The strange rebirth of Welsh fly-half play

Although Wales and Scotland’s encounter in Cardiff’s Principality stadium is postponed until… well, until sometime, neither Wales nor Scotland are in the final reckoning anyway for the Six Nations, Wales having lost three of their four games and Scotland two of their four. When the match is played it will have an old-fashioned feel, taking us back to the days when each game in what was then the Five Nations seemed of equal importance, an event in its own right, no matter where teams stood in the table. Way back, each country tended to have its individual style of play. To some extent, or sometimes, this may still be the case today. Yet there is also a more uniform style, with only small local or national variations in the northern hemisphere anyway.

We used to look to the Welsh for brilliant back-play and the kingpin and guiding spirit of their team was the fly-half. Of course the fly-half has always been important everywhere, but it was only in Wales that the wearer of the number 10 jersey was accorded divine status, and it was only in Wales that twinkled-toed geniuses seemed to come, one after another, off the assembly line in what the singer Max Boyce hailed as the Welsh Fly-half factory.

Cliff Morgan, Dai Watkins, Barry John, Phil Bennett, Gareth Davies, Jonathan Davies – why, this might have had us echoing Macbeth’s sigh as the witches conjured up the line of Banquo’s heirs – “what will the line stretch on to the crack of doom?” All the more so if one adds that genius from Llanelli Carwyn James who unaccountably won only two Welsh Caps and is now best remembered as the coach of the great 1971 Lions.

But for a long time the factory, like others in industrial Wales, has been on short time or even idle with shutters up and the gates chained. Occasionally there has been a flicker of life. One recalls with pleasure the delightful Arwel Thomas. But this has been rare.

Of course Wales have had fine number 10s since, but they never looked like products of the famous factory. Neil Jenkins, Stephen Jones, James Hook and the present incumbent Dan Biggar have won matches, even championships, for Wales and been British and Irish Lions, but in build and style of play, none has been characteristically Welsh. They haven’t fired the imagination or set the heart dancing. All were skilful, brave, efficient game managers, as Biggar still is. A Welsh Romantic might grant their ability and achievement before sighing “they might even have been English the way they play”.

It was said of Barry John that he could give the impression of entering a room without having come through the door; he just floated in as if by magic. The only northern hemisphere fly-half of recent years of whom this might be said is Scotland’s Finn Russell, temporarily exiled from the international game. He has the ghostly ability to find space where there seems to be none which characterized the products of the famous fly-half factory.

But now comes the good news and the reason I am writing this piece. The factory gates have been unchained; it’s in operation again. Last week I saw its latest product – graduate might be a better word, for really the factory might also be called a school or university – playing for Wales against England in the under-20 international, and it – he – was magic, pure Cliff-Carwyn-Barry-Phil type magic. His name is Sam Costelow, and watching him was sheer delight.

Against England he made breaks, side-stepping and swerving, scored a brilliant individualist try, created another from deep in the Welsh half, and, to cap it all, dropped a goal to win the match by a single point. By today’s standard he’s on the small side – only 1.73 metres, though, at the age of nineteen he may grow a little more still. He is stocky, with a low centre of gravity, just like Cliff Morgan. He has evidently all the daring and confidence of youth. He is possessed by a sense of adventure, and he plays as if rugby is not only a challenge, which it must be, but also fun, which some forget it should be.

He comes from Pencoed which is, I think, next to Bridgend, home club of the great J P R Williams, and has spent the last couple of years in the Leicester Tigers Academy. He has made some first-team appearances for the Tigers and says he has learned a lot from George Ford, but he is returning to Wales next season to play for the Scarlets, a club which some of us still think of as Llanelli, home club of both Carwyn and Barry.  He will surely light up the Guinness Pro14 and it will be a surprise if he isn’t playing for Wales very soon, lining up opposite his Leicester mentor indeed. It’s something to look forward to, even for those of us who aren’t Welsh and may see him bamboozling and wrong-footing our national team in the way he dazzled and flummoxed England’s very good under-20 side last week. I don’t suppose he’ll ever run through or over defenders, but he’ll surely leave lots of them despairingly tackling thin air. Young Sam is the fly-half as artist, not artisan, and the modern game with its emphasis on power needs this sort of player more than ever.