Brendan Gallagher continues his series looking at rugby’s great schools
NORTH WALES has historically been considered something of a backwater in Welsh rugby terms, sparsely populated with few clubs and school sides and those who did play rugby often looked across the border to Merseyside, the Wirral and Manchester for opposition.
Rydal would be just such a school, but despite those inconveniences they have made their mark. Not least because they have produced two of the great centres in Welsh Rugby history with first Wilf Wooller and then Bleddyn Williams, names that are still spoken about in awe.
Wooller’s is a fascinating story in many ways, a thundering centre who won three senior caps while still at school where he was also the best cricketer of his generation.
Whisper it quietly but Wooller was really an Englishman with his parents Wilfred and Ethel hailing from Eccles near Manchester, where his father ran a successful building business.
They moved to North Wales when Wilfred secured many of the contracts to help expand the flourishing seaside resort of Colwyn Bay.
Having shone as a footballer at Llandudno GS, Wilf junior switched to rugby when he moved to Rydal with great success, first as a prop and then at centre when his rugby daft headmaster, the Rec AJ Costain, insisted he was much too quick to play in the pack. His rugby and cricket coach Donal Boumphrey MC was also a great early influence.
For two years he formed the best schoolboy centre partnership in the land – England or Wales – with another English transplant Edgar Bibby whose neat passing game proved the perfect foil to the force of nature that was Wooller. Bibby, who went on to become a stalwart with Cheshire and the Combined Services served with the Fleet Air Arm in Malta, and remained a lifelong friend.
At the end of the 1932 season, after causing equal havoc for the First XV and First XI for two seasons, Wooller was confidently expecting to leave Ryal for Cambridge University. He had a firm offer pending exam results, but come the day he completely blew his Latin entrance exam. A pass was then mandatory for all Cambridge scholars.
So it was back to school for another year to swot up and make sure next time, a light workload in truth which allowed him to captain the Rydal First XV for two terms and make a splash playing senior rugby for Sale.
With Rydal he was aided by another excellent complementary centre in Harold Burton with the school winning 17 of their 23 regular season games, while at Sale he made an immediate splash along Wales centre Claude Davey in midfield.
At which point with the England selectors already trekking up to Heywood Road to view Wooller, Davey played a blinder for Wales by alerting the Wales selectors to the young man’s talent and his Welsh qualification via Rydal. At this stage a North Walian hadn’t been selected for nearly 40 years and the selectors were largely ignorant of any emerging talent in that region.
Wooller was summoned for a Wales trial on January 7, 1933, did well, and was asked to stay on for a few days and guest for Glamorgan against Monmouthshire at Neath.
Again he did well, scoring two tries, and next thing he knew he was playing for Wales in front of 60,000 fans at Twickenham. What’s more, after a nervous start, he is credited with a number of try-saving tackles as Wales claimed a famous win. By Monday he was back at school studying Latin and getting ready for his next school game.
Wooller played in all three Home Nations games that season as a schoolboy but picked up a serious knee injury playing for Sale at the Manchester Sevens. It remained a niggle for the rest of his rugby career, there in the background, although it didn’t stop him winning 19 Wales caps and starring in a famous win over the 1935 All Blacks.
And there would have been more but for World War 2 when he ended up as a prisoner of war at the Changi camp and working on the Burma rail track.
By his own admission though it made him a different player, concentrating much more on his passing and kicking skills to make up for a slight reduction in the power and dynamism of his running. A remarkable man and we haven’t even got space to detail his cricket career with Glamorgan and his time as an England selector.
His other great contribution to Rydal sport, while playing for Cardiff during the height of his career, was to spot the exceptional schoolboy talent of Bleddyn Williams, a prodigiously gifted member of a notable rugby playing family from Taffs Wells.
Williams skippered Cardiff schools to their first Dewar Shield in 12 years and after impressing at centre in the Wales U15 trial was capped at full-back, the only time he played there in his life. Wooller persuaded Rydal to offer Williams what amounted to a rugby scholarship.
Unsurprisingly with Wiliams on board – operating mainly at fly-half which is where he won his first senior Wales cap – Rydal were formidable during his three years in the First XV culminating in a notable unbeaten season in 1939.
During his second senior year Wiliams was the stand out player for North Wales Schools against East Wales but broke his ankle in the final minute which cost him a cap and the following year the school’s representative fixture list was cancelled with the outbreak of war.
It was far, however, from a one man show. Out on the wing during Williams’ era was an exceptionally quick Bristolian – Jack Gregory – who later played for England while at Blackheath and even more notably won an Olympic silver medal with GB in the 4x100m relay at the 1948 Olympics.
A little further down the school, but already making his presence known was Dyson ‘Tug’ Williams who was then a tenacious scrum-half. Later he became an exceptionally combative flanker for England.
At the Rosslyn Park Schools Sevens, they were losing finalists in 1954 and 1961.
More recently there has been Pat Leach, son of legendary Rydal director of sport Mike, who played a huge part, along with Phil Mather, in running Rydal rugby for 30 years.
Pat excelled at cricket and rugby and played for Orrell and Manchester before trying his luck with Worcester and Newport Gwent Dragons.
Much more recently former head boy and First XV captain Adam Sabri earned a professional contract with Newport Gwent Dragons emerging from a strong XV in 2016-17 that included Dan Owen, Euan Humphreys, Henry Maitland- Davies and Nick Dundee.
Another who has made a good impact is powerful back five forward Sean Lonsdale who Exeter Chiefs are nurturing after loan spells with Plymouth Albion and Taunton.
