Risca RFC

Risca Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union club based in Risca, Monmouthshire. The club is a member of the Welsh Rugby Union and is a feeder club for the Newport Gwent Dragons.

Club history

Risca RFC was formed in 1875 when a group of workers from Risca Quarry decided to put away six pence a week until they could afford sport jerseys and a rugby ball. The team was given permission to play on the Church House Field opposite the local Church House Hotel. The initial games were played against scratch sides and there are no recorded results. During the late 19th century, the Church ground was purchased by the local council and the team was forced to move. The nearest ground was in Pontymister, and the club decided to change its name to Pontymister Rovers to reflect their new location. The Rovers team was one of the more successful clubs in the Monmouthshire area, and this was reflected in 1898, when the team produced its first ever international player, Joseph Booth. Although Booth only won a single cap for Wales, the fact that a player from the area was chosen at all was a high achievement during a period where only a handful of city clubs dominated Welsh selection.

Risca

Coordinates: 51°36′29″N 3°05′28″W / 51.608°N 3.091°W / 51.608; -3.091

Risca (Welsh: Rhisga) is a town of approximately 11,500 people in south-east Wales, within the Caerphilly County Borough and the historic boundaries of Monmouthshire. It is today part of the Newport conurbation (which as a whole has a population of 140,200), though it is not a Ward of Newport City Council. Risca has a railway station, opened on the Ebbw Valley Railway in February 2008, after a gap of 46 years.

The town lies at the south-eastern edge of the South Wales Coalfield and a coal mine used to operate in the town with terraced housing nearby for miners. On 1 December 1860 an explosion at the Black Vein Colliery at Risca killed more than 140 men and boys as well as 28 pit ponies.

Risca is home to Ty-Sign, which is a large housing estate built in the early 1960s as a satellite village for the then new Llanwern steelworks. Risca has a rural aspect and is surrounded to the east and west by several extensively wooded hills including Mynydd Machen (1,188 ft/362m) and Twmbarlwm (1,375 ft/419m) which attract tourists for the hillwalking and mountain bikers to Cwmcarn Forest Drive.

Risca (disambiguation)

Risca may refer to: