First ever organised rugby game in Wales to be marked
THE first ever organised game of rugby in Wales – between St David’s College, Lampeter, and Llandovery College – is to be commemorated in the same Carmarthenshire village where the clash took place 156 years ago.
A game between Trinity St David’s College, Lampeter Past and Present and a Llandovery College XV has been scheduled for a 2pm kick-off this Friday in Caio, a village half way between the two towns, on the same field where the sport was first played in the area.
It will be part of celebrations to mark the bicentenary of the laying of the foundation stone of St David’s College, Lampeter, in 1822 and Llandovery College’s 175 years of existence.
The game will take place at Glanrannell by kind permission of the owner David Chaplin on the same piece of land that hosted the initial game between the two colleges back in 1866.
The event will also provide an opportunity for the people of Caio to celebrate their village’s contribution to Welsh rugby.
Post-match celebrations and a general knowledge/sports quiz will take place at the village pub, the Brunant Arms, while historian Selwyn Walters will be the guest speaker at an official dinner back at Trinity St David’s Lloyd Thomas Dining Hall at 7pm.
Because of health and safety issues surrounding the respective ages of the two sides, contact will be restricted for the Friday game, but a day later, on Saturday, December 3, a full-blooded game between the Old Boys of St David’s and Llandovery College will take place on Lampeter RFC’S ground at 2.30pm.
It is widely recognised and endorsed by the Welsh Rugby Union that the game of rugby was introduced into Wales at
Lampeter thanks to Rev Professor Rowland Williams, who became vice-principal of St David’s College in 1850 and encouraged students to play it in their spare time.
Visitors driving into the town are greeted with a signpost reminding them that they are entering Lampeter, the birthplace of rugby in Wales.
What is not so widely known is that the first competitive game between the then St David’s Theological College and independent school Llandovery College was not played in the town of Lampeter, but in Caio.
Professor Williams had acquired knowledge of the game when he was a student at King’s College, Cambridge, where a band of Old Rugbeians had introduced the game to fellow Cambridge University students.
He was at Cambridge during the abortive attempt to establish a code of rules in 1848, and must have heard of the meetings.
At Lampeter, he embarked on an extensive programme of reforms and had noted, with regret, the lack of organised games.
Because of a lack of primary sources, the date of that first game is problematic but it was probably in 1866 that the theological students from Lampeter faced their public school opponents from nearby Llandovery.
The tiny village of Caio sits half way between Lampeter and Llandovery and was chosen as a venue because of its convenient position at a time when coach and horse travel was a challenge to both man and beast.
In his book on the story of St David’s College rugby, The Fighting Parsons, historian Selwyn Walters quotes Professor H A Harris who, in his book Sport in Britain: Its Origins and Development, claims “that the first ever game of rugby in Wales was played in 1856 between a team from Lampeter College and a team from Llandovery College.
“The game was played in the village of Caio in Carmarthenshire, which is roughly half way between the two colleges.”
Walters suggests that 1856 in Harris’s account is a typographical error and that the story he relates refers to the match held in 1866, making it the first competitive match using the rugby rules as laid down at Rugby School and 15 years before the formation of the Welsh Rugby Union in Neath in 1881.
Caio was to be used on several occasions as the venue of the game between St David’s College and Llandovery College.
The Llandovery College Journal of March 1879 recounts: “It was not surprising that many of the boys walked a distance of about nine miles to see the match, as several old boys were more than likely to play against us”
Caio was also the birthplace of John Strand Jones, who studied at St David’s before being capped five times for Wales 1902-03 when a Llanelli player.
He kicked the winning goal against England to help Wales win the Triple Crown in 1902 and later took a Rev Strand Jones XV to Llandovery College on a regular basis, even scoring for his invitational side in the 1905 fixture.