Our History

Rugby was first played in the mining village of Cefn Cribwr in the late 1880’s as a welcome release for many miners from the long and hard toil of underground working.  The village, situated between Wales’ first and second cities Cardiff and Swansea consists of a two and a half mile long settlement, on the southern outcrop of the South Wales coalfield.  Cefn Cribwr, sometimes translated into the English language as ‘back of the ridge’ was surrounded by over 250 coal pits in the coal heyday. Many other local villages followed suit and set up their own rugby Clubs, allowing them to play regular fixtures against each other in the earliest days of rugby. Cefn, as it is fondly known, was one of the earliest Clubs to play regular fixtures in Wales.

Interest in the game soon grew, and Cefn entered the Bridgend and District league in 1904, with two local stars Johnny Smith and Ted Caswell earning their schoolboy caps. Johnny’s ‘knitted’ woollen Wales Jersey and cap was on display in the Club until recently.

The first Senior Wales cap attributed to a Cefn player was that of E.M ‘Ned’ Jenkins in 1927. This ‘colossus’ of a second row went on to win 21 caps for Wales.  In an away match against France Ned got persistently penalised by the ref, who also threatened to send him off for overly aggressive play. Wales proved worthy winners of that game, as the crowd got more and more angry towards the ref.  Ned famously escorted the referee off the pitch at the end of the match because of the French crowd’s hostility towards him!  This made the headlines of national papers, including the South Wales Echo.  Tuff buggers these Cefn boys!

Both World Wars took a toll on village rugby, but Cefn managed to purchase a their first proper Club House from the Coal Authority, a former miners’ welfare hall for one guinea (a pound and one shilling!) in the late 1950’s after running out of various venues, usually pubs, most latterly the Three Horse Shoes pub at the centre of the village.

The Club adopted the crest from of Tythegston Court as it’s badge.  Tythegston Court was a significant house and home to the Knight family, a family of the gentry.  In 1958 the intrepid four, Hopkin Watkins, Ivor Greenslade, Bill Styles & Wilf Wintle accompanied Councillor Cyril Beale in one of the few cars in Cefn at the time to visit Mr.Henry Knight, of Tythegston Court, to ask if we could adopt the Knight family Crest. It is now proudly on display on all Club jerseys and correspondence (specially modified with the USA Eagle for this tour), and is proudly on display at the front of the new Club House. Visitors can’t miss CCAC!

The 1961 Annual General Meeting minutes record the first intention to seek to move to a plot of land at Cae Gof playing fields on which to build a Club, in 1961…we eventually moved into our brand new Club House in December 2013…. so we are only 52 years late!!!   We never rush to do things in Cefn, often locally known as “God’s country”, because of its superb elevated rural location overlooking our nearest and richest rivals, and the relaxed way of life.

In rugby terms the Club developed enough to eventually become a Member of the Welsh Rugby Union in 1971, at the second time of asking following the tremendous work of Mr. Roy Davies, Cefn Cribwr Athletic Chairman at the time and Welsh Rugby Union Representative, Cefn having been a Member for a short period in the 1920’s.

Roy’s brother Teify Davies was instrumental in bringing so much to the village in terms of supporting youngsters in all sports including boxing, athletics, gymnastics and of course rugby.  Outside of sport he also took a keen interest St. John’s Ambulance brigade where he helped the local Division win nationwide accolades including becoming UK champions.  He was also a great singer, and took a keen interest in music, and took on the mantle of heading up the Cefn Pantomime for many years, initially set up in the late 70’s to raise money as the Club hit financial difficulties. People came from miles around to watch his entire cast; essentially rugby Club nutters perform in this massively popular annual Christmas show that also raised lots of money for charity too.

Teify was himself and accomplished lock forward; his Mid Glamorgan County Cap is still on display in the Club.  He was even sought after to play for Cardiff RFC, but decided to remain loyal to his beloved Cefn. He later went on to coach the Cefn invincibles Youth side of 1953, and was eventually awarded a British Empire Medal for his services to the community.

Other honours followed for the Club. The great Howell Greenslade played in two Welsh Senior trials during 1948/49 and only failed to be capped because of the presence of the great Welsh scrum half, Haydn Tanner. Many in Cardiff RFC still believe Howell deserved his cap, and was at least equally as good as Tanner. Howell’s Cardiff cap is on display in Cefn today.

Cefn’s other famous son, Keith Bradshaw was one of Cefn’s finest; he had 9 Caps between 1964 and 1966. Rumour has it he was capped at centre by Wales whilst still on the books as a Cefn player, playing his rugby for Cefn at scrum half!

Another star of that era, Colin Standing, an impressive athlete of a flanker was very unfortunate not to gain full honours having played for the Barbarians, and in a Wales final trial but failed to get capped and subsequently plied his trade in the professional Rugby League game in the north of England at the time.  John Brown also got to final trial stage without being capped.

In more recent times, former Club Player and Coach - Gwylim Wilkins became one of Cefn’s most recent Senior Internationals; when was he capped against Tonga, in 1994. Gwylim’s daughter Ffion has played in all of the last two seasons 6 Nations tournament s for the Wales Women’s team.

Brothers Richard and Matthew Wintle also received full international honours against Western Samoa, and Italy in 1989 and 1997 respectively, having played most of their formative rugby with oldest of local Cefn rivals of many a year, Kenfig Hill, “The Mules” RFC.

Their dad, Viv failed to gain a Wales Youth Cap from Cefn because of a small pox outbreak in Europe restricting travel to France a generation earlier, but he did play for Wales Junior Union alongside the likes of Howard “Chunky” Raikes, a world famous Cefn Tourist (travelling with us today, who will be desperate to give a song!), Nigel Lucas (who also captained the British Universities), Wyndham Thomas, Viv Howe and Alan Jones.

Viv Wintle’s younger brother John gained junior Honours, Captaining Wales Schoolboys in 1960/61and went on to play for Wales Youth. Other Youth and schools rugby and Under 21’s honours have come to Cefn from Paul Stenner of the great Cefn Stenner dynasty, Doug Evans, Glyn Greenslade, Steve Grabham, Adrian Thomas, Phil Wintle, Michael Tossell and most recently Johnny Stenner .

If Cefn’s rugby history is truly traced back, you can see that some of these names keep appearing, particularly the Greenslades, Downs’, Stenners, Grabhams, and Raikes’ many of whom came from England to chase work in the coal fields of South Wales at the turn of the 20th century. These big families (in more than one sense of the word) formed the backbone of the Club over many many years.

Sadly we lost one of Cefn’s true greats last year.  Beverly Isaac Francis Downs (aka BIF for short, or of course Ikey) who played, coached, and Chaired the Club.  He was a Life member who put his all into the Club and should have won International honours for playing the guitar!  What a tourist!  He is a very difficult individual to replace at time like this, but on this tour we have brought two of his apprentice guitarists to make sure the Cefn vibe that Bev developed lives on!

On this note, talking of tourists and tours, it’s worth sharing a summary of our previous travels.  This tiny Club on the South Wales coastline started touring on long and arduou trips to places like Brixham in Devon; there were no motorways then and resulted in many hours of travelling on a Browning’ s Bus without a toilet!  The Club really then went big and travelled up to the ‘big’ smoke’, London and Brighton to see the girls (and boys) with the shiny beads, before regularly visiting our dear friends in Duns (Scotland) from the 1970s until the present day.

Then came the real tours….  Belgium in 1978, where Peter Knight, a Cefn boy in the Royal Air Force, invited us over to S.H.A.PE. (Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe) at Monz.  Boy, could that touring group have done with our own Johnny Powell’s logistic skills on the second visit in 1979 when the bus broke down 60 miles from Paris!

Nevertheless that didn’t deter the Cefn die hard tourists. Having had a real taste of a truly ‘global’ Tour when Cefn hosted the oldest Club in Australia, Petersham in 1976, they decided to go globetrotting themselves. Cefn were one of the first ‘intrepid’ small Welsh club sides to go across the pond to Canada in 1982, and visited Toronto, Kingston and Ottawa.  Another Canadian Tour followed in 1989, this time to British Columbia….

......and now here we are…..on our way to the White House, Charlottesville and Virginia Beach….with the seventy year olds ready to go a surfing USA….whilst the youngsters complain of the hard grounds…. C’mon USA…C’mon Cefn!!