Down the years these operatic last-act numbers have quite a few times come down to this same fixture: Wales v France
Three days to go and do all Wales's red-hot presumptions already look too expectantly over-inflamed? A weathered and cranky France XV might have lost in Paris on Sunday, but the remnants seem perfectly capable to me of a formidable last hurrah in Saturday's grand slam finale and they could easily muster enough buckets of cold water to douse a young dragon's far too brazen certainties. We shall see.
All down history, these operatic last-act numbers have quite a few times come down to this same fixture. If the reds ravishingly slap on the whitewash on Saturday it will be their third slam in eight seasons, their 11th in the 104 years since they first played the fledgling French XV at Cardiff Arms Park on 2 March 1908 when the visiting newcomers spent the morning of the match (a Monday) being shown round Cardiff's Coal Exchange in Mount Stuart Square and being toasted with wine by the Welsh coal owners in their top hats before being transported to the ground in "two-pair horsed charabancs" for the hosts to run in nine tries to win in front of 20,000. So was the great rivalry launched.
As Wales are the only ones of the six to claim rugby union as its national game, then only 10 clean sweeps in the exact century up to 2008 is pretty meagre rations. Those grand slams have come in four separate gulps with great passages of famine in between. That first possible Five Nations' grand slam in 1908, for instance, was followed with two more in 1909 and 1911: that was the decade in which Wales took the pastime lovingly to its heart and soul: Rhondda toughs doing the forwards' donkey-work, deft and dancing Dai behind them to score the tries. Not until 1950 and 1952 did the team of Ken Jones, Cliff Morgan and Clem Thomas win two clean sweeps again; then another long gap until the imperishable "decade of the dragon" when the P4W4 was gloriously logged in 1971, 1976 and 1978 and the whole world and his wife knew the boyos only by Christian names or initials, as in Barry, Gareth, Gerald, Merv, JPR, JJ or JT.
Each time in the 1970s it was the French who were involved in the settling of those marvellously vivid grand finales; the spine still tingles at the sharp recollection of those deciders which provided three epic encounters, each suffused with hymns and arias, colour and clamour and cockerels, verve and wit, point-counterpoint, the full-on battle raging first this way, then that.
In 1971 in Paris, Barry first breaking his nose with an unlikely but heroic tackle and then ghosting through for the winning try after Jeff Young had hooked against the head. In 1976, it was another tackle which proved the turning-point in Cardiff when JPR thunderously bounced winger Jean-François Gourdon into touch at the cornerflag. In 1978 the slam was settled at the old Arms Park again when France gave best at the last only after Gareth and Phil Bennett first did all the scoring and then, together, announced their retirements.
The reds versus Les Bleus has been an unending eightsome reel, marked with all the eights down the exact century between that first match in 1908 and Wales's last grand slam in 2008. How's this for neat decennial milestones? 1928, and France's first win; 1948, France's first win in Wales; 1958, Wales like this week too assuredly certain of the slam, but the French coming from nowhere to deny them; 1968, France's first grand slam; 1978 and those Gareth and Benny adieus; and 1998 at Wembley (while they built Cardiff's Millennium Stadium) and Wales's cataclysmic 51-0 record defeat, inspired by the darting elan of French No10 Thomas Castaignède as if he was himself from the very template of the fabled Welsh fly-half factory which produced them all from Bush and Morgan to Bennett and Jonathan Davies. (By the way, how cheerfully, knowingly and refreshingly does the latter good fellow light up BBC's TV coverage along with the sparkling little Castaignède).
Refreshing too are big Welsh wingers. What a highly original one-off duo. How will the French on Saturday deal with those two enormous touchline tanks, Alex Cuthbert and George North? They make Jonah Lomu look a midget. For a bit of fun 30 years ago, those two professorial authors of Fields of Praise, Welsh rugby's unsurpassable centenary history, Dai Smith and Gareth Williams, listed a litany of Welsh wingers which I happily cribbed to read in celebration of his life when Newport's good Ken Jones died last year. This was how their hymn literally took wing:
"Ken Jones in flight resembled nothing as much as a jaguar. Other Welsh wings moved in different ways: Haydn Morris flowed, Gwyn Rowlands pounded, John Collins scorched, Lynn 'Cowboy' Davies high-tailed, Dewi Bebb scampered, Stuart Watkins powered, Keri Jones sprinted, Maurice Richards shimmied, John Bevan bulldozed, Gerald Davies sizzled, JJ Williams flew."
Great stuff. You might add since then that Nigel Walker vroomed, Ieuan Evans zoomed, Elgan Rees hustled, Alfie Thomas bustled and, of course, Shane Williams hopscotched. All you can say now is that big Al and mighty George both trample. I don't know what "to trample" is in French. But I suspect we might yet find out this Saturday.