Pssst: Burton's finest role - Red Richard of rugby Digitally altered image. This is a story of rugby, private angst turning to public blow-ups, sexual innuendo, alcohol, regret and a huge talent only partly realised. And no, it's not the Wallabies circa 2014. It is the sporting story of the late actor Richard Burton, the legendary hell-raiser who as a schoolboy was considered good enough to play rugby for Wales, but who ultimately turned to a different stage to make his name. "I would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at the Old Vic," Burton once said, and with his beloved Red Dragons taking on the Wallabies overnight - and Monday marking the 89th anniversary of his birth - it's worth recalling that for all the drama in Burton's love life, he always remained besotted with rugby. Considered a "rough and fearless" player, the coal-miner's son who became a star could well have played in the national team had the Second World War not intervened. In his 1988 biography Rich: The Life of Richard Burton, Melvyn Bragg notes that Burton played in a Royal Air Force Welsh team alongside eventual Dragons skipper Bleddyn Williams - who in his autobiography noted the actor's talent. Burton seemed particularly chuffed with that recognition. "On page 37 of that volume Mr Williams is kind enough to suggest that I had distinct possibilities as a player," he wrote in a memoir republished in the 1992 rugby anthology Take the Ball & Run. Incidentally, one of the curious phenomena of my library is that when you take out Bleddyn's autobiography from the shelves it automatically opens at the very page mentioned above. Friends have often remarked on this and wondered afresh at the wizardry of the Welsh. It is in fact the only notice I have ever kept. For the most part, Burton played down his ability, indicating that as a side wing-forward - in today's terminology breakaway - that he was too slow and too small to not be caught out by players with speed, bulk and height. "In my teens I had lived precariously on the lip of first class rugby by virtue of knowing every trick in the canon, evil and otherwise, by being a bad, bad loser, but chiefly and perhaps only because I was very nippy for the mark," he wrote. [But] when faced with bigger and faster forwards, I was doomed ... genuine class of course doesn't need size. Mind you, it's not as if Wales needed much help against Australia when the actor was in his prime. Only two Tests were played between the teams in Burton's youthful "window" - in December 1947, when he would have been 22, Wales defeated Australia 6-0, and in January 1958 it was a 9-3 Wales win when Burton would have been a sporting veteran at 32. Burton's memoir recalls the last game he ever played, having snuck away from an acting contract that specifically precluded his participation in rugby. At an away match against a village "whose name is known only to its inhabitants," he describes it as the type of place where "towards the end of the match, you kept your bus ticking over near the touchline in case you won and had to run for your life." I wasn't particularly nervous before the match until ... I heard a voice from the other team asking 'Le ma'r blydi film star 'ma?' (here's the bloody film star here?) as we were running on to the field. "My cover, as they say in spy stories, was already blown and trouble was to be my shadow," he writes. It was a mistaken game for me to play. I survived it with nothing broken except my spirit, the attitude of the opposition being unquestionably summed up in simple words like 'Never mind the bloody ball, where's the bloody actor?'  Returning to the stage that week, Burton said he was forced for several performances to play Hamlet as Richard III. His sporting career over, Burton spent the rest of his life as a fan. Again playing Hamlet in a matinee at the Old Vic, he was expected to be on stage throughout, but Bragg writes he kept a radio in the wings so he could hear the rugby score. For some reason Hamlet kept straying across the stage to those wings all afternoon. Other actors were instructed to bring on the score ... It was said that Gertrude gave him the final result. Needless to say, it was Burton's two marriages to Elizabeth Taylor that resulted in the biggest scrums of his life. The media circus is clear in YouTube footage of the pair arriving in Cardiff to attend a 1965 International match where Burton answers one whispered question with "Any forecast to make? It's 'when am I going to kill myself?'," and bemoans the "pack of lies" about reports that he had been unable to get tickets for the match, resulting in a deluge of offers to attend with other fans. Taylor is her luminous self and obviously enjoyed the more rugged elements of the game. Her most often quoted statement on sport is "I prefer rugby to soccer. I enjoy the violence in rugby, except when they start biting each other's ears off. Richard himself had alluded to the hardness of those who played rugby in the valleys of Wales, recounting the exploits of a one-armed half called Jimmy One Arm. "He'd lost an arm in the First World War [and] played with murderous brilliance for Caernarvon," Burton wrote. A great many people who played unwarily against him died unexpectedly in their early forties. Alas, so too did Burton. Passing away in Switzerland 30 years ago aged 47. As befits a hell-raising Welshman he was, of course, buried dressed in red. 2 minutes to midnight for... Ferrari driver Fernando Alonso. The former champ is pondering an off er to join McLaren but is still "considering what's the best decision." Sachin Tendulkar knows to stay reverential when it comes to comparisons with local cricket hero Sir Donald Bradman, saying they both "served the game." In his autobiography, Tendulkar recalls visiting the Australian great at his Adelaide home in 1998 where he revealed that defensive field settings would have curbed his 99.94 average to "Around 70." He said, 'Well, 70 isn't bad for a 90-year-old! ... to stop all the local trainers complaining about Melbourne Cups going overseas is make international visitors at least change their horses names to Australian names - like Cox Plate winner and the footy-themed Adelaide. Red Cadeaux could be Red Carlton and My Ambivalent becould simply be renamed "The Dees." Precedence could be Consistent Umpiring, while Unchain My Heart could run as Love You Eddie. Everyone's happy and it reminds us that footy season is not far away. - JOHN MULLAVEY, via email.