UKHamlet's Blog

The Six Nations Championship is upon us again. Speaking as a Welshman, the first game is absolutely critical this time. Talk about your whole season hanging on one game. If we win at Twickers – which would be a mighty task given the history of this game – we will be on a roll. History is against us though. Not only will it be our 4th Six Nations win against the English in a row but it includes back to back wins at Twickers . We’ve done it before, but not very often – certainly not in the last thirty years :

• 1950 & 1952 (4 win streak ’49-’52)
• 1970 & 1972 (5 win streak ’69-’73)
• 1976 & 1978 (5 win streak ’75-’79)

In our first golden era we had a 10 game unbeaten run (1899-1909). In our second golden era we had only lost once (1974) to England in the period 1969-1979.

Can this team do what the Golden Era boys did?

We are 8th in the IRB table, only Scotland and Italy are below us, with England, France and Ireland 2, 3 and 4 places above us respectively. We have just come off the back of a pretty dire autumn series, our regional teams are stuttering and our management seems bereft of new ideas.

So far has the stock of our coaches fallen, that the Irish are suggesting that they’re glad they sacked him. Obviously, their Grand Slam is worth both ours. Now, it would be churlish to suggest that they only got theirs courtesy of a missed game winning penalty by Stephen Jones, but no more so than the implication that Gatland is an Irish hater. He probably has a gripe about the IRFU, but who wouldn’t given his treatment? They are lucky they have a great coach in Declan K – who has turned a team of honest plodders into a tenacious fighting unit. He took one season to do that.

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Bangers and Smash

Kerrranngg - Banger Racing at its best

There are many ways to send a perfectly good car to an early grave, the most obvious is to give it to a company rep. Less apparent, but lots more fun is to take it to Llandre Airfield on the third Sunday of the month and enter it into a contest with the bargain basement Schumachers of South East Wales. For here, on two miles of windswept concrete, the wannabe Formula One drivers of tomorrow pit their skills against each other practising the black arts of banger racing.

Llandre Airfield is at best a cold, desolate place. Geographically and economically juxtaposed between the burgeoning, commercial district of the Vale Enterprise Park and the old, now nearly defunct, Llandre Industrial Estate, it represents a sad reflection of the best hopes and worst fears of that greatest of decades, the 1950s. In the pantheon of ridiculous planning decisions, Llandre must rank up there with Birmingham’s spaghetti junction, Milton Keynes and the age-old decision to site the Capital City in the most vulnerable part of the UK.

Situated some fifteen miles from Cardiff (equidistant from the other nearest population centre, Bridgend), marginally less accessible than the nearby Cardiff-Wales airport and only some five miles from St Athan RAF base, the airfield has no discernible commercial or military purpose. It must have been the fantasy of some long forgotten Alderman serving the adjacent market town of Bont Bettws to have an airport. Perhaps he or she believed it would enhance the status, prosperity and expectations of a town long over reliant on the twin pillars of rural life, the market and the public house. Whatever, the Alderman was wrong and Llandre Airfield suffered a graceless death in the early sixties, existing henceforth as a vivid concrete scar in the middle of rustic Glamorgan’s timeless beauty. That is, until recently when some bright sparks decided to transform it into a Jonni Bach Imola with a Welsh accent. Continue reading