Gareth Edwards used to tell a story about playing a club match for Cardiff at Aberavon and being manhandled by the Wizards’ formidable second-row Billy Mainwaring.
During a particularly torrid passage of play, Mainwaring’s mother Evelyn, an ever-present at the club’s games for so many decades, bellowed at her son as he picked up the great scrum-half by his jersey: “Put him down, Billy — he’s playing for Wales on Saturday.”
The towering lock duly obliged, dropping Edwards into the Talbot Athletic Ground mud. He duly made the game the following weekend.
Billy, who has passed away aged 78, became an Aberavon RFC legend, playing more than 700 games for the club over 18 seasons.
A long-time supporter of the Wizards, Clive Joseph, rang WalesOnline to say: “The town is in mourning. We have lost a legend. He was a great rugby player but also a great man, a perfect ambassador. Billy was a local boy who never forgot his roots.”
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He added: “Maybe he was the toughest man the town has produced. People talk of hard men but Billy would sort all of them out.
“But he was approachable and a gentleman off the field. He was Mr Aberavon.”
Mainwaring won six caps for Wales, packing down alongside Brian Price when Edwards made his Test debut in 1967 and facing New Zealand seven months later.
“There were some top second rows around during Billy’s day, with Brian Price, Brian Thomas, Billy and Delme Thomas among them,” said Joseph.
“Welsh caps were incredibly hard to come by. There weren’t many Tests but there was a lot of depth in Welsh rugby and anyone who played for Wales deserved the honour.”
But it was for the his beloved Wizards that Mainwaring will be best remembered during a marathon playing career.
Born on January 24, 1941, in Port Talbot, he went to Easter School in Taibach and cut his rugby teeth with Taibach RFC before stepping up to Aberavon.
They developed a hard-nosed pack and Mainwaring formed an outstanding second-row partnership with Max Wiltshire. The pair were to figure together against Colin Meads, Ken Gray, Kel Tremain, Brian Lochore and Co when the All Blacks played Wales in 1967. There were two other Aberavon players in the side that day, like Wiltshire both making their Test debuts, with Paul Wheeler lining up at full-back and Ian Hall in the centre.
Mainwaring’s debut had come earlier in the year against Scotland, before which his mother had decided to make an intervention on his behalf, with Evelyn later admitting: “ I asked Brian Price, Billy’s Wales lock partner, if he would look after my son at Murrayfield. Brian said that Billy was big enough to look after himself.”
Later, Mainwaring would team up with Allan Martin in the boilerhouse for Aberavon.
Clive Rowlands, who coached Wales between 1968 and 1974, said: “He was a really good guy — Aberavon to his core.
“He was capped in an important match against the All Blacks.
“It was always nice to meet him.
“Aberavon owed him a lot, but he owed Aberavon a lot. They were right for each other.”
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In a recent history of the club, the Wizards, former Aberavon captain Chris O’Callaghan said: “Billy was Aberavon rugby club.
“He was a fantastic example of a tough, hard, wholly uncompromising forward who through his actions on the field and the way he lived his life demanded respect from friend and foe alike.
“I didn’t play many games alongside him (I wasn’t fit to tie his bootlaces), but the few that I did, were an honour, a privilege and an enormous pleasure. He is a legend and I am humbled by the fact that I was able to share the same dressing room and the same field as him.”
He announced his retirement as a player at the end of the 1976-77 season, returning to play a game the following campaign.
He had been battling illness for a long time but continued to support Aberavon.
The funeral will take place on Wednesday, April 10, at noon at Margam Crematorium.
