They say Barry John, the king of clubs, finally decided to quit rugby after a bank cashier in Rhyl curtsied at him. This is already the case in some narrations. In others, it was a nurse in Swansea, or a young mother who told her son to reach out and touch her hand at the Eisteddfod, or the man who caused his car to back up when he left his car idling in traffic on Queen Street. Ask him for a handshake or help from the kids who gather around and stare at him when they get a tip that he’s stopped at a local garage to get his car fixed. “Living in the goldfish bowl isn’t living,” John said when explaining why he retired.
John passed away last Sunday at the age of 79. He, team-mate JPR Williams and former England captain Mike Weston will be given a minute’s applause at Twickenham on Saturday. John’s obituaries were a reminder that the game in Wales was slightly different to that played in England. There are 54,685 registered rugby players in Wales, spread across 276 clubs across a population of just over 3 million. This is a corner of Britain where rugby is not a minority sport. If so, John might have preferred it.
Relating to: New heroes ready to reignite England-Wales rivalry
“I am not a god, a prince or a healer, I am an ordinary person,” he wrote, and he longed to live like that. The irony is that his decision to leave the game at the age of 27 only burnished his legend.
The past is always present in Welsh rugby. There is no escape from this. Especially when playing against England. Warren Gatland has been talking about it this week, so has his captain Dafydd Jenkins and outside center George North, perhaps the only superstar left in his youth team. It’s a rivalry that dates back to 1881, but was actually forged during the years when JPR, Gerald, Gareth, Phil, Swerve Merv and others, surnames not needed, turned the English inside out. next year. Welsh rugby has had a sepia tint to it since the 1980s, as has West Indian cricket.
It’s been a tough few years in Welsh rugby. The national federation published an independent report into its culture, which said it could be a “toxic”, “unforgiving” and “even vindictive” workplace. Regional teams are struggling, there are fierce debates and resignations over the reform of professional football and the results of the men’s national team, whose success over the last decade has helped gloss over all the underlying problems. The situation is getting worse as one generation of players gives way to another.
Gatland was supposed to use this press conference to announce his team for the match, but he had already announced this 24 hours before. He left ahead of schedule and without warning because he was upset that the team had leaked the week before. His decision to highlight the announcement had quickly caught on with the press, and the conference began with a protracted back-and-forth between him and a handful of Welsh journalists over the state of the relationship between the team and the media. Gatland said at one point: “I feel like we’re stuck in a vortex of negativity about the game in Wales.”
There is another side to the story. There always is. Geraint John, community manager for the Welsh Rugby Union, was one of the same boys who idolized Barry John. “I was nine in 1971, so my first real experience of rugby was the ’71 Lions tour,” he says. “My heroes were JPR, Gareth Edwards and Barry John. The first match I went to watch was the 1973 Barbarians v New Zealand match, I went with my father, so that’s how I was brought up.”
John was at a media event at the Principality Stadium as Gatland gave his press conference and announced the launch of a new WRU apprenticeship scheme run in partnership with Cardiff Metropolitan University. Jenkins’ predecessor as captain, Dewi Lake, was a WRU apprentice, as was Kelsey Jones, who played on the women’s team. Other graduates work as center stewards or club development officers.
“Rugby in Wales isn’t just about what happens at 2.30pm on a Saturday afternoon,” says John. “Because rugby is important in Wales. People still want it, families still have it, it’s still embedded in the culture.” Clubs, he says, are vital parts of society, spaces where everyone is welcome, “even if it’s an 80-year-old who just wants to have a cup of tea”. The problem, he explains, is that the communities themselves change. And fast. “I visit clubs where people will say to me, ‘There used to be so many people playing,’ and I say, ‘Yeah, but we had 160-odd mines, too,'” says John.
“You see new towns being built, new schools being built outside Cardiff, so the challenge for us is how do we provide rugby for this group of people?” The other side of the matter is that there are towns where the population is decreasing. “Take my mother, she is 90 years old, there is nothing in her town anymore, there used to be two comprehensives but now there is only one there. The situation is the same in one of the regions where my father-in-law lives. There is no school there anymore. The local rugby club has thrived thanks to this school, but how long will it survive without it?”
At the same time, the demographic structure of the gaming population is also changing.
“If you look at the rich areas, the clubs are full of minis, juniors and lads, there are huge numbers there,” says John, “but I was talking to a manager recently and he said to us: ‘I’m not worried about that. It’s 10% of the people playing rugby.’ ‘I’m worried about the 90% who can’t afford it.'” The WRU runs a Fit and Fed program that provides breakfast and lunch to around 15,000 children in poor areas during the summer holidays, as they often rely on free school meals for nutrition. It also recently purchased 5,000 pairs of boots for communal use. Bought and distributed.
The talent is still there as it was in Barry John’s day. Whether Wales win or lose, they will still have plenty of fun at Twickenham on Saturday; Some of the young lads are wet behind the ears in the professional game but they have all the makings of Test match players. And the enthusiasm is there, especially the excitement of this fixture. John says: “Listen to Alex Mann talking about winning his first cap, hear him say it was the proudest day of his life and you have to believe the game is still burning in people’s hearts. And if we could win on Saturday…”