Gareth Edwards interview: Passing of Welsh legends will sink in at our reunions

After about an hour speaking with Sir Gareth Edwards at his home near Porthcawl, Lady Edwards comes into the conservatory with some refreshments – an enticing plate of Welsh cakes accompanied by a pot of tea, which is promptly covered by a tea cosy bearing the famous red dragon. At this moment I begin to wonder whether I have stumbled into Welsh paradise.

There were originally two reasons for speaking to the man still regarded as the game’s greatest-ever player. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the unbeaten British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa, that astonishing achievement by a special group of players winning 21 out of their 22 matches. And the other was to discuss the excellent work of the Sir Gareth Edwards Cancer Charity, set up to support young patients between the ages of 15 and 35 who are going through treatment and struggling financially.

Events in recent weeks changed that. Wales is in mourning after the loss of two of its finest players, the late JPR Williams and Barry John. The tribute for Williams in the minutes before Wales’ game against Scotland at the start of the Six Nations was spine-tingling. The legacy of ‘The King’ will no doubt receive the treatment when Wales soon host France.

The last few years have hit hard, saying goodbye to the pillars of Wales’ greatest era including JJ Williams, John Dawes, Phil Bennett. Trying to choose the right words, Edwards pauses. “I haven’t started missing them yet, if you know what I mean. Missing them will be when they’re not there,” he explains.

“This is part of life. It has dealt us a great hand, so I am not going to quibble about it. But it is still extremely sorrowful to lose great mates. The camaraderie we shared and enjoyed brought a lot of pleasure to some people. The loss of those boys, the fact that I can’t ring them up and have a chat with them… well, there we are. Losing them has drawn the rest of us together a bit again.”

Outside of reunions at formal functions, Edwards would see Williams when visiting his son’s caravan in the Gower. “Who would be pedalling past? JPR. To see him in a relaxed mood with his family was great. We would have a beer, reminisce.”

‘I was heartbroken’

John, Edwards’ half-back partner for Cardiff, Wales and the Lions and author of the famous “you throw it, I’ll catch it” line, shockingly retired after the duo had returned from the victorious 1971 tour of New Zealand, still the Lions’ only series win on the All Blacks’ turf. Hearing Edwards discuss the moment when John informed him, at John’s house before the two attended a function, the shock seems to still linger. In a sense there are parallels between John’s decision in 1971 to turn his back on fame and the pressures modern players face today.

“There were financial opportunities there for him and you can’t blame him, it’s an individual’s decision. But oh god, I was heartbroken,” Edwards admits. “Whether the whole thing was weighing down on him, I don’t know. He certainly wasn’t the sort of guy where pressure bothered him. But I missed him. In all probability, he missed the game. He said that he didn’t, but I think… going from such a high – that New Zealand tour was something else, no one had ever achieved that – we were wined and dined everywhere. It was difficult to live in the real world, so to speak. Everybody wanted to see you, to meet you.

“There was a game at Arms Park, a hell of a crowd, and Barry had said ‘Gar, this could be my last game.’ And I was going ‘No, it can’t be!’ It wasn’t so much that I didn’t believe him, I didn’t want to believe him. I was coming into my own and he was playing on top of his game.”

It is fascinating to wonder how not just Edwards’ life, but the history of the entire sport, might have looked had the timing of two letters been different. Edwards, as he puts it, was “mixed up which road to take” at the age of 16, having caught the attention of Swansea Town  – now Swansea City AFC – as a young winger playing football. Meanwhile his school master, Bill Samuels, had written to Millfield School about the athletically talented Edwards, having noted the impact receiving a sports scholarship had on Mary Bignal, who won long jump gold at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.

Edwards paced for days waiting to hear from both Millfield and Swansea. The offer from the school came first, before a letter from Swansea Town magically appeared on the family mantlepiece the next day...

“To this day, I still don’t know what I would have done,” Edwards admits.

Three years later Edwards, still a teenager, made his Wales debut and embarked on a remarkable career. In 1968 against Scotland he became Wales’ youngest-ever captain, the same year he went on his first tour with the Lions to South Africa. The focus naturally goes on his triumphs with Lions and that try for the Barbarians, but his three Grand Slams with Wales also deserve recognition.

It would be criminal to not use this opportunity to ask him about what is still deemed to be the greatest try of all time in 1973. Those great Wales team-mates are missed but Edwards also fondly remembers David Duckham – or Dai Duckham as he was called in Wales, the highest of praise for the late England wing.

One detail sticks out. “It’s the delight that people have had out of that try, of that game,” he explains. “The fun we have had when we have been brought back together. We had a function at Celtic Manor in January last year, a thousand people there. We had three of four of the All Blacks XV on a video call live at about 3am in New Zealand – it was fantastic.

“John Bevan, who went to rugby league not long after, says to me ‘it should have been my try’. I tell him he wouldn’t have made it! But he’s right. The fact that John was still on the wing meant that Joe Karam, the New Zealand full-back, had one eye on me and one on you and wasn’t sure where to go.”

It is fascinating to hear him reflect on those Lions tours; not the matches themselves – although Edwards’ crucial drop goal to help win the first Test in 1974 needs to be recognised – but the experiences. The levity supplied by the likes of Bobby Windsor, the Lions hard-as-nails hooker from Pontypool, sounds absolutely essential.

After the third Test in 1974, and a good few beers having clinched the series against the Springboks, the team’s plane took off from Port Elizabeth with Windsor sat between Edwards and the great Willie John McBride. An air hostess walked past, looking out the window with concern. A bird had been sucked into an engine, one of the two on a 737. Windsor, who hated flying, clung on to Edwards arm and leg for dear life as the plane landed and Windsor proclaimed “I’m never going on a b----y plane again ever!”

The team faced the option of waiting for the plane to be repaired in a couple of hours, or a five-hour bus trip to East London on roads with not even a hint of tarmac. Most opened more beers, waited and made the short flight to East London. Windsor arrived later at 10pm, walking into the bar covered in dust to inform Edwards; ‘oh Gar, that’s the best b----y journey I have ever had’.

Modern Lions tours are increasingly squeezed into tighter windows, much to the disappointment of Edwards.

“It was the best of the best. You learned on the field, off it, having a beer after the match. It should not lose its identity, its status.” Only the other day he spoke with the England flanker Roger Uttley about John’s passing, noting that “it felt like we were still on tour”.

That trip in 1974 was his last with the Lions. He turned down the chance to go in 1977, with two young boys now at home.

Wales won the Slam in 1978 and Edwards faced a similar predicament about the summer tour to Australia. Again he said no. The win over France to seal Five Nations glory ended up being his last cap. Reflecting now, John’s shock retirement all those years before had made Edwards more aware of the bigger picture.

“As benevolent as my employer was – and his statement was ‘if Maureen can do with you, Gareth, I can do without you’ – I became more conscious,” he says. “Something inside me [in 1978]… I didn’t want to ask Maureen again. I didn’t want to ask my employer again, who had never quibbled. A three-month Lions tour, he paid my wages. Who could go away for three months without being paid?”

The subsequent relief Edwards felt after saying no vindicated his decision but, as he admits, the mind still wanders. Should he have gone to Australia? Could he have held on until the Lions went to South Africa in 1980? Then again, as Edwards puts it, he was incredibly fortunate “because I survived it all. I didn’t get hurt or injured”, while also playing with three top-tier No 10s in Watkins, John and Bennett.

‘Jenkins is a charming boy’

He still enjoys the game today, as vastly different as it may seem. There is a connection between Edwards and the new Wales captain Dafydd Jenkins – “a charming boy “ – having played alongside his grandfather as a schoolboy.

“The kicking… it is boring, but there is lots of good rugby there,” he adds, while cautioning against the focus on power. “The physicality of the game today determines how it is played. We need to be careful. We need to protect these boys, we don’t want them being hurt.”

Although the game “is always vulnerable”, as he puts it, recalling concerned mothers in New Zealand watching the Lions in 1971 and the outrage of Wales’ 111-line-out game in 1963 which left Scotland threatening to cancel matches. “The point is, we have been there before. But let’s not get to a point where people are saying ‘I’m not going to watch this, I’m not going to pay for that’.”

Edwards on how rugby has evolved

There have been two notable tonics. One is Antoine Dupont, the France scrum-half and world’s best player, with the pair meeting twice in recent years. “He is special, a conductor. He makes them play. I can’t speak French but we seem to be able to converse when we meet.”

And then there is Portugal, whose fast-paced, ambitious performances at the Rugby World Cup reminded Edwards of the 70s.

“I know the whole essence of playing in the Rugby World Cup is to win it, but they brought excitement. Most of my mates who I played with and around my era were of the same opinion, messaging ‘did you see Portugal? They were great’. We want people getting off their seats and enjoying the damn thing.”

Praise does not come much higher for any team than those words from Edwards. Shaking hands afterwards he informs me that our couple of hours together was a pleasure. You can imagine how I felt.

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