From sheepdog training to rugby’s big stage
Gwenllian Pyrs juggles playing prop for Wales with life on the family farm, writes Fiona Tomas
Wales front-rower Gwenllian Pyrs puts her propping prowess down to mucking out on her family’s farm where she grew up playing no-rules rugby with her nine brothers and sisters while developing her other passion: sheepdog training.
“Rugby is still relatively new for me but I’ve been dog training on the farm with my dad since I was nine years old,” says Pyrs, who will run out at Twickenham Stoop against England today. “It’s where I’m most comfortable and if I’m stressed at all, I’ll go out with the dogs to relax.
The 22-year-old is one of several players to juggle jobs in an amateur Wales side who include a science teacher, a disability and inclusion officer, a student nurse and a fast-food crew member.
Growing up in one of the smallest known Welsh-speaking communities, Ysbyty Ifan in the Conwy Valley of north-west Snowdonia, Pyrs learnt most of her English from watching television as a child, before proper lessons in a bilingual secondary school.
Our phone call at 6pm is only the second time she has spoken English all day, during which she bashfully admits her anglophone mastery “is a bit poor” due to spending most of her time in the hills with her four-legged friends.
“I speak to the dogs in Welsh, but the commands are in English,” Pyrs says. “That’s because if I want to sell them, it’s easier for others to train them. They can be bilingual. There’s a competition where you trial with two dogs. For that, you’ll command one in Welsh and the other in English and work both of them together. If I know I’m going to keep the dog, I’ll teach it in Welsh.”
The bilingual traits certainly ring true among Pyrs and her international team-mates. “I’d probably say half of the girls speak Welsh,” she says. “Most of them prefer English because that way everyone’s in the conversation, but lots understand Welsh.”
After impressing at regional level in Scarlets’ under-18 set-up, Pyrs earned her first Wales cap against Italy in the 2017 Women’s Six Nations. But her career hung in the balance last year when she and Welsh team-mate Bethan Davies were involved in a road accident en route to Cardiff for training, a routine eight-hour round trip Pyrs has made three times a week since January. The incident ruled her out for the entire tournament.
“This car was doing about 70mph when it hit us as we slowed down to a roundabout,” Pyrs says. “We both blacked out and all I remember was someone knocking on the door and asking if we were OK. Both of us had whiplash and Bethan tore her calf, I had some soft tissue damage and a cut on my head which healed quite quickly. Trying to get back into the squad was difficult, but we got through it.”
Pyrs has since become a mainstay in the Wales side, having been involved in all of her country’s autumn Tests last year. Her comeback in the face of adversity is all the more remarkable given that she juggles the sheepdog training job with another as a rugby hub officer at several local schools across the Conwy Valley, where the heartbeat of rugby is unusually palpable for an area so remote. Pyrs’s father, Eryl, was one of the founding members of Nant Conwy in 1980.
“It has really knitted together the different social elements of the valley and is so important for the whole community,” Eryl says. “It’s important for the Welsh language too, with most of the coaching done in Welsh although there’s a warm welcome for all.”
It was only when Nant Conwy set up a girls’ section six years ago that Pyrs graduated from farmyardlevel rugby to playing in a more competitive environment. The crucial grass-roots hub helped spawn her international talent, and girls’ participation in this unlikely pocket of North Wales, where Pyrs is now something of a local celebrity, is booming.
“We’re trying to keep pace with the demand from girls,” Nia Wyn Roberts, the founder of the girls’ set-up at the club, says. “It’s fantastic to see a local girl like Gwenllian doing so well and representing the area on the international stage. Girls at Nant Conwy can see there’s a pathway for them now.”
Does Pyrs dream of leaving the sheepdog training behind for professional rugby, like her English counterparts? “I have thought about it,” she says. “But I love spending time with the dogs and rugby is such a short career anyway. I think I’ll always have dogs. I’m not sure if I could live without them.”