The summer of 1966 will always be remembered as the year when England defeated West Germany in the World Cup Final, and for commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme’s immortal line “They think it’s all over, it is now” as a ferocious shot from the boot of Geoff Hurst thundered into the back of the net at Wembley, writes Andrew Hignell.
It was also the only previous time that Derbyshire had played a County Championship match at Colwyn Bay, with the game – staged three weeks after the World Cup Final - seeing Glamorgan win by 63 runs after Ossie Wheatley had taken 6/42 in Derbyshire’s first innings, en route to claiming 100 Championship wickets. Opening batsman (and now Club President) Alan Jones chipped in with a pair of half-centuries whilst off-cutter Don Shepherd claimed 4/41 as Glamorgan wrapped up victory on the final afternoon of not only the three-day game but also the season as Glamorgan finished the summer in fourteenth place in the table.
The match with Derbyshire was the first-ever County Championship game staged at the ground in Penrhyn Avenue, and the first of many times that the Club’s professionals and supporters have made the 200 mile pilgrimage to the North Wales coast.
Over the years, it has become a very fruitful visit with the decent-sized crowds every year the county’s flag is flying by the entrance into the ground from Penrhyn Avenue confirming the presence of a hotbed of cricket enthusiasts and fervent support for county cricket.
This is a not a new phenomenon either, as the ground has staged a series of very lucrative cricket weeks for over eighty years. Since the 1920s, the club has hosted annual games, involving the MCC and touring teams, as well as Denbighshire`s games in the Minor County Championship during the 1930s, plus other exhibition games against invitation sides drawn from the highly successful Lancashire Leagues.
The chance of seeing some of the top names in the cricket world greatly appealed to the rapidly expanding population living in the resort towns dotted along the North Wales coast, and between 1940 and 1944, the Colwyn Bay club staged a number of fund-raising games for the War Effort.
Wilf Wooller, the highly influential captain of Glamorgan CCC, knew only too well about the fervent support for cricket on the North Wales coast having lived close to the ground and happily playing there since his early teens when a pupil at Rydal School. His father had also helped to lay out the ground , so it was no surprise that Wilf, after taking over the Glamorgan captaincy in 1947, brought the county side to Colwyn Bay to play in the annual festivals held at the ground.
The financial success of these festival weeks also led Wilf – by now the secretary of Glamorgan CCC – to bring County Championship cricket to North Wales in 1966 and his decision to stage the match with Derbyshire at the Rhos-on-Sea ground was rewarded by a crowd in excess of 4,000 on the first two days of the contest. From 1972 Colwyn Bay also played host to annual matches in the Sunday League, and since 1990, an annual Championship fixture has been staged, often against Lancashire, leading to the unusual situation whereby the “home” team have stayed in a seafront hotel in Llandudno whilst the “away” side have returned along the A55 to their family homes!
Over the years, all of these games have witnessed above average attendances, and given the fact that legendary players in Glamorgan`s history such as Matthew Maynard and Wilf Wooller learnt their cricket in North Wales, it is no surprise that the Club’s players and officials are more than happy to travel up from South Wales each year for the annual fixture at the Rhos-on-Sea ground.
Glamorgan take on Derbyshire at Colwyn Bay in the Specsavers County Championship from Sunday July 17.