Abertillery RFC

Abertillery Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union club based in Abertillery. According to their website, they were founded in 1883 by a coal miner named Doug Wallace who was a local resident who moved from Scotland in 1882, Wallace was known for his commitment for the club until he died in 1899 and will be remembered as a special part of the club even to do this day. Every year the club celebrates Wallace's life by competing in a cross country race with 100s of the locals competing in the last 10 years Mr Phelps has won the race 10 times and is now the all-time leading winner in the competition, in one year he run the race twice before anyone had cross the line for the first time. Club history 1883–1914 According to the club's official centenary book, Abertillery Rugby Football Club, Abertillery were founded on 21 September 1883 in a local public house, The Prince of Wales. Like many towns and villages in Wales in the late 1880s, Abertillery was home to multiple rugby teams; these included Abertillery Town, Abertillery Harlequins, Abertillery Wednesdays, Heart of Oak and Abertillery Rovers. Abertillery FC and another local team from Abertillery amalgamated around September 1887 into a single club called "Abertillery Football Club". These clubs had periods of growth and decline until two main teams emerged, Abertillery Town and Harlequins; these two sides merged into a single club known as Abertillery RFC in 1901. The early clubs did not originally own a match pitch of their own, so relied on sympathetic landowners to let them play on vacant fields. These included the Gas Works Field and Old Barn Field. The club also did not possess a club-house, so from 1890 they used Wilkinson's Temperance Hotel. During the first decade of the clubs' existence, matches were difficult to arrange and games often resulted in on-pitch arguments regarding the interpretation of rules. Abertillery would often arrange for a joint team to face more established clubs, and in 1888 an Abertillery team travelled to Cardiff to face Cardiff Harlequins at Sophia Gardens; the game quickly broke down into a 'violent war' before a lengthy discussion the game was eventually resumed. By 1892, Abertillery Town were facing other local clubs including Aberbeeg, Tredegar and Brynmawr. 1895 saw Abertillery enter the newly formed Monmouthshire League, and in January 1898 Abertillery were top of the league, but fell away in the second half of the season to finish fifth.