One of the greats: Barry John
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Frank Keating recounts memories of past clashes beetween Wales and France in The Guardian.
"Time and again down the years, I've relished the biennial barney across the water between the red and the blue. This greybeard rewardingly spools back no end of grand matches, grand moments, and grand men.
"Mind you, for the first part of the last century Wales's away match against Scotland was traditionally the fabled weekend for the working classes down there – with no end of night-special excursion trains steaming up north through the witching hours to deposit all down Princes Street at dawn, a bleary throng seething contentedly with high expectations as well as, it must be said, boozy, beery odours.
"It has me recalling a lovely little film made half a century ago this year by that fine Welsh journalist John Morgan in which he tells of the midnight rush beginning at Swansea railway station: "Most of them in scarlet berets and scarves or leeks and daffodils – and some even with saucepans – and a final run from the pub across the station yard swinging their flagons or carrying their crates like soldiers rushing ammunition to the guns."
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