The First XV - A Selection of the Best Rugby Writing

Includes Richard Burton, Frank Keating, John Reason, Eddie Butler to name a few, as well as a foreword by one of the all-time Rugby greats, Gerald Davies. -- Publisher: Parthian Books
Very rarely do I receive a book so fitting to the mass media one is consuming on a daily basis. But in the weeks spent digesting and reviewing this collection, the Rugby World Cup 2011 has been raging – and with it the hearts of many a proud Welshman as they watch their team battle beyond the group stages, all the while daring to dream of long-gone glory days returning. And it is these halcyon days, alongside some rather less virtuous moments, that this warm, affecting and humorous collection brings together. From the exploits of rabble-rousing R. H. Lloyd-Davies, whose promising (almost) international career was cut short by an altercation with a Cambridge professor of law, the chasing of ‘better calibre’ girls and various brushes with the law (stolen jewels anyone?), to a wonderfully whimsical Dylan Thomas tale of the obstinacy of Enoch, who refused to pay a former rugby great his dues – this book has it all. With XV wonderful extracts (and two reserves for good measure), whether you’ve grown up enthralled by tales of every last, mud-spattered stride of that epoch-defining moment in the New Zealand vs. Wales match of 1905, or simply have the most casual passing interest in rugby and enjoy a thrilling tale, then this collection from one of Wales’s best loved publishers is certainly for you. Amongst the highs, lows, brash comedy and touching sentiment that are packed like an eclectic scrum into this sub-100 page compendium, perhaps the best extract of all is a short story written by the one and only Richard Burton – detailing his last rugby match, played in a small village of ‘crippled masochists’. Much touted as a bright young ‘rugger thing’ in his day, yet at the point of being talked out of the potentially dangerous clashes by his acting agents, the marvellously self-deprecating tale is a joy from beginning to end. But I shall leave it to the eloquence of Carwyn Jones, via Frank Keating, to ultimately sum up what this book exquisitely embodies, albeit with words originally used to describe a sumptuous Barbarians try against New Zealand –‘That unique moment when sport, lovely sport, not only achieves, but assumes, an art form’. Well here it all is in one volume and I couldn’t have put it better myself! -- Jack Clothier @ www.gwales.com