The Greatest Sporting Family in History is Welsh! 

Amazingly, eight brothers played rugby for Cardiff, when it was regarded as ‘the greatest club in the world‘. An unknown story – two of the boys captained Cardiff and Wales, as did their cousin Bill Tamplin, who played with the famous Bleddyn Williams. Their uncle Roy Roberts also played for Cardiff with the older brothers before and after the War, winning the MM as a tank commander. The three eldest boys, Gwyn, Bryn and Bleddyn Williams fought in the War, Gwyn getting hauled off on a ‘death cart’ in North Africa for a desert burial, before a miraculous rescue. Gwyn was riddled with shrapnel, blinded in one eye and in pain for the rest of his days. Bleddyn risked court martial by racing to Gwyn’s hospital in Oxford, talking constantly to him about their childhood and rugby, until Gwyn came around from a coma. Gwyn did not even know he was married. In his spare time, his Taff’s Well schoolmaster selflessly threw himself into teaching Gwyn to read, write and count again. Bleddyn had trained as a fighter pilot but had to retrain as so many glider pilots had been lost at Arnhem, to fly paratroops through immense flak for the Rhine Crossing. The rugby careers of Gwyn, Bryn and Bleddyn were put on hold for six years because of War, and the next three brothers Vaughan, Lloyd and Cenydd, lost two years for National Service.   

Despite thus losing 24 seasons of playing time, the boys played 1,480 times for Cardiff Firsts. By the time their careers ended, three were in the top 8 appearances for Cardiff – Elwyn with 339 games, Tony with 328 and Lloyd with 310. Tony and Lloyd were the only backs, the other six being forwards. The book takes us over 100 years from the founding of Taff’s Well and Cardiff rugby clubs in the 19^th century up to the mid 1970s, when the youngest two brothers, Elwyn and Tony returned to play for Taff’s Well with great success. It is a UNIQUE story, never to be repeated in any team sport, with what amounts to a social history of rapidly changing times, and describing why Cardiff were acknowledged as ‘the greatest‘ team for a century. They played the best teams in Wales and England, and all the major touring sides, never coming close to a losing season. In many seasons they scored three to six times as many tries as their opponents, but the other teams scored more penalties. Cardiff always preferred to run the ball, the mission of the forwards being to get the ball to the backs for entertaining flowing rugby that brought record attendances wherever they played. 

We may have heard of Bleddyn, who captained Cardiff and Wales to the only two defeats of New Zealand on their 1953 tour of Britain, but there are the rugby biographies of all the brothers, their relatives Roy Roberts and Bill Tamplin, and some of the greatest men in Welsh rugby that they played alongside, for Cardiff, the Lions, Barbarians and Wales. I sometimes saw the four youngest in the same team – Lloyd (who also captained Cardiff and Wales), Cenydd, Elwyn and Tony – and this was the most difficult team to play for in British, if not world, club rugby. From 1933 to 1974, at least one brother was a regular first-choice player. Theirs is is a frankly incredible and inspiring story of 8 brothers and 4 sisters growing up in the Depression and War. Their father was out of work as a coal tipper down Cardiff Docks for 6 years before War broke out, and they grew up in a 2.5 bedroom rented terraced house in a tiny, polluted village. 

Despite constant offers to turn professional – Bleddyn was offered a world record fee – only two ‘went North’. Gwyn before the War joined Wigan, known as ‘Wigan Welsh’ for their preponderance of Welsh players. He told the press that he went to help his father financially, but three years ago it was discovered that he turned professional to pay for Bleddyn’s Rydal School fees. Cenydd was being touted in all the press as the next Wales outside-half or centre, but had played outside-half to rugby league legend Alex Murphy as scrum-half for the RAF. Murphy convinced St Helens that they needed Cenydd, and he decided to go, for a record for a non-international. He and his wife were living at his in-laws’ terraced house in Rhydyfelin, and the fee enabled him to buy a new four-bedroom house in a Lancashire village, with plenty of money left over. His rugby union career could have ended at any time with an injury, and he has never regretted the move. (Incidentally, turning ‘professional’ meant that one was paid for playing rugby, but still had a full-time job.)  In effect this is the story of the first 100 years of Welsh rugby, along with that of the Taff’s Well and Cardiff clubs – a wonderful read and a riveting history of changing times for even those with passing interest in the sport. If the brothers were from any major nation, they would still be known across the world.

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REPUBLICATION of 100 GREATEST WELSHMEN (492pp) and 100 GREATEST WELSH WOMEN (418pp) – each now just £12.95 (saving £6 and £4)