A KING GIVING UP HIS THRONE: THE DAY BARRY CALLED IT QUITS
FOR a brief moment, time-travel back to Lionel Messi in his Barcelona pomp. Or Cristiano Ronaldo at the height of his Real Madrid powers.
Then imagine either megastar dramatically announcing they were retiring while at the very peak of their game.
It’s hard to envisage such a scenario, but that’s the kind of bombshell that hit Welsh rugby when Barry John shook the world by revealing he was hanging up his boots.
An awful lot has happened in the intervening five decades – Grannygate, Ruddockgate, David Moffett’s controversial shake-up of regional rugby.
But not even those seismic Welsh rugby events quite stunned a nation as much as the day The King suddenly turned his back on the game at the age of just 27.
Barry John, who turned 77 last week, was truly extraordinary, for many still the greatest rugby star Wales has produced.
The man from Cefneithin was rugby’s first true superstar, dubbed the oval ball game’s version of George Best after inspiring the Lions to their historic 1971 triumph in New Zealand.
That Lions backline was arguably the greatest in the history of rugby union – Gareth Edwards, David Duckham, Mike Gibson, John Dawes, Gerald Davies, JPR Williams. Yet even amongst that truly stellar collection of talents, Barry John still stood out as the No. 10 magician behind the Lions’ success.
As such, upon his return he was feted, traffic stopped in the street, invitations piled up.
He worked for Forward Trust, a branch of Midland Bank, but increasingly there appeared a mismatch between his fame and his day job.
The whole town seemed to turn up when Barry arrived at a function.
It reached a point when a woman curtseyed in front of him while at a promotional event for his employers in North Wales.
“That convinced me this was not normal, I was becoming more and more detached from real people. Others thought it was funny, not me,” he said.
He decided the only way out from the scrum, to use a rugby metaphor, was to retire.
But as fate would have it he was able to go out on his terms, playing with the Lions mates with whom he had created so many special memories a few months earlier, and at his Cardiff Arms Park stomping ground.
The match was a Barry John XV versus a Carwyn James XV, each of the Welsh rugby icons former members of the Urdd, and it featured a Who’s Who of rugby.
On Barry’s side were the likes of Gareth, Gerald, JPR and Mervyn Davies. Facing them were greats like David Duckham, Bob Hiller, Ian McLauchlan, Sandy Carmichael, John Dawes and Phil Bennett.
“Basically I had the Wales team and Carwyn had the rest of the best of
Britain,” he said. “Lots of those were Welsh too because our second best were still amongst the finest around.
“We had no idea it would attract the interest it did, but support came in from various companies, 35,000 turned up and it was shown on TV.
“David Duckham and John Spencer were coming down together by car. They hadn’t arrived with 10 minutes to go because of the traffic and the huge numbers trying to get to the ground.
“David Morris was coming up from Neath and had to abandon his car and jog the last few last yards so he could make it for kick-off.
“It could have been embarrassing, playing 14 v 13, so it was a relief when everyone turned up.”
What very few in the two dressing rooms knew at the time was that this was to be Barry’s swansong.
Nine days after the match, he announced his bombshell news in the Sunday Mirror – then headed to West Wales with wife Jan to get away from the hullabaloo.
“Between returning with the Lions in August and the start of the Five Nations in February, it was absolutely manic,” recalls Barry.
“The invitations just flew in thick and fast. I had no time to myself, just knew I wasn’t as sharp mentally or physically as I wanted to be.
“You have to be a thoroughbred for top international rugby and the offfield demands meant I couldn’t be up to that standard as a player any more.
“I decided before the Five Nations that I would finish at the end of the season.
“As it happens, instead of the season just petering out with routine Cardiff games, I knew in my own mind I was finishing in the most perfect way possible. At the Arms Park, a wonderful celebration game, my mates in the Welsh side, the likes of Hiller, Duckham, Carmichael, McLauchlan, who’d toured New Zealand with me, on the other.
“We’d achieved something pretty spectacular together a few months earlier, so in my mind it was meant to be this way, the perfect finale, instead of letting the season drift and then making my announcement.
“The only ones I confided in were Gareth and Gerald. I felt I owed them that, pulled them to one side just before kick-off and said ‘listen, thanks for being great team-mates but this is my last game’.
“They were a little surprised, but I detected a touch of ‘he must have been thinking this’ because of odd hints I’d perhaps dropped here and there.
“The other person I told was our sponge man Gerry Lewis, literally just before we ran out. He slumped down and said ‘whaaat?’ Didn’t want to believe it.
“Other than that it was just the people at the Sunday Mirror who I’d negotiated a deal with.
“The editor was a big rugby fan and actually told me to carry on playing. ‘We’ve done the contract, Barry, you trigger it when you see fit, but carry on for a while’ he encouraged me. “But my mind was made up.” He added: “People must remember it was an amateur game back then. People were saying ‘you must