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Barry Gone
The King is dead
Long live The King
RIP The King. The greatest outside half of all no time. Thanks for the memories .
Oh, my goodness!
A true legend of the game. The 'Pele' of rugby!
RIP Barry John
Forever remembered playing spin the bottle with his stunning eldest daughter in his house circa 1985, cheers Barry, rip.
Anyone too young to remember the Welsh rugby Golden Era of the seventies can get an idea of the sort of player greats like JPR, Gareth Edwards and Gerald Davies were because there are current and fairly recently retired players they can be compared to, but there’s no one like Barry John.
Defenders would think they had him lined up and then he’d be through with the would be tackler having no clue as to how it happened. Barry John used to glide through gaps and I used to have no clue how he did it at the time, so there’s no way I can explain what happened now!
RIP
Jonathan Davies on Scrum V recalling on how he was great friends with George Best. I don't think they spent their time together flower arranging.
These were the true legends from the Men of Harlech era.Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
RIP Mr John.
Worth a Read Great Obituary:
Barry John, legendary Welsh fly-half nicknamed ‘The King’ who quit rugby at the height of his powers – obituary
‘What frightened me was the intensifying public movement towards my own deification. I began to scream
Barry John, who has died aged 79, is regarded as one of the finest fly-halfs ever to play rugby. The elusiveness of his running and the pinpoint accuracy of his kicking have persuaded many judges that among the rich pantheon of great Welsh No 10s of the past century – Cliff Jones, Cliff Morgan, David Watkins, Phil Bennett and Jonathan Davies – the thin man from Cefneithin deserves the crown.
He was, in fact, named King John by the New Zealand press and public when he starred in the first Test-series victory by the British and Irish Lions against the All Blacks on their own soil. It was a nickname that haunted him on his return to Wales: “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
That was in 1971, his ***** mirabilis, when he had also helped Wales to their first Five Nations Grand Slam since 1952. At the end of the following season, in which Wales were again unbeaten, John sealed the championship with four penalty goals in a 20-6 victory over France in Cardiff and set a new individual points-scoring record for Wales.
He then shocked the world of rugby by announcing his retirement at the end of that match, his 25th for Wales, aged only 27. As he said himself: “I was at the peak of my career at the very top of world rugby.” He was giving up what he called “a supreme experience, a ride on a kind of magic carpet”.
Later he explained: “What began to depress me – and, in the end, to frighten me – was the intensifying public movement towards my own deification. I began to scream inwardly. I don’t have much talent for coping with hyper-adulation and its suffocating side-effects. The pressures became more than I could stand.”
Barry John in 1971:
These pressures included the tsunami of invitations he received to speak or attend lunches and dinners, to the detriment of his family life. He also resented the physical intrusions of fans prodding his chest, pulling his hair, tugging his clothes and taking his shirt buttons. What finally freaked him out was women curtsying to him in the street. “I had been turned into a circus act.”
Gareth Edwards, his scrum-half partner for Cardiff, Wales, the Lions and the Barbarians, said: “It’s not how good he was; it’s how good he could have been. I honestly feel that an even more glittering future lay before him.”
Barry John was born on January 6 1945 at Low-Land, a smallholding at Cefneithin, about 10 miles from Camarthen. His parents, William and Vimy, had four sons and two daughters; Barry was the second son. The father worked for 28 years in the Great Mountain colliery at Tumble, a few miles away. In one Cefneithin street of 24 houses, 21 were occupied by miners.
It was a warm community, Welsh-speaking, chapel- and rugby-loving, in the valley of the River Gwendraeth. John wrote later: “I wouldn’t want to change a day of my childhood.”
All four boys played for the village team, and three of them for Llanelli. One brother went on tour with Wales and another played for Wales B, and would have gone further had he not suffered a serious injury. One daughter married Derek Quinnell, who was in the same Wales and Lions teams as Barry John, establishing another Welsh rugby dynasty.
At the village primary school, the head and one of the teachers had played rugby for Wales. In the same village lived Carwyn James, who won two caps for Wales as a fly-half before becoming a highly successful coach, beating the All Blacks with Llanelli, the Barbarians and the Lions. Although 16 years older than Barry, he threw a ball about with him from an early age, taught him to dummy and sidestep, and mentored him as his rugby talent emerged.
John passed the 11-plus at the second attempt and went to Gwendraeth Grammar School at Drefach, four miles from home. Aged 12 he was playing for the school under-15 team, even though he was only seven stone. He first played for Cefneithin when he was 16. On a Saturday he sometimes played rugby for Cefneithin in the morning and football for another local village, Porthyrhyd, in the afternoon.
He was equally good at football, scoring eight goals in one match, and drew interest from several senior clubs. Like Gareth Edwards, he could have made it as a professional footballer. He attributed some of his rugby skills to the other game: “I had an ability to dodge and feint, to make my opponents go the wrong way, and when they got possession I had a good idea of the way they were going to move.”
Barry John with his future wife Janet Talfan Davies, pictured in 1968 CREDIT: Anthony Wallace/Daily Mail/Shutterstock
His west Wales background made rugby an inevitable choice, though, and at 18 he was invited to play for Llanelli, but could only appear during the school holidays. He then went to study for a teaching diploma at Trinity College in Carmarthern, where he met Janet Talfan Davies, daughter of a leading Welsh lawyer, Alun Talfan Davies QC. She had been to Cheltenham Ladies College and went to on be a teacher. They married in 1969 and had four children, though they later separated.
He made his debut for Llanelli two days before his 19th birthday in 1964 and his debut for Wales two years later, while still at Trinity College. He became a regular at Stradey Park until the 1967-68 season, when he moved to Cardiff and began his hugely productive half-back partnership with Edwards.
When they first practised together, Edwards grinned: “You’re as confident and as big-headed as I am.” They were contrasting figures – Edwards always dynamic and restless, like a coiled spring, “an explosion waiting to happen,” as John put it. He himself was more aloof, with an air of cool superiority. As the Wales and Lions winger Gerald Davies put it: “While the hustle and bustle went on around him, he could divorce himself from it all: the game would go according his will and no one else’s.”
John said: “Our partnership was a natural and instinctive thing. We hardly ever talked tactics and our moves were spontaneous, not hatched in the dressing-room or at a blackboard.”
Having missed out on selection for Welsh Schools, John was determined to represent his country at senior level. His ambition was balked initially by the established Welsh and Lions fly-half, David Watkins, to whom he was reserve in four internationals.
He won his first cap in 1966 in a 14-11 defeat to the Wallabies, but made up for that a month later by scoring a try and a drop goal in Llanelli’s historic 11-0 victory over the tourists.
This try was described on air by Cliff Morgan: “This is Barry John again … going for the break … Oh no, he can’t make it this time … Yes, he can … he’s broken one tackle … he’s broken two … he’s inside again … is he clear? … 10 yards to go … can he get there? … what a try!”
He was chosen again for Wales against Scotland at Murrayfield, but misguidedly played while carrying a leg injury and was replaced in the next match by Watkins. In 1968, however, Watkins signed for the rugby league club Salford for a record fee and John became his automatic replacement in the Welsh side for the next four years.
He got a job as PE teacher at Monckton House School in Cardiff, but he had to give it up at the end of the 1968 season when he and Edwards were chosen for the Lions squad for South Africa. John broke a collar bone on the hard ground at Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria in the first Test and took no further part in the tour.
On his return to Wales he signed on the dole because he had lost his teaching job and could not find any other work. When his plight was reported in the media, he was offered a job by the Forward Trust, a finance house in Cardiff, where he worked as a rep for some years while living in crowded digs with friends who included Gerald Davies.
He turned down tempting offers from two big rugby league clubs, Wigan and St Helen’s, mainly because he could not bear the thought of leaving Wales.
Barry John playing against England in 1970, making a break for the ball with support from Dai Morris (centre) and Mervyn Davies (left) CREDIT: Mirrorpix
The following year he helped Wales to win the Triple Crown, thrashing England in Cardiff 30-9, John scoring a try and a drop goal. Edwards recalled John’s try as “pure magic”: when a Welsh attack broke down, “the maestro from Cefneithin scooped up the ball, and he ghosted, he glided, he weaved, coming off his right foot and his left foot, leaving the England defence in an embarrassed heap as he crossed the try line. It was a moment of individual brilliance.”
This ability of John to move silkily past would-be tacklers was described by the sports writer Frank Keating: “Barry John came like a ghost in the night … He was an insouciant natural sprite with a pale face and an apparently frail body … Sometimes, as he glided through ferociously hulking enemies, he made it seem they were actually mesmerised.”
For all the praise heaped upon him, John was a modest and rather shy young man who was embarrassed when fans or the media recalled his most memorable feats. When he first played for Wales he was worried about how he should address the captain, Alan Pask – “Mr Pask”, “Sir” or just “Alan”. This apparent bashfulness was in sharp contrast to his self-confidence on the field.
In 1970 Wales lost only to Ireland; after that, they never lost a game in which John played for Wales. The Grand Slam of 1971 was followed by the record-breaking victory in New Zealand, of which John was the brightest star. He had to rid himself of bad memories of an earlier disastrous tour with Wales, which John described as “my worst performance in top-class rugby”.
In the first Test in 1971 he won the match with the deadly precision of his kicking game, pulling the veteran All Black full-back Fergie McCormick all over the field. His curling kicks rained came down persistently just out of McCormick’s reach as they spiralled and twisted in the air. The great All Black was humiliated and never played again. The Lions won 9-6, including two penalties by John.
The All Blacks hit back powerfully in the second Test, winning 22-12, thanks mainly to the power of their scrum-half, Sid Going. For the third Test Derek Quinnell was brought into the back row to mark Going out of the game, which he duly did. The Lions put on 13 points in the first 18 minutes, in which Davies and John scored tries and John dropped a goal and converted both tries. They held on to win 13-3.
All depended on the fourth Test, which was a 14-14 draw, giving the Lions the series. John’s kicking was likened to that of a chess master pushing his opponents towards checkmate and making them battle defensively just to survive.
He was the unquestioned star of the tour, playing in 17 of the 26 matches, scoring 30 of the Lions’ 48 points in the Tests and a record 191 points overall. In the Universities game he scored a remarkable try which is still talked about in New Zealand. He received the ball from a scrum on the opponents’ 22, with their whole team in front of him. The waited for one of his trademark drop goals, but instead he danced right through them to score under the posts, stunning the home crowd.
Summing up the tour, the captain John Dawes said: “Barry took New Zealand by the scruff of the neck. His tactical awareness, allied to astonishing self-confidence, was the key to our success.”
John returned to win the three Welsh games played in the 1972 Five Nations (a trip to Dublin was cancelled because of the Troubles) and then announced that he was retiring to write a rugby column for the Daily Express and comment on HTV, which he continued to do for many years.
He was immortalised in the words of the official history of Welsh Rugby Union: “He was the dragonfly on the anvil of destruction. John ran in another dimension of time and place. His opponents ran into the glass walls which covered all escape routes from their bewildered clutches.”
He was entered into the rugby halls of fame for Wales, the International Board and World Rugby, but unlike his partner, Sir Gareth Edwards, he received no honour.
Barry John is survived by three daughters and a son.
Barry John, born January 6 1945, died February 4th 2024.
RIP a man whose like was like his mate George Best
RIP
Thanks for posting mate. Really enjoyed that. R.I.P Barry John.
Spedger
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Only one rugby player in history could have hung out and done photoshoots with George Best without appearing ludicrous. RIP Barry John �������������� <a href="https://t.co/OMpq6ygRSy">pic.twitter.com/OMpq6ygRSy</a></p>— Graham Thomas (@Graham_Thomas) <a href="https://twitter.com/Graham_Thomas/status/1754226963168854347?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Quote:
Originally Posted by The Bloop
A once in several generations player.
His ability to confuse defences was a joy to watch and I feel genuinely privileged to have seen him play.
RIP
Thanks for that. I'm just a little too young too have seen either of them play in their prime, which is a shame.Quote:
Originally Posted by MOZZER2
Lived around the corner from me, would sit down for a pint with us whenever he was around - great company, loved telling a good story or 2, sad to see another legend go.Quote:
Originally Posted by kendoddsdadsdogsdead
When I worked for Barclays Bank, I played for our district soccer team. When we played against Midland Bank (as it was then) we were surprised to see Barry John lining up against us - he worked for Forward Trust, a subsidiary of Midland Bank. He played in central midfield, and I can honestly say that he was equally as comfortable on a soccer pitch as a rugby field. We won the match 5-3 and he scored all three goals for Midland Bank, one of which was virtually from the half way line. He was terrific! RIP Barry!
Wonderfully gifted sportsman.
Unfortunately, like George Best, from an era where superstar players were not "looked after" from the mental pressures that came with their "gifts", the exact opposite to the modern day sportsman spending much of their post-sporting lives inside some boozer or other.
RIP Barry John, like GB a true legend of the game.
How come Barry John and Gareth Edwards , both staunch west walians , played rugby for Cardiff instead of Llanelli , Swansea or Neath ?
A line from Jonathan Davies made me laugh ....
I was lucky . I got to know Barry John from a young age . We went to the same school. But obviously not at the same time .
Barry John did play for Llanelli before Cardiff. Think he had a teaching job in Cardiff so that was the that.Quote:
Originally Posted by SLUDGE FACTORY
Didn't Gareth Edwards attended college in Cardiff.
Rugby still amateur at the time so both would've played where they could, easiest and cheapest for them.
Yes they did (Gareth Edwards did a fortnight as a student teacher while I was in Waterhall school and picked me as captain of the "rest" against the school team because I knew all of the positions which related to what shirt number - he soon realised his mistake when he saw me play!).Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordi Culé
During the seventies, London Welsh were, arguably, the best club side in Britain because, as you say, there were either young men whose studies took them to that city or there were some who were a bit older who went to London to work. From memory, JPR, Gerald Davies, John Dawes, John Taylor and Mervyn Davies all played for London Welsh up to the mid seventies and there were others like Jim Shanklin, Mike Roberts and Geoff Evans who were less regular members of the Wales team who played for them.
Gareth Edwards went to millfield public school didn't he ?Quote:
Originally Posted by Jordi Culé
I wonder if the Welsh side in the 2000s under various guises who won more grand slams and triple crowns than Barry John's era ? ......I could be wrong .....will be held in the same esteem as the seventies sides ?Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
I think it is a generational thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by SLUDGE FACTORY
People who do not remember the teams of the 70's will have their own memories of Welsh "greats".
For example Scott Gibbs. He would have got into any team in the world in his pomp, including New Zealand, and who can forget "that" try in 99 at Wembley?
Also, sport on TV, at that time there were only 3 channels and the 5 nations games shown live.
The players of that era were household names.
Rugby was more a game of skill in the 70's, and the players weren't as pumped up compared to the modern day.Quote:
Originally Posted by MacAdder
I know what you mean. Rugby has evolved and not for the better in many people's eyes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wales-Bales
Although I would say that there have been a number of good Welsh players who have still managed to bring their skills into the modern era and make the game watchable.
Gibbs being one of those, Shane Williams another.
Jonathan Davies made a massive success of going up north in what is considered and accepted a much tougher code.
Younger people will mention these before BJ, Gareth Edwards, JPR et al.
As has been said before on many occasions, it is nigh on impossible to distinguish who was better than another if they were from different eras but BJ has been hailed by many as the best of his.
Does the fact that good quality video is available of the players from the seventies mean it is easier to judge them than it was for older generations? All we had was a few poor quality films that made it look very easy for someone like Dixie Dean to score his sixty goals..Once you got to the fifties, the picture quality improves, but I’ve seen films of England 3 Hungary 6 and the Matthews Final and the standard doesn’t look great.Quote:
Originally Posted by MacAdder
RIP Barry John. One of the greatest players that I was lucky enough to see play.
Is there any sport where standards and performance hasn’t improved? Even ‘sports’ like darts & snooker players get better & better. Obviously track & field improve, boxers, hmmm, not so sure on that. Have racehorses become faster? It’s the age old argument, until time travel happens, we’ll never find out…….Dear God, imagine being a time traveller and ending up stuck forever in the Alan Durban days, at least the lean ‘30s had a 9-2 v Thames to savour:hehe:Quote:
Originally Posted by the other bob wilson
Your old Riverside shirt could get an airing!Quote:
Originally Posted by splott parker
I’d have to travel incognito, I still owe Bartley a florin.Quote:
Originally Posted by Citizen's Nephew
Used to often see him in The City Arms, and at the cricket, always happy to have a chat. RIP.
RIP..but the game has changed a lot The size of them today compared to then, not saying it better ruby nowQuote:
Originally Posted by goats
Yes he did but afterwards he did teacher training in Cardiff College of Education (now Cardiff Met).Quote:
Originally Posted by SLUDGE FACTORY