His skill and athleticism were so staggering that he was known all across the rugby globe not by his name but simply by his initials.
JPR.
John Peter Rhys Williams was JPR.
To say he was a rugby fullback is like saying Van Gogh could paint a bit.
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Born and bred near Bridgend, the club he played for in southern Wales, JPR would go on to win 55 caps for Wales and become a member of a unique club that includes Gareth Edwards, Gerald Davies and Alun Wyn Jones in winning three Grand Slams.
He also played eight tests for the British and Irish Lions, famously winning the 1971 series in New Zealand with a monstrous 45-metre drop goal. He was also a pivotal member of the undefeated 1974 Lions Tour of South Africa known as The Invincibles.
And JPR was also part of what is regarded as the greatest try ever scored. While playing for the Barbarians against New Zealand in 1973, he contributed in the lead-up to Edwards’s legendary try.
And despite all of these amazing feats, his record could have been even greater. JPR was also an academic who would go on to become an orthopaedic surgeon. To achieve this, he withdrew from certain selection for the 1977 Lions Tour of New Zealand to focus on his medical studies.
None of these glorious achievements really define the phenomenon that was JPR. He simply revolutionised the way fullbacks played the game. He was charismatic beyond measure, athletic and brave, and his instinctive joyous attack made him an icon.
“We played to win,” he once said of his Welsh team of the 1970s. “But winning was not the be-all and end-all. It was the way you played the game. I think that is important.”
If only more of today’s players and coaches thought with the same intellect as JPR.
An athlete, a scholar and a gentleman, JPR was my boyhood hero. The rugby-obsessed teachers at our Christian Brothers school in the inner-western suburbs of Sydney had a philosophy of educating the young boys placed in their charge. They termed it as creating Renaissance men. People of the Enlightenment.
The basis of the concept was to never let your schooling get in the way of your education. The sciences, art, history, languages, drama, maths, compulsory faith and athletics were all instructed to us, in reverse order of priority. My coach and mentor, Brother Paul Leary, would lay out JPR’s life achievements before us like a banquet in which we should partake.
During the then Five Nations, every Monday night the Australian state broadcaster, ABC, would beam in 60 minutes of grainy black and white highlights that would flicker on our valve-driven, Neanderthal ancestor of modern TV sets. Accompanied by the melodic Scottish lilt of the great Bill McLaren in commentary, we sat transfixed as he placed the perfect metaphors to describe JPRs mind-bending play.
With his socks around his ankles and mutton chop sideburns leading his long flowing hair, we had never seen anything like JPR. In the way The Beatles changed the music of the world a decade before, JPR and his Welsh team changed our game from a frumpy wrestling match into a symphony of majestic athletic endeavour.
Entranced watching our prec-Cambrian TV set, my three Williams brothers and I immediately arrived at the most illogical of conclusions. Without a shred of evidence, we decided that JPR Williams had to be our long-lost cousin.
As the Five Nations played out in the chill of the north, Australia was in off-season. In those summer months, twice a week after school, there was always a game of touch rugby organised by our cabal of rugby nerds. With my socks around my ankles and bumfluff barely clinging to my cheeks, wearing my hair as long as my school would permit and having great fun, I was giving it all I had to move like my hero JPR. Which of course was impossible. But like all kids, joyously, I had no concept of my limited talent. I was still young enough to dream.
Then in the southern winter of 1978, the great Welsh team, who at that time were regarded as the best on the planet, were scheduled to tour Australia. Finally, I would get to see the great JPR in the flesh.
Bruised after a shock defeat in the first test in Brisbane, the champion Welsh team was ravaged with injury in the week before the second test in Sydney.
Then the impossible was announced. JPR Williams, the greatest fullback the game had ever seen, was selected for Wales to play openside flanker. We could not believe our eyes as the Welsh legend ran on to that hallowed turf of the Sydney Cricket Ground to face the Wallabies wearing the number 7 jersey. The only time I saw JPR play, he was a flanker.
Despite all the unimaginable adversity of moving from fullback to flanker at international level, JPR played magnificently. His bravery and courage that day are seared into my memory. It only deepened my respect for him as once again he did the impossible.
Fast forward 25 years and I was coaching Leinster in a game against Bridgend at the Brewery Field in Wales during the first Celtic League season. With a powerful second-half display, the gifted Leinster players that I was privileged to coach had won 51-32. Shorty after fulltime a tall, graceful, smiling man opened our door and glided into the Leinster dressingroom. Oozing charisma and charm, my boyhood hero shook hands and exchanged words with all of our team.
[ JPR Williams: A revolutionary, a fighter and the ultimate competitorOpens in new window ]
There is a saying that you should never meet your childhood heroes. Those people who we admire as kids, who give us the courage to dream big in our lives. The myth is based on the negative belief that they can never live up to our youthful expectations.
John Peter Rhys Williams had been in my life for decades. I was in his presence for only a few brief moments. Those moments in the changing room and later chatting in the clubhouse were life-affirming.
Then in his early 50s, he was still playing rugby every Saturday as an openside flanker for the Tondu club in south Wales. Added to working around the clock as a surgeon, he somehow fitted in time to be the president of Bridgend RFC.
Gracious, humble, extroverted and extraordinary, he talked rugby, then shook hands. As we parted I realised that as a boy I had chosen my rugby hero very wisely.
Vale JPR. Thank you for the inspiration of your life so magnificently lived.
