125 YEARS OF RUGBY 1875 - 2000 ABERGAVENNY RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB FOREWORD by our Patron Mr ALUN GRIFFITHS, Esq As Patron, it is with pleasure that I write the foreword to this book being published covering the past 125 years of Abergavenny Rugby Football Club. The Committee who have researched the developments of the club from its very humble beginnings to its present day have been most grateful to the members and people of Abergavenny who have come to us with paper cuttings, photographs etc. They have also used the reminiscences of members and life members of the club to provide an informative and readable account of players and personalities who have been associated with us over the years. This book indicates the development of the club which has teams from eight years old to senior level, which shows a very positive contribution to Abergavenny R.F.C. and Welsh Rugby. Many people over the years have unfailingly served the club, and I would pay tribute to them all. They have developed a club steeped in tradition and a club of which, not only the town, but Monmouthshire and Wales can be truly proud. I have been associated with Abergavenny R.F.C. a number of years and seen us survive the era of professionalism, which proves that we can compete with bigger clubs in what we provide at Abergavenny, and that we may continue to do this positively for the game we all love. Alun Griffiths 2 ABERGAVENNY RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB Members of WELSH RUGBY UNION, MONMOUTHSHIRE RUGBY FOOTBALL UNION, MONMOUTHSHIRE RUGBY FOOTBALL CLUB, PONTYPOOL DISTRICT RUGBY UNION, EAST MONMOUTHSHIRE RUGBY UNION. CLUB OFFICIALS Patron : ALUN GRIFFITHS Esq. President : GRAHAM HAWKER C.B.E. Chairman : MIKE AYLETT Esq. Hon. Secretary : CHRIS BREAKWELL Hon. Treasurer : COLIN WATSON Vice-Chairman : DAI WAITE Fixture Secretary : PETER EVANS Subs. Secretary : CHARLIE SHAW Club Captain : DARREN WILLIAMS Quins Captain : BRYAN MORGAN Team Manager : IAN COSTIN Coaching Staff : GEOFF WILLIAMS, TERRY RICHARDS Physio : REBECCA BOWLES GENERAL COMMITTEE NIGEL EVANS MIKE PREEDY VAUGHAN GREEVES CLIVE WEDLOCK RON HINKSMAN IAN WYLLIE CLIVE HOWELLS NEIL PHILLIPS ANDREW MOSS LIFE MEMBERS D. W. BREEZE E. N. D. WILLIAMS C. OAKEY D. G. JAMES J. BELFIT L. GRAHAM T. C. LLEWELLYN J. TOWNSEND R. WALBYOFF L. A. BREEZE K. J. HEWITT T. A. JONES R. V. JAMES A. NORMAN 3 Abergavenny RFC : Committee : 2000/2001 Sir Tasker Watkins opening Abergavenny’s new stand : 1998 4 National pride : Mr Ken Hewitt at the Millennium Stadium : 1999 5 The Early Years by Keith Davies Firstly let us congratulate Alan Breeze who wrote the first Club History Booklet back in 1975. His research - as the Committee set up for this book know only too well was painstaking and thorough. We thought it time that since another 25 years has elapsed since the Centenary Book was written we should update the records to the present day. Surprisingly, our research has taken us back further than 1875, in fact to 1867 where in the Book ‘Fields of Praise” Abergavenny Rugby is mentioned. For eight years after 1863, when the Football Association was founded and the dribbling code tabulated into fourteen rules, forms of rugby continued to be played in a confused limbo of local variations. It was to check this accelerating process of fragmentation from sliding into total anarchy that the first of the national controlling bodies, the Rugby Football Union, was established in London in 1871, and the Rugby code clearly differentiated from the Association game in a legislative overkill of fifty nine rules. These did not become uniformly adopted overnight, even where they were fully understood, and they required continuous modification for the next twenty years before the game began to resemble its modem form. The need for systemization is clearly to be seen from accounts of a hybrid football game, neither dribbling fish nor handling fowl, played at Abergavenny in 1867. The visitors were a Newport team including in the persons of Joseph Gould, Charles Lyne and H.C. Lloyd, fathers of subsequently greater rugby sons of Newport and Wales. It appears that this fifteen-a-side mongrel game contained a good quota of hacking, yet players could not pick up the ball and run with it, nor 6 pass from hand to hand, and while there was running and dodging, there was also dribbling. The evidence of town v. town games of the early 1870s confirms that the distinctive features of the rugby and association codes were not immediately clarified by the cumbersome commandments of 1871, though the abolition of hacking was rapidly welcomed by leading groups in society that viewed the practice as repugnantly uncivilized. Some old-boys regretted its disappearance, and well into the 1870’s held a minute’s ‘Hallelujah’ at the end of a match for unrestrained hacking. Lampeter could only claim to have the first established rugby side in Wales after they had found other sides to play against. It became possible to find opponents within reasonable reach as the skeleton of the rail network which had been laid in the 1840s was filled out during the next two decades. The spinal chord was the line that snaked in from Gloucester to Newport initially, then on to Fishguard, ultimately, the familiar route of the old G.W.R., which is what it became in 1863. It had been linked up with tracks already connecting Hereford, Abergavenny, Brecon and Merthyr by the late 1850s, and the valley lines joined it and each other in the 1860s. The Llanelli railway reached Llandeilo in 1857 and Llandovery the following year; the mid-Wales line connecting Llandovery and Swansea had been completed in 1868; Lampeter had access to the whole of South Wales now the line from Carmarthen had reached it in 1866; the completion of the track from Swansea via Neath to Brecon in 1875 added final confirmation that the midwives at the birth and immediate growth of rugby football in Wales would be arriving on the scene together. As was mentioned in the Centenary Book, and in the case of so many other Clubs, the early records of Abergavenny Rugby Club have been lost or destroyed. In fact, it was only the quick thinking of the Chairman - Mike Aylett who recovered a lot of the pictures and items of memorabilia from a skip, when back a few seasons, a few people decided to give the Club a clean out! As a keen Rugby Collector myself I know only too well the importance of memorabilia and preservation of such items, so that in years to come the next generation, and generations after them will be able to look at the life and times of one of the oldest and longest running Clubs in the Monmouthshire County. With the aid of newspaper cuttings, photographs, and memories of past players and committee men it is possible to put together - what I think is a good account of the Club spanning the last 125 years. We do apologise for any omissions or inaccuracies, they are certainly not intended. The earliest years of Abergavenny Rugby is dated and printed in the Abergavenny Chronicle of February 1876 which reports on a match between The 7 Vale of Usk Wanderers and Newport Rugby Football Club which was played “under Rugby House Rules” on 10 February 1876 played on the Castle Meadows, Abergavenny. Their kit, a shirt with a black fleur-de-lys on the left hand side, is almost the reverse colours of the “Press” team who were founded in 1888. The Vale of Usk Wanderers : 1876 Also mentioned around this time is Abergavenny “Hearts of Oak” who played Crickhowell on 12 June 1887 and beat them by 1 point in an exciting and well contended game. In 1887 the South Wales Football Club constituted a Challenge Cup Competition. The Cup competition had been launched at a meeting of the South Wales Football Club at the Cardiff Arms Hotel on 23 October 1877, when it was decided to institute a challenge cup of the value of fifty guineas, open to competition by any club subscribing two guineas. After applications had been received, the draw was made: Carmarthen v Cardiff to be played at Neath Talgarth v Merthyr at Merthyr Brecon v Monmouth G.S., at Cardiff Cowbridge G.S. v Llanelli at Neath 8 Carmarthen G.S. v Lampeter College at Carmarthen Glamorgan 10 Rifle Volunteers (Cardiff) v Llandovery College at Swansea Pontypool v Newport at Newport Llandeilo v Neath at Neath Swansea v Abergavenny at Brecon And it was Newport, after dismissing Pontypool, Llanelli and Carmarthen, who defeated Swansea by a goal to nil in the final on 2 March 1878 at Bridgend, to become the first holders of the South Wales Cup. We are also proud to have been one of the First Members of the Welsh Rugby Union. In 1875, had our delegate got to the meeting held to form the Union we would have been a Founder Member! It may also interest some readers to hear that according to the Abergavenny Chronicle on the 22 December 1877, Abergavenny Grammar School played their first match under Rugby Rules. It was against Monmouth School, Abergavenny winning by two points to nil. On 8 November, 1877 Blaenavon played their first game against Abergavenny. The game took place at Blaenavon and the Pontypool Free Press carried this report:- “A most exciting match was played between the two teams yesterday on the ground of the former (Blaenavon). The game was most pluckily contested and eventually ended in a draw, namely a goal to a goal. We noticed some splendid players on the Abergavenny side amongst whom we mention W.