Phil Bennett
Wales and Lions fly-half widely regarded as one of the greatest players in rugby union history
PHIL BENNETT, who has died following a long illness aged 73, was fly-half for Wales in the 1970s – and one of the best players in one of the greatest rugby union sides of any era.
Possessor of the most devastating sidestep the game has seen, he could throw off a defender with little more than a feint of the body. But he had much more to his game than the ability to swerve oncoming predators. An astute kicker who used the ball wisely, he had a highly active rugby brain, and was able to size up the options ahead of him in a split second.
With Wales between 1969 and 1978, Bennett finished first (or equal first) in eight Five Nations championships, with three Grand Slams, one of them as captain. He was also a key player for the British and Irish Lions on their unbeaten tour of South Africa in 1974, captained the Lions on their 1977 trip to New Zealand, and was a star attraction in the 1970s for the carefree Barbarians invitational XV.
Domestically, he served Llanelli with distinction during a notable period of success for the club in the 1970s, before retiring to do media work in 1981.
Philip Bennett was born on October 24 1948 in Felinfoel, on the edge of Llanelli, to Les, a steelworker, and his wife, Mary, who worked at a carpressing plant. At Coleshill Secondary Modern School he showed ability at a range of sports, including football
– and in his early teens was offered a trial at West Ham. Even in those days, however, he was wedded to his home town, and the idea of having to move to London appalled him. Instead he left school for the Duport steelworks, and joined Llanelli.
He made his international debut in 1969 at 20, coming on as Wales’s first-ever injury replacement, against France in Paris, although a wardrobe malfunction almost prevented him from taking the field. Called into action with just three minutes left, Bennett spent two minutes wriggling around with a broken zip as he tried to get his tracksuit bottoms over his boots – until the hooker Norman Gale, exasperated by the delay, ran across and tore the trousers to pieces.
In those early days, Barry John was at fly-half for Wales, so Bennett had to play in other positions. But with John’s surprise retirement in 1972 he was able to make the No 10 shirt his own, forming one of the best ever half-back partnerships with the scrum-half Gareth Edwards.
Two years later he was picked for the 1974 Lions trip to South Africa, where the touring side won 21 of their 22 matches (with one draw), including a 3-0 Test-series victory. Bennett was instrumental in that great success, amassing 103 points.
When he returned to Felinfoel from South Africa, it was to personal tragedy. His wife, Pat, whom he had married in 1970, was pregnant with their first child, Stuart, born a few weeks after his return. But the baby lived for just a day, and the devastating blow made Bennett question his rugby career. “I couldn’t cope,” he said later. “I’d been four months in South Africa while Pat was carrying the baby. I should have been by her side, not playing rugby. I wanted to give up the game there and then.”
But the local community pulled round in a supportive huddle, the steelworks gave him time off work, and Llanelli paid for the couple to go away on a recuperative holiday in Spain. Pat became back pregnant again; this time the child, Steven, survived, and he was joined by another son, James, not long afterwards.
A Grand Slam with Wales followed in 1976, and when Mervyn Davies retired the following year, Bennett took on the captaincy. Though he was a laidback character, Bennett had the necessary steel for leadership, and was not above using a bit of naked nationalism to rouse his charges. In a changing-room speech before a match against England in 1977, he decided to fire up his players with an ad hoc disposition on the historical English mistreatment of the Welsh.
“Off the cuff I began this rant,” he recalled. “‘Look at what these buggers have done to Wales,’ I said. ‘They’ve taken our coal, our water, our steel. They buy our houses and they only live in them for two weeks of every year.’ I was pretty chuffed, but I wasn’t sure that Gareth Edwards had been taking it all in. I knew he was a keen fisherman, so I mentioned that the English were even taking over our fishing waters. ‘What? The bastards!’ he said. That stirred him!”
Bennett was captain, too, of the Lions on their four-month tour of New Zealand in 1977, a generally dispiriting experience as the series was lost 3-1. But he played as well as ever, scoring 125 points on the trip, and his reputation remained intact. “It was a tough trip and I know it affected Phil because of the disappointment,” said his fellow Lion Bill Beaumont. “But everybody left that tour thinking what a great guy he was.”
Better times came the following year when as captain Bennett took Wales to the Grand Slam in 1978 with a 16-7 victory in the final Five Nations game against France in Cardiff, in which he scored two tries, having decided beforehand that he would retire after the match.
In all, Bennett had played 29 times for Wales, and his final club game for Llanelli came in 1981 after 413 appearances with 2,535 points, including 131 tries. His greatest moment with Llanelli – perhaps, he felt, of his entire career – was the 9-3 defeat of the mighty All Blacks at a packed Stradey Park in 1972, when his exceptional tactical kicking was a key component of victory.
“At the end of the game the supporters burst into the dressingroom and ripped the laces from our boots as souvenirs,” he recalled. “Some already had clumps of mud from the pitch. By about 7pm there were policemen cavorting in the street – I think even they were drunk.”
There had also been 20 caps with the Barbarians, including one against New Zealand in 1973, a monumental encounter that included the so-called “greatest ever try” as Gareth Edwards dived over in the corner in Cardiff. It was Bennett who had started off the move as he picked up a horribly bouncing ball close to his own line, essayed three typically exquisite sidesteps to take him past various flailing All Blacks, and then fed the ball to JPR Williams.
Although he would have made a good coach, after his playing career Bennett opted for media work, becoming a pundit for BBC Wales, doing some television commentating, writing newspaper columns and speaking on the after-dinner circuit. He also ran a sports shop in Llanelli.
A dedicated family man, he was a regular spectator at Felinfoel matches, standing in characteristically unassuming fashion on the terraces. Appointed OBE in 1979, he was inducted to the World Rugby Hall of Fame in 2005.
Phil Bennett is survived by his wife Pat, née Jones, and by their two sons.
Phil Bennett, born October 24 1948, died June 12 2022