Wales narrowly beat Scotland in rugby union Six Nations

 Wales narrowly beat Scotland in rugby union Six Nations

You could actually see the Welsh dragon breathing fire at their Scottish opponents. The Millennium Stadium has rarely seen anything like this. Two evenly balanced rugby union teams going at it hammer and tongs, fighting for territory, kicking strategically, weighing up the options and sticking to the game plan rigidly. This was the kind of Six Nations match which used to be five many moons ago but is now ingrained in the psyche of rugby union followers everywhere because this is the way it should be. 

During the 1970s Welsh rugby union was a thing of beauty, a wondrous fusion of the sublime and the not so ridiculous as it might have seemed. Wales were flamboyant, theatrical, a side of body swerves, irresistible passing and the most heavenly of touches. They were a collective, a body of men united in mind, thought and deed. Wales had class written right through the team and the names were almost as familiar as Land of My Fathers, the celebrated Welsh anthem.

The props, hookers, fly halves, back row and wingers are now the stuff of legends. There was Barry John, drop goal specialist, organised, comfortable with the ball in his hands, dashing here and there and positive from the first whistle. There was Phil Bennett, muscular, virile, macho, shoulders and hips twisting, ducking and weaving, a force of nature who ran at his opponents as if they were invisible

JPR Williams was the good doctor who always administered the finest medicine, a strapping, long haired player of bustling belligerence and daredevil running. Mervyn Davies was the engine, the carburettor, the motor who sparked life and vitality into the heart of the class of the 1970s and burrowed his way through forests of legs undaunted, brave and courageous as they came. And then there was Gareth Edwards who, in the minds eye, can still be seen flying through a blur of black and white Barbarian shirts in that memorable length of the pitch, glorious try against the New Zealand All Blacks in 1973.

Rugby union used to be one of the last bastions of masculinity, male machismo and rumbustious, no holds barred  aggression where no ear was left intact and players were flipped into the air like pancakes. It was game played by men with little in the way of malicious intent but still committed to the cause, driving, mauling, rucking, locking bodies in brutal scrums that moved like tanks slowly edging towards the try line. 

Today though the stakes were just as high. Wales for their part, have blown hot and cold since those far off salad days when tries came almost naturally and their game was a simple work of art. JPR, Barry John, Phil Bennett and company were models of telepathic thinking, role models of stylish co-ordination, always thinking one step ahead of the rest. It was joyous, restless, tirelessly magnificent rugby

But the class of 2022, without being unknown quantities, did give tantalising glimpses of their 1970s heyday. When the likes of Liam Williams at full back and wing charged forward with unbridled force and intensity, Scotland seemed to come to a juddering halt. Then both Alex Cuthbert, Nick Tompkins and Louis Rees Zammitt powered into attack, Rees Zammitt constantly drilling holes in the Scottish defence as the most effective winger of international rugby union in modern world rugby union.  

With Dan Biggar kicking his penalties stupendously and precisely, Tomas Francis scoring the only and most brilliant try of the match , Will Rowlands conducting his team in the second row like an engineer fixing the nuts and bolts of a machine and Wyn Jones effervescent at prop, Scotland had no answer to the sheer relentlessness and inevitability of the Welsh attack.

And yet in the game's opening stages Scotland threatened to win most of the strategic ball from loose rucks, navy blue shirts picking their way through the Welsh and the home said looked briefly worried. They needn't have done so. Wales embrace rugby union in the way that fathers were hugged on return from the Second World War. They are unmistakably passionate, always progressive, always on the front foot and even when the moon is in the wrong position they can still lift themselves for the big occasion and treat an oval ball as if it were theirs by divine right. 

When Dan Biggar kicked the first of the game's defining penalties, Scotland looked as though the afternoon would last for much longer than they must have thought. But there is a doggedness and stubbornness about the Scots that is somehow genetically programmed into them. Now they drove back the Welsh like a navy combine harvester, bumping, boring, scrapping, bouncing off  bodies, darting and jostling for possession as if their lives depended on it.

Then in perhaps the game's most spectacular phases, Scotland planted their imprint on the game. Following some tenacious and legal shoving and pushing, the Scots caught the ball and began to work incisive openings. Now a lightning quick sequence of passes across the pitch, full of invention and innovation, landed in the influential hands of Finn Russell who flung the ball athletically into the far corner. Darcy Graham, brilliantly anticipating the pass, danced towards the try line and chalked up the game's first try. 

But then Wales took an impressive stranglehold on the game. Their movement in an and out of possession was a sight to behold and the hand to hand game in the tightest of positions was an education to those who may not be acquainted with the game's finer points. They looked the most likely to team to score again and again. After some sloppy and lethargic moments in the Scottish rearguard, knock ons and loose handling became a recurrent theme in the Scottish game plan. They paid for it. 

When Dan Biggar scored a multiple of penalties in quick succession the writing was on the wall for the Scots. Biggar seems the penalty specialist for Wales and today his kicking was flawless. Tomas Francis did score another beautifully constructed try for the Scots but by now the game was flowing in the home side's direction. Biggar scored another vital set of penalties and the game was marginally over for Scotland. 

For a moment you thought back to that remarkable game between the Barbarians and the All Blacks and convinced yourself that sport simply couldn't get any better. It was sport at its most expressive, sport at its most cultured, sport baring its soul, sport unburdening itself from whatever troubles it may have been facing at the time. It was sport with unique technique, outrageous skill and fulsome flair. Wales can only be immensely proud of itself. Somehow the sport of rugby union always knew it would.