Glamorgan relish big Rugby day

By Andrew Hignell

Glamorgan, who celebrate their 125th anniversary as a county cricket club in 2013, are looking forward to a special day in July when the 'birthday' actually falls.

The meeting back in 1888 when the present club came into being was held on July 6 – the day this coming summer when the Welsh county will be meeting Warwickshire in a Twenty20 match at Rugby School, as county cricket is taken to the famous school for the first time.

As far as Glamorgan are concerned, Warwickshire are very fitting opponents on their anniversary day because they were the opponents in their inaugural county match at Cardiff Arms Park in June 1889. The visit to South Wales turned out to be a comfortable victory for Warwickshire and with the home side captained by Edmund David, the son of the vicar of St Fagans, it was a truly a case of David against Goliath as Warwickshire won early on the second afternoon by eight wickets.

It is also quite appropriate that on the day 125 years after the founding meeting at the Angel Hotel in Cardiff, which had been convened by Sir John Llewelyn, a president of the Welsh Rugby Union, the two sides should be going head-to-head at Rugby School – the famous boarding school where William Webb Ellis is reputed to have invented rugby football while a pupil there in 1823.

Over the years a host of Welsh rugby internationals have appeared with distinction for Glamorgan, with the list headed by two of the greatest names in Welsh sport – Maurice Turnbull and Wilf Wooller. Both featured in the first Welsh rugby side to beat England at Twickenham in 1932-33, alongside fellow county cricketers Viv Jenkins and Ronnie Boon, with Turnbull subsequently leading the club with distinction during the 1930s before Wooller captained Glamorgan to their first Championship title in 1948.

Glamorgan’s first full-time professional back in the 1890s was Billy Bancroft, a star full-back with Swansea, while in more recent times Keith Jarrett a winner of ten Welsh caps and a member of the British Lions party who toured South Africa in 1968, played twice for Glamorgan in 1967. Aaron Shingler, who featured in the recent defeat by the Welsh rugby side against New Zealand at the Millennium Stadium, was also previously on the club’s junior staff and played for both the Glamorgan Second XI and England Under-19s.



Date: 12/01/2013 13:04:00 by Andrew Hignell
In: Today | Glamorgan |