Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

to running rugby, this tactic was modified with C.P. playing at half-back – or scrum-half in modern terminology – as the Llandovery students hoped their star master would pick up the ball from the forwards and bulldoze his way through the opponents in the muddy conditions. Through his efforts, C.P. established the College as a stronghold in the Welsh rugby scene, building on the pioneering work of W.P.Whittington back in the 1860s. When, at the end of his student days, Lewis returned to the College, their fixture list included fixtures against Llandovery Town; Christ College, Brecon; St. David’s College, Lampeter; and an Old Boys fifteen. Within a few years, the fixture list had expanded to include games against several of the major clubs, with C.P. revelling in the off-field arrangements, and as one ex-pupil reminisced, ‘when we played games some distance from Llandovery, we often travelled in an enlarged waggonette driven by C.P.Lewis and were accompanied by a band of enthusiastic supporters’. Through his influence, Llandovery College also participated in the South Wales Football Challenge Cup which the South Wales Club launched at a meeting at the Cardiff Arms Hotel in October 1877. The College were amongst the eighteen founder members in the competition for the cup, 27 with the influence of these educational centres in the spread of rugby fever and the adoption of the game as the national sport of Wales clearly evident from the presence of the Grammar Schools from Monmouth, Cowbridge and Carmarthen, besides St. David’s College, Lampeter alongside Llandovery College in the first-round draw, against leading town clubs including Cardiff, Merthyr, Brecon, Llanelli, Newport, Neath and Swansea. Llandovery practised at the start of the season with a match against a ‘Carmarthenshire Rovers’ team, a side probably composed mainly of Old Boys from the school. Seemingly they had an easy draw in that first year, against the Glamorgan 10th Rifle Volunteers (Cardiff), which was played at Swansea. After helping to defeat Merthyr in the second round, C.P. led the College in the semi-final at Brecon, where they lost to Newport, the eventual winners of the Cup, by two goals to nil. The competition proved to be a huge success. David Smith and Gareth Williams, in their neatly titled 1981 book, Fields of Praise, The Lone Full Back 77 27 The trophy was valued at fifty guineas in 1877, equivalent to £3,700 in 2009 money, so it was never intended to be minor competition.