Department: Sport, Local History, Rugby, Cricket, Football, Swansea
No. of pages: 1
St Helen's Stories
Alun Wyn Bevan
A celebration of a century and more of sport at St Helen's, Swansea, which has been home to the Glamorgan Cricket Club and Swansea RFC, amongst others. Includes many black-and-white and colour photographs.
For anyone born within a bus ride of St Helen's in Swansea, this is a wonderful trip down memory lane, touching on the sporting events, both rugby and cricket, and the players who have graced its magnificent playing surface. - Geoff Edwards, Gwales
Some grounds are part of sporting folklore. Whether it's Cardiff Arms Park or Lord's, Wembley or Wimbledon, the arenas where the great games are played out are as integral to our memories of those encounters as the players who contested them. One such ground is St Helen's, Swansea, home to, amongst others, Glamorgan Cricket Club and Swansea RFC.
It was at St Helen's that a pair of local schoolboys, Haydn Tanner and W.T.H. Davies, helped defeat the mightly All Blacks in 1935. It was here in 1948 that Glamorgan went a whole season undefeated as they won the County Championshop for the first time in history. And it was here twenty years later that Sir Garfield Sobers struck six sixes in a single over, something that no one else had ever achieved before in first-class cricket!
What is more, it seems that the Australians are none too fond of this ground: their cricket team came a cropper here in 1964 and 1968, whilst their rugby side, their world-champion XV, lost heavily to Swansea here in 1992.
But in this entertaining book, Alun Wyn Bevan does more than parade the stars and statistics of great games played on this ground. He unearths some of the stories behind the headlines - and they are, in turn, charming, amusing and amazing! And each helps to create a sense of what makes St Helen's such a special place to all sports lovers
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