Agile ‘Monkey’ saved the day for Wales at Stradey Park

PETER JACKSON

The only time England ever ventured west of Swansea for a Test match, the honorary secretary of the Rugby Football Union doubled up as the referee. Had the idea caught on, imagine the scene a century or so later: England rocking up at Cardiff Arms Park and Wales finding Twickenham’s somewhat overweight chief executive Francis Baron in charge, a whistle in his mouth, a red card in one pocket, a yellow one in the other.
The circumstances behind George Rowland Hill’s appointment for the Wales-England match at Stradey Park on a frosty January weekend in 1887 is not c...

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