Back in the arms of my fathers

Zut alors, I am back in Wales and so are the team. No more cross-channel ferries. No more French motorways. No more "un coffee creme, trois bieres et l'addition, s'il vous plait monsieur"  - at least not for a week. I have exchanged the seven-mile beach in La Baule, considerately placed just outside my hotel window, for the A48 west of Cardiff and the sight of an occasional plane coming in to land at what used to be known as Rhoose airport down near the Bristol Channel.

For now the sun is still shining, as it was in La Baule, Cardiff is decked out in traditional pre-match colours and Wales begin to believe they can beat Australia in their important Pool B match in Cardiff. Earlier this week I drove past the school I attended a million years ago and past the playing field. It adjoins Llandaff Cathedral, where I sang as a choirboy, and abuts Western Avenue in the capital. God    nows how many times I got the ball as a pimply-faced nine-year-old and charged with it, imagining I was some Welsh hero. I must have played cricket on the same field but funnily enough I have no recollection of doing so.

In Wales, of course, the match only begins when the final whistle blows. That's when the arguing and debating starts.

"Why the hell did so and so kick when that move went down the right?"
"Bloody hell my grandmother could have converted Alfie's try."
"Dew, dew, didn't the boys do well?"

Do you remember a cartoonist called Gren? Well you would only if you were Welsh or lived in Wales. He drew funny cartoons about archetypical Welsh situations, like the boys from Pontardulais getting ready to go down to the match in Cardiff, the boys out celebrating after a match. It was to my great pleasure that a regular in his cartoons was a journalist, a rugby writer, whose name  was "Byline Hopkins".

So mes amis, Byline Hopkins I am and a little respect from you will not go amiss. I have covered games in Cardiff since the early 1970s and attended a few before that. I saw Phil Bennett dancing his way around the pitch, Barry John too. I remember the gymnastic ability of Gareth Edwards, the darting and breathtaking speed of Gerald Davies.

Today's heroes are smaller, lighter and slower. Age does that. It not only renders policemen younger by the year but it means that good as Alun-Wynn Jones is, he is not so athletic nor so gifted nor so, well, heroic, as Delme Thomas. That's what heroes are, isn't it? People raised above the norm, people who could no wrong. Barry John was the greatest stand-off I have ever seen, James Hook and Stephen Jones and even Johnny Wilkinson notwithstanding. Mervyn Davies was beyond compare. JPR Williams was inspirational.

I don't care that the game is professional now and that it was amateur when I was growing up. I don't care that Alun-Wyn Jones is four stone heavier and an inch or two taller than Delme Thomas. I don't care that he trains most days, is an outstanding example of a modern all round second row forward. To me he ain't Delme Thomas and that's that.

Or is it? Wales need a huge game from numbers 1-22 to beat Australia. How nice that would be - to see a southern hemisphere beaten in the northern hemisphere. It will be hard but Gren, who sadly died not long ago, would have liked it, Max Boyce would like it and, come to that, so would Byline Hopkins.