When Phil Bennett reached his 50th birthday, his former Test team-mate Bobby Windsor declared, only half in jest: “He’s still the best fly-half in Wales.”
Bill McLaren said of the diminutive figure from Felinfoel: “They say down at Stradey that if you ever catch him you get to make a wish.”
Few opposition flankers did catch him.
Read next: Jiffy devastated by Phil Bennett news and Wales in mourning
One of Wales’ greatest-ever rugby players has passed away at the age of 73 after battling a long illness. His career numbers are superlative — 413 games for Llanelli, scoring 2,535 points, including 131 tries; 29 Wales caps; two Five Nations Grand slams and three Triple Crowns; eight Tests for the Lions.
But statistics alone could never do justice to Phil Bennett’s majesty on a rugby field.
Poetry in motion, his team-mate and old friend Delme Thomas called him.
Benny, as he was known throughout rugby, was a supreme game-controller blessed with a running game the gods might have signed off. When he sidestepped, you half-expected it to come with a screech. “I once played against him at Stradey and he stepped one way and then the other.” recalled former Swansea back-rower Geoff Atherton. “My legs became tangled and I fell over in a heap. He could do that to people.”
Opponents didn’t know what weather to wish for when they faced the west Walian. If conditions were bad, he would kick for the corners and play for territory, basing his decisions around what was possible and using his sharp rugby brain to guide his team around. On dry pitches, he could open up defences with slashing breaks that often featured that jagged step.
His greatness as a player was captured for all time with his role in Gareth Edwards’ try for the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973, when a splash of extravagant sidesteps in the shadow of his own posts started the move that flowed into arguably the finest touchdown the sport has witnessed.
But he also took special satisfaction from helping Llanelli to victory over the All Blacks a few months earlier and he was irresistible for the Lions in South Africa the following summer. For Wales, he arguably peaked in 1977, when he was Welsh rugby’s player of the year, though the following season his class and maturity shone through when leading his country to a Grand Slam, two tries in his final Test amounting to a stylish international sign-off.
All this left him a mild-mannered role model for a generation. Jonathan Davies, who knew a thing or two about fly-half play himself, has referred to him as his inspiration growing up.
Plenty of others felt the same way.
Rewind 25 years when the Saturday evening Green ’Un, The Sporting, ran a series that involved asking sports stars in the area to name and talk about their sporting heroes.
Benny proved such a popular choice it reached the stage where one interviewee was asked to nominate someone else as so many had been picking the former Wales captain. Very reluctantly, the chap agreed to do so.
Phil would have been embarrassed had he been told that story, for never once in 20 years of this writer ghosting his column for the South Wales Evening Post did he boast about himself to me. It wasn’t his style.
People picked up on how lightly he wore his fame, too.
Once, The Guardian’s Frank Keating asked Willie Davies, one of the two Swansea schoolboys who beat the All Blacks with the Whites in 1935, to name his favourite modern Wales fly-half. “Phil Bennett,” he said, “brilliant, and without ego.” Wife Dorothy then took the phone. “Precisely,” she repeated, “brilliant and no ego — Mr Bennett and my William must be kindred spirits.”
And when asked for a comment to mark his old friend and team-mate’s 70th birthday, Ray ‘Chico’ Hopkins replied: “You can write anything down because he’s just great. When I was a bit low a fair while ago, he always used to ring me up to see how I was. He’s a brilliant guy, one of my best mates.”
Benny’s support for Chico was such that he used to mention him in his column, “to pick him up a bit”.
Nor did such a generosity of spirit just extend to his friends. There would be nods and a few words for everyone. Help if needed.
One story, in particular, is a personal favourite, with a local rugby club once ringing the sports desk at The Post in a state of high anxiety. “We’ve been let down at the last minute by our after-dinner speaker,” the voice on the other end of the phone informed the paper’s then sports editor David Evans. “It’s going to be a disaster.
“Can you do anything?”
Dave duly got in touch with his paper’s star columnist, who agreed in an instant to stand in.
"But what about money?" Benny was asked. "They can't pay you much."
"Tell them to buy me a few beers," came the reply.
A great evening was had by all.
Fast-forward to 2021 when the Scarlets were stranded in South Africa amid the Covid pandemic. Despite his own health concerns, the region’s president went out of his way to put in a call to their media and communications manager Rob Lloyd, enquiring about the well-being of players.
The story will surprise only those who didn’t know Phil Bennett, a man whose talent was matched only by his personality.
It was a joy to watch him play.
But it was even better to know him off the pitch.
Truly, one of Welsh rugby's brightest lights has gone out.
