THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW
Aberavon Naval Rugby Football Club exists in name only, an enduring exercise in dogged survival more than ten years after their team sank without trace.
And yet this weekend the ghost of a club in the old steel town of Port Talbot will stop to remember its most famous former player, the prototype superstar of the professional era who gladly paid the £3 subscription fee for the privilege of wearing the blue-and-black.
It is a little-known fact that Jonah Lomu made his last stand on a British rugby field far from the madding crowds of Twickenham, Murrayfield and the Millennium Stadium. He made it at The Talbot Athletic Ground, home of Aberavon RFC, not for the All Blacks but for a nautical local club then barely afloat in waters deep enough for submarines.
Aberavon Naval never had a clubhouse to call their own, nowhere to fly their badge of a golden anchor on a blue background. Instead a few veterans had to make do with imagining they had lowered it to half-mast for this of all weekends, the eighth anniversary of Lomu’s death at the age of 40.
They loved Jonah wherever he went but it is hard to imagine his innate humility creating a more lasting impression than the one he left the land-lubbers at Aberavon Naval from two missionary visits during the summer and autumn of 2008.
Plagued by the kidney disease which ended his All Blacks career in 2002 at the age of 27, Lomu had announced his retirement from all rugby the previous year following a ten-match stint on the wing for Cardiff.
“A local player, Kevin Lane, became friendly with Jonah during his time at the Arms Park,” says Stuart Broad, a former Aberavon Naval player. “They spoke about the possibility of Jonah giving a master training session at the club.
“We never thought it would happen but it did, on a summer’s night in 2008. Adam Jones, then at the height of his career, was there along with most of the clubs in Port Talbot. Before he left, Jonah promised that he’d be back to don the blue-and-black of Aberavon Naval.”
Mark Tolland, the club’s president, treasures the memories. “Most global superstars would have been too busy to come to our club in the first place but Jonah stayed on long after the session finished. And when he left he told us: ‘I’ll bring my togs the next time and play for you’.”
He proved as good as his word, playing for Aberavon Naval against a Port Talbot Select XV on November 21, 2008. As a Cardiff player three seasons earlier he had packed the Arms Park to the rafters with an excitement rarely seen there since.
The financial arrangements at Aberavon Naval were very different to those which had applied at Cardiff where they paid Lomu £3,000 per match. Far from asking for a penny to play for Aberavon Naval, he paid them for the privilege.
‘’We charged him £3 subs to play,” says Tolland. “He paid right away, no problem. Such a humble, lovely guy. Instead of rushing off after the match, he stayed with us, helping out behind the bar serving pints. None of us who were there will ever forget the night and Jonah’s generosity.”
When Lomu died almost exactly seven years later, the rugby clubs of Port Talbot joined forces to support a match in aid of Jonah’s sons, Dhyrelle and Brayley. “We chose two invitational squads representing a total of 37 clubs,” says Broad, secretary of Aberavon Quins who staged the match this very weekend five years ago. “We raised £3,000 for his sons. It was the least we could do.”
By then Aberavon Naval had run out of players. It ceased as an active rugby club on January 5, 2013, unable to raise a team for their remaining fixtures in the sixth division of the Welsh League.
“Swansea City got to the Premier League roundabout that time and we lost six players right away,” says Tolland. “We’d been fighting against the odds before then until it came to a point when we just couldn’t raise a team.
“The club had been formed about 50 years ago when a lot of boats used to come into the docks in Port Talbot. It’s closed now but we still pay our dues to the WRU and we have a little mini-bus which we keep going for the local community.”
The council-owned ground at Western Avenue where the Naval used to play is still there, albeit with a different set of goalposts to cater for football. At least Lomu’s jersey has found a safe home, preserved for prosperity amid the memorabilia housed at the Talbot Athletic Ground, home of the Wizards of Aberavon.
