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FORMATION OF WELSH RUGBY UNION The Castle Hotel in Neath is the birth place of the Welsh Rugby Union..............
however the Neath club were not present at the meeting and do not appear as founder members of the WRU, Smith and Williams in their Welsh history go on to explain why, "There was one club however a leading club in
Welsh rugby, which was quite strikingly conspicuous by its non-attendance at the
Castle Hotel. Distance or communication difficulties can hardly have explained
its absence, for that club was Neath itself. The moves culminating in the
formation of the W.R.U. had not merely taken the wind out of the sails of the
S.W.F.U. The tacit involvement of the other clubs in these manoeuvres meant that
the crew had deserted it as well. There were just two people left aboard the Marie
Celeste of the old union, secretary Sam Clarke and president John Llewelyn.
Both were from Neath. Smarting from the indignity of other clubs’ collusion
with Mullock, Neath declined to attend the foundation meeting which was taking
place on its own door step. Clarke, in particular, quite understandably had no
intention of lifting a finger to dig a pit into which he was invited to jump.
But the wound soon healed: Neath were mollified by being awarded the final trial
of October 1881; Clarke would be awarded two international caps by the
Union
which
had deposed him; and Llewellyn would in time become it's President. Neath did
not compete for the cup in the 1881-2 season, but re-entered the lists in
1882-3, and at the end of that season D.J. Price of Neath became a western
district representative on the W.R.U. match committee. From 1883, Neath never
failed to be represented at Union meetings, and in the persons of Walter Rees
and Eric Evans, would make the greatest individual club contribution in the
history of the W.R.U. by monopolizing the secretaryship from 1896 to 1955. (text from Smith & Williams - Fields of Praise) |
