March 18, 1978 — for Welsh rugby there has never been a day quite like it, before or since.
It yielded a Five Nations Grand Slam with red ribbons tied around it, but it also marked the departure of two Wales sporting icons from the international stage.
Gareth Edwards and Phil Bennett were both bowing out from the Test scene. All-time greats, the pair of them. Never to be seen in international rugby again.
The thousands of Welsh fans who emptied from the Arms Park stands and terraces onto the streets of Cardiff celebrating a third Five Nations clean sweep of the seventies would have been blissfully unaware that at that very moment there was a quiet conversation going on inside the home changing room which was to mark a pivotal moment in Welsh rugby.
Read more: The untold Phil Bennett stories that show the kindness of a Wales legend
Sadly, Bennett passed away this week. On hearing the news, many would have perhaps allowed themselves to be mentally transported back to that spring day more than four decades ago, when the post-match news prompted such a sharp intake of breath.
Between them, the half-backs played 82 Tests for Wales and 18 for the British and Irish Lions, but it was the indelible moments of magic — the Benny sidestep, the Edwards kick and chase, the glorious dive in the mud — that will remain in the memory.
Now they were going at once, after Wales had seen off a formidable French team 16-7 to secure the title of Europe's best team for yet another year. But their decisions were taken independently.
“I knew it was going to be my last game, but I didn’t tell anyone beforehand,” Bennett once recalled.
“I didn’t want this game to be about me. This was a great Welsh team, we had just achieved the triple Triple Crown and were going for a second Grand Slam in two years. So there was no big farewell to the crowd or anything like that.
“Afterwards, I walked into the changing room and I went up to Gareth and said thanks for everything and he replied: "You’re getting out as well. Me too'."
And that was the end of the Edwards-Bennett double act, one that had sprinkled stardust across world rugby in the red of Wales and the Lions.
“I remember coming off the field and Jean-Pierre Rives, the great French flanker, came up to me and said: ‘well played you old fox, you got the better of us today, but maybe next year in Paris it is my turn'," Edwards remembered.
“I just remember thinking next year in Paris was a long, long time away.
“And in Wales there is always the next challenge, we are never satisfied, we had just won another Grand Slam and someone was patting me on the back saying: 'Right it’s Australia now in the summer, then if we beat New Zealand in November and after that South Africa we can be champions of the world'.
“We were still amateurs, we worked hard away from rugby and it was also time to give back to the people who had sacrificed so much for us and spend time with the family. I was also conscious of not going on for that season too many. It was a strange feeling, but it just felt it was the right time.”
Bennett had said of his retirement: “It was a decision I didn’t take lightly. I remember going to the Arms Park with Llanelli schoolboys and being in awe of the place. It was something special and I loved playing there.
“But I knew the time was right to finish. I had two young children and wanted to spend more time with the family.
“I was also a big boxing fan and had seen a number of fighters just stay on for that one fight too many — I didn’t want that.
“These days, you retire and it’s all over the press, it dominates the build-up to matches, but there was nothing like that. I just went back into the changing room, I think I told Gareth and maybe John Dawes as well. That was it.”
Digging deep for history
Wales had limped into the championship finale after a bruising 20-16 victory over a fired-up Ireland in Dublin.
“The boys were tired,” admitted Bennett, Wales' captain back then. “There is talk these days about Lions fatigue, but we were coming off the back of three months in New Zealand in 1977, I think we played something like 26 matches down there and it took its toll.
“The Ireland game was brutal. We had beaten them well two years earlier and they were out for revenge, they had four Lions in the pack themselves and they took no prisoners that day, with boots going in, everything. Our pack stood toe to toe with them and we got the win and the triple Triple Crown, the first time that had been achieved.
“But coming back in the changing room after the final whistle, it wasn’t a scene of jubilation or anything like that. You had boys having treatment, boys with their jerseys ripped.
“We had France next up and in the week before the match we trained at the Afan Lido in Port Talbot, as we did back then. We were a shambles, dropping balls and we couldn’t do anything, so John Dawes, our coach, just told us to go home and rest up.”
Awaiting Wales in Cardiff were a French team seeking Grand Slam success themselves, a side that boasted one of the most feared packs in the game.
“We were up against some of the greatest players to have pulled on the French jersey — Robert Paparemborde, Alain Paco, Gerard Cholley, two bruisers in the second row — France always picked hard men in the second row — and that legendary back row of Jean-Pierre Rives, Jean-Claude Skrela and giant No. 8 Jean-Pierre Bastiat,” Bennett had said.
“They also had this young kid at scrum-half in Jerome Gallion who was going to be the next big thing.”
Fittingly, it was Bennett and Edwards who starred, the skipper collecting a brace of first-half tries with Edwards adding a superb drop goal.
But this wasn’t an all-singing, all-dancing finale. This was a victory built on dogged determination. Wales had to tough it out to secure their Slam.
“We were hanging on in there in the second half,” Bennett previously said.
“I remember we got the boys together in a huddle and at the same time the crowd, as if sensing we could do with a lift, erupted into song. We just said: ‘We can’t lose this today, boys’. And we hung on for the win.”
“They were a tough side,” added Edwards. “Phil scored two great tries, I dropped a goal and Steve Fenwick did the same in the second half, but we weren’t at our best and it was a case of digging deep in that second half.
“The French were an uncompromising side, tough men, with a legendary back row. But we were strong mentally, we knew how to win.”
In his post-match press conference, Dawes proclaimed: “This team deserves to be recognised as the greatest of all time."
The sentiments could have been the same when it came to describing his two departing half-backs.
