THE ultimate in bonecrushing tackles at Cardiff Arms Park happened long before JPR Williams got to work on Jean-Francois Gourdon, famously flattening the French wing when all seemed lost during the 1976 Grand Slam decider.
It measured high on the Richter Scale, a pulverising no-arms hit which under current laws would have called for the double whammy of a red card and a penalty try. Back then it was seen as part of the game, just as it had been at the same venue almost a generation earlier.
Another Welsh fullback, Haydn Mainwaring then of Swansea, set the benchmark in February 1961 for the ...