Barry John

From Welshpedia

Barry John is considered by many experts to be the greatest fly-half in Rugby Union. In a relatively short career, he took the fly-half game to a new peak and in the process became known simply as "the King".

John arrived at international level in circumstances that would have crippled a lesser player with nerves. He replaced the mercurial David Watkins in 1967, who went north to rugby league when still a student at Trinity College, Carmarthen. Within a year a combination of John's cocksure confidence and ability to destroy defences saw Barry become a Lion in South Africa.

In the first test he broke his collarbone and was forced to return home. He would more than make up for his disappointment four years later in 1971 in New Zealand. The British Lions series victory over the All Blacks made them the first Lions to win a series in New Zealand and stemmed from Barry John's boots.

In the First Test, under Welsh coach Carwyn James' orders, John terrorised New Zealand full-back Fergie McCormick with ruthless tactical kicking. McCormick crumbled under the pressure and was swiftly followed by the rest of the All-Blacks as the Lions roared.

John turned the screw as the series progressed scoring 30 of the Lions 48 points over the four matches and cemented his reputation as one of the game's greatest players.

One year later, at the age of only 27, with only 25 Welsh caps, Barry John retired from the game. Such was the strength of Welsh rugby in the 70's that John's premature departure could easily, but wrongly, be forgotten. The pressure of international rugby was cited as the reason for his decision to quit, somewhat surprisingly for a man of such swaggering confidence on the field.

How does he compare to modern greats such as Jonny Wilkinson? Such comparisons are always difficult. Jonny is a much more successful kicker but still has some way to go to equal Barry's domination of games. Most people remember Barry John for his ghostly runs through the heart of the toughest defences. Fly-half aficionados also remember with relish his unmatched tactical two-footed kicking and his ability to launch his centres. (Mike Gibson played the best Rugby of his career outside Barry.)

As the authors of the official history of the Welsh Rugby Union, Dai Smith and Gareth Williams, wrote of him: "The clue to an understanding of his achieved style lies in what he could make others do to themselves. The kicking, whether spinning trajectories that rolled away or precise chips or scudding grubbers, was a long-range control, but his running, deft, poised, a fragile illusion that one wrong instant could crack, yet rarely did, was the art of the fly-half at its most testing. He was the dragonfly on the anvil of destruction. John ran in another dimension of time and space. His opponents ran into the glass walls which covered his escape routes from their bewildered clutches. He left mouths, and back rows, agape."

Rodney Webb, the man who developed the modern rugby ball, also believes that John was the greatest kicker of all time.[2] As he points out, these days the balls are coated in a laminate used on the hulls of giant oil tankers, have dimpled surfaces, unobtrusive lacing and multi panels. In the Seventies the balls soaked up water, swerved all over the place and were placed on muddy and sometimes uneven pitches (unlike many of today's professional rugby pitches) without the use of tees. Barry John was one of the inaugural inductees of the International Rugby Hall of Fame in 1997.

External Links

Barry John: The King  (http://astore.amazon.co.uk/welshped-21/detail/1840183411)

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