THE sight of thousands of rugby fans walking past the statue of Sir Tasker Watkins at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium at the weekend was thought-provoking for me.

I wonder how many of them now know the story of the remarkable man whose statue is far bigger than his diminutive stature in life - but nowhere near the size of his heroism.

I feel the need to tell it again today because it bears telling, because of the weekend's link between rugby and remembrance, because Sir Tasker hailed from Nelson in the Rhymney Valley, my home valley, because one generation needs to pass on its history to another.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Sir Tasker joined the British Army as a private .

He attended an Officer Cadet Training Unit, and was commissioned on May 17 1941 as a second lieutenant.

He was one officer in a group in Normandy post D-Day leading an assault on a Wehrmacht machine gun post.

After all the other officers were killed in the approach, Sir Tasker continued to lead the group and was awarded the Victoria Cross for leading a bayonet charge against 50 armed enemy infantry and then single-handedly taking out a machine-gun post to ensure the safety of his unit.

He was the first Welsh soldier to be awarded a VC during the Second World War.

This was his citation, something pinned up on the dressing room wall by former Wales coach Graham Henry during a Six Nations campaign:

“On 16 August 1944 at Barfour, Normandy, France, Lieutenant Watkins' company came under murderous machine-gun fire while advancing through corn fields set with booby traps.

The only officer left, Lieutenant Watkins led a bayonet charge with his 30 remaining men against 50 enemy infantry, practically wiping them out.

Finally, at dusk, separated from the rest of the battalion, he ordered his men to scatter and after he had personally charged and silenced an enemy machine-gun post, he brought them back to safety.

His superb leadership not only saved his men, but decisively influenced the course of the battle.”

His Victoria Cross is on display in the Lord Ashcroft Gallery in the Imperial War Museum.

The words of the citation gloss over the sacrifice and sheer terror of battle.

Sir Tasker later became a barrister, judge and president of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1993.

He had a wry wit.

In 1979, he said: "In 1823, William Webb Ellis first picked up the ball in his arms and ran with it. And for the next 156 years forwards have been trying to work out why."

If you had walked past him in the street, or met him at a rugby function, however, you would have seen an unassuming, modest man.

Yet what this country had asked of him and his contemporaries was more than most of us now can comprehend.

He was from a generation who knew from bitter, first-hand experience that war was not something in which to revel, not something in which to glory - it is something they hoped would never have to be endured by their children and grandchildren.

Sir Tasker died in 2007. The Welsh team wore black armbands for their 2007 Rugby World Cup game against Canada in Nantes.

The number of those who can tell us about their Second World War experiences first hand dwindles every year.

He would, no doubt, have heartily approved of the fitting show of respect by the teams and crowd at the Millennium Stadium ahead of the South Africa match.

As a proud Welshman, I doubt he would have approved of the result.

SOME Welsh rugby fans do us few favours.

We lost the South Africa match because we lost the contact area, lost key players early on to injury and didn't capitalise on our chances.

Yet here they are again blaming the bogey man - Alain Rolland.

Rolland was about as fair as I have seen a referee in penalising both sides. You might not like his style (and I don't, particularly), but you cannot argue he favoured South Africa.

Perhaps we as a rugby nation should concentrate our focus on why we seem to be sticking to our life-script as the plucky losers instead of winning matches like this which was, at one stage, just two points within our grasp.