Brinley Williams
Encyclopedia
Brinley "Bryn" Williams was a Welsh
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 dual-code international rugby
Rugby football
Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...

 wing who played rugby union
Rugby union
Rugby union, often simply referred to as rugby, is a full contact team sport which originated in England in the early 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand...

 for Llanelli
Llanelli RFC
Llanelli Rugby Football Club is a Welsh rugby union club founded in 1875 and its senior team is one of the leading club sides in Wales. The club began the 2008-09 season at their historic home ground of Stradey Park in Llanelli, but moved in November 2008 to the new Parc y Scarlets in adjacent...

 and rugby league
Rugby league
Rugby league football, usually called rugby league, is a full contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular grass field. One of the two codes of rugby football, it originated in England in 1895 by a split from Rugby Football Union over paying players...

 with Batley
Batley Bulldogs
Batley Bulldogs are an English professional rugby league club from Batley, West Yorkshire. They currently play in the Co-operative Championship. Batley is one of the original twenty-two rugby football clubs that formed the Northern Rugby Football Union in 1895...

. At rugby union he won three caps for Wales
Wales national rugby union team
The Wales national rugby union team represent Wales in international rugby union tournaments. They compete annually in the Six Nations Championship with England, France, Ireland, Italy and Scotland. Wales have won the Six Nations and its predecessors 24 times outright, second only to England with...

, and at rugby league he won two caps for Wales
Wales national rugby league team
The Wales national rugby league team represent Wales in international rugby league football matches. Currently the team is seventh in the RLIF World Rankings. The team were run under the auspices of the Rugby Football League, but an independent body, Wales Rugby League, now runs the team from...

, and one cap for Other Nationalities
Other Nationalities rugby league team
The Other Nationalities rugby league team regularly played international, and also county, rugby league football teams in Europe from 1904 to 1975. The team, created in 1904 to play England in the first ever rugby league international match, was at first made up of Welsh and Scottish players...

.

Rugby career

Williams first came to note as a rugby player when he joined first-class Welsh team Llanelli. He had previously played for Bryncaerau, but after the cessation of rugby with the outbreak of World War I he joined the Royal Welsh Fusiliers and was posted to the front. During his service in the War, he was wounded on three occasions, and came to the notice of his battalion commander Lord Howard de Walden
Thomas Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden
Thomas Evelyn Scott-Ellis, 8th Baron Howard de Walden, 4th Baron Seaford , was a British peer, landowner, writer and patron of the arts. He was also a motorboat racer who competed in the 1908 Summer Olympics.-Biography:...

, who after the war named a racehorse, Brynfleet, after him.

With the end of the war Williams joined Llanelli, and in 1920 he was awarded his first international cap. He was selected at wing, opposite William Charles Powell, for the last three games of the 1920 Five Nations Championship
1920 Five Nations Championship
The 1920 Five Nations Championship was the sixth series of the rugby union Five Nations Championship following the inclusion of France into the Home Nations Championship, and the first played since the 1914 Games due to World War I. Including the previous Home Nations Championships, this was the...

; with his first match played away from home against Scotland. Despite Wales losing the game, Williams was reselected for the next two matches, wins over France and Ireland. In the Ireland game, Williams scored his first international points, with three tries
Try
A try is the major way of scoring points in rugby league and rugby union football. A try is scored by grounding the ball in the opposition's in-goal area...

.

In 1920 Williams left Llanelli and rugby union by joining professional rugby league team Batley. His signing on fee was a reported as £400, (based on increases in average earnings, this would be approximately £54,100 in 2009), and he made his debut for the club on the 28 August. While at Batley, Williams made three international appearances, two with Wales and one with Other Nationalities, all of the matches in 1921. His two games for Wales were against England and Australia, while the Other Nationalities was an away game to England. After leaving Batley he played for Leeds
Leeds Rhinos
Leeds Rhinos is an English professional rugby league football club based in Leeds, West Yorkshire. The club won the 2011 Super League and became the most successful club in the Super League era, beating St Helens 32-16 on 8th October 2011. Formed in 1890, Leeds competes in Europe's Super League...

 and then Pontypridd.
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