents’ house. Until my parents called at his family home around 8:15 the following morning of the fifteenth. Five hours before that, Thomas Howard John had failed to recover from a heart aneurysm and had passed away. He was sixty-eight.

Among the immobilised emotions which would not really hit me for quite a few weeks (but when they did they hit hard); the gunshot salute by the Royal Air Force as I bore the body at a classically wet, Llanelli funeral; most poignantly my Auntie Gwen – my grandfather’s eldest sister of six sisters, who was a good decade older than he was; hugging me uncontrollably upon her arrival at her little brother’s house, in a feeling of devastation.

Notably, the Friday evening following the grand victory; Llanelli played Cambridge University at home in a friendly match. Before the match there was a minute’s silence, as well as a deserved mention in the match programme for all he and my father had done over many years at the club. It still hadn’t sunk in with me.

It has probably taken me twenty-five years to be able to recount the whole experience in as much detail. As not only a grandfather, but a friend and role-model, a war veteran and enthusiast of many cultural aspects - it became a huge void which opened for my life, as well as my family’s lives in the following few years.

Only two weeks later, I was selected in the extended Wales Schools Under-18s squad. Not only was I disappointed and upset he would not see it, I felt aggrieved – for all he had given me could not be returned.

What seems a lifetime later; perhaps fittingly – in Australia’s sun - with a beautiful wife whom I wish he could have met and my two little canine friends (whom I address yng Ngymraeg), I wear the same jersey with utmost pride, which beat the 1991 World Champion Wallabies at Stradey Park. He couldn’t have chosen a better last memory, nor could many others write it.

“...the running off the ball.... Ieuan Evans! Does to the Australians, what they’ve been doing to the rest of the world for the last fifteen months....”

Lyn Davies, BBC Match Commentator, Llanelli vs Australia 14.11.92

#LlanellivAustralia #LlanelliRFC #Scarlets #Australia #1992 #ClassicRugby #RugbyUnion #RWC1991

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