Rugby legend JPR Williams dies aged 74

Considered the one who revolutionized the full-back position, Welshman John Peter Rhys Williams died on Monday.

Star of Welsh rugby in the 1970s, John Peter Rhys “JPR” Williams, considered one of the best players in history, died at the age of 74, the club announced on Monday January 8. Bridgend Ravens, of which he was a player and then president until his death. This “level game icon world”, according to the terms chosen by the white and blue team, redefined the role of the back in the 1970s to invent a “total rugby” with the great generation of the XV du Poireau, which then reigned over the Tournament of Five nations (eight Tournaments won by the Welsh between 1969 and 1979, including three Grand Slams in 1971, 1976 and 1978)

Lively and endowed with great athletic qualities, he broke conventions, starting to intercept passes and play with his feet, often at the wrong time, to destabilize the opposing game. With him, the back, until then rather static, became capable of scoring tries. His partners were players who became equally legendary: Gareth Edwards, Phil Bennett and, at the end of his career, his namesake JJ Williams. Which also led sports journalists to identify him by his initials “JPR” alone.

An iconic style

Flamboyant on the pitch, he was also so in his physique. Huge sideburns reaching the corners of his lips, hair blowing in the wind, this 1.85 m and 75 kg player has always imposed his elegance. Even his corkscrew socks have become a genre.

“The rugby world has lost one of its greatest players of all time, a man who revolutionized the fullback position during a twelve-year international career that included 55 caps for Wales and eight for the British & Irish Lions”greeted the president of the Welsh Rugby Union, Terry Cobner, who was one of his teammates in 1976 and 1978.

Born in Bridgend, 40 kilometers west of Cardiff, in a family where ovals play a large part, it was on the tennis courts that he achieved his first success. Rather than choosing between one or the other, the young boy then pursued both sports: junior tennis champion of Wales on one side, selected with the under-fifteens in rugby on the other. At 19, he toured the Welsh B team to Argentina. The turn is taken for the oval. His legend was also built with the victorious tours of the Lions, selection of the best British players, to New Zealand in 1971 and to South Africa in 1974.

“Mister Incredible”

“He was the rock of the defenses of every team he played for, the inspiration of counter-attacks and the man who feared nothing and who believed that a cause was never lostcontinued Terry Cobner. We all thoughtadded the Welsh rugby bossthat he was ‘Mister Incredible'”

From 1977, he even reduced his time devoted to sport to take his final exams as an orthopedic surgeon. “I usually say that I spent half my life breaking my own bones on the rugby field and the other half putting other people’s bones back together in the operating room”he said in his biography published in 2007.