For the first 47 years of my life the European Cup meant only one thing – Manchester United. Whenever United went into Europe I followed their progress by any means available. Every word in the newspapers, each crackling radio broadcast, the briefest TV highlights, or the wall-to-wall coverage offered when it transformed itself into the Champions League, I soaked up the lot.
Like many kids growing up in the fifties and sixties my affections towards United stemmed from the Munich air crash of 1958 when I was nine years old. It was an awful event for all United followers but for those of us who were just starting to form attachments to sporting heroes it had a profound effect. Every game United have played since then, on some faraway foreign field, has always felt partly in honour of the players who lost their lives. Actually winning the European Cup became a cause. More than that, it was a crusade and I often felt that Sir Matt Busby was a man with a personal mission that was somehow far more important and significant than the ambitions of other managers. Maybe that is why United fans are sometimes accused of arrogance and chauvinism by others who don’t carry the same emotional baggage.
For many years the destiny remained unfulfilled and it was left to Celtic to break the mould in 1967 when they became the first British club to conquer Europe. That was a magnificent achievement and I don’t think Celtic have ever been given full credit for it outside of Scotland. The following season United also lifted the European Cup and although I couldn’t get to Wembley that night I still remember it unfolding on TV as one of the most emotional sporting occasions I can recall. For Bobby Charlton to score in that 4–1 victory, having been a survivor of the air crash ten years earlier, was a perfect ending to a wonderful story. It meant a good deal to me, as a young man of 19. What it must have meant to the United players I can hardly imagine.
Later that year, I was lucky enough to meet those same United players – all heroes of mine – in Argentina, where Wales were on tour. I think the meeting had been arranged by the management of both squads in order to keep us out of the shadier parts of Buenos Aires. United were there playing in the World Club Championship. I would have quite fancied a tour of the city’s bars in the company of George Best, and so would a few others in our squad, but those in charge had obviously tried to block any attempts at escape as we all sat in the United team hotel.
It was always going to be a sober affair, but the chance to sit and chat to the likes of George and Paddy Crerand – great guys – was not one any of the Welsh squad were going to miss. They had conquered Europe as a club and now they were taking on the best in South America, Estudiantes, in front of 80,000 passionate Argentinians. But you wouldn’t have guessed it by the calm, cool air of confidence that oozed from the likes of Best. If he had been any more relaxed he would have been in a coma.
Regular European competition had taken British club football, and the players, on to a new level and that was why I felt so enthusiastic about the notion of something similar in rugby, when the idea was first mooted. The idea of a Europe-wide club competition had been kicking around for some time, but, just as with the rugby World Cup, those who ran the game always seemed to lag behind those who played and watched. Caution was their watchword, when rugby cried out for boldness and enterprise. It meant that when a European tournament finally did get off the ground, Welsh players of my generation, and many after, had long since hung up their boots.
The first year of the European Cup, which, thanks to the bold backing of the sponsors in those early days, has now become universally known as the Heineken Cup, was 1995. Welsh, French, Irish, Italian and Romanian sides took part and although it might have been 40 years since United and other British soccer clubs first crowded on to small aircraft to make arduous trips to mysterious destinations, there was the same spirit of adventure and exploration about the whole thing. Players, coaches, fans, administrators, media – we were all new to it and it was a journey into the unknown. When you consider how far the tournament has come, how much it has grown in playing standards and commercially, it is remarkable to think that this has been achieved in the space of seven short years. Everything that European soccer encapsulates in terms of prestige, drama, tension and excitement is now there in Heineken Cup rugby.
Take Cardiff, for instance. They are a big club, in many ways the biggest in Wales, but their horizons and ambitions have been broadened by European competition. Their chairman and Peter Thomas, one of the club’s financial backers, have publicly stated many times that the ambition of the club is to win the Heineken Cup. They reached the final in the first season in 1995–96 but the tournament was barely into its stride then compared to what it is now. Cardiff know that and they also know that the Cup now carries huge financial rewards. So the competition has become their top priority every season and it is the yardstick by which their teams and coaches have to be judged. So far, they have not measured up to expectations and I’m sure the same goes for leading English clubs who have yet to lift the trophy such as Gloucester, Wasps, Saracens and Harlequins.
For my own club, Llanelli, the desire is even stronger. Having failed to make the final after losing two semi-finals in the dying minutes, I know that there is a restless yearning to become the first Welsh club to win the tournament. Like Manchester United in the footballing equivalent, the European Cup has become Llanelli’s holy grail.
In Wales, the Heineken Cup has another important significance. It is the only way at present whereby Wales can match up to and possibly beat England. Wales have fallen so far behind England at international level that Welsh players now have an inferiority complex whenever they come up against the white shirt. The only way I think we can rid ourselves of that is for those same players to take confidence from beating English clubs in Europe. Llanelli went some way towards achieving that when they beat both Leicester and Bath on their way to the 2002 semi-final, where they should really have beaten Leicester again. Perhaps the most encouraging comment made by anyone about the state of Welsh rugby after a dismal 2001–2002 season was Austin Healey’s verdict that the hardest matches he had played in all season, for club or country, were Leicester’s three matches against Llanelli.
I am convinced that the revival of Ireland at international level was sparked by Ulster’s Heineken Cup triumph in 1999 and the growing stature of Munster in Europe. To a lesser extent Leinster have helped, too. In contrast to Irish success, the decline of Scotland at Test level has been merely a reflection of the poor showing of both Edinburgh and Glasgow in Europe.
For France, Europe has enabled their players to grow up, and this fed through to their Grand Slam of 2002. French players now show far more discipline at international level, both individually and as a team. This, too, has come from their experience in Europe, where you need cool heads and calm nerves if you are going to succeed. The French coach, Bernard Laporte, realised this and stressed time and again how important it was for French players to show discipline and self-control in big European matches if they wanted to play for France. In the early years of Europe, the French players could easily be provoked, especially away from home, and they were always able to mask their weaknesses by blaming a foreign referee. But things have changed and it seems to me that the players of Toulouse, Stade Français, Montferrand and Castres are no longer content to seek easy excuses.
As far as England are concerned the effect of Leicester and their back-to-back Heineken Cup Final victories in 2001 and 2002 hardly needs to be stressed. England may have failed to collect the Grand Slam in both of those seasons, but there is no doubt that England’s ascendancy in world terms to the elite owes a good deal to the extra competitive edge European club rugby has provided for Clive Woodward’s players. Just look at the form Martin Johnson, Neil Back and Austin Healey bring with them to the England set-up.
In fact, I have no hesitation in saying that the major Heineken Cup matches now rival Test matches in terms of standards, intensity and atmosphere, not to mention the demand for tickets. When Wales play Ireland it’s normally only during the month preceding the game that a number of my Irish pals, mostly ex-internationals, ring me to ask if I can help them out with tickets, but my phone almost went into meltdown before the 2002 Heineken Cup Final, as even the 30,000 tickets given over to Munster fans for the final with Leicester at the Millennium Stadium seemed inadequate. With the stadium roof closed and Munster and Leicester fans in full voice, it was the equal of any international game.
The final that day is worth reflecting on. It was an afternoon when real fans took over the stadium – not the corporate day-trippers who have infiltrated Six Nations games. Friday night in Cardiff before the game was an incredible sight, with supporters from both teams having taken over the city. The next day, the singing, colour and spectacle all knocked spots off many international matches I have attended in recent seasons. Of course, the Unions all need the income derived from corporate hospitality, but I am inclined to agree with the Manchester United player, Roy Keane, who upset the apple-cart recently by declaring that the prawn-sandwich brigade, as he called them, were reducing Old Trafford to a sterile arena devoid of real passion. If we are not very careful then the same thing will soon happen to the Millennium Stadium or Twickenham, Murrayfield and even Lansdowne Road. That is why the atmosphere at Heineken Cup ties has proved such a breath of fresh air. It’s about real fans, with real affinities and real voices.
Paul Ackford wrote a piece in The Sunday Telegraph before that Heineken Cup Final in which he suggested that club/provincial rugby had now become bigger than international rugby. I think he made a very valid point, although my reasons for thinking a shift is taking place are perhaps different to his. I still believe Test rugby sets higher standards and, unlike Paul, I don’t feel that the unpredictable nature of the Six Nations championship has been lost forever simply because of the recent success of France and England. These things are cyclical and Wales, Scotland and Ireland will come again even if their strong periods will rarely be sustained for as long as those managed by England and France. My belief that the Heineken Cup is threatening the pre-eminent status of the international game is more to do with the fans. The likes of Leicester and Munster are followed by passionate people with a deep knowledge and respect for the game. The more I go to Six Nations games, the fewer people fitting that description I see around me.
The England-Wales game at Twickenham in 2002 seemed to be watched by people who either had no idea what was going on or else simply didn’t really care. There was barely a murmur inside the ground. It was the same when Wales hosted Scotland in the same season. That was a close game, but the two sides were poor and half the stadium seemed indifferent to who won. You can’t just blame the suited watchers. The number of people at Wales games who spend half the match wandering backwards and forwards to the bar, or queuing up for soggy pizza, depresses me almost as much as some of the Welsh performances.
In contrast, the Heineken Cup games have become mini-internationals, comparable to the Test matches of old. When Pontypridd play Bath, or Cardiff host Harlequins, there is a bit of bite to the whole thing. Voices are raised. Passions are raised. It matters. The blunt truth is that the 2001–02 season was a pathetic one for Wales, only rescued by our clubs in the Heineken Cup and the Parker Pen Shield.
The change can also be seen in the attitude of players towards club rugby. I went out to France to cover Llanelli’s pool game against Perpignan for Radio Wales in January 2002. Perpignan were a strong side and they handed Llanelli a solid beating, even though their own chance of qualification from the group had already gone. In years gone by, a heavy defeat away from home would have been the signal for a serious sorrow-drowning session, maybe until three or four o’clock in the morning. But I saw most of the Llanelli players sipping lemonade in the team hotel at 10 p.m., chatting among themselves – not about the defeat they had just suffered, but about what they had to do to beat Leicester at Stradey Park in order to qualify for the knockout stages.
Three or four years earlier, I happened to have been in Belfast at the same time as Swansea were there after they had been beaten by Ulster. Of course the result bothered them, but afterwards it seemed they couldn’t get away from the old mindset that any match outside of their own borders constituted ‘a trip’ in the old amateur sense of the term. The old rituals and bad habits had to be observed and this applied equally to every club in Wales. A beery weekend in Belfast was fine in the days before professionalism, but is no longer much use if you are aiming to topple the likes of Leicester. I am sure Swansea have since come to recognise that, like every other club chasing the Tigers’ tail.
Talking of Swansea, I was reminded of their days of yesteryear on that visit to see Llanelli in Perpignan. Travelling to this part of France, where you are only a couple of hours’ drive from Barcelona, seems an unlikely opportunity for tales about old foes back home. But I bumped into Jean-François Imbernon, a massive second row from the French team of the mid-seventies. Having played with distinction for Perpignon, Jean-François now owns a bar in the centre of town where rugby folk tend to meet.
We hadn’t seen each other since 1977 when France beat Wales in Paris on their way to a Grand Slam. When I shook his hand, my own disappeared into this huge paw, and, as with all French forwards who had once tried to crush me on the field, he greeted me like a long lost brother. We talked about our clubs and the state of the game in Wales and France, but it was only after the third or fourth bottle that I plucked up the courage to ask him about his nose. I had been staring at it from the moment I met him because it was literally spread over one side of his face.
‘What happened to your nose,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Ah, it was a Welshman,’ he replied, ‘the Swansea forward, Geoff Wheel. He caught me with a good one.’
Imbernon had been part of a brutal pack of French forwards along with the likes of the great Robert Paparemborde and Gerard Cholley, who had formerly been a successful amateur boxer. As players they were all lunatics and nutcases, but here I was, sharing some superb wine with this guy, who, 25 years earlier had been trying to tear me limb from limb. It sums up the spirit and tradition of rugby, but in the context of new European horizons. Had Llanelli been purely on the treadmill of the Welsh domestic scene then Jean-François and I would never have renewed our acquaintance.
That is the great thing about Europe as an arena for competition between clubs. It offers something a little different. The players have to cope with new surroundings and the fans get to sample another way of life, another culture, and usually some great food. The welcome from the French clubs has always been lavish. The banquet thrown by Toulouse after they hosted Cardiff a couple of years ago could have kept a small village in food for a week. But it’s all done with such style and generosity. The fans and the players, like the great French wing Emile Ntamack and the prop Franck Tournaire, mix together freely and the atmosphere is so relaxed. That connection between players and supporters is something I feel we have lost at all too many clubs in Britain. There appears to be a divide at some places, players preferring to jump into their flash cars and roar off home after a game rather than have a drink with the people who pay their wages.
Perpignan offered fabulous hospitality before and after the game, just as they had done when I first saw Llanelli play out there in 1999. But the Stade Aime Giral is like a bullring. The noise and the vibrant colours of the Catalan flags waved by almost every home supporter make it incredibly intimidating.
Llanelli have come home beaten on both their visits, but they have absorbed so much knowledge from those two games that I am certain they can win there next time. The bank of experience gained from European competition provides the basis for success in this new higher form of club rugby. Leicester lost in the 1997 Heineken Cup Final to Brive and in the following years they also lost away to Pau and to Stade Français. But those defeats taught them so much, the knowledge gained forming the basis of their magnificent victory over Stade in Paris in the final of 2001.
Leicester have undoubtedly set the standards in Europe, having recently become the only team to have successfully defended the trophy. It is a monumental achievement, for which they deserve enormous praise. Leicester have not only been a class above the rest, they have also been involved in some of the epic matches we have seen over the past seven years. Their three matches against Llanelli, played to three packed stadiums in three different towns, couldn’t have been more tense. They are virtually unbeatable at Welford Road and they now have the confidence and armoury to go to the French clubs and attack them on their own territory. Dean Richards has assembled a squad with huge strength in depth and they have developed a playing style with far more variety than the Leicester sides of a while ago. It might have been okay for Leicester to dominate in England through the power of their pack, but in Europe they needed something more. Skilful backs, like Geordan Murphy, Steve Booth and Leon Lloyd, have given them that dimension and when a spark of genius is required, they can call on Austin Healey.
Richards can be a bit dour for some tastes. But I like the bloke and he has a wealth of knowledge about the game. John Wells is a fine coach, but the thing that has really impressed me in recent years about Leicester has been their ability to be original and innovative. They have signed players from all over the world, like Rod Kafer and Josh Kronfeld from the southern hemisphere. They have tempted boys from rugby league, like Booth and Freddie Tuilagi. And they have brought youngsters through from their own academy, such as Ollie Smith. They have blended all these influences and made sure every player knows what it means to pull on the club jersey. Maybe most important of all, they breed a winning attitude. Leicester win matches they have no right to win. They just never give up and that is why they have conquered Europe in successive seasons.
Other clubs, such as Saracens and Cardiff, have tried big-name signings, but the thing about Leicester is that all their stars seem to want to die for the cause. You can’t say that about Cardiff. They have hugely underachieved in Europe and you have to point the finger at the players.
I know from talking to Leicester players and officials that when they lose or play poorly they don’t waste their time with witch-hunts and inquests. They just belt the crap out of each other at training on Monday morning. Cardiff have lacked that spirit in recent seasons and they have suffered for it.
Bath and Northampton are the only other English clubs to have won the Heineken Cup. Northampton edged past Munster in 2000 in a final that never really hit the heights and Bath beat Brive in the 1998 final. Jon Callard scored all Bath’s points and one memorable tackle made by Ieuan Evans summed up a very courageous performance. Brive were firm favourites, having beaten Leicester in the previous final, but maybe they had been left jaded by three action-packed matches against Pontypridd earlier in the tournament.
One of those matches packed in a little too much action for most people’s liking. Ponty lost 32–31 out in France in the pool stages in a game that regularly boiled over. It was a hard, physical match and Ponty were robbed by a dreadful decision by the Scottish referee Ed Murray. He awarded a late try to Brive, which I was not alone in thinking should never have been given. Unfortunately, the Ponty boys carried their sense of grievance with them to a local drinking spot called Le Bar Toulzac when they should have stayed in at their hotel. All hell broke loose and for a while the mass brawl and its aftershocks seemed to be the only sports news of note in the whole of Britain.
Ponty were wrong to allow themselves to be caught in that predicament, but I genuinely believe the whole episode made them stronger as a team and a club. It bonded them more tightly and the strength of character formed by those three epic games laid the foundation for their wonderful Parker Pen Shield campaign last season, when they reached the final.
Llanelli were involved in an even dirtier match out in Pau in southern France a few years back and for a while it seemed as if every game between French and Welsh sides should carry an EU health warning. But things have calmed down a lot more recently. Players now know that if they go berserk then they will be sent off or sin-binned, and that inevitably costs you points and often victory.
After the Brive and Bath years came the Ulster triumph of 1999. In a ridiculous and petty show of arrogance the English clubs had boycotted the tournament, but that should not detract from Ulster’s success. At home that year they were invincible.
Their moment of glory came in Dublin when they beat Colomiers. Thousands of Ulstermen travelled to Lansdowne Road and much was made of the political significance of uniting both north and south through rugby but it was only when I was in Belfast the following week to attend a dinner in the team’s honour that I realised what it really meant. David Humphreys, the brilliant Ulster fly-half, sat next to me and told me how moved he had felt as an Ulsterman at the way the whole of the south of the country had got behind his team.
As we chatted together, I felt a little of jealous of David having not only played for his country but also captained Ulster to their European triumph. I was part of a Llanelli side that won four Welsh Cup Finals in succession between 1973 and 1976 and we genuinely felt we were a team capable of giving anyone a game. We had eight Lions in our side and without meaning to sound arrogant we would have fancied our chances against any English or French side we had come across. A European club tournament would have told us exactly where we stood. But in those days, we only played around seven games a season against English clubs and visits to France were very few and far between.
There were no official league tables in Wales or England either and the nearest we came to any kind of cross-border contest was a match against Bedford in 1975. They were the English Cup winners; we were the Welsh holders. Someone had the smart idea to get us together in a challenge over two legs and Carwyn James, our coach, made sure we prepared properly. We thrashed Bedford at Stradey Park, but our plans for the away game on a Monday night were undermined when a few players had to cry off because of work commitments. I was captain and was determined to be there even though it meant driving like a lunatic from a work appointment in Newport. It was my first day with Courage Breweries and half way through an important meeting I suddenly realised I was in danger of missing the kick-off. So I mumbled some excuse and dashed through the door, half fearing I’d probably get the sack. Some other Llanelli players had just got back from Wales A duty in France and the general feeling was one of rushed preparations. It was a freezing night and I came close to skidding the car off the road at least twice before I arrived at the ground with a few minutes to spare. I walked into the dressing room and sensed immediately that not everyone was taking this game as seriously as I was. So I laid it on the line. ‘I haven’t risked my neck driving across the country on a horrible night for you buggers to lose!’ I told them – or words to that effect. The side responded, we gave Bedford another heavy beating and came off the pitch to a standing ovation.
Unfortunately, there were to be no more English-Welsh challenges. Maybe the English thought better of it. Either way, I was disappointed because I think Llanelli could have proved we were the best side around. Thirty years later, and thanks to Leicester, I’m still waiting.
The Heineken Cup is certain to grow from strength to strength. The Parker Pen Shield will always be the little sister and my feeling is that we should do away with it and have one large European tournament with more group games for each team.
The Cup also needs an improved structure. Instead of being played in small chunks, it should be integrated into the season at regular intervals, every few weeks, like they do in soccer with the Champions League. At present the competition goes into hibernation after the pool stages and loses some of its momentum.
Of course, a full-blown European League would be even better. It would then be more than a match for the Super 12. But at present there are too many vested interests, especially in England and France, and we may have to wait a while for that one.