The Bobby Charlton of Wales who’s bereft without his George Best
The death of Barry John – so soon after JPR Williams died – has hit GARETH EDWARDS hard but one of the game’s greats is clinging to a heap of joyous memories
SIR GARETH Edwards has found something to smile about within his sadness. There have been too many days like this for him lately, but he is focusing on an amusing memory of Barry John.
That was easy, because there are so many, and it has also been awfully tough, because Edwards just didn’t see it coming on Sunday, when John’s family announced a true great had passed away aged 79.
For most of their lives, this pair rarely took a step the other did not anticipate. But that one caught Edwards cold.
‘I spoke to him only last week,’ he tells Mail Sport. ‘We’d often have these nice chats on the phone, just little catch-ups, and that was the same. It’s so sad. I was shocked. But I’ll say this: there was so much about him that brought me joy.’
With that comes a wonderful story about a player and man who stood out. It dates back to 1971 and the only occasion in 133 years when the British Lions won a series in New Zealand.
As those of the time will tell you, if Edwards was the Bobby Charlton of those marvellous Welsh sides of the late Sixties and Seventies, and arguably the finest player the game has known, then John was George Best. He was the fly-half who could make it rain in a team of geniuses and then sidestep the drops.
Edwards, three years the younger and now 76, was alongside him for almost all of it — half-backs tied together by position and friendship for club, country and the Lions — and he was there next to him in New Zealand, too. It was the tour when Edwards’ mate was renamed ‘King John’ by the Kiwis.
‘You have to picture it,’ Edwards says. ‘We’ve won one of the Tests and lost one and we’re on a great run on the tour (16 wins and two losses) when we faced one of the provincial teams, Hawke’s Bay.
‘Everyone wants to take down our flag at this point and it was a torrid game. There was stuff going on in the lineouts and all sorts — I remember John Pullin had a head wound that was bleeding and Barry looks to me and says, “Gar, I’ve had enough of this. When you get it, throw me a long ball”.
‘He went back around 30 yards and I chuck it to him. He just put the ball on the floor and sat on it. Everyone suddenly stops, confused. I was thinking, “What the hell is he doing now?”
‘Then he just gets up and hoofs it, not only into touch but over the stand and out of the ground. It was his way of saying, “We’re not playing the game this way”. They hated that, but it was Barry’s way of shoving up two fingers. It epitomised him.
‘He played with a smile on his face, but he was an assassin at the same time. What a player, so much talent. With Cardiff, when we trained, he’d start spinning around and doing drop goals with his heel. We’d ask why and he’d say the other way was too easy.’
It’s the softest and most mournful of chuckles that follows in an interview that extended over three phone calls after two hours in person at Cardiff Arms Park a week earlier. We had met to chat about Wales’s Six Nations clash with England at Twickenham this weekend and to discuss a time when the Welsh would be expected to quick- step and thunder their way through such a game.
That was a different era, of course. The sport has changed, bodies have grown bigger, but those Wales teams of the Seventies are preserved as the stylish rulers of a prolonged, golden period in time.
In Wales the components of the sides who won six Five Nations titles, shared a further two and collected three Grand Slams from 1969 to 1979 can be recited like Pele, Garrincha, Jairzinho, Rivellino and Carlos Alberto.
The sadness is that the inevitable has come around: John Dawes, JJ Williams, Phil Bennett, JPR Williams and now John are all giants who have passed away in the past three and a half years alone, the latter two in the past month. Ray Gravell and Merv ‘the swerve’ Davies are among those previously departed. ‘We know there’s no getting away from it in life but it has been hard,’ says Edwards after the deepest of breaths. ‘So many special names there. With Japes (JPR Williams, who died last month aged 74), I almost thought it could never happen — he was indestructible.
‘I remember him and me going for the same up-and-under for Wales. The rule with Japes was simple: get the hell out of his way.
‘I didn’t and he smashed his jaw to pieces against the back of my head. We thought he’d be out for a long time, but he turned up to dinner that night with a grin!
‘I knew he had been unwell but last time I saw him, last November, he was doing great. Same when we saw each other in the summer in the Gower.
‘Even if you don’t talk all the time you are part of each other’s lives. You’ve shared something. We’ve all been kicked where it hurts quite a bit in the past few years and when you’ve known those boys in their glory, well... but if there’s one thing that is nice, it is that they are remembered. They live on in memories for a lot of people. It was a special team to be part of.’
THE way it was then isn’t especially close to the way it is now. Warren Gatland has a young Welsh side in transition, as does Steve Borthwick with England, but the fire of this particular match will likely never change.
Sitting in the Sir Gareth Edwards lounge at Cardiff Arms Park, under a pair of portraits — Edwards on the left, John to his side, naturally — a smile has spread across the old boy’s face that is wide as the Severn. Edwards has a tale about what it all means.
It traces to a quiet road in a small village, Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, just north of Swansea and near the pit that Edwards’ father mined.
‘I’d be out on that road with a ball and, if I was kicking it or throwing
Barry played with a smile but was an assassin at the same time. In training he’d spin round and do drop goals with his heel