Whoever it was who coined the phrase “never meet your heroes, lest they have feet of clay” obviously never met Sir Gareth Edwards.
The greatest of all Welsh sporting knights – there are unfortunately far too few of them for some unknown reason – continues to charm, amuse, captivate and amaze in equal measure even though today he reaches his 75th birthday. Poll after poll down the years have rated him as the greatest player the world of rugby has seen. His playing statistics certainly bear out such billing.
He first played for Wales at 19, captained the side at 20, went on the first of three British & Irish Lions tours at 20 and won the first of his five Triple Crowns at the age of 21. He won three Grand Slams, set records for the most caps (53) and the most tries (20) by a Welsh player and was one of the catalysts for the Lions winning back-to-back series on tour in New Zealand in 1971 and South Africa in 1974.
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In tandem with Barry John at half-back for Wales and the Lions and then the recently-departed Phil Bennett for the same two teams, he kept the Welsh flag flying high around the globe. On the sporting stage he stood supreme, but the way he has been since exiting his theatre of dreams at the old Cardiff Arms Park after winning yet another Grand Slam in 1978 has added even more lustre to his image.
Once the pin-up boy of Welsh sport, he is a beacon of decency, a man who is admired as much these days for his adventures on a canal barge with his wife Maureen as he was idolised on the pitch with Barry and Benny.
As far as double acts go, his now 50-year marriage with Maureen stands as another beacon in modern-day society. They grew up in the same street in Gwaun-cae-Gurwen, went to the same secondary school, were teenage sweethearts who first became a couple after agreeing to go on a blind date to make up the numbers with mutual friends. They have not only survived the test of time, but thrived as each year has gone by.
Gareth may have been lucky enough to head off to Millfield a few years later, but the flame had been lit between him and Maureen. Just to show how strong a marriage theirs is, consider these two facts.
Firstly, having left the honeymoon arrangements to Gareth on July 6, 1972, Maureen found herself being whisked off to stay at a quiet fishing hotel in mid-Wales. Romantic? “Not a bit of it,” she said. “Although Gareth did get the key to the fire exit so I didn’t have to walk through the foyer and bar where all the old fishermen were talking about their catches.”
Not the most auspicious of starts, you would have thought and Maureen cried on the phone to her mother while she was away saying, she wanted to come home. Gareth, apparently, loved it!
And he has loved her for every second of every day since then. So much so, in fact, that on the day of their 50th anniversary the other Wednesday, he once again chanced his arm. This time he took his long-standing partner for a day out at the Arms Park, the scene of so many of his sporting triumphs.
To be fair to the old non-romantic, there was a good reason this time for him tempting Maureen away from their beautiful home in Porthcawl and head to the Hubert Johnson Trophy Room at Cardiff Rugby. Together they helped to unveil a painting that has been a year in the making to not only mark one of the greatest moments in Gareth’s stellar career, but also to fill in a gap in rugby history.
What started with Phil Bennett’s outrageous stabbing, side-stepping run in the fourth minute of the huge clash between the Baa-Baas and the All Blacks on January 27, 1973, ended up in being what has been consistently proclaimed ‘the greatest try’ scored.
It has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times on various YouTube channels and remains the most talked-about score in rugby history. While people still marvel at how the Baa-Baas own ‘magnificent seven’ conjured up the moment of magic – Phil Bennett to JPR Williams to John Pullin to John Dawes to Tom David to Derek Quinnell and, finally, on to Gareth Edwards – there is no photograph of the great man actually scoring the try. It has been out on DVD and remains visible in the digital world, but you can’t see it in a book, newspaper or on a poster.
Just think about that for a moment – not one picture exists of what has been described as the greatest try scored in the history of rugby union! So that is where the story begins about why Gareth took Maureen to the Arms Park on their wedding anniversary last week.
A chance conversation between Gareth and two old friends, former Wales squash star Adrian Davies and financial services expert Scott Salter, on the way to a lunch sparked the idea of creating a painting to replicate the try ahead of its 50th anniversary in January next year.
“Had the game been played at the modern-day Principality Stadium it would have been captured by at least 10 ‘snappers’ behind the dead ball line in that part of the ground. It would have been the rugby picture of the century!” suggested Salter.
“All three of us just couldn’t believe there was no photograph of that special moment. We’ve checked with agencies, picture libraries and noted photographers of the era and spoken to those from more recent times. There is simply nothing out there.
“Gareth couldn’t recall signing a photo or painting of his try and that’s when he stumbled on the idea of commissioning an artist to paint the scene. Having checked that nobody had had the idea in the previous 48 years, we engaged Welsh artist Elin Sian Blake.
“Well known for painting rugby scenes, it took Elin a year to complete the work. She kept in close contact with Gareth and the interest generated from family, friends and then the business community spawned a new, potential commercial opportunity.
“It was then decided to produce signed, limited-edition prints of the painting, which Elin named The Greatest Try. We have since created a website, TheGreatestTry.com, to use to sell the prints and other branded products. We’ve also booked the International Conference Centre at the Celtic Manor Resort to host what we believe could become the biggest lunch hosted in Wales with up to 2,500 seats available.”
What the investment in the painting also did was to provide Maureen and her two sons, Owen and Rhys, with the opportunity to give Gareth the best 75th birthday gift he could have asked for – a permanent reminder of one of the highlights of his amazing career.
“I’m not sure where we’re going to put it in the house as yet, but it will be nice to have it there to glance at every day. That try has been an amazing part of my life and I love that so many people still want to talk about it. If they ask, then I’m happy to tell them what happened,” said Gareth.
“I used to take care of ‘Benny’ when we played together and the little man certainly paid me back in spades when he led the All Blacks back on a merry dance to pave the way for the try. You could sense there was going to be something special about that game and he lit the touch paper.
“What many people sometimes don’t understand is that the game against New Zealand was being heralded as a fifth Test for the All Blacks on their tour and another Test against the 1971 Lions. Phil hadn’t been on that tour, it was a trip dominated by Barry John.
“Barry had retired by the time this game came along and it really was Phil’s big moment to shine. He had to ask for special permission from the Barbarians committee to invite Carwyn James, the 1971 Lions coach, to come and help us prepare for the game. They eventually agreed, but said he could talk to us from the sidelines, but couldn’t go onto the pitch to coach! He got us all in the right frame of mind and his last words to Phil were, ‘Go out and play as if you were playing for Llanelli at Stradey Park’.
“That’s exactly what he did and I can’t thank him enough for that. His was a terrible loss to so many of us last month and it hurt deeply. For as long as I tell the story of the Baa-Baas try I will ensure he is given the credit he deserves.
“I’ve always been fascinated by the pleasure that try still gives to so many people. It is also amusing to try to keep count of how many people reckon there were there at the ground on the day. I think I’m up to around 200,000 at the moment!
“Wherever I go in the world, people always seem to want to talk about it. Just before the 1995 World Cup in South Africa I was invited to go fishing in the middle of nowhere in Russia. It was a three hour-helicopter ride from Murmansk. The helicopter had seen service in the war in Afghanistan and had bullet holes in its sides, but it got us to our destination. I ended up staying in a village where the mayor, who was a former nuclear submarine commander, took me back to his house, brought out a DVD, shoved it in the telly and up came that try!
“I said, ‘You’re kidding me, someone put you up to this’, but he said he was a rugby fan. So, obviously, it has had a big impact – there’s no getting away from it, no matter where you are!”
Gareth's story really is one of those rags-to-riches tales. The son of a miner, he was given the chance to hone his sporting ability at Millfield after his PE teacher and mentor at Pontardawe Technical School, Bill Samuel, pushed and pushed for him to get a scholarship at the elite boarding school in Somerset.
“I am the product of a very caring community where people were hard-working and everyone knew each other. You were proud of your identity and the village you were from,” he said. "The river ran black because of the coal tips, but as kids we never missed a moment to play sport in the road or the local farmer’s field. I had a very happy childhood and like every schoolboy I dreamed about playing for Wales.
“There was always a competitiveness about our play. Boys as young as 10 would line up against 16-year-olds in whatever sport we were playing at the time. When the call came for us all to go home to go to bed, everyone wanted to score the last goal or touch down the last try.
“Bill Samuel saw some potential in me and was hard on me. I remember the week after Wales had been beaten by a record score in South Africa in 1964 he stopped me from going home and made me do some extra sprinting work. He told me, ‘That’s not happening again and it starts now – do this and do that’, he told me. I protested that I was going to miss my bus, but he said he’d take me home in his car.
“When we got there I complained to my father, who actually went to see him. Bill made me work harder than anyone and I have always been able to look back and feel thankful of what he did for me. When I was a teenager, I never thought for a moment what the future held for me. My scholarship at Millfield brought me opportunities, no doubt about it.
“I came from a mining background and without the scholarship Millfield gave me I’m not sure what might have happened to me. I remember being shocked one day when I went home and saw on the table a miner’s helmet and a new pair of hobnail boots.
“I said to my dad, ‘Oh you’ve got some new boots have you?’ He said, ‘No, try them on, they are for you’. I was shocked and he then told me I wasn’t going to be staying on in school and the only place for me was down the mine. That moment shook me rigid and it was probably the biggest crossroads.
“I had been offered the chance to play for Swansea Town at football and go to an English public school. With a fortnight to go before school started, Bill Samuel got a message from the Millfield headmaster to say that he had found a way to get me in.
“The weekend before I was due to go to Millfield a letter arrived for me from Trevor Morris at Swansea Town offering me a chance to play for them. My mother, though, like all Welsh mams from that background, was very keen on the best education for her children and so I never got to fulfil my footballing dreams.”
His partnership with, and deep affection for, Millfield has grown and grown. The current school team play their matches on the Sir Gareth Edwards pitch and there is a Sir Gareth Edwards Scholarship Fund that provides similar opportunities to the one he had to aspiring young sportsmen and women of current and future generations.
Fiercely proud of the two formative years he spent at Millfield, there is nothing about him that suggests he built his reputation on any old school tie connections. He is so well grounded in the traditions of a Welsh mining community that he represents everything that is good about his country.
At his core runs a stream of emotions that made him the great competitor he has always been. If anything is worth doing, it is worth doing well!
Millfield helped him to win an England schools athletics vest and also helped him to hone his tennis skills. The latter came in handy on the Wales tour to Japan in 1975 when he joined forces with JPR Williams, another great alumni of Millfield, to notch a notable victory.
“We were in Tokyo on tour and there were some wonderful tennis courts close to where the team was training. I fancied a knock and asked JPR to join me. Our hosts were only too pleased to accommodate us and we quickly got into having a bit of fun,” recalled Gareth.
“Soon, a few people came to watch us and then more and more joined them. Finally, we were approached and asked if we would mind if two players from the club could join in with us.
“Now, everyone knows that JPR was a junior Wimbledon tennis champion and I guess I was half-decent. But, unbeknown to us, we found ourselves playing the club’s doubles champions. The first two serves I received thundered past me as the local heroes laid down a marker.
“JPR simply came up and whispered in my ear, ‘Just do all you can to get the serve back and leave the rest to me’. I did my best, he did what he said he was going to do and we ended up winning both sets.”
The Japanese duo picked the wrong double act to play against – as did so many of the greatest rugby teams in the world during the 1960s and 1970s! Gareth pushed back the boundaries during his golden era, ripped up the history books and rewrote the play book for scrum halves.
Things may be a little bit more sedate these days, but his drive and passion has not diminished one little bit. The good thing is that he is one national idol, a true national treasure, who is willing to meet and talk with anyone and really is a joy to spend time with.
Penblwydd hapus, Sir Gareth!
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