CARMARTHEN RFC
INTERNATIONAL PLAYERS
Introduction
There are over 50 players known to us who have either played for the Quins 1st XV or Youth XV and have gone on to represent their own country gaining international rugby caps. Many also went on to represent the British and Irish Lions.
Some players had international caps for the countries of their birth including Tonga; Samoa; Pacific Islands; Canada and England. Yes England. The story goes that David Watt, who gained four England caps in the 1966/67 season, happened to be in the area during the 1968/69 season and was persuaded to play for the Quins in a home match at The Park against old rivals Tumble. As often happened in this derby encounter, it was a tough bruising 80 minutes with less emphasis on actually playing rugby. After eventually getting to the safety of the changing rooms, Mr Watt was allegedly heard to say that “never would he play West Wales rugby again.”
I have endeavoured to establish copyright issues for each photograph and hope I have done so successfully. Should that not be the case, I would welcome contact from anyone wishing to explore this further.
With the talent currently playing in the Quins team in the Principality Welsh Premiership there are positive signs that this Honours List will soon have more names added to it.
Mr.T. L. Evans, Senior Geography Master at the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Carmarthen, produced a history booklet for the club’s centenary season 1874/75-1974/75. Contained in the booklet were the names of Quins players who, in the club’s first 50-60 years, had gone on to play international rugby for Wales. Through my own research, I have established the dates when several of these players had actually turned out for the Quins. There are some names where I cannot find a record of when they played in Quins colours but Mr. Evans may well have had access to official records or local knowledge to verify this. I have referred to this in the individual profiles of those players.
As with all my other features, I would not have managed without the much valued help of a number of individuals. Mr. Peter Owens, Rugby Heritage Manager with the Welsh Rugby Union, has given up a great deal of his time to provide me with actual Welsh Rugby team photographs so that I could single out the individual players for my feature. He has also been of immense help in resolving issues for me in regards to copyright. To that end, I am extremely grateful to him and to the Welsh Rugby Union for allowing me to include in my feature player photographs from 1875 – 2002.
My thanks also to Mr. Phil Evans, of the Carmarthen Athletic Club, for providing me with so many individual player profiles from his extensive collection of international rugby match programmes.
The work on researching each player’s playing history was done by Mr. John Lewis, Chairman of the Carmarthen Quins Supporters Club and my sincere thanks to him for doing this on my behalf.
We try to be as accurate as we can when stating player profiles. However, we welcome any information where there may be inaccuracies but also where additional information could have been included which we were not aware of.
This feature would not have been possible without the excellent support I received from the following:-
Huw Evans Agency
Ian Williams, Riley Photography
Programme Publications Ltd
Mike Walters, Photographer
Peter Owens, Welsh Rugby Union
Phil Evans, Carmarthen Athletic RFC
John Lewis, Chairman of the Carmarthen Quins Supporters Club
Ian Golden, Sporting Records Online Ltd
Click here to see the international player list
Click here to see the Lions list
Percy Jones – Club Archivist (August 2017)