{"id":442322,"date":"2026-02-24T03:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T03:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/442322\/"},"modified":"2026-02-24T03:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T03:50:09","slug":"oxfordshire-rugby-player-who-was-capped-by-england-dies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/442322\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxfordshire rugby player who was capped by England dies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n  The former international rugby union player died on Sunday, February 22 having been moved to the John Radcliffe Hospital.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Mr Parsons, who went by Jim, was born in Chipping Norton on March 13, 1943 and lived in Wootton, near Woodstock, until his death.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  <img   width=\"100%\"\/>Jim Parsons pictured in Oxford colours in 1965 (Image: Archive)\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  He was well-known in the world of rugby and has been described as a &#8220;terrific&#8221; player in the second row.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Outside of the game he was a farmer, but his greatest successes was on the rugby pitch having been capped four times by England as a lock in the 1968 Five Nations Championship.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  He was introduced as one of eight debutants against Wales at Twickenham.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Lock Parsons was one of Oxford RFC\u2019s best players in Iffley Road and earned his cap after joining Northampton.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.oxfordmail.co.uk\/news\/25876507.families-remember-four-men-killed-didcot-power-station-10-years\/?ref=ed_recent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Families remember four men killed in Didcot power station 10 years on<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Speaking to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theoxfordtimes.net\/?ref=au\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Oxford Times<\/a> in 2012, he said: &#8220;It was a big deal. Wales were a very good team and had far better players than we did.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cA lot of us were fairly amateurish. They had players like Barry John and Gareth Edwards.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cWe were winning until right at the end. Their scrum half took a penalty kick, which went under the bar, but Bob Hiller dropped the ball.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cThey had a scrum five and scored from it.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  Mr Parsons won four caps for England in 1968, but his top-level career was ended by a knee injury suffered while playing sevens rugby that year.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  He vividly remembers how he felt on his England debut.\n<\/p>\n<p>\n  \u201cIt was the most amazing thing ever, trotting out at Twickenham in front of 70,000 people,\u201d said Parsons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former international rugby union player died on Sunday, February 22 having been moved to the John Radcliffe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-442322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}