Haydn handed out the tackle from hell

THE ultimate in bonecrushing tackles at Cardiff Arms Park happened long before JPR Williams got to work on Jean-Francois Gourdon, famously flattening the French wing when all seemed lost during the 1976 Grand Slam decider.

It measured high on the Richter Scale, a pulverising no-arms hit which under current laws would have called for the double whammy of a red card and a penalty try. Back then it was seen as part of the game, just as it had been at the same venue almost a generation earlier.

Another Welsh fullback, Haydn Mainwaring then of Swansea, set the benchmark in February 1961 for the Barbarians against South Africa. When Avril Malan stampeded clear from a line-out, Mainwaring hurtled across the field in desperate protection of the Baa-baas’ tenpoint lead to smash Malan into touch.

He hit him with such force that the Sunday

Times likened the blow to ‘a comet burying itself in earth’. It was said that Malan took some minutes to recover and when the referee blew for no-side, Mainwaring joined Newport wing Brian Jones and Ireland hooker Ronnie Dawson in chairing Malan from the field.

He could probably have done without it given that Mainwaring had done his unwitting best to rearrange the Afrikaner’s ribs He still managed to attend the dinner during which he was made an honorary Barbarian.

Mainwaring, a onecap wonder who made his only international appearance a few weeks after the Malan blockbuster in the centre against France, died last week at the age of 85. His victim is still going strong at 81 but probably still wincing at the mention of his nemesis.