Towards the end of the 1990s Welsh rugby, once again, found itself struggling to compete at the top level. After a humiliating defeat to the Springboks in Pretoria, where Wales narrowly avoided shipping 100 points to the South Africans, the WRU realised something had to change. Their search for a world class coach took them to New Zealand, where Graham Henry was doing great things with the Auckland Blues. They’d found their man and the whole of Wales breathed a sigh of relief when Graham Henry announced, “I’m going to coach Wales….and I’m leaving tonight”. It didn’t take long for his influence to have an impact.
Coincidentally at the Groggshop we were in the middle of a revolution of our own of sorts. We had experimented with resin as early as the mid-seventies but by the late nineties I was becoming frustrated with the old clay moulding process. To a modeller the two-piece plaster mould was very restrictive, and the moulds didn’t retain the detail I had put into the master figure for long. We took the bold step away from clay to resin in 1997 and I’ve never regretted it. It meant every figure we made in a limited edition was as sharp in detail as the first and I was also free to make more adventurous pieces. One of the first subjects to be solely made in this way was Graham Henry.
It wasn’t long before Graham had proved his worth by almost reversing that record defeat in Pretoria, coming very close to beating the Springboks in Wembley. The following weekend, my father and I were in the stand at Sardis Road when Graham Henry made an appearance. As he climbed the stairs to his seat, he received a standing ovation and the decision to make a Grogg of him was made there and then. I based his pose on Rodin’s famous statue “The Thinker” as Henry is a superb tactician, renowned for his immense knowledge of the game.
By the time the five nations rolled around the Graham Henry Grogg was finished and we presented the first figure to him on the eve of the Welsh team’s departure to Edinburgh. I was pretty nervous, but Graham was delightful and took it all in good part, especially as I discovered later, he had no idea what a Grogg was! A few weeks later his wife Raewyn appeared in the shop. Fascinated by the Grogg she had come to find out what Groggs were all about. It was the beginning of a long and valued friendship.
Unfortunately, Graham’s first five nations proved a very steep learning curve with Wales losing first to Scotland and then Ireland. Panicking a little we decided to only make 250 pieces of Graham’s Grogg fearing he’d be on his way home sooner than we’d hoped. Miraculously Wales then turned everything on its head…. beating France in Paris for the first time in 20 years and then famously denying England the final Grand Slam of the century. Wales then went on an eleven match winning streak including a series win over Argentina and the first ever win over the Springboks in the half built Millennium Stadium.
The ridiculously low Limited Edition piece of “The Great Redeemer”, as Graham became known, sold out very quickly leaving us with egg on our faces! I made a brand new figure of Wales new super coach but kept one of the original figures. It is still on display in our museum today along with its rubber mould and plaster block not only as an exhibit but as a permanent reminder to me to be more careful when numbering limited editions in the future!
