Welsh Rugby Union | Wales & Regions | Penbwlydd Hapus Sir Gareth Edwards

The scrum-half great from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen celebrates his 75th birthday today (Tuesday, 12 July, 2022) and finds his name is still on everyone’s lips. Last week he hit the headlines for his interpretation of the Springboks selection for the second Test and then found Dan Biggar’s men giving him an early birthday present with that historic 13-12 win in Bloemfontein.

When you assess his numbers and achievements it is easy to see why he has been regularly named as the greatest player of all-time

GARETH EDWARDS BY NUMBERS

CAPS: Wales 53 (35 wins, 5 draws), Lions 10 (5 wins, 3 draws)
CAPTAIN: Wales (13)
POINTS:– Wales (88), Lions (3)
TRIES: Wales (20), Lions (0)

TRIPLE CROWNS: 4 (1969, 1971, 1976, 1977, 1978)
GRAND SLAMS: 3 (1971, 1976, 1978)
OUTRIGHT FIVE NATIONS TITLES: 5 (1969, 1971, 1975, 1976, 1978)

ALL GAMES FOR WALES: 65
ALL GAMES FOR LIONS: 39 (3 tours)

GAMES WITH BARRY JOHN: 23 (Wales), Lions (5)
GAMES WITH PHIL BENNETT: 27 (Wales), Lions (4)

GAMES FOR BARBARIANS: 11 (8 v International teams)

GAMES FOR CARDIFF: 195 (67 tries)

HONOURS
MBE 1975
CBE 2007 for services to sport
Knighted 2015 for services to sport and for charitable services
Welsh Sports Personality of the Year 1974
Youngest captain of Wales
First player to win 50 caps for Wales
Most consecutive Tests (53) in world rugby for one country
Wales record try scorer (20)
World Rugby ‘Hall of Fame’2007 inductee
Welsh Sports Hall of Fame ‘Roll of Honour’ 1998 inductee
Cardiff RFC Hall of Fame

His lasting legacy to the game he adorned are some of the tries he scored. The two scores at Stade Colombes in 1969 and 1971, that first helped to secure a Triple Crown and then a first Grand Slam in 19 years.

The dive into the corner to earn a draw with South Africa in 1970 (he couldn’t do an ‘Anscombe’ and win the game with a touchline conversion), the ‘Monster in the Mud’ special against Scotland in 1972 and tries in the Grand Slam wins over the French in 1976 and 1978.

He had it all, he did it all and his greatest try of all, for the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973, is due to reach its 50th anniversary next season. It is a score that has been watched by hundreds of thousands of sports fans on the internet and is, like Gareth, consistently recognised as the greatest of all-time.

To mark that anniversary, as well as his 75th birthday, his family and friends decided to commission a painting of that incredible fourth minute try that set-up a wonderful win for the Baa-Baas in the Welsh capital.

Sir Gareth Edwards with his Barbarian shirt and the painting

The try is available to watch on the internet and on DVD, but there is no photograph of Sir Gareth diving in at the left corner at the River Taff end of the then National Ground, Cardiff Arms Park. How can that be, I hear you ask?

There were cameras and photographers 50 years ago, but there had never a been a try like that before. To fully understand how one of the greatest moments in British sport was totally missed you have to ask the profession itself.

If you study the video of the game, you can see a posse of around 10 photographers taking pictures of the team, and the New Zealand Haka, prior to kick-off. After that, they dispersed to the touchlines.

“In those days the lenses were different and the demands from the newspapers weren’t the same,” explained David Norrie, who runs the Colorsport picture agency in London.

“Our man, Colin Elsey, was at the game and was one of less than a dozen people covering the match. Peter Bush, the doyen of Kiwi sports photographers who is still alive, was also there, as was Bob Thomas, who built up the agency that became Getty Images.

“They wouldn’t have expected such an explosive start to the game and would just have been glad to have got a couple of line-outs or scrums in the bag to begin with. They would have been working the touchlines, keeping up with play, rather than sitting in a static position behind the posts.

“When Bryan Williams kicked ahead from half-way they would probably have switched off, thinking the covering Phil Bennett was going to clear to touch. He didn’t!

“The snappers on the North Stand touchline would have been out of the equation as the move built towards the south stand and then headed towards the west terrace. Those on the south side would probably have been wondering what on earth was going on.

“They may have got a shot or two of the move coming towards them, but as soon as Derek Quinnell shoveled the ball out to Gareth Edwards it was simply going too fast to catch up.”

Among those who were struggling to keep up was the Western Mail’s Clive Lewis. There are a few long shots of Gareth diving over in the corner from behind and a nice head-on snap of him running back to half-way as the crowd roared its approval.

These days, there are 40 positions for photographers at Principality Stadium for most Wales matches. They are all given an assigned position between the 5-15 metres lines behind the posts. They have to stay in their positions for the whole game, or find someone to switch with at half-time from the other end. Nobody runs the touchlines anymore.

“It was a big moment and it is a great shame it wasn’t captured for posterity,” said Dave Davies, of the Press Association, who was crowned the Welsh Sports Journalist of the Year in 2019.

“You had film in your cameras in those days and the local lads would probably have had a runner with them to take the film back to base to get developed. There were no floodlights and you just hoped for a bright day in order to get some non-grainy shots.

“They would probably have been shooting between 3-5 rolls of film, each with 36 frames on them. These days, with high-speed cameras with lenses as long as your arm, which can shoot more than 1,000 frames in a game.

“If that try was scored today there would be hundreds, even thousands of frames of it from start to finish. Then, of course, if anything had been missed you can bet someone in the crowd caught it on their phone!”

No wonder Elin Sian Blake, the Welsh artist commissioned to paint the picture of Gareth’s try, had a few problems when she began her research. The project took her a year to produce, with Gareth’s left hand taking five days in its own right. It would have been so much easier if there had been some pictures!

Sir Gareth Edwards and ‘The Greatest Try’

“The idea was to create almost a 3D effect to allow people to look at the painting as if Gareth was diving towards them sitting behind the line. It was a technical challenge to get that right, especially with all the attention to detail,” said Elin.

“Gareth was brilliant to work with and he talked me through his thinking at the time and his actions to score the try. One day he came to my studio and demonstrated how he dived towards the line by diving on my bed. Yes, Gareth Edwards diving across my bed!

“It was surreal, but he gave me so much help and support as we tried to get it right. There is a little bit of artistic licence, but other than moving the French referee, Georges Domercq from behind Grant Batty to get him into the picture I think we’ve been pretty historically accurate.”

It was Elin who came up with the title for the picture ‘The Greatest Try’ and prints are now being made available for purchase. The original will take pride of place in the Edwards household in Porthcawl.

There were a ‘Magnificent Seven’ players involved in that try, six of them Welshmen. This is how Cliff Morgan described it in commentary – just in case you’d forgotten!

‘THE GREATEST TRY’

27 January, 1973 – Barbarians 23 – 11 New Zealand

“Kirkpatrick to Williams. This is great stuff. Phil Bennett covering. Chased by Alistair Scown. Brilliant! Oh, that’s brilliant! John Williams, Bryan Williams. Pullin. John Dawes, great dummy. To David, Tom David, the half-way line! Brilliant by Quinnell! This is Gareth Edwards! A dramatic start! What a score! Oh, that fellow Edwards!

“If the greatest writer of the written word would have written that story, no one would have believed it. That really was something”

– Cliff Morgan