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http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog...s-greatest-try
Barbarians 'greatest try' against All Blacks is relived 40 years on
Gareth Edwards and team-mates remember 24 seconds of magic that entered rugby folklore
On 27 January 1973, seven men combined to create the most famous, and some say the greatest, score in rugby history, during the Barbarians' 23-11 victory over the All Blacks.
Here, marking the 40th anniversary, Phil Bennett, JPR Williams, John Pullin, John Dawes, Tom David, Derek Quinnell and Gareth Edwards, tell the tale of 'that try'.
It was not a typical Barbarians match. "The idea that it was an exhibition," says the former English hooker John Pullin, "that was thrown out the door right away. It was a needle match because it was the All Blacks and the Lions had beaten them on tour in '71 and they were going to beat us back, come what may." Twelve of the Barbarians team had been part of that Lions squad. One of the new boys was Bennett, who had taken over the fly-half spot from Barry John. Before the game Carwyn James, who coached Bennett at Llanelli, took him to one side and said: "Go out there and really express yourself, play what's in front of you, just like you do at Stradey Park."
In the fourth minute the New Zealand wing Bryan Williams lofted a high kick towards the Barbarians' try line. Bennett was back covering, the last man. The ball came down over his head, bounced four times and then he gathered it up and glanced over his shoulder. The first thing he saw was the All Black flanker Alistair Scown. And so began one of the great passages of spontaneous play. But, as Bennett reveals, a little more thought had gone into it than appeared at the time …
'Kick it, Phil'
Phil Bennett: "My first thought was 'God, here comes Scown again'. I had played in the Llanelli side that beat the All Blacks 9-3 earlier in the tour and I remembered one thing from that match: Scown was a madman. He had steam coming out of his ears and spent the game chasing me like a lunatic. Then, on the Tuesday before the Barbarians match, I had watched the All Blacks play a combined Aberavon & Neath team. And the All Blacks were magnificent, they thrashed this side but what I noticed once or twice was one or two of the Neath lads sidestepped as the All Blacks flew at them and they went miles past. 'Gosh,' I thought to myself. So when I saw Scown coming at me, that was what I had on my mind: 'Come on then, you're going so fast, I'll beat you.'"
Gareth Edwards: "The game had started at such a frantic pace, with lots of kicking back and forth, so I was absolutely breathless and really needed a moment's respite. When the ball went deep and I saw Phil was running back, I thought, 'Thank God for that, Phil will know exactly what to do. He'll kick it to touch.'"
Derek Quinnell: "I was coming back over the halfway line, getting my second wind, I said to myself, 'Kick it, Benny, for God's sake kick it.'"
Bennett: "I could easily have put it into touch but I always thought, 'When are the opposition going to relax most?' It's when they have got us by our try line and they are saying to themselves, 'They're going to stick it into touch here.'"
'He's running it'
Quinnell: "I knew what Benny was like, because I'd played with him since I was 11 at Coleshill Secondary Modern. I could tell just by the way he was standing when something was afoot. And when I saw him twirl the ball in his hands I thought, 'He's going to run this. I'd better get back there.' And off he set."
JPR Williams: "Oh my God, here we go again! Phil was always doing things like that. When I saw him choose not to kick it into touch, I knew what was going to happen: he was going to run the ball from our own 22."
Edwards: "The next thing I thought after that was 'Oh, what the hell is he doing now?'
Three magnificent steps
Bennett: "I sidestepped Scown and he went past me at a million miles an hour. But what I didn't realise was that there were three other guys [Ian Hurst, Peter Whiting, Ian Kirkpatrick] coming up behind him. By the time I had beaten Scown, there was another guy coming at me and I just thought, 'Oh, I've got to beat him as well,' and then there was another guy and another guy and all of a sudden you've beaten four players. It was off the cuff but I had done similar things when I was playing for Llanelli. That was always the way I played, ever since I was a little kid playing 20-a-side in the park. I just loved beating people. It came naturally to me."
John Dawes: "I can't think of anyone else who would have got away with it. But then I doubt if anybody else would have tried it. They would have kicked to touch."
Tommy David: "They were three magnificent sidesteps."
John Pullin: "Bennett was dancing around in circles but he wasn't going anywhere."
JPR gets clobbered
Bennett: "It happened in a flash. And all of a sudden I thought, 'It's on'. I was lucky that JPR was at full-back, because I knew he loved counter-attacking. I knew his first thoughts would be 'What's on here?', just the same as mine, So I threw him a long pass."
Pullin: "It was a bloody hospital pass, to be frank."
JPR: "I got hit by a high tackle from Bryan Williams. Maybe nowadays the try wouldn't have been scored, because the referee would have blown up and given a yellow card."
Edwards: "He was virtually decapitated."
Bennett: "JPR got clobbered but he was so strong he got away with it."
Pullin to Dawes
JPR: "So I off-loaded to John Pullin, the one Englishman among the six Welshmen."
Pullin: "JPR shovelled it on to me and I shovelled it on again to John Dawes. I had a bit of room but, to be honest, if I'd had a bit more, I would have booted the ball straight into touch."
Edwards: "John Pullin, bless him, did the right and proper thing and did it with aplomb. He passed it on to John Dawes and by that time I was cursing to myself because I was so knackered."
David's deceptive dummy
Dawes: "I was intending to put John Bevan away because he was outside me and was the type of winger who, given the right kind of ball, would have had a chance of scoring. But that avenue became blocked and luckily Tommy David was there inside me, just like a good flanker should be."
David: "John Dawes made my career with that pass. I was just a boy from Pontypridd, had never played for Wales, and this was the biggest game of my life. Of course, on the TV commentary Cliff Morgan said it was 'a brilliant dummy'. It was never a dummy! Or if it was, it was the best one I never saw in my life.
Quinnell: "There was a hint of a dummy. I think he moved his eyes, and that was about it, to be honest."
Dawes: "That's a trade secret. If Cliff Morgan says it was a dummy, it was a dummy. It was one of those things, John Bevan was running up outside me but I could see he was covered, so the ball had to go back inside me."
Edwards: "All of a sudden I was thinking, 'If there is a breakdown, I had better be there.' I was really just concentrating on getting to where the ball was going to be and trying to anticipate if there was going to be a tackle. So I turned around and started to run thinking to myself, 'Oh God, I had better get going.'
Off Quinnell's bootlaces
David: "I got the ball around the halfway line and made ground. I always like to think I ran about 40 yards but on the video it looks only about two. I got tackled by the prop, Geoff Whiting. It was always my style of play to offload and that's what I did. It wasn't the best of passes because it was one-handed."
Quinnell: "It was obvious we had to try to keep the move going because we knew the All Blacks were stretched. So Tommy just let it go. He took a chance but he knew what he was doing. Still, I was fortunate to get the ball up off my bootlaces really."
Dawes: "We were all part of it. We played that sort of rugby or tried to when we had the chance. It was all about continuity, not letting the ball die. That was the type of players Derek and Tommy were, I can't think of many other forwards around at the time who would have dealt with that situation as they did."
Bennett: "It's no good you just thinking like that, the whole team has to think that too. Everybody – Dawes, Derek, Tommy – was on the same wavelength."
Quinnell: "So many things could have gone wrong but fortunately they didn't. When you look at it, the guys in between Benny and Gareth were just a conduit between two brilliant rugby players, really. We were just cementing what they started and finished."
'Throw it here'
Edwards: "That lateral movement gave me time to pick up momentum. It was only as I approached Derek that I realised the All Blacks defence was in disarray. John Bevan was on the wing but because I was coming up from behind I could see that the full-back, Joe Karam, had his eye on John. So by the time Derek had the ball I shouted at him in Welsh, 'Throw it here, throw it here.'"
Bennett: "Edwards always went for the glory! He had been on the halfway line having a rest!"
Edwards: "Of course, by then, I could hear the crowd were beginning to anticipate something special and they were getting very excited in the stands."
Quinnell: "Gareth was screaming for it. He could see the headlines in 40 years' time! He was that good he could see that far in advance."
Edwards's perfect timing
Dawes: "I swear Derek Quinnell's pass was due for John Bevan."
Edwards: "It wasn't an interception but to this day John Bevan hasn't forgiven me for taking away his moment in the sun!"
Quinnell: "My passes always go where they're meant to! John Bevan was a longstop, there or thereabouts just in case. So I handed it on to Gareth and all he had to do was run 40 yards and get it down. And they call it a Gareth Edwards try, I can't understand that."
JPR: "Gareth timed his run perfectly. He came in between Derek and John travelling flat out and I don't think the try would have been scored if he hadn't timed it so well."
Injection of pace
Edwards: "My injection of pace gave me just enough to get around Joe Karam, because I knew he was concentrating on John Bevan. But it's peculiar what you think of in situations like that. I had some hamstring trouble, and when I took the ball I was flat out and I just thought, 'Please don't let my hamstring go now.'"
Bennett: "I was standing downfield, watching it all unfold."
Dawes: "I can't remember anything about what happened to me. I must have been taken out, because I don't remember seeing anything after that. I didn't see again it till we watched it on TV."
Dive for glory
Quinnell: "Gareth was deceptively quick but exceptionally strong as well. Joe Karam got half a hand to him but it wasn't enough."
Edwards: "I was through the gap and it was then just a question of 'Can I get to the corner?' I was mindful that out of my peripheral vision, their wing Grant Batty was coming over as cover. My old PE master always said to me: 'If you are close to the line, dive in, because it makes it more difficult for tacklers to stop you," and that's what I did.
'It's folklore now'
Bennett: "I looked at the crowd and saw they were going nuts, and I thought, 'God, that must have been good.' And I always remember that my great friend Willie John McBride was the one guy in the BaaBaas who didn't shake my hand but came up to me and said, 'You stupid bugger. What were you doing?'."
Pullin: "It's folklore now, isn't it? But it was just a score to be honest. Four points. Three-nil with a penalty would have suited me."
Edwards: "The noise in the stadium was so loud that I thought it must have been something special. I remember walking back thinking, 'I wish it was the last minute not the first minute.'"
David: "When Gareth scored in the corner I was knackered, to be honest. It was only after I came off the pitch, black and blue, covered in bloody stud marks, as the night went on and the beer went down, I realised what a great, great try it was. 'Pinch me,' I thought. 'Was I really involved?'
JPR: "We've dined out on it pretty well ever since."
Dawes: "It was the most memorable game and the most enjoyable game of my career. You have dreams about how you want to play and how you want the game to be played and for me that's what they look like."
And for those who want reminding, the try is here:
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