Blaenavon RFC 16 : 17 Risca RFC

WRU National League – Division 1 East

11^th November 2017.

I went to watch Blaenavon play this afternoon, ahead of the Wales game.

Blaenavon RFC was formed in 1877. Rugby had spread up the valleys from Cardiff, Newport and Swansea in the mid 1800s with the railways that served the coalfields and rugby’s close association with the industrialisation of  the south means that it was always a working class game in Wales, with deep community roots.

It was a real rugby day – cold and with a spiteful drizzle. This made for some difficult technical challenges – the light was flat and dull and fell away sharply within an hour of the kick off; mist rolled in intermittently and I kept being distracted by what was a really good game. Blaenavon are close to the bottom of the table and, before today, Risca were not doing much better but the standard of National League rugby in Wales is good and this was a tight game, played in poor conditions.

I went intending to see the game ‘in context’ rather than to take ‘sports’ pictures; to look at the crowd and to include them in my observations. I didn’t get that many shots to be honest but I think I have captured a sense of the ‘match’ (as opposed to the game – there is a difference in Wales).

Blaenavon is a local club; it is a team that could exist nowhere else; its players and supporters represent the immediate area, in every sense of the term;

Very little separates players and supporters;

People seem to stay with the club a long time;

Rugby is, arguably, the ultimate team game – the bonds formed are physical and emotional;

And the game is hard;

For both individuals and for teams;

As the light fell and the mist rolled in again, the high ISO and difficulties in focussing led me to convert this final shot into black and white but it reminds me of the kind of newspaper photo that has captured the game for over 100 years in this part of South Wales and so seems a good reminder of the continuity of identity that rugby has provided for communities like Blaenavon;

I really enjoyed the afternoon; the humour of the supporters who were more than happy to tell me why the rugby top I was wearing (Cardiff Blues) was the wrong one (this is Dragons territory). A number of people asked me about what I was doing  and were keen to ‘chimp’ the shots I had taken as well as being interested in seeing more pictures later.

The technical challenges were frustrating and I have an awful lot of poorly exposed, out of focus shots but I like those that made it to edit and I think the images do convey something of the intensity of the game and of the humour and inclusiveness that surrounds it. I also hope that it shows Blaenavon at play in a way might easily be overlooked if one’s lens was only ever turned to the structural and economic challenges it faces.

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