The Rocks’ roll of honour in rugby’s first golden era
ST Peter’s rugby club members should be puffing out their chests at the moment – and not just because they are riding high in Division 2 East Central.
Two points clear of Abercwmboi at the top of the table with six games to play, they also have a game in hand on their nearest rivals. The top two meet at Abercwmboi on 2 March in a crucial fixture.
On top of that the club can lay claim to having produced two of the heroes of the Wales teams that set the 11 match winning run that Warren Gatland’s side will attempt to beat on 23 February.
Eddie Jones may have described his next Guinness Six Nations opponents as “the best Welsh side of all-time”, but they are not quite there yet. Last weekend’s 26-15 win in Rome enabled them to equal the record of 11 successive victories posted between 1907-1910 by a team that won back-to-back Grand Slams and beat Australia.
At the heart of the Welsh pack in the first four wins in that sequence in what became known as the first golden era of Welsh rugby were two players who had learned their rugby at St Peter’s, Billy O’Neil and John Alf Brown.
The club’s excellent history, written by former secretary Des Childs, tells with great pride how St Peter’s nurtured their talent before sending them on to bigger things with both Cardiff and Wales.
“In the late 1890s St Peter’s were an outstanding side which produced a series of fine players, foremost among whom was the great Billy O’Neil. He was a young vice-captain in 1897 before joining Cardiff in 1898/99. Billy was an expert line out forward who has become a legend,” wrote Childs.
“By 1901/02 another St. Peter’s vicecaptain and forward, ‘Jack’ Brown, was to join Billy at Cardiff. Billy became the first St Peter’s man to win a full Welsh cap in 1904 against Scotland. He was to win a total of 11 caps in the next few years during a period acknowledged as one of the golden eras of Welsh rugby. They included the Triple Crown years of 1905 and 1908.
“In 1907, Jack was to play with Billy against England and become the second St Peter’s international. He was to win seven caps in the next three years. Both players were to be vice-captains of Cardiff.
“Billy turned professional with Warrington in 1908. Under the seniority rule it was customary to apply at that time, he would have captained Wales the following season.
“Billy was later to coach St Peter’s after WW1. His parents, John and Ellen O’Neil, together with John’s sister, had been shipwrecked off the Welsh coast when emigrating to America in one of the infamous ‘coffin’ ships. Their descendants have populated the ranks of St Peter’s ever since with branches of the family including the Manleys, Whelans, Crowleys, O’Briens, Sweeneys, Ellerys and Leahys.
“They were to provide six club captains and two others who married into the family. One wonders how different St Peter’s would have been if that ship had not floundered off the Welsh coast all those years ago.”
The 11-match sequence began with a 29-0 win over Ireland at the Arms PaRk on 9 March, 1907 in the final game of that’s years Home Nations Championship. That was a record score and winning margin for Wales in any game, let alone against the Irish, and both O’Neil and Brown figured in the pack.
O’Neil, a crane driver at Cardiff docks, was then one of four Welsh forwards who played throughout the first Grand Slam campaign in 1908, with Brown figuring in the first three matches. Together they helped to lay the ground work for a 28-18 win over England in Bristol, a hard-fought 6-5 triumph over the Scots in Swansea and a 36-4 victory in the first game against France in Cardiff.
Wales then claimed the first Grand Slam in history with an 11-5 win over the Irish in Belfast. O’Neil made the last of his 11 Welsh appearances at the Balmoral Showgrounds and ended up with 10 wins.
Brown, a coal trimmer at Cardiff docks, picked up his final cap in the 8-0 win over England in 1908 to give him six wins out of seven, and three wins over the auld enemy. He made more than 200 appearances for Cardiff, playing with O’Neil in the 17-0 win over the Springboks in 1907.
O’Neil went north to join Warrington and was in the side that beat the first Australian tourists on 14 November, 1908. He also won two caps for the Wales rugby league team against England before returning to Wales at the end of his playing career.