When JPR Williams, the great Welsh rugby full-back, died this week at the age of 74, the tales were legion. What a player he was: quick, smart, tactically astute. Not to forget, astonishingly brave. He appeared to have no fear in the bruising, bloodied environment of rugby in the 1970s.
In truth, often he would get his revenge in first. As on the 1974 British and Irish Lions tour of South Africa when, in order to pre-empt the home side’s bullying aggression, the visitors agreed that on the call of 99 they would go into collective action. The idea was, on the basis that the referee could not send the entire team off, as soon as they heard the shout, everyone would simultaneously punch the nearest Springbok.
Phil Bennett, the side’s cultured fly-half, recalls that in the midst of one of the test matches in that notorious tour, he saw Williams suddenly charge 30 yards across the pitch to flatten the biggest bloke in a green shirt with a single blow. As he trotted back into position, Williams said to Bennett “That showed him.” To which Bennett replied, “But John, nobody shouted anything.”
