Peter Jackson: The eternal debate: King John or Benny?

The surest way to start an argument in any clubhouse  is to ask one question and then step smartly out of the firing line: Barry John or Phil Bennett? It never fails. More often than not, they will still be going hammer and tongs come closing time as to which of the revered Welsh Lions was the greatest – ‘The King', as the New Zealanders crowned John or his successor ‘Benny,' the Magic Dragon.
Those who saw them in their pomp are knocking on now, not least the few privileged enough to have been on the same Lions stage at the same time, in New Zealand in 1971 and South Africa three years later. Trying to separate them on the basis of a cogent case in favour of one over the other is as tricky as any of the other perennial comparisons from other fields of sport.
Stanley Matthews or Tom Finney? Lionel Messi or Diego Maradona? Garfield Sobers or Ian Botham?  Bjorn Borg or Pete Sampras?  Rocky Marciano or Muhammad Ali? Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods?
The Barry or Benny debate has been given fresh relevance by a new book Undefeated, the story of the 1974 Lions (Y Lolfa, £9.95) by the award-winning broadcaster and journalist, Rhodri Davies. In reliving the tour to beat all tours, the author puts the question to some of those closest to the respective fly-halves.
Gareth Edwards partnered Barry for five years until 1972 and ‘Benny' for the next six until their joint international retirement in 1978.  Perhaps it's the diplomat in him but rugby's player of the 20th Century, confronted with the subject in the second decade of the 21st, still can't choose between them, or won't.
“Maybe it's suited me not to over the years, mind you,” Edwards tells Davies in the book.  “But the longer it went on and the more I started to ponder the whole thing, I realised that I actually didn't need to separate them.
“They were both absolutely outstanding in their own individual ways that I never felt the need to compare.  We in Wales were lucky enough to have Maradona and Messi in the same era.

“Phil was everything Barry wasn't and Barry was everything Phil wasn't.  I was just lucky to get the best of both.”
The Scottish verdict, as given by Edwards' fellow 1974 Lion Andy Irvine, favours Bennett, “pound for pound the best stand-off we've ever seen”.
“The two guys for me that could beat anybody on a sixpence were Benny and Gerald Davies.  And although Benny wasn't the biggest boy in the world, he was a reasonable tackler for his size.  But it was really his game-management that I admired most. He did things with a quiet authority. He wasn't bossy, he wasn't big-headed.  He was wonderful to play with.”
If second row forwards are qualified to pass judgement on the arts and crafts of fly-halves, then none of the cauliflowered brigade ought to have more impeccable qualifications than Willie John McBride.
The brawny Ulsterman played with John in the winning '71 series against the All Blacks and with Bennett in South Africa three years later. He let his choice be known sometime ago and has no reason, 40 years later, to change it.
“It would still be Phil,” he tells Davies.   “Two great players – the greatest – and I played with both. Barry was fantastic, just phenomenal. But the difference between the two was that Benny was a team man.
“Barry was an individual. To me that made a huge difference.  And one more thing – Benny would take the rough stuff too.”
Clive Rowlands coached both.  True to form, ‘Top Cat' takes a different point of view.  “Who was the best – Barry or Phil?” he tells Davies in Undefeated.  “Good question.  The answer – neither.  Cliff Morgan was better than both of them.”
Had Barry not abdicated at the age of 27, because he found it increasingly hard to accept his celebrity status and because he had an irresistible offer from the Daily Express, he would probably have reigned supreme in South Africa two years later.    Consequently, there would have been no argument. His legion of fans will never change their view that Barry John was the greatest fly-half of all. In a Lions sense he is unique, the only one to run the All Blacks so ragged that they lost a home series.
And that begs the question as to which was the greater achievement – '71 in New Zealand or '74 in South Africa?  Another argument for another time.
*This article was first published in The Rugby Paper on June 29.