timeIt is said that Barry John finally decided to quit rugby when a bank teller in Lille curtsied to him. In some accounts, that’s how it works, anyway. In other people’s stories it was a nurse in Swansea, or a young mother telling her son to reach out and touch his hand in Astedford, or the man on Queen Street Idling the car so he could ask me to shake my hand, or the kids would gather around and stare at him when they learned he was parked at a local garage to work on his car. “Living in a goldfish bowl,” John said in explaining his reasons for retiring, “is no life at all.”
John died last Sunday at the age of 79. There will be a minute’s applause for him, his team-mate JPR Williams and England’s veteran captain Mike Weston at Twickenham on Saturday. John’s obituary is a reminder that the game in Wales was somewhat different to the game in England. Wales has 54,685 registered rugby players spread across 276 clubs and has a population of just over 3 million. There is a corner of the UK where rugby is not a minority sport. If so, John might prefer it.
“I am not a god, a prince, or a healer, but an ordinary person,” he wrote, missing being able to live like an ordinary person. Ironically, his decision to retire from the game at the age of 27 only served to add to his mythology.
The past is always present in Welsh rugby. There is no way to escape it. Especially when they play England. Warren Gatland has been talking about it this week, as have his captain Dafydd Jenkins and his outside center George North, after The player may be the only remaining superstar on his young team. This rivalry dates back to 1881, but the real formative years were when JPR, Gerald, Gareth, Phil, Merv the Swerve and all the rest (no last names needed) beat the British inside and out, year after year. Welsh rugby has had a sepia tone since the 1980s, just like West Indian cricket.
It has been a difficult few years for Welsh rugby. The National Federation has withstood an independent report into its culture, which found it can be a “toxic”, “unforgiving” and “even retaliatory” workplace. Teams across the region are struggling, with vicious rows and resignations surrounding reforms to the professional game and the results of the men’s national team, whose success over the past decade has masked any underlying issues that have Be the center of attention. It gets worse as one generation of players gives way to the next.
Gatland was supposed to use that press conference to announce his team’s inclusion in the competition, but he had already revealed that information 24 hours earlier. He went ahead with the plan without any warning because he was annoyed by the way the team’s information leaked last week. The decision to announce the news early caught the media off guard, and the meeting began with a lengthy back-and-forth between him and several Welsh journalists about the state of relations between the team and the media. “I felt,” Gatland said at one point, “that we got into a negative spiral in the Wales game.”
There is another side to the story. There are always. Geraint John is WRU’s community director and one of the kids who idolized Barry John. “I was nine years old in 1971, so my first real experience with rugby was the ’71 Lions tour,” he said. “My heroes are JPR, Gareth Edwards and Barry John. The first game I went to was the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973, with my dad. , so that’s how I grew up.”
While Gatland held a press conference, John was at a media event at the Principality Stadium to announce the launch of a new WRU apprenticeship scheme run in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University. Jenkins’ former captain, Dewi Lake, is one of the WRU apprentices, as is Kelsey Jones on the women’s team. Other graduates serve as center officers or club development officers.
“Wales rugby doesn’t just happen at 2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon,” John said. “Because rugby is important in Wales. People still want it, families are still passionate about it and it’s still embedded in the culture.” He said the club is an important part of the community and a place where everyone is welcome, “even if It was an 80-year-old man who wanted to stop and have a cup of tea”. The challenge, he explained, is that the community itself is changing. And it’s fast. “When I visit clubs, people will say to me ‘we used to have so many people playing ball’,” said John, “and I reply, ‘yeah, but we used to have over 160 mines too’.
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“You see new towns, new schools being built outside Cardiff, so the challenge we have is how do we provide rugby for this group of people? “The flip side is that some towns are losing population. “In the case of my mother, she is 90 years old and there is nothing left in her town. There used to be two complexes but now there is only one. The same is true in one of the areas where my father-in-law lives. Now there is nothing there at all The school. The local rugby club thrives because of that school, but how long can it last without it?”
At the same time, the demographics of gamers are changing.
“If you look at affluent areas, the clubs are full of mini teams, youth teams, youth teams, huge numbers,” John said. “But I spoke to a principal recently and she told us ‘I’m not worried about these 10 players. % of people who play rugby, I’m afraid 90% can’t afford it.” The WRU runs a Fit and Fed program in disadvantaged areas during the summer holidays, providing breakfast and lunch to nearly 15,000 children who don’t normally play rugby. Rely on free school meals for nutrition. They also recently purchased and distributed 5,000 pairs of boots for public use.
The talent is still there, just like it was in the days of Barry John. Whether Wales win or lose, they will see a lot of young kids on the pitch again at Twickenham on Saturday, some of whom are still in their infancy in the professional game but have all the qualities of a Test match player . The enthusiasm is there too, especially the excitement surrounding this game. “To hear Alex Mann talk about winning his first race,” John said, “to hear him say it was the proudest day of his life, you have to believe that this sport is still burning in people’s hearts. If we If we can win on Saturday…”
