Gareth Edwards (rugby player)

Gareth Edwards

Player information
Full name	Gareth Owen Edwards
birthday	July 12, 1947
place of birth	Pontardawe, Wales
size	1.91 m
society
society	Career ended
position	Half of the crowd
Clubs as active
Years	society	Games (points)
1966-1988	Cardiff RFC	195 (426)
National team
Years	National team	Games (points)
1967-1978	Wales	53 (88)
1971-1974	British and Irish Lions	10 (3)

Sir Gareth Owen Edwards , CBE (born July 12, 1947 in Pontardawe ) is a former Welsh rugby union player on the scrum position . He is considered to be one of the best players of all time. Edwards was the son of a miner from Gwaun-cae-Gurwen. A scholarship enabled him to attend the prestigious Millfield Public School .

Career

At the age of 19, in 1967, he made his international debut and by 1978 played in all 53 internationals for Wales, including 13 times as captain. He is still the youngest captain of the Welsh national team and was given this honor for the first time when he was 20. During his career, Wales dominated the Five Nations with seven wins, including three Grand Slams .

He also played ten times for the British and Irish Lions , including in the legendary Lions team, which in 1971 was the first and so far only time to win a series of games against the All Blacks in New Zealand . The following tour in 1974 in South Africa came to an end without defeat for the Lions with the participation of Edwards.

The particular strength of Edwards was in addition to his extraordinary speed, strength and agility, his wit, with which he made twenty attempts in his international career. Especially famous is the trial for the Barbarians in 1973 against the All Blacks in Cardiff , often referred to simply as "that attempt" ( "that try" hereinafter).

Since he wrote an autobiography , he was then no longer allowed to compete in the then purely amateur sport of rugby union, train a team or intervene in the sport in any other way.

A survey by Rugby World magazine named Gareth Edwards the best player of all time in 2003. Surprisingly, however, the latter explained that the All-Blacks scrum-half Sid Going had dominated him in the seven games they played against each other:

"As I say, he was the best I played against and, yes, he probably had the edge on me in the games we played."

However, this could also have been due to the respective strikers, so Edwards:

.. I wouldn't have minded playing with the back row the All Blacks had ... then Sid might not have come out on top.

Today Gareth Edwards works as a commentator for the BBC and the Welsh language broadcaster S4C. There is a statue of him in St David's shopping center in Cardiff. In 1997 he was inducted into the International Rugby Hall of Fame and in 2007 into the World Rugby Hall of Fame . On June 12, 2015, he was raised to the nobility by Elizabeth II and has held the title Sir since then .

Web links

Commons : Gareth Edwards  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Video gallery with Edwards' attempt at Barbarians from 1973 (English)

swell

1. ^ R. Palenski: Century In Black, 100 Years of All Black Test Rugby. Hodder Moa Beckett Publishers, 2003, p. 105.
2. ^ Wales legend Gareth Edwards knighted in Queen's Birthday Honors. on: telegraph.co.uk