They say that Barry John, king among fly-halves, finally decided to quit rugby when a bank cashier in Rhyl offered him a curtsy. That’s how it goes in some tellings, anyway. In others it was a nurse in Swansea, or a young mother who told tell her son to reach out and touch his hand at the Eisteddfod, or the man who caused a tailback on Queen Street when he left his car idling in traffic so he could ask him for a handshake, or the kids who crowded round to stare at him when they got a tip-off that he had stopped in at the local garage to have his car fixed. “Living in a goldfish bowl,” John said when he explained why he retired, “isn’t living at all.”
John died last Sunday at the age of 79. There will be a minute’s applause for him, and his teammate JPR Williams, as well as the old England captain Mike Weston, at Twickenham on Saturday. John’s obituaries were a reminder the game in Wales is a little different to the one they play in England. There are 54,685 registered rugby players in Wales, spread across 276 clubs, among a population of just over 3 million people. It’s one corner of Britain where rugby isn’t a minority sport. John might have preferred it if it was.
