Dewi Lake has explained what was behind the picture of him and Tommy Reffell going toe-to-toe with Springboks hooker Malcolm Marx.
The picture of Lake and Reffell staring down Marx during Wales' first summer Test earlier this year instantly became an iconic one, with it illustrating perfectly how the pair had fearlessly taken to Test rugby. The match in question was Leicester openside Reffell's Test debut, while it was just Ospreys hooker Lake's sixth cap.
And now Lake has spoken about the image publicly for the first time, revealing that he and Reffell even laughed at the publicity it garnered on social media.
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"It is a good picture," he told the Scrum V podcast. "I won't say I like it, but he has got a good angle on it.
"Me and Tommy had a good giggle about that together on tour. He has taken a pretty good picture there."
He also added that the pose came down to a mindset of 'fronting up' against the world champions, having been widely written off by the South African media ahead of the series.
"Definitely, (it's about) not backing down," he said. "More letting them know we were here to give them a Test match.
"I think a lot of people would have thought there was no game. A lot of the things we saw in the press over there was going back to a nasty game Wales lost by a lot (96-13 in 1998).
"For us, we weren't going to roll over and they'd have to work for it if they wanted the win. That first Test we did make them work.
"We're a little nation that punch above our weight. We were just trying to show that at the time. It was captured. It was just that we weren't backing down."
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