Iorwerth Price Jones, Trelewis…The Quiet Referee – part 1

It is hard to imagine in these days when Welshmen are not allowed to referee in the English leagues, that we once had an elite class referee actually living in the High Street, Trelewis.

Iorwerth Price Jones (Iory) was born in number 1 Hylton Terrace Bedlinog on the 18th December, 1927. He grew up in the village and attended the infants’ school at Commercial Street and then onto the Bedlinog Boys School at Oaklands Terrace (Where the new surgery has been built) the girls’ school was at the end of Hylton Terrace in those days…

When he was 13 years of age he played for the Bedlinog Boys school team, who played wearing distinctive Black and White squares on their shirts. One day they had arranged a match against Trelewis down on the Trelewis Welfare fields, a good local derby. The match was interrupted by men shouting that a young lad had wandered too close to the nearby quarry and had fallen in; people rushed to help as the game was abandoned, but the youngster lost his life in the deep waters of the quarry… a dangerous place that had a buried crane neck rising above the surface and many parents feared their children playing there. In later years the quarry was filled in with waste from the collieries.

Eddie Jones, Iory’s father was a collier on the coal face at Taff Merthyr colliery and young Iory was soon to follow in his fathers footsteps.

At 14 years of age, Iory got a job at the nearby Taff Merthyr Colliery, he spent two years underground, mainly on the tension end that pushed the coal towards the waiting trams, and it was called District 15. In those days before cap lamps, he was expected to collect a lamp weighing 14lbs and carry that all the way into his place of work, and of course back out again at the end of a long shift. Dai Hughes was the manager then, he lived in the big house on Captains Hill called Brynffynon. At 16 years old Iory had to work on top pit due to suffering with dermatitis and started work with the Blacksmiths. He used to catch one of the Bert Davies buses, with wooden seats, that picked up at Bolwells shop near his home.

Taff Merthyr Colliery

Iory also attended the Treforest mining school where he studied Welding fabrication and was fully qualified upon leaving. Iory left the collieries after 9 years and worked for a number of years in Cardiff at a government training centre. He then got a teaching job at Cross Keys College, where he worked for over 25 years, during which time he became a top class football referee. He was fortunate enough to be allowed to take time off on occasions when he had to be away refereeing.

Iorwerth was a very good young footballer who got picked for the Nelson Welsh league team, he then got transferred to Treharris and finally played in the Southern league for the very powerful Merthyr Tydfil team. Unfortunately a problem with his left knee forced him to see the local doctor in Trelewis, Dr De Souza, who strangely enough held his surgery in the front room of number 12 High Street, a house that Iory would later make a home for him his wife Margaret and their daughter. Dr De Souza diagnosed a cartilage problem and performed an operation at St Tydfil’s Hospital in Merthyr to remove it, this spelt the end of Iory’s playing days, he was determined to still keep involved in football though and started refereeing local league games.

Iorwerth began serious refereeing in the Pontypridd and District league, where assessors would mark your performance; he was getting excellent marks and soon went from Grade C to a grade B. He became a Welsh league referee and move up to a grade A, eventually his talent earned him a place as a football league linesman…a great honour.

After a few years, an even greater honour came his way, when he became one of the five Welsh referees on the football league list, that was allowed by UEFA and FIFA…The other four at that time were, Leo Callaghan, Haydn Davies, Clive Thomas and Jack Gow. Unlike these days, he was expected to officiate at all levels, one week he could be at St James Park, Exeter, and the next at Old Trafford. Iory was 38 years of age, and was being paid £13 a match plus expenses, a far cry from Today’s referees’ wages.

The day finally arrived for Iory’s first match in charge; it was Portsmouth v Birmingham City at Fratton Park, August 24th 1966, what a match it was, a nine goal thriller with the away team going away with the two points after an amazing 5-4 victory. During the season he officiated at plenty of games including matches at Tottenham, Fulham, Wolves and Chelsea, before the season was concluded he was elected to the F.I.F.A panel of referees after just one season as a football league referee as well as being put on the UEFA list to referee matches in their competitions.

To be continued….

Many thanks to Paul Corkrey for allowing me to use this article. To view the original please go to https://www.treharrisdistrict.co.uk/treharris-areas/trelewis/history/

Taff Merthyr Colliery

Opened in 1926, the Taff Merthyr Colliery was one of the last collieries to be sunk in Wales by a private company – the Powell Duffryn Steam Coal Company. It was also one of the most controversial.

Taff Merthyr Colliery in the 1920s. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

The two shafts of the Taff Merthyr Colliery were sunk between 1922 and 1924 to approximately 1900 feet and were 21 feet in diameter, but the development of the colliery took place during the 1926 General Strike. The pit officially opened just after the end of the strike, but the owners of the company insisted that no members of the South Wales Miners’ Federation could be employed at this new pit and they set up a company union, the South Wales Miners Industrial Union, which the miners were expected to join in order to work.

Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s the pit, together with others in the South Wales valleys became major trouble spots in the struggle for democratic representation with torchlight processions, stay down strikes and mass meetings, culminating in the strike of 1934/5.  Taff Merthyr ‘strike breakers’ went into the mine under police protection and fought with the stay-down strikers resulting in 40 men being injured in the battle.

The anger felt by miners and their wives towards the ‘scab’ workforce often spilled into the streets with physical violence and other forms of intimidation. Crowds would assemble on the streets and as this labour-force passed silence was observed with doffing of caps and caps until they passed out of sight (taken from the Western Mail 1935). This resentment was to remain in the village for many years.

Police Sergeant Gooding after being hit by a stone during the Taff Merthyr Riots in Trelewis. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

During the peak years of the early 1930’s however, the pit employed more than 1,600 men and produced an annual tonnage of over 600,000. With the outbreak of the Second World War, Bevin Boys were employed at the colliery, and in 1945 it was reported that 1,119 men were employed at the colliery.

The colliery was nationalised in 1947, and at that time it employed 153 men on the surface and 874 underground.

During the early seventies, 735 men were employed and they produced 340,000 tons of coal annually from the seven feet coal seam. £ 8 million was invested in the colliery in the mid-seventies and the work was completed in August 1978 and it involved deepening shafts to 640 meters and building a new coal preparation plant and MGR dispatch system.

Taff Merthyr Colliery in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of http://www.alangeorge.co.uk/index.htm

In 1992 Taff Merthyr was amongst 31 pits scheduled for closure, despite protests and the widely held opinion that there were at least 10 years reserves of coal. Safety and maintenance work continued during a review, but it seemed inevitable that 368 coal workers would lose their livelihood when tons of rubble and other material for filling the shafts were delivered before the review was even concluded. The final shift was worked on 11 June 1993. There was talk of a miners buy out but it never materialised and the winding gear was demolished by explosion on 22 July 1994.