It's Rorke's Drift again, but this time the Welsh heroics end badly

WALES fell to the longest count in Test history yesterday, battered into submission after 20 minutes’ stoppage time amid allegations of biting, cheating and general jiggery-pokery.

- Peter Jackson

The outrageous finale to a Royal occasion will demand an unprecedented Six Nations inquiry into the sequence of events that ended in the 100th minute after a rearguard action of superhuman proportion. A siege that demanded gallantry above and beyond the call of duty ended with Welsh hearts broken by the equalising try and Camille Lopez’s winning conversion.

For the first time in living memory, an international had been won and lost by a scrum that effectively took almost half an hour to complete. There were 49 seconds left on the game-clock when Wales, clinging to a five-point lead thanks to Herculean tackling in the face of heavy French artillery, conceded a penalty.

France went for the scrum. Over the next 20 minutes of actual game time plus another ten for all manner of stoppages, France won nine more penalties. Wales survived eight scrum-penalties, almost as many resets, one yellow card and almost endured the nearest thing sport has come to a rugby version of Zulu.

Those involved will no doubt swear to their dying days that they would have endured their Rorke’s Drift had it not been for what happened before the second of those eight scrums. Wayne Barnes had binned Samson Lee after the first set piece in the 81st minute.

Before the front rows went through the engagement process, the English referee asked Uini Atonio, the gigantic French substitute tight head: “Are you fit?”

Yes, said Atonio. Guy Noves and his French management team thought otherwise. They sent Rabah Slimani, the starting tight head, back into action almost half an hour after he had been substituted.