A SPECIAL golden reunion of one of Gwent’s finest sporting achievements took place this week at Cross Keys Rugby Club.

Fifty years to the day that a combined Pontypool, Cross Keys and Newbridge rugby team won against the mighty Australia touring side, 11 of the team gathered to commemorate the special occasion.

The half-century anniversary on Tuesday evening was the first time that most of the players had been together in the same room, where they shared stories from their playing days and basked in the glory of their success against the Wallabies.

Organised by second-row forward David Husband, who arranged for them to watch a 40 minute highlight film of the game, before they had dinner together.

Mr Husband, 77, of Llangybi near Usk, said: “Rugby players always seem to have a great comradery where no one shows off but you are all in it together, and I could feel that again as soon as we were together again.

“It was a very enjoyable experience and everyone enjoyed watching the film, which brought a few laughs as well. When you watch it, it brings some memories back and you realise how old we are all getting.”

On that glorious day, 16,000 people flooded into Pontypool Park to see the combined side beat Australia 12-3 through two tries by Terry Evans and Laurie Daniel, with Pontypool back Daniel also getting the two penalty kicks.

Whilst a couple of the players competed in the combined Pontypool and Cross Keys team that lost to New Zealand in 1963, for many it was their one and only game against a tier one international side.

Mr Husband added: “It is a period of time I’ll never forget towards the end of 1966, with the Aberfan disaster and then our fellow Pontypool player Roger Addison, who played Prop and would have otherwise been in the combined side, suffered terrible injuries earlier in the month. So it’s nice to look back fondly to this game.

“The game has changed so much, we played in Cross Key’s shirts so we had to give them back afterwards.”

Whilst 14 of the 15 players are still alive, coach Dai Harris has passed away and a few couldn’t make the occasion.

Team captain Jim Jarrett, 75, said: “I hadn’t seen quite a few of them since 50 years ago and I thought we were going to need name badges but we all seemed to recognise each other straight away.

“It’s amazing that 14 of us are alive and its funny looking back as I played second row even though I was a Number 8. They were better in the first half but we were ahead 6-3 at the break and then outplayed them in the second. What was amazing when looking at the clip is how not one scrum collapsed.”