Wales rugby greats sing iconic song together to help famous Welsh club after historic season

Wales Online

8 hours ago

Wales rugby greats sing iconic song together to help famous Welsh club after historic season
The club are raising funds after a massive promotion
A a dozen former Wales and British and Irish Lions players belted out a Beach Boys classic as part of a fundraising effort for London Welsh – and the heartwarming choral rendition has been caught on camera.
Mike Phillips, Gareth Edwards, Robert Jones and Gerald Davies were just some of the names in attendance in the English capital as they belted out Sloop John B by the iconic American rock band. 1971 Lions choirmaster John Taylor conducted the rendition of the famous track, with the likes of Scarlets head coach Dwayne Peel and Wales legend Ken Owens also in attendance and singing along.
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The event was put on to raise funds for Welsh to invest in their facilities following a landmark season. All former rugby stars, including Sir Ian McGeechan and former England hooker Brian Moore, looked immaculate in their smart clothes, with everyone getting stuck into the song, with arms raised and smiles across the board.
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It was held at The Brewery on Chiswell Street, with famous Welsh comedian Rob Brydon a guest speaker on the night. It celebrated the 120th year since the first of more than 50 of the club's players represented the Lions.
It's been a joyous season for the iconic club, who recently secured promotion back to the National Leagues after being booted out of the Championship back in 2017. Sign up to Inside Welsh rugby on Substack to get exclusive news stories and insight from behind the scenes in Welsh rugby.
After years of hard work by all those behind the scenes, like former Ospreys star Cai Griffiths, the club have climbed their way back to the upper echelons of English rugby and won the league title in the process.
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Despite their ascent, director of rugby Griffiths assured WalesOnline back in March that the club have no intention of targeting a return to the Premiership, they simply want to retain their players and take it season by season.
"We want to target top six next season. And then we will basically build on that. The biggest thing is sustainability," he said.
"When you start thinking about Championship, Premiership, you start chasing it, that means stupid decisions: payments and costs spiral out of control.
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"For us, we've done well getting into this league, we want to get into that top six and build again the following year, then hopefully we can get more success.
"Retaining 90% of the squad (is our goal), it's a key thing. If we do that, then they'll potentially be five players going to 100 caps next season.
"These guys are still young. Seeing the areas we do need to bolster up, it's a big league, as in the players are bigger, there's more games.
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"You need that strength in depth. The quality is there, even in the second team now. There are a lot of players who have come from the seconds to the firsts. We want to keep on with that pipeline of players."
Next season, Welsh will be competing in the National League Two division, which is the fourth tier of English rugby. Join our WalesOnline rugby WhatsApp community here.
The project to get promoted was three years in the making, with Griffiths an Co initially focusing on developing young players, and now it's clear that approach has paid off.
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"The group of players that we've got now, we've had them for four, five years. There's a couple of 70-cappers in there which is fantastic and also some players who haven't won anything, so it's fantastic for them to experience that," said Griffiths.