Lions turned hoses on Bevan and Gibson

ALLAN MARTIN THE FORMER WALES, LIONS AND ABERAVON LOCK

- Jon Newcombe

AS the years go by the memories fade but one incident that people always mention when talking to me about rugby, which helps to bring them back to life, is the infamous Andy Haden dive in 1978. We were beating the All Blacks at the time and the game was going our way. But with about six to seven minutes to go, a long raking kick went into touch, just outside our 25, and they had a lineout.

It was thrown in but called again, and on the second call, Andy Haden, who was standing opposite me, appeared to jump and landed on the floor. Most people probably thought I’d elbowed him or pushed him. In my mind, I thought Jeff Squire, who was behind me, had whacked him. The ref penalised Jeff for leaning on, even though this had been happening all game without any action taken, and Brian McKechnie kicked the penalty and it was game over. We lost 1312. I got to know Andy quite well over the years but he never admitted to cheating! He was a great lock forward and a great rugby thinker.

McKechnie was a straight-on (or toepoke) kicker like me. I don’t recall being a lock and a kicker as that big a deal back then as it would be now. I just enjoyed kicking the ball and was quite good at it, I don’t really know why other than the fact I loved playing football growing up and I would spend hours practising curling corners in down at Port Talbot FC pretending to be my Swans hero Ivor Allchurch. When I first started kicking for Aberavon and Wales, we used leather balls, which took some shifting once they got wet and heavy. But I still preferred them to the synthetic balls that came in, they were hopeless for me because they weren’t made of a living material and there was no ‘action reaction’ and they just fell away around the corner.