It’s worth knowing there were almost 20,000 empty seats on the occasion of New Zealand’s latest visit to Wales. For those who decided to stay away, one can only hope it was for the sake of a wedding or a funeral, because they missed one of the most remarkable sporting upsets of recent times.
How to summarise the scale of this Welsh win? How to catalogue the sequence of unlikely events that made it possible? How to contextualise the sheer madness?
We should start with a statistic – this was the first time Wales have been the All Blacks since 1953. And then we must expand upon it, because there have been 34 matches between these outposts in those 73 years.
But let’s divert quickly to a wonderful, historic a quote from the world of tennis. When Vitas Gerulaitis finally got one over Jimmy Connors in 1980, he said: ‘Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row!’
This was a bit of that and twice as large. It was extraordinary. New Zealand were No 1 in the world. Steve Tandy’s Wales? Since 2023, they have beaten Italy, Fiji and laboured their way past Japan last week. Their fans, a patient bunch, had succumbed to apathy. Their governing union is a shambles, their regions are being cut, their identity a fading cloud in the modern landscape. And then this happened.
Adam Beard was a colossus at six. Louis Rees-Zammit a marauding force on the wing. Dewi Lake was immense. Jac Morgan a wrecking ball. And James Botham, due to become a father next week, stopped a try in a final 20 minutes that ought to be burned into permanent memory.
How to summarise the scale of this Welsh win? How to catalogue the sequence of unlikely events that made it possible?
Wales players celebrate an astonishing triumph in Cardiff on Saturday afternoon
The Welsh were fighting for their lives, it was an extraordinary afternoon of rugby
About those final stages. They were huge, of course. And nervy. For the first half, it was all about the Welsh quality with ball in hand. The second was about backs against the wall. And my word, they were strong backs. This set of Welsh players were no one’s idea of history makers, but the team photo they posed for at the whistle ought to echo for decades.
If the roof of the Principality Stadium wasn’t so well attached, those 55,152 souls who showed up might have blown it off. But it was like that from the off, even if the initial assumption was that many had come to see a haka and a massacre.
Let’s go straight to the second minute. Rees-Zammit supplied the velvet by caressing a chip over the top and Tomos Williams was the iron fist that thumped down onto the bouncing ball. Only 88 seconds had been played and Wales were ahead.
A little false hope can be forgiven in these parts, but after Sam Costelow kicked the extras, the scenario quickly became daft. With six on the clock, Wales had a lineout, and the point to make here is that the set-piece has been one of the few areas of pride for Tandy. They do it well.
But not against Japan. Last week, it was a mess that shaped into a liability. Against the All Blacks in those initial stages of the dance? Well, that was different. Dafydd Jenkins plucked the ball from up high, Gabriel Hamer-Web and Jac Morgan carried hard and then up popped Dewi Lake to thunder through the wall, bouncing Wallace Sititi onto his backside. When Costelow converted, the lead was up to 14-0.
The All Blacks, in pole position for this championship after what happened to the Springboks in France, were in pieces. Handling errors, penalties, second in the collisions, turned over.
They stirred when Wales made it easy at the lineout, opening a channel for Cortez Ratima to burst through, but that wasn’t the portent of doom it might have been. It wasn’t the trickle that became a flood. And that’s because it didn’t factor for Archie Griffin, the Bath tighthead, muscling his way to a second try in two games. With ball in hand, Wales were superb, but even then the All Blacks were odds-on to find a means to correct it.
Naturally, the dominant thought was that gravity would begin to pull. And it did. At 21-7, the Welsh looked tired. On the chase, at the breakdowns, the gaps they left were growing. More pertinently, the All Blacks cut out the errors. Elite teams do that.
First, Sititi took a bite out of that lead and then a sequence of offloads culminated in Fehi Fineanganofo going over, two minutes into the red. Richie Mo’unga kicked for 21-21.
That was sickening for Tandy for two reasons – one being the gut punch of conceding with the last action of the half. The other being the play that shortly preceded the try, when Wales kicked for position when three points would have added some comfort. Ifs, buts and maybes, but you couldn’t fault the ambition.
At the break, it was easy to consider that these sides were close on the scores last year before New Zealand stormed clear. That didn’t happen this time.
Instead, 43 minutes in, and after 16 phases of the attack, Eddie James was presented with the tiniest pocket of space on the left corner and crossed. With the bonus point secured, a small item of history followed – the Welsh maul was too much for New Zealand and Rees-Zammit went over. It was the first time Wales have put five tries on the Kiwis; not for the first time, you had to wonder where this was all coming from.
But the All Blacks came again. Flanker Peter Lakai, so brilliant lately in the considerable task of filling the void caused by Ardie Savea’s absence, found a gap to get the score to 35-26.
After Mo’unga converted, the heat was on, but the Welsh were fighting for their lives. Taine Plumtree landed a huge turnover, for one. For another, Gareth Thomas. Or Louie Hennessey. And then, top of the lot, Botham got his hand under when the Kiwi thought they had grounded. The defence was sublime.
And it needed to be. For all the waves that followed, nothing got through, before finally the whistle went. Remarkable.
