of Asgård. A part of this plain was a zone known as Gladsheim where the hall of Valhalla was located.
“Ullr had been silent during the journey but now he asked. ‘Have you had much experience at organizing sporting events?’
“‘Yes, I once arranged a special kind of steeplechase for a local fete. It involved a selection of vicars, sextons, vergers and deacons chasing after the steeple of their church while I ran off with it.’
“‘Ridiculous. How could a mortal man carry a steeple?’
“‘Sometimes I have big hands,’ I said.
“‘I think you are a liar,’ he cried, ‘rather like Loki, the god of mischief, who you might be unlucky enough to meet; but I find you entertaining nonetheless. Tell me something else highly unlikely.’
“‘I once posted myself in a box. Does that count?’
“He was gravely disappointed. ‘No.’ But then he saw that we had nearly reached the hall of Valhalla. ‘Here you will find all the dead Welsh rugby players from the past. You may select any you like.’
“This prospect pleased me and I have to admit that I was feeling confident. Let me describe Valhalla as I remember it. For a start it was large, smoky, dark, smelly and noisy. The floor was awash with spilled mead and ale. I went inside and found myself thrust into a chaos of shouting and fighting. It was just like Wind Street in Swansea on Friday night. There were long dead Viking warriors hitting each other with axes, good practice for Ragnarok, the end of the universe, or so Ullr informed me. I wandered rather nervously among the benches, plates of food and the severed limbs. Red beards and red-rimmed eyes formed an ocean of northern ire into which I wallowed like a punctured coracle.
“Despite the mass of people I felt horribly alone, and then abruptly I recognized a shape in the flicker of a brazier.
“‘Gwyn Nicholls!’ I cried in amazement. ‘You were captain of the side that won the Triple Crown in 1902.’
“‘That’s right, boyo. But who are you?’
“I recognized another shape. ‘Watcyn Thomas! In 1931 you played 70 minutes with a broken collarbone and scored a try.’
“‘That’s right. Against Scotland.’
“Ullr peered over my shoulder. ‘Do you choose these two?’
“I nodded and Ullr prodded them along with the point of his sword. And that is how it went for the next few hours, with me wandering through the dimness and bumping into great dead Welsh players, and Ullr confirming whether I wanted to add them to my team or not. Eventually I had fifteen players and we left Valhalla and plodded along to a training ground where the god left me with a wink and a shake of the hand. I nursed my bruised fingers and pondered. From what Ullr told me just before he left, I had only one week to get my side in shape before the big match that would take place in the new stadium on the far side of the Well of Urd, beneath Yggdrasil, the World Tree.
“I confided my worries to my team. ‘It’s not much time!’
“‘Don’t be daft, boyo!’ cried Dewi Bebb, winner of thirty four caps between 1959 and 1967. ‘We’re all fit and keen.’
“‘That’s right,’ added Ray Cale, hero of the 1950 Grand Slam and notorious for his robust play. ‘We’re ready for anything!’
“I accepted their reassurances and we started training. My main problem was that I didn’t know the opposition, I hadn’t seen the Asgård team play and thus I couldn’t devise any effective strategies against them. I had to settle for making guesses based on what I remembered about Norse mythology. Then it occurred to me I could ask my players to fill in the details I didn’t know. They regularly went to watch Odin’s boys thrash all other teams in existence. The news wasn’t good and I began to regret ever boasting to Ullr on that bus out of Cardiff. For a start, ordinary rugby balls weren’t used up here but the severed head of a frost giant with quite different bouncing qualities.
“I also learned precisely what the Rite of the Blood Eagle involved. The victim is tied facing a post and his ribs are cut from his spine and his lungs pulled out through his back, so that they resemble wings, inflating and deflating as slowly and agonizingly his life drains away.
“The days passed and my confidence began to drain away also. I realized I had made a bad mistake. Allow me to explain my mistake as best I can… It’s natural for human beings to feel the past is better than the present, that the players of olden times were faster and stronger than those of today. And maybe they were. But the point is this: they weren’t that much better, a little bit better maybe, but twenty or thirty times better? No! And that’s what would be required to beat Asgård, players twenty or thirty times better than the modern Welsh side. I just didn’t have players of that calibre. We were going to be slaughtered, and in my case I was going to be sacrificed in a particularly nasty way.
“The week was already over and Ullr sent a bus to pick us up. I said nothing to my players about my fears. They were in good spirits and I didn’t want to lose the only strength at our disposal – mighty ignorance. The bus took us towards the Well of Urd and the new stadium and we pushed through the crowds on their way to the same place. In the changing room I gave a last inspirational speech and then I went to take some air. The atmosphere inside the stadium was incredible, overpowering, apocalyptic. To settle my nerves I smoked a cigarette and this seemed to attract the rage of a certain section of the crowd who made insulting dragon faces at me until I stubbed it out with a twist of my heel.
“To my amazement I recognized the referee, a fellow who called himself the Postmodern Mariner. We had met shortly after my career as a pirate with Captain Ribs and my island idyll with Charlotte Gallon. He was a reporter who wandered around looking for strange stories connected to the sea. I managed to get close to him and ask what he was doing up here. He shrugged and said he originally came looking for information on Jörmungandr, the serpent that circles the world at the bottom of the sea, but somehow he’d ended up as a forced volunteer in this match. Nobody ever wanted to referee an Asgård game. The abuse from the dead Vikings in the crowd was just too much.
“We didn’t have time for a longer conversation than that. The match was about to start. I paced the touchline as my players walked out of the tunnel to a chorus of insults and threats from the rows of the packed stadium. Every voice in the place was raised against us. The sweat on my skin, already cool, turned to ice when the home side emerged. Fifteen Norse gods in full armour, Thor in the lead, swinging his hammer and shouting with the force of a small volcano. I glanced up at the red sky expecting rain, but it was just Thor’s mocking laughter sounding like thunder. Then the coin was tossed, a coin with only one side – Odin’s mythical disc – and the game began. I covered my eyes.
“The referee used a miniature ram’s horn instead of a whistle to blow off. The stampede of feet was like a landslide. I heard the pitiful shrieks of Arthur Gould, captain of Wales no fewer than eighteen times between 1885 and 1897, but I still couldn’t bring myself to look. Then there was a roar and I knew that Asgård had scored their first try. Finally I had to peer between my fingers. I watched the god Hœnir convert easily for another two points. He celebrated in modest fashion, for he was the silent god and considered something of a ditherer by Odin. I groped for another cigarette, thought better of it and ran my fingers over my ribs. The Rite of the Blood Eagle awaited me…
“Many tries followed in quick succession. All the gods scored at least one, and some of them – including Dagr, Höðr, Njörðr, Váli and Kvasir scored a thousand or more. I have to be honest and admit
