Swansea RFC supporters will be aware that the main display cabinets in the St Helen’s Lounge are rotated so that new material can be presented regularly. We are also pleased to be maintaining our close connections with Swansea University and providing projects from the St Helen’s Archive to student interns. This year we have had the good fortune to have two especially diligent students and they have taken on Swansea RFC’s ground-breaking Romanian Tour of 1954.
The result is that both Cosmin Gregore and Lewis Douglass now have some unique coursework from their Heritage Work Placement with Swansea RFC. The collection has benefitted from being used as a practical educational tool and the club has been adorned with a new display. You can also read their online work on our website too.
Swansea’s historic voyage to play two matches in Bucharest in August 1954 draws together the threads of sport, politics and the social gulfs and similarities found in the ‘West’ and behind the ‘Iron Curtain’. Cosmin and Lewis have produced a project that explores these contrasts and presents a varied and interesting story from a time that, while beyond the memory of most of us, still resonates in the world today. Please take time to read their work.
The two have also been generous enough to offer to do an oral presentation to the Sporting Memories group at St Helen’s that is run by Ospreys in the Community. This was staged in today’s weekly session and the group were very appreciative of the efforts Cosmin and Lewis put in to bring a fascinating story to life – a story of rugby football, travel to hitherto restricted places in Eastern Europe, contrasting outlooks and political systems and finally, the involvement of Britain’s MI5 agency!
We will continue the work we do with Swansea University and other organisations to bring the St Helen’s Archive Collection to the community and to make it available as a resource to ever wider and more varied groups and we thank both Swansea University and Cosmin and Lewis for their involvement in what is after all, a joint venture.
If you would like to find out more about what the St Helen’s Archive do and our future plans, get in touch with us here: [email protected]
Dave Dow (Archives – Swansea RFC).