Peter Jackson: Grav’s fight with a Jag brought the roof down

Ray Gravell would have been 61 this week and the world, especially the part which revolved around Mynydd-y-Garreg, would have been all the better for his presence. He passed away five years ago long before his time but will never be forgotten by those of us lucky to have known him as a fearsome rugby player, popular broadcaster, film actor and all-round Welsh patriot.
A new book will ensure that the multi-dimensional ‘Grav’ lives on with renewed affection. He features in all his larger-than-life glory as remembered by fellow Lions in Roars From The Back Of The Bus (Mainstream, £17.99), a veritable treasure trove of anecdotes edited by Stewart McKinney, of Dungannon, Ulster and Ireland. Gravell is one of a host of famous names featured by McKinney, a wing forward imbued with the warrior spirit which won him a place on the invincible 1974 Lions tour of South Africa.
One of his team-mates on that historic expedition, Roy Bergiers, had carved his name in gold lettering two years earlier by scoring the only try when Llanelli beat the All Blacks at Stradey Park.  Gravell played alongside him in the centre and almost a quarter of a century later the pair were deputed by the Scarlets to collect a politician of international repute from Cardiff airport.
Dick Spring, deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland, had been to Wales before, not least as Ireland’s full-back at Cardiff Arms Park in 1979 when a costly fumble contributed to his team’s narrow defeat.  Seventeen years later, he was coming back to speak at a banquet on the eve of Llanelli’s match against South Africa.
The club entrusted chairman Bergiers and president-elect Gravell with Spring’s safe delivery.  What transpired could have come straight out of a Mr Bean film with ‘Grav’ in the title role doing his unwitting worst to cause a diplomatic incident.
Bergiers tells the story:  “In order to impress Dick and do justice to his position as a top politician, Ray insisted on borrowing his friend’s brand new top-of-the-  range, Jaguar  – state-of-the-art with all modern accessories and gadgets.
“Ray picked me up in Carmarthen to travel along the M4 and confessed he was still getting used to the automatic gearbox and the indicators.  We attracted some attention dressed in our dinner suits and bow ties as well as the fact that we were travelling relatively slowly, cautiously allowing Ray to get used to the car.
“By the time we met Dick on the tarmac of Cardiff Airport we felt extremely important, being allowed through security as expected personnel on a secret mission – 0012 and 0013.
“This feeling was enhanced as we travelled back down the M4 with Dick and his PA in the back taking phone calls and discussing the Iraq situation. Approaching dusk, the sky darkened and heavy clouds loosed a downpour.  Ray, cool, blasé and sophisticated, pressed a switch for the wipers.  The wipers did not come on but the roof opened instead letting rain lash down on the Tanaiste and his PA.
“Still thinking the secret-agent dream could be retrieved, Ray pressed another switch.  Once again, it did not have the required result.   The windscreen washers started bouncing jets of water off the screen and in through the roof of the car.
“Ray’s sangfroid attitude disappeared to be replaced with panic and anxiety.   The more switches he pressed, the bigger the hole we were digging.  Thank God the hard shoulder came to our rescue. Ray got things under control and, eventually, we got going again.  I swear he never touched another button.”
Gravell left an indelible impression on another Irishman, Ollie Campbell – unlike Spring, one noted purely for his activities on the field.
The fly-half remembers his fellow Lion during the last visit to apartheid South Africa in 1980 for a warm-up routine before the first Test in Cape Town which ‘beggared belief’.
The bearded Welshman had been in full cry before entering the field as a substitute. Campbell recalls Gravell  “getting geared up” on the touchline, “repeatedly beating his chest with as much energy and volume as Johnny Weissmuller in his role as Tarzan….”
Campbell’s tribute of Gravell goes far beyond his reference to a “passionate and proud Welshman who spoke Welsh as his first language and, amazingly, also spoke some Irish. He was the only person in the world who always called me by my first name Seamus, naturally with an Irish accent, too.   In memory of him, by mutual agreement, his wife Mari has continued this tradition since he passed away.
“He was the warmest, most magical and wonderful human being imaginable.  From the outside he looked fearless, intimidating, imposing and indestructible.   What made him so appealing was the fact that in reality he was so insecure and vulnerable.”
In compiling what doubles up as a valuable social history of the men who made the Lions, McKinney deserves every success with the book.  Fifty per cent of all royalties will be donated to the Lions Charitable Trust.