LONDON - Mervyn Davies, the Welsh rugby player who died Friday at 65, kept his immaculate timing to the very end.

He died of cancer the day before Wales was to play France in Cardiff in the final round of the European Six Nations championship. Wales’s class of 2012 will attempt to emulate their predecessors of 1976 who, led by Mr. Davies in the last of his 38 matches for his country, beat France in Cardiff to claim both the championship and the Grand Slam feat of beating every opponent. Flags will fly at half-staff over the Millennium Stadium, with a prematch minute’s silence.

Known widely as Merv the Swerve, Mr. Davies was born in Swansea in 1946. His memoir was called simply “Number 8,’’ his position, the middle man at the back of the scrum. He did not simply make the position his own; he redefined it.

“Wherever the ball was, Mervyn was invariably there,’’ wrote Gerald Davies, a teammate who pointed out that, while previous Number 8s had been either grafting scrummagers or active around the field, “Mervyn combined both styles of play.’’

Gerald Davies remembered him “looking as if somebody had put a jersey on a clothes hanger’’ when he first played for Wales in 1969. The mature player wore a headband, Zapata-style moustache, and was 6 feet 4 inches tall. His physical presence and all-round game meant that Wales could play two smaller, quicker men alongside him in a dynamic, attacking style of play.

During his eight years on the team, Wales was champion four times - including 1975 and 1976, his two years as captain - and never lower than second.

He appeared certain to captain the Lions in New Zealand in 1977, but a year earlier, in a Welsh Cup semifinal, he suffered a brain hemorrhage. The stroke nearly took his life, and it ended his career.

In 2002, Welsh rugby fans voted him the greatest captain and Number 8 in their long history.