Legends of 1973 Barbarians come together for 50th anniversary

Even after 50 years few would dispute the BBC commentator Cliff Morgan’s verdict on rugby’s ultimate game. “If the greatest writer of the written word would’ve written that story no one would have believed it.”

Saturday, 27 January 1973 was the day the sport ascended to another level and Gareth Edwards’s classic try remains as famous a sporting moment as any.

One thousand guests including Edwards, Willie John McBride, Mike Gibson, JPR Williams and Derek Quinnell will gather for lunch at Celtic Manor near Newport on Friday to celebrate the anniversary of the famous Barbarians v New Zealand fixture and to raise a glass to sadly departed teammates such as Phil Bennett, David Duckham, John Dawes and John Pullin.

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Edwards also sees it as a chance not just to reminisce, but to explore the reasons why his third-minute full-length dive – “What a score!” – into the corner at Cardiff Arms Park remains so uplifting for so many people. “I don’t watch it every day or every week, but it still gives us a little tingling at the back of the neck when you see it,” he said this week.

“That was the way the game was supposed to be played. The beauty of it was that we played what was in front of us. There was no pattern to it. In today’s game I don’t suppose they would have tried to run it. It’s far more stereotyped and defences are much tighter. How we were able to improvise under pressure is probably why it still stands up as much as it did 50 years ago.”

There are five times more rucks and mauls in a modern Test match, but the 1973 fixture contained 94 scrums and lineouts, plus 96 kicks out of hand, significantly higher than the average figures for a 2022 Six Nations game. The other big difference, says Edwards, was the absence of any television match officials to halt play on a regular basis. “Looking back we couldn’t believe how many times it could have gone wrong. But there was no TMO and it was allowed to flow.”

As for the “greatest try”, Edwards insists most of the credit lies elsewhere, from Bennett’s initial sidestepping brilliance to the handling of Pullen, Dawes, Tom David and, finally, Quinnell. “I shouted at Derek in Welsh, ‘Throw it here.’ I never thought for one minute it was anything but a flat pass. I think a lot of people get disappointed now if the TMO doesn’t come in, but I never thought ‘That’s forward.’

“Out of the corner of my eye I could see [the All Black full-back] Joe Karam was caught in two minds. He had John Bevan in his eye-line and then I came through. Maybe it was those kind of quirky things that made it happen. The other thing I remember thinking was, ‘Please God, don’t let my hamstring go now.’

“Then it’s peculiar. You sense the crowd around you. It was uplifting. And I could see Grant Batty coming across. At which point you grasp at things you were taught in school. My schoolmaster always used to say, ‘If you’re going for the line, dive in underneath them. That makes it harder for you to be tackled.’ As I got to the try-line that’s what I tried to do.’”

Edwards, now 75, says he hopes the anniversary will also show the next generation of young players what can be achieved. “When I look at it again now I think, ‘Fair play.’ Some of ‘Dai Duckham’s running, Phil’s darts … everybody had their moment in the sun somewhere along the line.

“I remember Ray McLoughlin holding up a couple of All Blacks who were trying to score. He was like a pit prop in a mine, holding up the roof. That was every bit as important as the try. Everybody played their part.”