Why ‘genius’ Jonathan Davies earned his CBE twice over as previous ‘loathing’ has been reframed into respect

James While 01 Jan 2026 9:39 AM

I grew up an English kid in mid-Wales, which meant two things straight away. I learned Welsh at school whether I liked it or not, and I learned very early that supporting England came with consequences.

This was the 1970s and 80s, when Wales didn’t just beat England, they ruled rugby. England had Bill Beaumont and hope; Wales had choirs, certainty and a habit of making visiting sides look faintly ridiculous.

My school was so Welsh that being English felt like a character flaw. Wooden spoons appeared in my bag with depressing regularity, not as jokes but as statements, left there by boys who knew exactly what they meant.

In the days when corporal punishment was still very much part of the furniture, I was often mildly surprised that, had I transgressed badly enough, I wasn’t beaten with one of them.

Men who might genuinely frighten you in a car park

Every Five Nations season ended the same way, with England propping up the table and me enduring weeks of brutal, relentless mockery delivered in fluent Cymraeg and English in equal measure. You learned to take it, or you learned to keep quiet.

I didn’t hate Wales as a team. I admired them, grudgingly at first and then properly. Even as a child, I understood Gareth Edwards. I could see that JPR Williams was something else entirely. Phil Bennett made sense to me, too.

There was something elemental about those players, as if they’d come straight out of steelworks, pits and council estates, with nothing polished about them except their rugby. They looked like men who might genuinely frighten you in a car park.

Jonathan Davies didn’t fit that picture at all. One moment fixed him in my mind forever. England were playing Wales, play had stopped, one of those brief pauses where everyone pretends not to be breathing too heavily.

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Peter Winterbottom was standing there. Wints, my hero. The hardest man alive, as far as I was concerned. A back-row forward who looked as though he’d been chiselled out of granite and left unfinished on purpose.

Davies walked behind him, casually put his leg behind Winterbottom’s and pushed him backwards over it. No rush, no drama, no glance at the referee, just a neat little act of humiliation. Winterbottom landed on his arse. The great Peter Winterbottom, dumped like a pub stool.

In that moment, I aged three years. That was it. I didn’t just dislike Davies from that moment; I loathed him. Intensely. Not because of the act itself, which was clever and nasty in equal measure, but because of what it said.

He wasn’t scared of Winterbottom. He wasn’t cautious. He wasn’t even particularly interested. He treated him like a wasp and swatted him away with a dinner napkin, something mildly irritating that needed brushing aside, and that offended me deeply. It was like the Republic of Chad laughing at the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal.

Davies represented everything Wales, in my head, shouldn’t be. He was brilliant in a way that felt deliberate, flowing where I wanted force, clever where I wanted confrontation. He looked like someone who could sell you something after the match.

I wanted my Welshmen made in steelworks and collieries, not marketing agencies, and Davies felt too smooth, too knowing, too comfortable being the best player on the pitch. And of course, he usually was.

When he went north to rugby league, I was delighted. That’s one out of the way, I thought, a problem solved. It was like finding out the school bully had moved to Canada. Wales diminished, England spared.

Except he wasn’t diminished at all. He went to Widnes and became a phenomenon, a stand-off who could shred defences in ways union simply didn’t allow at the time. His vision expanded, his timing sharpened, and his arrogance, if that’s what it was, somehow became justified.

When he came back, he was even better.

The genius

The truth I resisted for years was simple: Jonathan Davies was a genius. Not a stylist, not a show pony, not a highlights-reel merchant, but a genuine rugby intellect with feet and hands quick enough to execute what his brain was already three phases ahead of.

As a 10 he could control games without shouting, open teams up without seeming to try, and play with a looseness that was entirely underpinned by control. His career stitched itself across eras and codes as the organising presence in a side that played with tempo before tempo was fashionable.

Then came the jump to league in 1989, walking away from amateur union at the peak of his powers because he knew exactly what he was worth. He dominated there too: Man of Steel, Challenge Cups and a second act that would have been enough for most players on its own.

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The British and Irish Lions remain the strangest footnote. His solitary Lions appearance came in 1986, not on a tour at all, but in the one-off Test against a Rest of the World XV after the planned South Africa tour was cancelled.

It counts officially, but it never really felt like a Lions career in any meaningful sense. He should have been a three-tour Lion without argument. Politics, timing and the code switch all conspired to rob him of that. By 1997, at an age when most 10s were long gone, he was still good enough that people genuinely discussed whether he might sneak into that touring party.

Time, annoyingly, has softened me. I watch old clips now and I see it clearly: the balance, the deception, the way he could make three defenders wrong with a single step.

I understand why he wasn’t scared of Winterbottom, because he was operating on a different plane where physical intimidation simply wasn’t part of the calculation. He knew exactly where the power lay, and it wasn’t always in the shoulders.

I still wince at that moment, and I probably always will. Heroes aren’t meant to be tipped over like that, especially not by someone who looks as if he’s enjoying himself.

But I’m genuinely glad he has a CBE, and not just for sporting reasons. A few years after his playing career ended, Davies’ first wife died of cancer, leaving him a relatively young man with two children to bring up and a life abruptly reordered by loss. That sort of experience doesn’t announce itself, but it changes everything.

Much of what followed makes sense in that light. His long-standing commitment to cancer charities, particularly in Wales, hasn’t been symbolic or occasional. It has been sustained, practical and deeply personal, rooted in lived experience rather than obligation. He has raised significant funds, given time as well as profile, and done so without needing it to be framed as redemption or legacy.

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I feel quietly humbled by that, because it reframes him. The smoothness, the intelligence, the confidence I once resented all get put to work somewhere else, somewhere useful. The same clarity that let him take a defence apart has been applied to causes that actually change outcomes, not headlines.

He earned the CBE twice over. Once for redefining what a Welsh 10 could be, and again for understanding that being brilliant at something gives you a responsibility to be useful beyond it. He embarrassed England repeatedly, infuriated me personally, and forced me to grow up enough to recognise brilliance even when it’s wearing the wrong jersey.

I hated Jiffy because he made my rugby childhood uncomfortable, because he made strength look optional, and because he reminded me that intelligence, when paired with skill at his level, is basically cheating. And if I’m honest now, that’s exactly why he deserves every bit of this award.

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