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On This Day – April 5^th

Forty-four years ago on this very day, four records were broken in one match.

This extract from ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Like… – The History of Maesteg Harlequins R.F.C.’ explains what happened on this day.

The world long-jump record had been broken thirteen times from the years 1901 to 1967. The average increase in distance was 2½ inches or six centimetres in modern metric measurements.

Then Bob Beamon came along. At the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the American destroyed the standing record not by a couple of inches, but by nearly two entire feet!

What has Beamon’s Olympic feat got to do with Maesteg Harlequins R.F.C.? On several counts, incremental increases in a number of Quins records were destroyed in a single game.

In 1908, a Maesteg rugby star of the period J.W. Preece scored three tries and a conversion, to become the first Harlequin to score a hat-trick of tries and break into double figures. Three months later T.J. Arthur eclipsed Preece’s individual score with a try, three conversions and a dropped goal in a seismic 46-nil team win over Maesteg United.

Arthur’s record was surpassed by a single point five times in the 1960s, all by the same person, Alan Griffiths. Brian Williams matched the record in 1972. The bar was raised by Ashley Davies to sixteen and then to seventeen.

Tal Llewellyn became the first player to score four tries in a game during the 1922-23 season. Gerwyn Thomas scored four against Maesteg C.Y.M.S. thirty-one years later.    

April 5^th 1980 was Easter Saturday and this time of the year meant rugby tours and tribulations. Chipping Norton rolled into town and what transpired was memorable for one club and a nightmare for the other.

Thankfully, it was a memorable match for the Quins who ran-out 104-3 winners. This was and remains, the highest score achieved by the Quins in a single match. So too the twenty tries amassed during the eighty minutes.

Just like Beamon, Robert Butler by-passed the upper teens record individual figure and ignored the twenties altogether. Butler served up an individual tally of thirty-two points [2T 12C].

Meanwhile, Ralph Turner tore past the previous try-scoring best and set the bar at seven tries in a match. Still a club record.

Another similarity between Beamon, Butler and Turner; came after their record-breaking performances. Beamon was unfamiliar with the metric measurements made by the announcer. He had to be informed of his monumental feat by fellow competitor, coach and friend Ralph Boston. When the realisation sank in, Beamon suffered a cataplexy attack and collapsed head-in-hands, unable to manage the emotion.

Butler and Turner too collapsed, about five hours after the game, unable to deal with the two gallons of liquid laughter!