Our time machine travels back to the early days of our sport to celebrate the remarkable career of Dai Davies, who didn’t just excel at rugby league, but rugby union and football too.
RUGBY league players have fathered footballers.
Dad of the Knowles brothers ‘Nice One’ Cyril, of Tottenham Hotspur and England, and Peter, the Wolverhampton Wanderers wonder boy who famously turned his back on the glory game to become a Jehova’s Witness, was Wakefield Trinity and York fullback Cyril snr, for instance.
And much-travelled Wales international Trevor Hockey was a son of Albert, who having shone at scrum-half for Abertillery in rugby union, turned professional with Keighley.
Footballers have fathered rugby league players – Salford Red Devils prop Jack Ormondroyd is the son of Ian, whose clubs included Bradford City, Aston Villa and Leicester City, while former Halifax Panthers, Huddersfield Giants and Bradford Bulls centre/secondrow Chester Butler’s old man Peter played for Huddersfield Town, Southend United, West Ham United and West Bromwich Albion among others before coaching a string of sides around the world.
Some players have even played both games.
York Knights prop Kieran Hudson was once a goalkeeper in the Sunderland Academy system.
And Kyle Dempsey was in the Wigan Warriors development ranks before he focused on football and carved out a career which took in Carlisle United, Huddersfield, Fleetwood Town and Gillingham before he joined Bolton Wanderers, for whom he made 19 appearances in the season just finished.
Then there was Albert Brough, who represented the respective Barrow and Oldham clubs in both the oval and round-ball games, also playing twice as a backrow for Great Britain in the former.
Also between the Wars, Ben Beynon played rugby union for Wales and football for Swansea Town (now City) before turning to rugby league with Oldham (as a back), while talented Wakefield winger Ted Bateson had previously played a few football matches for Blackburn Rovers.
But no one has matched the dual achievements of the remarkable Dai Davies, who represented Wales at both rugby league and football and played in a Challenge Cup Final for Swinton, as a stand-off, and an FA Cup Final for Bolton, as a goalkeeper.
Born in Llanelli on 12th May, 1880, he appeared for that town’s renowned rugby union team, and was part of the celebrated Scarlets side who lost only once in 31 matches in the 1896-97 season. That year he was a try-scorer in the win over Newport, which the Daily Chronicle newspaper labelled as being “for the club championship of the United Kingdom”.
That was Swinton’s first campaign as members of the Northern Union and, keen to make an impact in the professional code, they kept close tabs on the South Wales scene, with leading club official Jack Scholes making trips there to scout and sign up players.
It’s said he first clocked Davies while completing a deal with Wales international and Llanelli captain and centre Owen Badger, and having continued to track his progress, finally lured him north shortly before the end of the 1898-99 season, in which he played twice late on.
The following campaign, Davies was a regular as Swinton finished third in the 14-strong Lancashire Senior Competition and reached their first Challenge Cup final, beating Eastmoor, Holbeck, Oldham, Broughton Rangers and in the semis, Leeds Parish Church.
That set up a showdown with Salford, which took place at Manchester’s Fallowfield Stadium and was officially watched by 17,864, although one local newspaper claimed more than 25,000 were present.
Skippered from the forwards by club stalwart and former England union international Jim Valentine and with a side including his younger brother Bob in the centres, Swinton took control in the second half, with Davies, who was still a teenager, scoring the last of their four tries (worth three points apiece) in a 16-8 victory.
The following season, still forming an effective halfback partnership with compatriot Joey Morgan, he represented Lancashire while helping his club finish second in the table, while in 1901-02, Swinton were fourth and made the Challenge Cup quarter-finals.
Having played 88 times for Swinton, Davies’ career took a seemingly unlikely turn during the 1902 close-season, when he joined top-flight football club Bolton despite having very little experience of the game.
He had a tough start to life in the first team, with 12 goals conceded in two games, a 5-1 Christmas Day defeat at Liverpool and 7-1 Boxing Day setback at Sheffield United.
Bolton were relegated in bottom place, but they persevered with Davies, whose bravery increasingly caught the eye, with one reporter noting he “excelled in the dangerous and difficult task of diving headlong at an incoming forward’s feet and whisking the ball away as he curled up and rolled to safety”.
Both the team and Davies’ form in the Second Division was far better, and the following season, 1903-04, the goalkeeper represented Wales against Scotland and Ireland while helping Bolton finish seventh in the table and reach the FA Cup Final by beating Reading, Southampton, Sheffield United and in the semis, Derby County.
Four years after running out for Swinton at Fallowfield in the Challenge Cup Final, he lined up for Bolton at against Manchester City in front of 61,000 at the Crystal Palace stadium in south London.
City won 1-0, but Davies was reported to have “had a good match”, making a number of fine saves, and the season after, 1904-05, he helped Bolton win promotion back to the First Division by finishing runners-up to Liverpool.
Winning a third Wales cap, this time against England in 1908, he remained at Burnden Park until the early stages of the 1909-10 season, when after 137 games for Bolton, he returned to rugby league, and Swinton, where he became captain.
Between then and 1912-13, he made a further 85 appearances for the club, including the Lancashire Cup Final of 1910-11, which Oldham won 4-3 at Wheater’s Field, Salford, with his brother Dan a teammate at hooker.
Davies added a Wales rugby league cap to his football trio when he faced England in the 39-13 defeat at The Butts in Coventry in December 1910.
After serving in the First World War (as did his brother), he was involved in the Swinton Park amateur club.
He died in Manchester aged 64 on 23rd June, 1944.
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 509 (June 2025)