A recent addition to our ever-increasing collection at THM, a beautiful Welsh honours cap, has come to us from the family of William Richard Edwards who played for Wales between 1929 and 1931.

William was born, lived and died in England but with Welsh ancestry he played hockey for Wales. Ironically, had he played representative hockey for England he would not have received an honours cap because England did not award them. The Hockey Association deemed them to be a ‘reward‘ in an era of totally amateur sport and refused to entertain the idea. Thankfully for William, Wales, and indeed Scotland and Ireland, did not share English hockey’s policy, so he received his much-treasured cap which has now been presented to the Museum by his daughter along with a scrapbook, postcards and photographs from his career.

William was born in Ludlow, became a County Council solicitor for Shropshire, Essex and East Sussex, and died in Sussex. He qualified for Wales through his grandfather but always considered himself to be ‘Anglo Welsh’. In fact, during that era, nearly a century ago, all three of the other Home Nations (Scotland, Wales and Ireland) held ‘Anglo’ trials in England because of the number of qualifying players who resided there.

Regular readers of Hockey Shorts will be aware that that honours caps play a big part in our activity. We have earlier Welsh caps but they are green, so we were confused to receive this red one. We are now investigating when this colour change took place. As is often the case, one new piece of information often poses further questions!