Barry Rugby League Football Club was a professional
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 11 ...
club based in
Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
Barry ( cy, Y Barri; ) is a town in the Vale of Glamorgan, Wales, on the north coast of the Bristol Channel approximately south-southwest of Cardiff. Barry is a seaside resort, with attractions including several beaches and the resurrected Bar ...
,
Wales
Wales ( cy, Cymru ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is bordered by England to the east, the Irish Sea to the north and west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the Bristol Channel to the south. It had a population in ...
playing in the
Welsh League
The Welsh League was the first club rugby league competition in Wales.Lush (1998), pg. 19 Its inaugural season was in 1908/09 when four additional teams were formed to join Ebbw Vale RLFC and Merthyr Tydfil RLFC, which allowed a league tournamen ...
and
Northern Union. Based at the Trinity Street Ground in Barry, the club was one of the first professional Welsh teams, formed in 1908 but folded after just a single season.
Club history
Formation
At the beginning of the 20th century,
rugby union
Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In it ...
was the sport of choice for most villages and towns.
Association football
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
was viewed as a north Wales activity, and cricket was the summer game. At the end of the 19th century, clubs in the north of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
had broken away from the
International Rugby Board
World Rugby is the world governing body for the sport of rugby union. World Rugby organises the Rugby World Cup every four years, the sport's most recognised and most profitable competition. It also organises a number of other international ru ...
, and started a professional version of rugby which later became known as
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 11 ...
. Rugby union was a strictly amateur sport, and any player or club that took any form of payment were likely to be suspended from the game. This was very difficult to administer, as clubs were beginning to experience their star players "Going North", to the professional game where they would be paid to play rugby. In 1907, two rugby league teams formed in South Wales and joined the Northern Union, they were
Ebbw Vale and
Merthyr Tydfil. This led to further clubs considering the switch to the Northern Union game, Barry being one of them.
In 1908, the ''Barry Herald'' reported that Barry was 'going strong for a NU club'.
[Lush (1998), pg. 30] A meeting was held soon after at the Windsor Hotel in Barry, presided over by a Mr J. White, where the discussion was to form a Northern Union club.
In August, the Herald predicted that 'Barry will loom large in the football world', and that 'crack NU Rugby teams from the North of England' were expected to visit.
The club formed soon after and the local Trinity Street ground was acquired as the team pitch while the team colours would be the same as
Cardiff Rugby Football Club, that is Cambridge Blue jerseys and socks and black shorts.
To run the professional club a company needed to be formed, so with capital of £250 in 10 ''
s'' shares
Barry Northern Union Rugby Football Club Ltd. was formed.
These subscribers came from all parts of the town who needed to present a minimum of 50''s'' cash subscription or £5 to qualify for the board of directors.
For match days,
Barry Railway Company offered 'special facilities' for those travelling from
Cardiff
Cardiff (; cy, Caerdydd ) is the capital and largest city of Wales. It forms a principal area, officially known as the City and County of Cardiff ( cy, Dinas a Sir Caerdydd, links=no), and the city is the eleventh-largest in the United Kingd ...
and the
Rhondda Valleys.
1908-1909 season
Barry's first game under the Northern Union rules was against fellow newly formed Welsh team,
Treherbert
Treherbert () is a village and community situated at the head of the Rhondda Fawr valley in the county borough of Rhondda Cynon Taf, Wales. Historically part of Glamorgan, Treherbert is a former industrial coal mining village which was at its e ...
, on 5 September 1908.
The game was played at home, and a 'large crowd' watched Barry win their first match 6-3. A week later the team travelled by train from Barry to West Yorkshire to face their first Northern team,
Keighley
Keighley ( ) is a market town and a civil parish
in the City of Bradford Borough of West Yorkshire, England. It is the second largest settlement in the borough, after Bradford.
Keighley is north-west of Bradford city centre, north-west of ...
. Barry were outclassed, and lost the match 31-0, though the eight-and-a-half-hour journey to reach the venue may have had an effect.
The next match was played at home, and Barry faced another major team from England, this time
Leeds
Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...
. Barry lost the game 17-3 in front of just 2000 paying spectators; and this number generally declined as the season progressed.
Barry lost their third game in a row when they faced Ebbw Vale, but then managed their second Northern Rugby League win when they defeated
Aberdare 13-5. However, on 17 October, in an away fixture to Ebbw Vale, a depleted Barry lost 37-0 and then a 'very weak team' lost 6-31 to
Widnes
Widnes ( ) is an industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2011 census had a population of 61,464.
Historically in Lancashire, it is on the northern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form th ...
.
Despite 'probably the best gate of the season', Barry's home encounter with
Oldham
Oldham is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, amid the Pennines and between the rivers Irk and Medlock, southeast of Rochdale and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough of Oldham ...
was a terrible result, losing by 54-0. Then in an away fixture to Merthyr, Barry could only field 11 players, with their club secretary having to fill in at full-back. Results continued to be poor, with defeats to
Mid-Rhondda, Aberdare, Keighley and Treherbert. On 12 December the team was drawn to play Aberdare in the first round of the
Challenge Cup, and managed to acquire a few new players, leading to a rare 9-5 home win.
[Lush (1998), pg. 31] Barry then failed to show for a Welsh League encounter with Ebbw Vale, and their progress in the Challenge Cup was halted by a home defeat to Mid-Rhondda. This was the start of a seven-game losing streak.
[Lush (1998), pg. 259] Their losing run was broken on 20 February 1909, when the team would first beat Northern opposition,
Widnes
Widnes ( ) is an industrial town in the Borough of Halton, Cheshire, England, which at the 2011 census had a population of 61,464.
Historically in Lancashire, it is on the northern bank of the River Mersey where the estuary narrows to form th ...
. The match, played at Trinity Street, saw a large crowd assembled to see the club's newest recruit,
Dickie David. David, an ex-Cardiff and Wigan player who had been capped for the
Wales rugby union team
The Wales national rugby union team ( cy, Tîm rygbi'r undeb cenedlaethol Cymru) represents Wales in men's international rugby union. Its governing body, the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU), was established in 1881, the same year that Wales played thei ...
, failed to show for the game, saying he could not appear due to business.
Even without their new star player Barry were victorious winning 12-6 despite trailing 2-6 at half time. This would be Barry's final win, as their last four games ended in defeat, including heavy losses to Leeds (56-0)
Battles with the Welsh
TheRhinos.co.uk and Ebbw Vale (38-0).
Barry ended the season bottom of the Welsh League, and in the Northern Rugby League they finished 29th out of 31 clubs with 3 wins, no draws and 15 losses.
Club dissolution
In June 1909 Barry were named as defaulters by the Northern Rugby League. On 12 June 1909, the ''Athletic News'' reported that 'Barry had failed to fulfil the conditions laid down by the Committee' of the NRL and that they were 'practically expelled'. The club never played any further matches and the business was formerly dissolved in 1913.
Bibliography
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Notes
{{reflist
Rugby league teams in Wales
Defunct rugby league teams in Wales
Rugby clubs established in 1908
Barry, Vale of Glamorgan
Sport in the Vale of Glamorgan
1908 establishments in Wales