Our Gar!

By Neville
June 6 2016

To kick off the end of season entertainment in this parish ,I have invited myself to select two teams.  One will be an all time Saracens 15+ bench. Gentle reader, you will doubtless recall that I did the same thing a year or two ago.  But we are now monarchs of all we survey, and the time has surely come to add one or two current names to the panoply of those past greats the grey-haired amongst us still revere. 

But for today. I've chosen the opposition. This is based on people I have seen play, with no qualification as to whether this was live or on TV. Some will have played against us, but some most certainly will have not and they are a varied bunch. Well, one of them is anyway. 

So here they come, out of the tunnel of my memories. They arrive on the field not to fireworks and stirring music. But in black-and-white, mostly, long-haired, faces battle hardened and set yet again for the fray. 

And as hard as bloody nails the lot of them. 

15. JPR Williams. 

I mean if you wanted to define a full-back you would say, simply, " JPR". You don't need to bother with the rest. 

He had the absolute lot. Power, pace, nous aplenty, and the ability to tackle like a brick wall. Who can forget some of the entirely legal no arms blocks he made in those black-and-white days in the 70s. 

In those days men were men and the sheep knew all about it. 

The games he played for the Lions when I was a kid and for the Barbarians in 1973 live long in this old lads memory. 

So much so that the reason we in our house still have the ability to play videos is because of recordings of some of the games that he played in, amongst others. 

14 Gerald Davies. 

Somebody I sing with was telling me the other day that Shane Williams was the finest Welsh wing he had ever seen. Well yes Shane was absolutely brilliant. Good but not Gerald Davies. 

" Give him the ball, why not?" I can hear Cliff Morgan, saying it now on commentary in an old recording from 71. 

Why not indeed. He was absolutely devastating and the sort of player who if he were to play now would be absolutely devastating. 

Somebody I used to work with had to play every year against David Trick, I think, who used to play for Bath. My old chum could not lay a hand on him from first-year to sixth form. He used to talk about it with affection 

But if he had to face TGR, I wonder if he would have been so sanguine, years later. 

But then Gerald humiliated many, many, much finer players than my old colleague.

13. Taff Lewis. Teacher Leyon County High School for boys late 1960s-70s. 

I don't know what he taught at school. I wasn't really paying too much attention to that sort of thing.

And I also don't know whether Mr Lewis ever played representative rugby. I very much doubt it somehow. But I remember trying to tackle him. 

Okay he was about 35. 16 stone of beer, and about 4 inches taller than me. And he always managed to play, so that he was running downhill towards me. 

I tried, dear reader, I tried, but at the age of 14. I couldn't stop the bloke and neither could anybody else who happened to get into my channel to help me. 

And this was LCH's idea of rugby training. 

So he gets into the opposition 15 because he is impossible to stop. and whoever I select at 13 in our team will flatten the @#$%& once and for all. 

I'm almost tempted to select Jacques Burger for that very purpose. My word, I would pay to see that. 

Dear Mr Lewis. I hope you're still with us and reading this and if you are do please get in touch. But I fear we may have lost you, especially if you carried on drinking in the way that we all knew you did. 

12. Will Greenwood.

Well I can't select Welshmen for the entire team. But that isn't the only reason Will gets in. 

He had a rugby brain the size of a planet and my memory is that before he was very badly injured, deliberately by some hairy-arsed tyke, in South Africa, plenty of pace to burn as well. 

He didn't need pace, not when he could play like he did. Finding space where none existed and putting lesser players outside him into gaps that he had made by the timing of his pass. That Jonny Wilkinson was improved by having him there, I have little doubt. 

One of the finest inside centres I have ever seen. 

11. David Duckham. 

It may be that he's put on a few pounds now, but then who hasn't. and in his pomp, the sight of him rampaging across a rugby field ,in particular, perhaps in that game against the all Blacks and 73 was a sight to behold. 

He was also part of the England team that beat the all Blacks in 1973. 

it is a shame that he played in a bad international side because he would have graced any team of the era. 

it wasn't just that he was fast and elusive, though he was both. It was the way he ran, like a force of nature. That was the thing that made him stand out for me. 

My dad didn't believe he was English. He was that good. [In Wales, he was known as ‘Dai Duckham’ because he was good enough to have played in the Welsh three-quarters of the early 70s! Ed]


10. Barry John. 

There is nothing that hasn't been said about this bloke. A genius who retired far, far too early. 

They simply don't make them like this any more 

Could he play now, this waif of a man? 

I would like to think that talent like this would blossom and would equally keep him out of harm's way. 

9. Gareth Edwards. 

The greatest scrum-half I've ever seen, and then some. 

I keep going back to that all Blacks Barbarians game and 73 and of course, Gareth finished off that sweeping move from one end of the pitch to the other begun by Phil Bennett, cutting concrete with a couple of sidesteps, and went through umpteen hands before Gareth took over and dived in the corner. Graham fxxxxxg Hughes would have disallowed the try for a forward pass, but who gives a stuff about him. 

But I return to it, unabashed, because it was an iconic game, especially for an English kid who was still trying to play just and knew he could never ever in 1000 years replicate what he was seeing on the telly that day. 

I have a clear and distinct recollection of seeing it on the telly live as it were, and sitting there spellbound as the events unfolded. I got the video years later, and confessed am still watching from time to time. 


So much so that when I sang with Janet Dawes, many years later, and she told me that she been at the match for obvious reasons, I touched her for luck. 


I wear the scar with pride.


Anyway, Gareth was another one of these blokes who just had absolutely everything you need to play in his position, but in his case it was double and treble helpings...

Fitting opposition for a Saracens All-Time All-Stars team?

Discussion started by TheSaracens.com , 06/06/2016 12:47

TheSaracens.com
06/06/2016 12:47

The author and I are obviously of a similar age. I, however, was blessed to grow up in south Wales and would watch Cardiff every weekend during the season (they would put out two teams when the first team was away!). Gareth Edwards would deign to turn out for Cardiff if the Welsh selectors were coming to watch!

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2016:06:27:14:21:32 by Darraghgirl.

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Darraghgirl
15/06/2016 14:37

Bit of welsh bias methinks?????

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Neville
16/06/2016 07:55

I don't have the honour to be Welsh, DG.

The fact is that when I was a kid the best players in Lions Country were often Welsh. Especially in the backs.

And that imbalance is reflected in my selection. Some of the players are there by "necessity"!

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TonyTaff
16/06/2016 12:39

When a combined England/Wales team played Scotland/Ireland it was considered impolite to pick only Welsh backs, so Duckham got the gig.

He was the only English back who could hold a candle to the Welsh backs of the time. He was christened 'Dai' and I have his autograph as 'Dai Duckham'!

It's a long time since Sports network paid anything!

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PhillFez
17/06/2016 11:07

Nice trip down memory lane Neville and the photo of the great GE reminds me of the invitation game at Bramley Road in the 70s where the opposition could have been Barbarians in all but name. My claim to fame is I side-stepped the great Gareth - well he was on his way to the bar at the time!

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JO'G
20/06/2016 06:38

always remember one of those invitation games (Major Stanley's XV) for the Varsity warm up. GE played and the students were only interested in keeping him off the scoresheet. I think it was on Rugby Special it was that long ago

with almost the last play of the game, he ran backwards from a scrum, swivelled and dropped a goal - pure class.

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