Our romance is having total power because we know we have nothing to lose. We’re secure in the knowledge that we already lost a long time ago – Richey Edwards, Manic Street Preachers 1992
We have forgotten how to lose – Warren Gatland, National Coach, Wales, 2019
So what connects the words of an insurgent rock star of the 1990s with the coach of the Welsh rugby team embroiled in a battle to win the Six Nations championship?
Ever since reading ‘Everything’ by Simon Price I have been intrigued by the quote from Richey Edwards, which forms the dedication in the book. It seems odd, contrary, almost unbelievable that you can state that your power comes from the belief that you have lost.
For sports fans, however, the statement will make absolute sense. Hopelessly beaten, a sporting team can play with a freedom and abandon that stands in stark contrast to their performance up to that moment. ‘We’ve got nothing to lose’ is a cry that has reverberated around many a sporting stadium.
But I don’t think Richey Edwards was thinking about sport when he said those words. If he ever touched a rugby ball it may well have been only to puncture it. I cannot speak for him but I imagine one of the things that annoyed him most was the machismo that surrounds a lot of the discourse around sport.
But I also don’t think they were just the words of a young iconoclast trying to shock or faking profundity. Manic Street Preachers’ roots were in the valleys of South Wales. They had seen their community fight to save jobs in the Miner’s Strike of 1984-85 and seen the desolation and disintegration of that community after it was over (Edwards is reported to have said that if Blackwood, his home town, had a museum it would be full of rubble and shit).
Undoubtedly, Edwards was a ‘Generation Terrorist’; an angry young man who wanted to change things and wanted to be heard. But the Manics were Welsh boys too, shaped by their upbringing and latterly, at least, proud of their Welsh heritage. Edwards’ words spoke to a Welsh identity that embraced its past, present and future. The fact that I am writing about them 25 years after they were uttered is testament to that.
Wales is a nation that feeds on the romance of having lost. Where, when and how are things that can differ according to the person making the claim; but there is a central cultural certainty that we are underdogs, battling for our future in a world where the odds are stacked against us. We survive and endure. Success, whether it be in the world of sport, culture or politics is never expected and is often interpreted as saying we are still here. Yma o Hyd. (this is a patriotic song in the Welsh language released by Dafydd Iwan in 1981. The song extols the survival of the Welsh nation over the centuries. The song proudly proclaims Ry'n ni yma o hyd, er gwaetha pawb a phopeth which translates as "We're still here, in spite of everyone and everything.)
So now those words of Warren Gatland. This is a man so far removed from the world of Richey Edwards that you would only place them together in one of those flights of fancy that bring your favourite people together as party guests. A proud kiwi, a professional sports coach and a rugby man through and through, Gatland is a winner in the increasingly global world of sport. How on earth could anything he has to say find common ground with the Manics? Well, its there in that re-statement of the familiar sporting narrative ‘winning is a habit.’ Much of what Gatland does is for a reason. His words are not simply to create good copy for the journo’s covering his sport but are little incendiaries planted to explode in the minds of his opponents or in the psyche of his own team.
By re-casting that familiar ten-plate of sporting success; by saying Wales had forgotten how to lose rather than had learnt how to win, Gatland was placing his teams achievements firmly in the realm of that romantic world of loss that Edwards was interested in. Never let a Welsh side believe they are favourites. Never allow them the luxury of over-confidence. To continue to win, Wales must continue to believe that they have lost.
That this is something that has always existed in Welsh rugby we only have to look at Phil Bennett’s speech to his players before a game against England in 1977. Remember this was a team that ruled supreme in what was then the Five Nations championship winning four consecutive triple crowns. Bennet’s speech was not your ordinary pre-match ‘get into em’ type but an invocation on the theme of loss:
'Look what these bastards have done to Wales. They've taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our homes and live in them for a fortnight every year. What have they given us? Absolutely nothing. We've been exploited, raped, controlled and punished by the English — and that's who you are playing this afternoon.'
So maybe this is just how we feel about the English or perhaps this is just a rugby phenomenon but there is more to this. Jump forward from Richey Edwards in 1992 to Nicky Wire of the Manics in 2016 and his lyrics for the official song of the Welsh National Football team due to play in the European Championships. The song, Together Stronger, is peppered with previous failures from the 1958 World Cup to previous qualifying campaigns that have ended in defeat. Wales played way beyond anyone’s expectation and were only defeated by eventual champions Portugal in the semi- final. To win, Wales must believe that they have lost.
That all of this has a resonance beyond sport will be confirmed by a TV documentary to be screened over the next two Monday evenings. Martin Johnes, Professor of History at Swansea university, will argue amongst much else that:
'Part of Wales' current problem lies in believing that we are, and always have been, victims, powerless to act on our own and to choose our own future.'
I am not sure whether Richey Edwards would agree. His sense of loss was not a crutch but a weapon. The feelings of deprivation, lack of retention, destruction and diminution that he felt propelled him onwards. In the same way, modern sportsmen and women can reflect this powerful sense of what is lost with a ruthless professionalism and determination to win. Listening to Sam Warburton speak about his approach to winning was a revelation here:
His insistence that winning once against the All Blacks was not enough for him and that only several victories over them would be a reason to celebrate show, for me, a combination of the two sides to Welsh competitiveness; a romantic attachment to Wales the place and a constant avoidance of any sense of being victims that this attachment can bring.
Wales, for me, has and will always be a romantic attachment. As the world of international sport seeks to undermine and strangle the sporting traditions of the country I love, I am certain that in order to win the battle of ideas about Wales’ sporting future we will still need to be a bunch of losers with a winning mentality. I only hope individuals and organisations that stand to represent Wales can combine these two approaches and give Wales the future it deserves.
For those interested in reading more about Manic Street Preachers I can wholly recommend this:
Those who want to know more about Richey Edwards might try this, though I have not read it: