biginabox

It’s probably my only claim to fame that we shared the Felinfoel County Primary School playground for 2 years. Even then he was just ‘Benny’. No other names needed. And everyone knew he was destined for greatness. We were his first fans. And we never looked back.
When he took to the cramped, steeply sloping Boys playground, everyone stood back and watched. He seemed to be everywhere. A completely different kind of animal.
When he played cricket in the Summer, our teachers would queue up to bowl to him, some using underhand methods like the Headmaster’s famous ‘rissole’, a hard ball as round and smooth as a fragment of brick forged by the waves and tides of centuries. All methods failed. One famous shot felled his best friend Kenny (AKA ‘Tiger’), raising an enormous black bruise on his thigh, and forcing the Duty Master, Mr John Williams, to carry the sobbing ten year-old ‘Tiger’ into the school for treatment (Arnica and a milk biscuit.)
I did find myself seated next to him and Kenny for one afternoon. I was completely overawed, but to my surprise, he took an interest in what I was doing, and put me at ease. He was two years older than me, but still only ten or eleven, yet with the innate social skills of a mature adult.
All too often it seems that god-given talent instills a sense of entitlement and superiority. In Benny’s case it did the opposite.
That seems to have been his personality. What other player in history has tried to persuade the ref NOT to send off an opponent? That’s a sportsman. And even more important, he was one of the generation which confirmed that sport can be an Artform. In his own quiet way he did for rugby what the Beatles did for pop music. A genius of his Time.
Match after match I would sit in my favourite seat – at the back of the South terrace, sitting on the wall overlooking the cricket pitch, on halfway. This was the best place to follow all Benny’s magic, which could happen on any square of the chessboard pitch. It was also from where I saw Delme Thomas break through midfield like a shirehorse and canter almost to the line, dragging a pack of defenders with him like snapping dogs. It was where the best view was of steaming floodlight lineouts and scrums, with the terrifying Gale Brothers steaming in unison. At night, this viewpoint also offered the magnificent background of the steelworks, reminding everyone of their roots.

See also

Industrial Rugby 1958

and

Make Rugby Pitches Bigger Now!