Read more
50 years on, Gareth Edwards’ try still greatest
We wonder if it will ever be matched…
Welsh flanker Gareth Edwards (2nd left, in red shirt) on his way to score the first try for his team during the quarter finals Rugby World Cup game opposing Wales to England at Ballymore Stadium, Brisbane 08 june 1987. At left, England’s Jonathan Webb trying to bock while England’s Dean Richards tries to catch up. Wales won by 16 to 3. (Photo by PATRICK RIVIERE / AFP)
It was a moment of sheer magic … poetry in motion – and still regarded rugby’s greatest try. The match: Barbarians against the All Blacks.
The scene: Cardiff’s old National Stadium. The date: 27 January, 1973 – yesterday 50 years ago. The moment: The Barbarians run from their own line in the opening minutes and Welsh scrumhalf Gareth Edwards scores in the corner after a wonderful team effort, where the ball was moved through half the team’s hands on the counter-attack.
ALSO READ: Bok boss Nienaber from hero to zero? Jake White takes a swipe
Edwards, at a 50th anniversary lunch held yesterday, said he feared his hamstring would stop him finishing off the move.
Edwards, who played 53 Tests and 10 for the British & Irish Lions, said: “Derek [Quinnell] passed, then I was thinking as I went up the touchline at a rate of knots ‘please God, don’t let my hamstring go now!’”
And the impact it had on rugby? Edwards said: “Wherever I go in the world, people want to talk about it.
ALSO READ: Springboks-Wales decider as big as Lions finale — Nienaber
In the ’90s, I was fishing in the middle of nowhere in Russia and I was staying in a village where the mayor, who was a former nuclear submarine commander, took me back to his house, brought out a DVD, shoved it in the television and up came that try!” What a moment.
We wonder if it will ever be matched…
