{"id":42029,"date":"2026-05-06T04:27:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/leigh-halfpenny-the-unassuming-welsh-rugby-great-who-has-hung-up-his-boots\/"},"modified":"2026-05-06T04:27:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-06T04:27:39","slug":"leigh-halfpenny-the-unassuming-welsh-rugby-great-who-has-hung-up-his-boots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/leigh-halfpenny-the-unassuming-welsh-rugby-great-who-has-hung-up-his-boots\/","title":{"rendered":"Leigh Halfpenny: The unassuming Welsh rugby great who has hung up his boots"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Back in 2008, a Wales Under-20s side went deep into the Junior World Championship and hinted at what was coming. Sam Warburton, Justin Tipuric, Dan Biggar, Rhys Webb, Jonathan Davies and Halfpenny were in that side.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Grand Slams, titles and World Cup semi-finals. For a time, the best team in the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">One by one, they&#8217;ve gone. Halfpenny is the last.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The numbers are strong. Some 101 caps, 801 points &#8211; third behind Neil Jenkins and Stephen Jones &#8211; but they don&#8217;t quite explain him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He was unassuming, almost bashful, and the last person looking for credit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yet the one everyone trusted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Nobody has a bad word to say about him. In this game, that&#8217;s rare.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">His former Wales coach Warren Gatland called him the best defensive full-back the game has seen. At his peak, especially with the British &amp; Irish Lions in 2013, he was probably the best full-back. Full stop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/rugby-union\/articles\/cd9px291jyyo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in 2008, a Wales Under-20s side went deep into the Junior World Championship and hinted at what was coming. Sam Warburton, Justin Tipuric, Dan Biggar, Rhys Webb, Jonathan Davies and Halfpenny were in that side. Grand Slams, titles and World Cup semi-finals. For a time, the best team in the world. One by one, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42030,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42029"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42029"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42029\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42031,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42029\/revisions\/42031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kede.com.br\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}