Billy Boston, the retired Welsh rugby star who was a trailblazing figure for Black professional athletes in Britain, was knighted by King Charles III in a special ceremony at Buckingham Palace on Tuesday.
Boston, 90, is widely considered one of the best to ever play rugby league, the faster, more free-flowing version of the game, with 13 players on a side rather than 15, as in rugby union. He spent most of his career with Wigan Warriors, where he notched 488 appearances from 1953 to 1968, and finished his career with a British record of 571 tries, the rugby equivalent of touchdowns in American football.
He was the first Black player to represent Britain on its rugby league national team, on a tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1954. He scored 24 tries in 31 international appearances for Britain and played a pivotal role in Britain’s Rugby League World Cup championship in 1960, scoring against Australia in the final.
Boston, who revealed in 2016 that he had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, did not make a public statement about the knighthood. The BBC reported on Tuesday that his wife, Joan, said that his family was “excited that everything he’s done for the sport and for our community is being recognized.”
His son Stephen, appearing with his father after the ceremony, said the knighthood was “a long time coming” and “should have been a lot sooner,” noting that his father was the first player in the 130-year history of rugby league to be knighted.
Boston collected several major honors at Wigan, the team said on its website, and won the Challenge Cup, the oldest rugby league cup in the world, three times.
Mike Danson, Wigan’s current owner, said on the team’s website that Boston’s knighthood was a “richly deserved honor.”
“Without doubt, Billy was a player who was — and still is — the biggest crowd favorite in rugby league,” he said.
In Wigan’s 1959 Challenge Cup victory against Hull, Boston scored two tries in front of a crowd of nearly 80,000 at Wembley Stadium. He was the most prolific try-scorer in the history of rugby league and “an iconic figure in the history of British sport,” Tony Sutton, the league’s chief executive, said in a statement Tuesday.
Politicians in Northern England, where rugby league is most popular, had expressed frustration for years that a rugby league player had not received a knighthood, particularly given that several rugby union players had been given the honor.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain said on social media on Tuesday that it was “a historic wrong” that it had taken so long for a rugby league player to receive a knighthood. Boston, he said, was “a legend of the game who overcame prejudice to represent Great Britain and opened the door to a more diverse game.”
“The first knighthood in rugby league could not go to a more deserving player,” Starmer said.
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