Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Chapter Eight The Lone Full Back Besides boasting a county cricket side which was, as we have seen, ‘strong’ by the local standards of the time, Breconshire’s sportsmen were also the prime instigators behind the formation of a regional rugby team. In October 1875, when C.P.Lewis was still an Oxford undergraduate, two leading members of the Brecon Town rugby club, Major T. Conway Lloyd and H.W.Davies, formed the South Wales Football Club. The latter acted as secretary and treasurer, whilst the former was appointed president of the new organisation. Lloyd was also a fine cricketer and an influential member of the South Wales C.C. which was the inspiration for the new regional rugby club, run along similar lines ‘with the intention of playing matches with the principal clubs in the West of England and neighbourhood.’ 74 Newspaper announcement of the formation of the South Wales (Rugby) Football Club, in 1875. Although still an undergraduate at the time, and therefore understandably absent from the notice, many of those listed played both rugby and cricket alongside Lewis.