Wales 31-17 Italy
Steve Tandy’s side end 15-game losing run in competition
So that’s what it was like. Wales win a Six Nations match in Cardiff for the first time in more than four years. A crowd of 70,000 fairly ripped the stadium off the roof. And they did it with virtually every play of the game.
Most plays gave some cause or other for a cheer - and, boy, did the locals respond. How familiar an experience, and yet how not, a ghostly echo of times past. Wales’ mission now is to put flesh on the spirit, to do it again as a matter of course, as of old.
And there were the guys in blue, Italy. Darlings of the Six Nations they may be (there are quite a few of those these days), but they could not make anything work. This was a throwback to times past for them as well, forlorn and blown away by a country imbued with the culture of rugby. How retro.
