Wrexham Rugby Football Club (Welsh: Clwb Rygbi Wrecsam) is a Welsh

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 ...

team based in

Wrexham Wrexham ( ; cy, Wrecsam; ) is a city and the administrative centre of Wrexham County Borough in Wales. It is located between the Welsh mountains and the lower Dee Valley, near the border with Cheshire in England. Historically in the count ...

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 ...

. Wrexham RFC is a member of the Welsh Rugby Union. Wrexham was one of the nine founder clubs of the North Wales Rugby Union, which formed at Wrexham in 1931.

History

Wrexham RFC was founded in 1925. In 1931, at a meeting held by Wrexham, the North Wales Rugby Union was founded in January 1931 with nine clubs and affiliation to the Welsh Rugby Union coming in June of the same year. Originally Wrexham had no home ground and played as a nomadic club. This continued until 1946 when they obtained their own ground at Dean Road. In 1976 they moved to their current home ground on Bryn Estyn Lane in 1976 with floodlights being installed a year later. In 1995, the

New Zealand national rugby union team The New Zealand national rugby union team, commonly known as the All Blacks ( mi, Ōpango), represents New Zealand in men's international rugby union, which is considered the country's national sport. The team won the Rugby World Cup in 1987 ...

player

Jonah Lomu Jonah Tali Lomu (12 May 1975 – 18 November 2015) was a New Zealand professional rugby union player. Lomu is considered to have been the first true global superstar of rugby, and consequently had a huge impact on the game. He is widely regarde ...

made a guest appearance for Wrexham RFC against a North Wales XV in an exhibition match. This was done as a favour to the Wrexham coach Phil Kingsley Jones, who had discovered Lomu as a 14 year old. This was five months after Lomu had appeared for the All Blacks in the

1995 Rugby World Cup Final The 1995 Rugby World Cup Final was the final match of the 1995 Rugby World Cup, played in South Africa. The match was played at Ellis Park Stadium, Johannesburg on 24 June 1995 between the host nation, South Africa, and New Zealand. South Afri ...

against

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

and after rugby union had just permitted professionalism. Following the

introduction of regional rugby union teams in Wales Welsh regional rugby is the top tier of professional Welsh club rugby and is composed of the Scarlets, Ospreys, Cardiff Rugby and the Dragons which compete in the United Rugby Championship. The regions were established for the start of the 2003/04 ...

, Wrexham's coach led criticism of the fact that there was no professional regional team permanently based in North Wales. In 2013, Wrexham won the WRU Division Three North title. Until 2002, Wrexham RFC had run a ladies rugby team. The ladies side of the club was resurrected in 2019.

References

{{coord, 53, 3, 15.18, N, 2, 57, 31.21, W, region:GB, display=title Sport in Wrexham Welsh rugby union teams