156 years on, match to commemorate first in Wales
Featured Image credit: Michael Day via Flickr
The first organised game of rugby in Wales between St David's College, Lampeter and Llandovery College is to be commemorated in the village where the clash took place 156 years ago.
A game between Trinity St David's College, Lampeter and Llandovery College has been scheduled for Friday December 2 in Caio – a village halfway between the two towns – on the very field at Glanranell Farm where the game was first played in the Principality.
It is widely recognised – and fully endorsed by the WRU – that rugby was introduced into Wales at Lampeter thanks to the Cambridge educated Rev. Professor Rowland Williams, who became Vice-Principal of St David's College in 1850 and who encouraged students to play it in their spare time.
What is less known is that the first competitive game between the then St David's Theological College and independent school Llandovery College was not played in Lampeter but in the Carmarthenshire village of Caio.
For 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 Llandovery.
Llandovery College were playing rugby at the same time as St David's College, the game having been brought to the independent school in the time of the then Warden the Rev William Watkins (1861- 1875) by schoolmasters educated in England and familiar with the game of rugby.
Caio sits halfway 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 WRU in 1881.
