Price glad he played under old regime

PETER JACKSON

THE MAN TRULY IN THE KNOW

AT Pontypool Park on September 24, 1986, with the sweet chestnut trees in full autumnal regalia, the faithful rolled up without the foggiest clue that they were about to see something they had never seen before. And would never see again.

Against Munster at that place on that day, Graham Price made his first appearance as a substitute. That it would also be his last during a career spanning some 700 first-class matches over 22 years beggars belief, all the more so in an age when Test props are conditioned to last for 60 minutes, if that long.

Price’s endurance has long been the stuff of legend:

Twelve consecutive Tests for the Lions. Played in every minute of every one: eight against the All Blacks, four against the Springboks.

Forty one consecutive internationals for Wales over eight years. Played every minute of everyone bar two and then only because he had fallen victim to dastardly deeds.

Against France at the Arms Park in the 1976 Grand Slam decider, Price had been gouged so badly that he couldn’t see where he was going because of what was diagnosed as a scratched eyeball. Against Australia at the Sydney Cricket Ground two years later he had his jaw broken by Steve Finnane, a barrister doubling up as the Wallabies‘ loosehead straight out of Dodge City.

That Price amassed 1,000 scrums and more without the luxury of starting a match on the bench save for the one against Munster is as great a tribute to his endurance as anything he achieved for the Lions and Wales. The one-sub match in a long lifetime is something that has somehow remained unknown, until now.

Even then, it took a deep trawl through all those seasons for the man himself to come up with the most startling fact of all, a revelation which shows how much the game has changed since Price bowed out three years before professionalism.

“I told the club at the start of that week that I wasn’t available for the Munster match so they picked the team without me,” he says. “Then, on the Friday, I found out that I was available. They said: ‘Righto, bring your kit and we’ll pick you as a sub’.”

Substitutes, or, to give them their official title, replacements, were a novelty when Price began his marathon as an 18-year-old schoolboy for Pontypool against Gloucester at Kingsholm on December 27, 1969. Replacements then were limited to international matches, a maximum of two per game and then only in the event of injury.

Against Munster 38 years ago, Price waited until the second half before being summoned to replace a tighthead of similar longevity widely acknowledged as the best uncapped prop of his generation, Brandon Cripps who died last year at the age of 67.

Within the first two years of the Nineties, subs had doubled from two to four. In 2009 they had doubled again, from four to eight by which time the game had long abandoned policing the injuries-only rule in acknowledging the reality of tactical substitutions.

For Price and his propping contemporaries, a generation which included such greats as Fran Cotton and Robert Paparemborde, going the distance was taken for granted, week in week out, sometimes twice a week.

Now, of course, it has become so rare as to be deemed worthy of comment. Dan Cole, England‘s tighthead centurion, last went the full 80 for his club, Leicester, five years ago, a fact courtesy of the oracle in such matters, Stuart Farmer.

During last season’s Six Nations, an average per match for almost all starting props worked out at anything from 43 minutes to 57. The one exception, Zander Fagerson, topped 70 minutes, Glasgow’s tighthead having been the only one of the breed to complete a match unsubbed, for Scotland against France.

“We used to play every week and that didn’t change during the Five Nations,” Price, now 72, says. “We’d play for Wales one week, go back to our clubs the next week for a big cup match, then have an all-day session with Wales on the Sunday.

“And so it went on. We never even thought about taking a break. Rugby was our hobby and we wanted to play as often as possible. If there was any danger of the club resting us, we’d be annoyed.

“In the early days I went through a spate of injuries. It got to the stage when Ray Prosser (Pontypool’s head coach) said to me: ‘Well, Pricey every time you fart you pull a muscle!’

“Despite the ironic humour, ‘Pross’ was very sympathetic because he’d been through the same thing himself as a youngster. He used to put an arm around me and say: ‘Don’t worry, son. You’ll come through it, all right’.

“In my day we didn’t think about the physicality. We just got on with it. In terms of looking after ourselves, we were not as well catered for as the modern players.

“I found it easy to motivate myself. Two games a week, like Gloucester at home on the Wednesday and Cardiff away on the Saturday, meant two tough matches but it also meant two very good piss-ups.

“We were amateurs and that was all part of the social scene. I think the game was better when subs were only allowed in the event of injury. Wearing down the opposition was a big part of Pontypool’s game under Prosser and we’d win matches in the last five or ten minutes because of it.

“That doesn’t happen any more. Look at South Africa. They have the best front row in the world and the next best front row in the world sitting on the bench. Other countries have a job to put out one decent front row, never mind two.

“It’s a different game now. People often ask me whether I’d ever wished I’d been born 30 years later so that I’d have been paid and paid well for my hobby. In that case, I wouldn’t have been allowed to play 567 matches for Pontypool. I wouldn’t have liked that…”