Wales are back at the top table of rugby

It was the morning after the party to end all parties. How is the hangover Warren Gatland was asked and the coach of the Wales team that 18 hours earlier had won the Grand Slam smiled ruefully and said: "not as bad as I expected." Alongside Gatland, Ryan Jones looked as though he had not been to bed. The Wales captain rolled his eyes in response to a similar question.

Wales's achievement in beating England after being 16-6 down at half-time, then Scotland, Italy, Ireland and then France was enormous. This, Wales's tenth Grand Slam, was better than the one in 2005, won by a tighter unit, harder, more pragmatic, with one or two players such as Martyn and Shane Williams who have the capability to change a game.

The victory over Ireland in 2005 that won Wales their 9th Grand Slam was a remarkable occasion, a sunny day, the roof of the stadium open, the stands a mass of red and green. But Ireland in 2005 did not compete as hard as France in 2008. Ireland did not give the Wales forwards as hard a time as the French. The overall commitment and intensity of the game three years ago was not on the same level as this one.

Furthermore, the victory over France in 2008 was better than the victory over France in 1978, the one that won Wales their eighth Grand Slam. That team was the one of Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett and the gap these magnificent playery left when they retired meant that Wales were denuded. Not for nothing was it another 28 years before Wales won the Grand Slam again.

Attacks don't win matches, Shaun Edwards has been saying all season, and he was proved right. In more than 400 minutes of rugby Wales's parsimonious defence conceded only two tries and as Edwards pointed out "one of those was from a bad throw at a lineout and one was from a cross kick so our defensive line wasn't really broken once."

Edwards and his blitz defence are as much a part of this Wales triumph as James Hook and his youthful promise, Stephen Jones and his tactical mastery, the massive efforts of the Wales forwards and the individual brilliance of either Williams.

At the end of the game a fan in the row behind me in the Millennium Stadium handed me a glass of beer to drink. He wore a red rugby shirt and throughout the game he had been shouting his support: "ref, he's offside" as a Frenchman threatened to make a break. "Ref, that was a forward pass".  "Oggy, oggy, oggy."

When the final whistle blew he was hoarse and it signalled a merciful end to the noise. Yet one understood what he and his friends were going through. He put me in a headlock and squeezed, massive forearms feeling as though they were made of steel. And then he kissed me. His friends alongside him shook my hand too as though I had personally delivered this wonderful triumph to him, to them.

Things are going Wales's way, whether it is Cardiff City in the FA Cup, Duffy topping the hit parade or now the national team in the national sport becoming the top team in the northern hemisphere. No wonder Westgate Street in Cardiff was grid-locked with unmoving traffic on Saturday evening, St Mary's Street, too.

I have covered sport around the world for four decades - Olympics, rugby World Cups, Ryder Cups, Lions' tours. In my mind this was an occasion that was as memorable as any. I didn't mind being put in a headlock. I understood what it meant to him because, as a Welshman, it meant a lot to me too.

Journalists are supposed to be callow calm men of impartiality. No cheering in the press box is the title of a book by an American journalist and about his life in sports journalism. Normally able to follow that maxim, I admit, blushingly, that as Mark Jones wove his way from one end of the pitch to the other I thought I was seeing something I had never seen the like of before. I was on my feet cheering - and I shouldn't have been. The code of ethics had been broken.

But who could not cheer as an unfancied team had been turned into winners by resolute management, by a dogged  reluctance to give in, a remarkable self-belief? A pack of forwards said to be overweight and flabby had been strong enough to take a strike against the head in the third quarter - and then push the French pack back ten yards.  That summed up it all up.

Wales's triumph in the 2008 Six Nations was a triumph against the odds and the encouraging aspect of it all is that there is real talent in this team, a depth that should see them improve for the next couple of years. Wales set off to South Africa for two Tests in June as the northern hemisphere champions six months after losing to Fiji and being knocked out of the World Cup. South Africa will be harder than anything they experienced in the Six Nations.

Meanwhile, Wales are back at the top table of rugby and a nation rejoices. The only Welshman who was a bit down in the aftermath of this historic game was Stephen Jones, who had brought Wales home to this historic and impressive victory. The fly half was rushing around the car park at the team's hotel on Sunday morning looking for a set of jump leads to start his automatic car. "I left it in park yesterday morning and the battery's gone flat" a red-faced Jones explained.

Comments

[Caroline Roberts]

Did any 'Times'photographer's bother to attend the spectacular Match at the Millenium Stadium on Saturday???
Judging by yesterday's sports pages they were all too busy at Twickenham trying to capture England's Cipriani in as many shots as possible. No less than seven photgraphs supporting five pages of reporting on the England game!
Did they win the Grand Slam??

[Hywel Williams]

I couldn't agree more with Sian and Mark - the Championship winners had to wait until page 4 to get a mention in the Sunday (English) Times. It was all about Cipriani this and Asthon that for a side that fared rather poorly overall. It is time we had a truly British newspaper.

[Mark Davies]

So England beating a poor Ireland side merits more headlines than Wales winning a Grand Slam. Biased English-centric media again. Please note too, that Wales have won more Grand Slams in the Six Nations era than England.

[Sian Evans]

Question: Which is the greatest achievement? England having a new fly half or Wales winning the Grand Slam?
Answer: In The Sunday Times' opinion obviously the former. Reports on the Welsh success are only worthy of page 4. We all know what coverage would have been like if England had won the Grand Slam but it seems you have to give them pride of place no matter how well any of the other British teams perform.