Welsh Journals

The Arms Park LESLIE H W PAINE THE GROUND is in the very heart of Cardiff-just as though Murray- field were in Princes Street, or Twickenham in Piccadilly. But unlike other international grounds, which, and especially Twickenham, have the carefully preserved, somewhat remote appear- ance of a shrine, the Arms Park has a homely look about it, due mainly to the fact that the field is encircled and reduced by a dog racing track. Paradoxical as it sounds the mixture of the two is not incongruous even though their raisons d'etre are so opposite, for the juxtaposition of rugby and dog racing is indicative in Cardiff only of the whole-hearted acceptance of the game by the Welsh as part of the normal life of the ordinary people. And on International days you don't need the special Big Match editions of the South Wales Echo, or the red and white official pro- grammes on sale in the streets, to prove this. Just go on such a day and join the crowd in the ground on the north terracing under the old stand-anytime up to two hours before the kick-off. There, pungent with the smell of leeks, will be miners from the Rhonnda, steel workers from Port Talbot, Newport clerks and Cardiff undergraduates, Lampeter theologians, Pontypool nylon spinners, hoteliers from Tenby, and exiles from all over England- young, old and middling, professional men, labourers, artisans and civil servants-a classless society drawn together only by the love of the game played with the oval ball. And while patrolling policemen smile indulgently at the youthful exuberants planting and making pagan obeisance to their leeks on the centre line, this great crowd will sing. What it sounds like in the changing rooms deep under the stand I don't know-visiting players, tense before the match, have found comfort in it and the opposite, so I am told. But to be in it and of it, to hear from 60,000 voices, Sospan Fach, We'll Keep a Welcome, Cwm Rhonnda, and Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Land of My Fathers), is to be