Davies John

 

Player John Davies

John Davies

Position:  Fly Half/Wing

Born: 8^th June 1950 in Brecon

Height: 5ft 7in

Weight: 11 stone

Education: Brecon Grammar School and Trinity College, Carmarthen

Achievements:

Honours:

Debut game: 3rd October 1974 v Taunton

Final game: 17th April 1982 v Llanelli

Number of Appearances: 203

Career details:

John Davies, who was born at Brecon on June 8^th 1950, learned his rugby at the local grammar school from where he went to Trinity College, Carmarthen. He moved to the West Country to take up a teaching post and played briefly for Bristol without ever making the first team. He turned to playing combination rugby for St Brendans Old Boys and had virtually given up hope of playing first-class rugby when Bath asked him to become the fly half understudy to John Horton. He made his first team debut in that position against Taunton in September 1974 but later switched to the centre and then the wing to become the most prolific scorer in the Bath Club’s history. He completely eclipsed the previous record by scoring 425 pts in the 1975-76 season. The following year he scored a record 25 tries and in 1977 scored 26 pts in one match – another record. By the beginning of the 1978-79 season he had played his 165^th game and taken his overall scoring record to 1,250 pts made up of 55 tries, 179 conversions, 215 penalties and 9 dropped goals.

John finally retired in 1982 when his statistics were: Played 211 games, scored 84 tries and amassed a staggering 1541 points

John was an aggressive and fearless player who never shirked a tackle. He worked hard to perfect his goal kicking at a time when Bath suffered from a lack of a first class kicker and as his record shows his determination and application paid off to Bath’s benefit.  John was always willing to play a fast, expansive handling and running game and was lucky enough to play alongside the likes of John Horton, Mike Beese, Jim Waterman and John Palmer

John has always been tremendously fit and keen on all ball games. He was a Sports teacher in Bristol and latterly helped to train budding athletes until his recent move to Scotland. He was an extremely good and competitive cricketer – a left arm fast bowler and number 3 batsman. He played for Fairway Wick Sunday XI in the North Somerset League division one along with the likes of Geoff Pillinger, John Cunningham and Steve Richards.

January 1978 – John Davies rewrites the record books

Bath this week must have decided to tear up their book of club records and publish a new one entitled The Life and Times of John Davies.

For the darkened haired little Welshman, by his exploits over Christmas, has now made a clean sweep of every scoring record in the club’s history.

The one that finally fell on Christmas Eve was Vaughan Williams’ proud performance of scoring 24 points in a match against Bedford in April 1966.

That until Saturday was the record for the number of points by one player in a first class match.

But, almost predictably, up popped Davies with 26 points to help Bath to a record 58-13 win over luckless and bemused Rugby.

Davies, naturally, was delighted but perhaps what pleased him even more was that during the game he became the first player since Bath was formed in 1865, to achieve a career aggregate of 1,00 points – in just three and a half seasons.

What is perhaps even more unusual is that every single one of them has come for Bath, Davies’ only first – class club.

On moving to the West Country, he in fact first joined Bristol but never made his mark or scored any points for them. It was only when he moved to Bath, after almost having given up the idea of playing top – class rugby that the points flood began in 1974. Oddly even that was almost by accident.

He was originally recruited as the fly-half cover for John Horton and it was more than half the way through that season that he began to take place kicks because other members of the side were injured.

He finished with a modest 118 points but in 1975-76 he really went to town with 425 points in the season, almost trebling Bath’s previous best.

Last year he missed more games through injuries but still managed 297 points, and broke the club try record by touching down 25 times.

His progress to his first 1,000 points in fact, has been little short of remarkable and should be recorded in details as follows:

Season                   Games   Tries      Cons       PGS        Drops     Total

1974-75                     36             0            17           21           7              118

1975-76                     50             7            53           97           0              425

1976-77                     33           25           46           34           1               297

1977-78                    15           10            21           26           1               163

                                134            42         137         178           9             1003