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South Africa showed there's still a high pedestal in the game for human wrecking balls and tough hombres on their magic carpet ride to the 2019 Rugby World Cup in Japan.

The journey to their third Webb Ellis Trophy win was built on a hard edge and mean streak, the rest of planet rugby couldn't match.

But the physical specimens, that were the bone-crunching 'Boks, didn't have a copyright on intimidating opponents in the brawn department.

Welsh club rugby is synonymous with teams famed for building their house of pain with firm foundations.

So we give you the sides who set the benchmark in dishing out their own particular brand of medicine, the clubs who rivals felt a little trepidation boarding the team bus for a journey to their battleground and the ones who sometimes saw fixtures cancelled for their over-aggressive attitude.

We’ve ranked them to give you Welsh rugby’s ultimate threshing machine....

8: Maesteg

In the 1970s they weren't just a side riding high at the top of the Merit Table, but one you knew could dish out the physical stuff. With players nicknamed 'Cowboy' and 'Billy the Kid' you wouldn't have expected anything else.

Tough nuts Billy Howe and John Morgan was their enforcers back in the day and one Pooler player remembered one particular a clash in the 70s, saying: "They came up to the Park early on the reign of Ray Prosser as the Merit Table champions. It was a 9-9 classic."

7: Tredegar

The Gwent valleys club may be down on their luck these days, but that wasn’t always the case and in the 1970s.

Teams venturing up the Recreation Ground knew the man with the magic sponge was about to put in a request for time-and-a-half plus a lieu day for the overtime work he was about to put in.

Tredegar’s tough nut side centred around a certain Paul Woods, who would later go on to carve out a fearsome reputation in rugby league with Widnes, Rochdale Hornets and Hull.

And he played among the backs!

“He was very tough and very aggressive,” recalls renowned hardman Jim Mills, who played with him for Widnes and Wales, and was himself sent off more often than any player of his era. “You wanted him on your side, not against you.”

With fellow tough as teak Tredegar clubmates Mel Bevan and Charlie Butler, a trip to Tredegar in the 1970s was certainly not for the faint-hearted.

6: Ebbw Vale

It was said the Ebbw Vale and Tredegar matches back in the 70s provided enough bumps, bruises and cuts along the way to give Elastoplast shareholders a lavish lifestyle. Vale would have the lions share of wins, but Tredegar would not go down without a fight.

In the rock-hard stakes the two clubs couldn’t be separated by a Rizla paper as the Tredegar tough guys had to contend with the Ebbw men who brought steel to the town... players like granite hardened Gareth Howls, renowned Welsh international mauler Clive ‘Budgie’ Burgess, John Short and Elwyn Morris.

5: Newport

The Black & Ambers developed a steely edge with the arrival of one Mike ‘Spike’ Watkins in the early 1980s.

Their scrummaging, firstly alongside the likes of England international Colin Smart, and then Rodney Parade cult heroes Rhys Morgan, John Rawlins and then Frankie Hillman ensured opposing front rows knew they were in for 80 minutes of torture.

And flanker Roger Powell offered no respite in the loose.

Never afraid to take a backward step in the fisticuffs stakes, Newport’s most notorious match came at Bristol in 1985 when referee and police officer Supt George Crawford walked off in the first half complaining that it was like “street violence” on the field, and never came back.

A replacement referee was found to complete the game.

Weeks later a visit by Fiji to Rodney Parade was again marred with violence. Fijian second row Savai was sent off after a huge fight broke out among four different sets of players. Savai was seen butting Newport captain Watkins and was dismissed by referee Owen Jones.

Shortly afterwards, Watkins was flattened by a kick to the stomach, which led to an exchange of words between the officials of both teams.

4: Treorchy

Another side that has seen the giddy heights of top class rugby only to fall on harder times.

But whether on a peak or a trough opposing teams knew they were in for one hell of battle visiting the Rhondda Valley club.

And none more so than in the 1970s when Chris Jones was ruling the Treorchy roost.

He was the man whose disciplinary rap sheet had more weeks on it than the Julian calendar.

“You had the Treorchy back row of the early 1970s whose boast was that no half-backs had scored against them for three years and they put 11 outside-halves off the field during that time,” said Jones.

“So all you did was wait for the referee to turn his back and then boot, punch, stamp, gouge and whatever you wanted to. That was the way it was and every team had its hard men.”

‘The Dream’ in the mid-1990s brought the rugged fortress days back to the Oval when the Zebras invested heavily into players like Welsh stars Dai Evans, Chris Bridges and Lyn Jones.

3: Pontypridd

They don’t call Sardis Road ‘The House of Pain’ for nothing and though you could go all the way back to the 60s and 70s when firstly the likes of prop Wayne Evans and later on flankers Chris Seldon, Mike Shellard and Tommy David were ruling the roost before the arrival of Jim Scarlett and Adrian Owen, one era readily springs to mind when discussing Ponty in their pomp.

It’s the era when ‘The Chief’ Dale McIntosh, Steele ‘Stella’ Lewis, Phil John, Nigel Bezani, Denzil Earland earned their stripes for the Valley Commandos.

The 1997 ‘Battle of Brive’ when Ponty refused to take a backward step on the pitch and in Le Bar Touzlac afterwards epitomised the ‘15’ Musketeers attitude that made the club the force they were with tight-knit team spirit the envy of others.

2: Neath

The current Welsh All Blacks is a far cry from some golden eras when trips to the Gnoll for Welsh players didn’t figure highly on their bucket list.

You could go back to the 1950s when brutal scrummager Courtney Meredith strutted his stuff to the following decade when in 1967 fixtures with Cardiff were put on hold after one infamous match that left Welsh legend Gareth Edwards fearing someone could get killed.

“I honestly thought someone was going to be killed,” recalled the Lions great. “There was a great closeness among us as player but also a great rivalry between our clubs. It was hard to believe that you could batter yourselves to death one week and then be comrades in arms the next Saturday.”

But perhaps the cream of crop came under the watch of the late great Brian Thomas when the likes of Phil Pugh, Brian Williams, John Davies, Kevin Phillips and Mark Jones were at the peak of their physical powers.

Their infamous match was the 1992 clash with the touring Wallabies at the Gnoll when respected coach Bob Dwyer described the town as the “bag-snatching capital of the world” accusing the home players of grabbing the Wallabies’ testicles in a bruising affair.

1: Pontypool

Pooler were so notorious in the 1970s, 80s and early 90s under the reign of Ray Prosser and then Lions hooker Bobby Windsor, some chose to break off fixtures with them.

London Welsh did so in 1973 after one infamous game at Old Deer Park when the Exiles ended the game with 12 men and later on Bristol were said to be incensed by one match at the fortress named Pontypool Park when a young outside-half among their ranks by the name of Stuart Barnes was subjected to some rough stuff.

They didn’t even have a full fixture list among the top Welsh clubs back in the day.

Former Wales and Bridgend centre Steve Fenwick recalled in the book ‘Nobody Beats Us’: “In between internationals we played Pontypool away. It was a bastard of a fixture. They were ruthless and games against them were like the Alamo.

“They would pound us for 80 minutes and it was the one game I would tell my wife not to book anything for the Saturday night as I might be in hospital of limping back home.”



