The death of entertaining rugby

Dear Sirs,

In amateur days, with no substitutes, there were very few stoppages and far, far more running rugby. Driving mauls would have been disallowed for offside and scrums operated with actual hookers. Wales and France had wonderful teams in the 1970s, with very few new caps, and their exciting games were full of tries scored by the backs. We need to return to understandable rules and perhaps place an average weight limit on teams, as Lord knows how many players are being brain-damaged in the present bash-fest.

Cardiff Rugby Club always had one mantra – ‘get it to the wings‘. Of the 8 Williams brothers who played for Cardiff, the great Bleddyn, who captained Cardiff and Wales to inflict the only two defeats on the 1953 All Blacks’ tour, played 78 first-class club games in his final two seasons. With club and international trials, friendlies and charity matches he played over 100 matches (plus training, or course). Bleddyn was a centre, and his brothers Elwyn, a wing-forward, played 37 games a year for Cardiff for seven consecutive years and centre Tony played an average of 35 games in seven years, both overlapping with such greats as Gareth Edwards, Barry John and Gerald Davies at the Cardiff club. The 8 Williams brothers played over 1,400 games for what was then acknowledged as the ‘greatest rugby club in the world‘, with the hardest fixture list, despite the War and National Service limiting the careers of the eldest six. There is no way in modern rugby that they could have achieved such a record.