Home
Change
category
"

John Griffiths: Five Nations memories of Dewi Bebb

Dewi Debb was a favourite player of mine when I was growing up in west Wales in the fifties and sixties.

Nothing endears a Welshman more to his compatriots than to score a try against England. Dewi Bebb scored the winner on his debut in 1959 and went on to score ten more tries for Wales – including another five against England – in a distinguished career spanning nine seasons.

Always a firm favourite with crowds, he was a level-headed player and an outstanding specialist left wing whose dashing opportunism stamped him as the leading try scorer at a time when expansive three-quarter play and easy run-ins for wings were at a premium. Dewi could thread his way through the eye of a needle to score a try.

He was a permanent fixture in the 1965 side that won Wales’s first Triple Crown for thirteen years, and scored the try that turned the winner-takes-all showdown with Ireland at Cardiff in March. Early in the second half he snaffled up a deflection from a line-out on the Irish line to dive in at the corner.

Although he was dropped for the early part of the 1966 campaign, the selectors felt in dire need of his speed to take on the French at Cardiff in March. Bebb’s pace on a firm pitch helped his nation to the Championship title and earned for him a place on that summer’s Lions tour to Australia and New Zealand. It was his second tour with the Lions, having been a member of the side that visited South Africa in 1962.

He signed off in 1967 where he had started: scoring a try against England in a wonderful open game at Cardiff. That game showed that had he played under more open laws, his haul of international tries would have easily doubled.

Memory added on February 11, 2021

Comments

No comments have yet been added to this memory.

Add a comment

Mark as favourite