When a tall tree falls in the forest

BEFORE reality TV and “live the dream” talent shows, there was a hugely influential science fiction and fantasy series which was compelling viewing for anyone with a grain of imagination.

The Twilight Zone ran for 156 episodes and inspired a whole generation of writers, including Stephen King. My favourite story concerns the editor of a dying, small-town newspaper who turns it round through the expedient of hiring the Devil as a sub-editor who uses a Linotype machine, which has the happy knack of predicting the future every time a story is set on it.

Exclusive after exclusive, always ahead of the opposition. If only things were so simple in 2010.

But when I watched the response of Wayne Rooney to the jeers and catcalls of supporters in Cape Town, and then that quite astonishing press conference by John Terry, it was another installment of The Twilight Zone that came back to me.

In The Big Tall Wish, a washed-up boxer is able to reverse his sporting fate through the supernatural ability to see himself through the eyes of others.

That would be a difficult, and sobering, experience for Wazza and co, but I wondered what it might have meant to Andy Ripley, a horse of a different colour, who could not see at all as a long battle against prostate cancer finally overcame him six days ago.

As you grow older the whiff of mortality becomes stronger in your nostrils. First your parents go; then it can be your friends, but it is a different kind of grieving and sadness which arrives when your heroes, some of the tall trees of your life, fall to the ground.

By modern standards Andy Ripley only played a handful of games for England’s rugby team – two dozen between 1972 and 1976 – but he was a throwback to a Corinthian age of amateur sport and possessed an all-round expertise that made him a feared and admired number eight, a national class 400m runner and hurdler, a champion triathlete, a world indoor rowing champion, an accomplished yachtsman and a qualified canoe instructor.

Just for good measure Ripley, still playing rugby at 41 and close to being selected for the Cambridge Boat Race crew ten years later, became BBC Superstars champion in 1980 when the series was at the height of its popularity.

Most of his career in the England side was spent in the shadow of one of the great Welsh teams of all time but he can still be seen on YouTube running the length of Murrayfield, legs moving up and down like pistons, to set up a try for Tony Neary and then bursting out of the back of the scrum and though a redoubtable Wales defence at Twickenham in 1974.

That secured the first English victory over their rivals from across the Severn since 1960 and was one of a quartet of remarkable triumphs from a fade-to-grey team – South Africa beaten 18-9 in Johannesburg, the All Blacks defeated 16-10 in Auckland and Australia turned over 20-3 in Twickenham.

The 6’5” Ripley, with his flowing lion’s mane hair, ball tucked high under his arm, was also the star when England won the inaugural World Sevens trophy.

It needed a great player to keep Ripley out as first choice in the historic 1974 Lions tour of South Africa and, unfortunately for the Rosslyn Park man, there was one – Merve “The Swerve” Davies, who completed a formidable back row with Fergus Slattery and Roger Uttley, originally selected as a lock but moved to accommodate yet more aggression in a pack which was one of the most physical in the history of the game.

Ripley was a star of the midweek team, but nearly four decades later his failure to make the Test side still played on his mind when he was asked whether he was disappointed to lose out. “Disappointed? Into devastation and beyond” was his answer.

He revelled in his unconventional image as “rugby’s first hippy” and his reputation for insouciance probably cost him a longer career at international level. On the first ambassadorial reception in 1974 he turned up on parade in casual wear rather than the official Lions uniform and was given a severe reprimand.

“There’s another official function on Friday. You will wear the tour blazer, grey trousers and tie. Don’t dare turn up in anything else” hissed manager Alun Thomas.

He did as he was told, and sported blazer, grey trousers and tie. But no shirt, no socks, and no shoes.

People like Ripley are supposed to be immortal so it was a shock to everyone when he was pictured last month receiving an award at Buckingham Palace, wheelchair-bound, shrunken, and blind.

And now he has gone.

It happened that I was wandering around Highgate Cemetery on Sunday, looking at the graves of Douglas Adams, Karl Marx and Malcolm McLaren, and calculating, as you do on these occasions, the ages of the departed.

Into my head came the words of the metaphysical poet John Donne’s sermon, Meditation XVII, with its observation that “any man’s death diminishes me.”

But, in the case of Andy Ripley, perhaps more so than many.

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