Wales v Scotland 03.02.24

It was 6am when I scrapped the ice off the car windscreen in readiness for the long drive from Twickenham to Cardiff. To break the journey up, I intended to stop somewhere en route to tackle a parkrun. On a whim, I plumped for Ashton Court in Bristol because it begins with an ‘A’ and would constitute another letter ticked off my parkrun alphabet (parkrunners are a bit nerdy).

I didn’t realise how undulated this area of Bristol was and I struggled for the first 2.5k, which was a steep uphill climb. The second 2.5k was thankfully all downhill but I never fully recovered from the first and reached the finishing line in a rather disappointing time. The other noteworthy event on this detour, was picking up a £100 speeding ticket somewhere within Bristol’s ghastly road network, in my haste to arrive promptly for the 9am start.

Arriving in the Welsh capital

Not to be deterred, I was soon back on the road to Cardiff and glad to cross the Severn Bridge. A further lack of pre planning however, led to a complete blank on the whereabouts of the match day park and ride sites. The usual spots at the Cardiff City Football Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl were abandoned.

Eventually, I decided to drive to the stadium and was directed by a sympathetic steward to the Sophia Gardens, a short distance from the stadium, where I was charged 25 quid to park. My motoring costs were beginning to rack up.

It was a mizzly day for taking photographs. My first shots of the day were of a group of lads from Aberdeenshire, dressed in yellow ‘Macleod of Lewis’ kilts and drinking tinnies outside Tescos, before I wandered up St Mary Street and found a male voice choir singing in front of the moat at Cardiff Castle.

My next location was Westgate Street for some crowd shots and to capture the team coaches arriving at the stadium, escorted by police motorcycles and horses. This is always a spectacle, where fans line the street to offer encouragement and sometimes hurl abuse. One year apparently, a mad Welshman broke the police line, charged at the England coach headfirst and nutted it.

The big match

I had managed to pick up a match ticket from the Welsh Rugby ticket exchange website for about £55, which was cracking value. When I got inside the stadium there was a goat on the pitch and hymns and arias were being sung. The atmosphere was building and I was looking forward to the anthems.

The visiting fans rendition of Flower of Scotland was intoxicating and next up the Wales anthem, ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau’, was full throated and lusty but ruined in my section by a woman with a voice like a vuvuzela. And there was I thinking every lady in Wales had a voice like Catherine Jenkins! Silly me.

Like my parkrun earlier, the match was a thing of two halves. A terrible first half for a young Welsh team saw the visitors race to a 20-0 lead. Gawd knows what Gats the head coach said at half-time but whatever it was, it worked a treat because in the second half Wales were on steroids. An amazing come back saw them almost win; they huffed and puffed, they heaved and they shoved but alas for the home crowd they ran out of time and fell short by a point. Final score, Wales 26 Scotland 27.

The stadium emptied quickly so everyone could get back to pubs and bars of St Mary Street. Avoiding all temptation, I took my leave and walked back to Sophia Gardens in the rain for a slow and uneventful drive home.