It’s a moment caught in time that Andy Allen has a permanent reminder of in his Cwmbran home.
In many ways, it’s the ultimate image of defiance in defeat and a symbol of how passions can run high when Wales take on England.
It was back in February 1990 and Newbridge lock Allen was winning just his second cap for his country.
As will be the case this weekend, the match was at Twickenham and he was up against a star-studded England team featuring the likes of Will Carling, Jeremy Guscott, Rory Underwood and Brian Moore.
It was very much a one-sided Five Nations contest, with the home side handing out a 34-6 thumping.
But the 22-year-old Allen gave his all, with one incident in particular seeing him leave his mark on the occasion.
“When Will Carling scored his try in the corner, I had run all the way across corner-flagging,” he recalls.
“Having made the effort to get there, I thought I’m just going to dive on him and do a bit of damage. I had to make an impression on him.
“It was the old sporting saying, I got there as quick as I could!
“It was pure frustration more than anything else.
“I had made that effort to get over, so I thought I’d splash on him anyway, b*****ks to it.
“Brian Moore started shouting and bawling at me, spitting and snarling, so I just flashed him the Vs.”
The moment was captured perfectly in one of the great rugby images.
“I’ve got the picture at home,” says the 54-year-old Allen.
“Apparently it’s in the top 50 iconic sporting photographs. They have even made a jigsaw out of it!
“I had no royalty payments, nothing. These days you would have image rights, wouldn’t you?”
Looking back, Allen is the first to acknowledge he brought an abrasive edge to his rugby.
“I got sent off twice and sin-binned three times in one season,” he recalls.
“That was because the nature of my game was to intimidate.
“You had to in them days. If you backed away, you wouldn’t survive. In the forwards, you had to look after yourself.
“I remember being punched from behind up in Abertillery and my nose was hanging off. They put 14 stitches in and sent me back on. That’s the way it was back then. A wet sponge on your b*****ks and get back out there.
“When you were playing the likes of Neath and Pontypridd, as soon as they got the upper hand on you, your game would go to pot completely.
“So you have got to dominate and intimidate and that’s what I used to do.
“I have never been afraid of anybody. I never cowered down to anyone, not even when I played against Dooley and Ackford in that England game. No-one scared me.
“I would never ever take a backward step.
“I’m an amiable person. But it’s just a funny thing, when I put the boots on and crossed the white line, I felt empowered and my personality changed.
“It turned me into a different kind of person.
“I remember when I played for the Barbarians at Swansea, Mickey Skinner said to me ‘You are one of the dirtiest blokes I have ever come across, but a hell of a gentleman.’
“So that’s nice.
“I just felt different when I was out on the pitch. I felt I needed to prove something to someone.”
Allen was only to win the one more cap, with a badly dislocated ankle derailing his progress, but he will always cherish the memories of wearing the three feathers.
It was a hugely emotional time in his life.
“I had lost my mother when I was 19,” he explains.
“When I was playing for Cwmbran Youth, I won a East Gwent cap, which was green.
“I took it her and she wasn’t very well. She had cancer, she was dying.
“I remember giving it to her and she said ‘That’s lovely Andy, but get me a red one’.
“When I did that, the emotions when I was singing the national anthem were quite severe.
“I cried my eyes out. It brought so many emotions out.
“I was cap number 872. I will always cherish that number.”
You can read Andy's remarkable life story in full here.
The 1990 game also saw hooker Moore wearing his heart on his sleeve as he secured a first victory over Wales at the fifth time of trying.
He had been on the bench for the violent 1987 Five Nations game in Cardiff and then started that summer’s World Cup quarter-final in Brisbane, the memorable 1988 match at Twickenham and the following year’s encounter in a rain-lashed Welsh capital.
All of them ended in defeat.
“Back then, losing to Wales was what happened to England,” he recalls.
“Dai Pickering was the Welsh captain in 1987 and I will never forget his after-dinner speech.
“He said ‘We only just made it, but thank God I wasn’t the captain to lose to England’.
“Then Clive Rowlands stood up and it was the old joke about ‘What will you do in a bad season? Oh, we’ll just go back to beating England.
“I remember thinking at the time ‘You f***ers’.
“I thought ‘I don’t like this’.
“It was the arrogance of ‘We’ll beat England anyway, even if we’re not very good’ and ‘Thank God I haven’t lost to England’.
“I didn’t like the automatic assumption that we would lose to anybody.”
Speaking to WalesOnline, he added: “Even when we were crap, people would still delight in beating England, even though, in rugby terms, it didn’t mean anything because we weren’t very good.
“If you are English, you come to understand that everyone hates you or says they hate you, at the very least.
“When we played Wales in Cardiff, you would descend into this maelstrom. You walk into this barrage of hatred and people were taken aback.”
Moore finally ended his losing run against the Welsh at Twickenham at 1990, with his roar of celebration at Carling’s try speaking volumes in terms of an outpouring of emotion.
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