Cardiff Rugby () are one of the four professional Welsh rugby union teams. Based in Cardiff, the club plays at Cardiff Arms Park. The club became professional in 1996, following the professionalisation of rugby union. Between 2003 and 2021 the club's first team was branded the Cardiff Blues.
Traditionally, the club competed in matches against English and Welsh clubs as well as against touring sides.
Today they compete in the United Rugby Championship and in European Professional Club Rugby competitions.
They won European Challenge Cup titles in 2010 and 2018, beating Toulon and Gloucester respectively. Cardiff most recently made the knockout stages of the European Rugby Champions Cup in 2012.
Their most recent league title came in 2000 with victory in the Welsh-Scottish League. They most recently made the URC playoffs in 2026.
Between 2005 and 2018, they also competed in the Anglo-Welsh Cup and won the 2009 title, beating Gloucester at Twickenham.
The club also runs one of the five Welsh rugby academies, age group teams and the semi professional Cardiff RFC side, affectionately nicknamed "The Rags", which competes in Super Rygbi Cymru.
In 2026, Cardiff Rugby will celebrate its 150th season. It is one of only three clubs to feature in the World Rugby Hall of Fame.
History
Origins The first reliably recorded Rugby club in Cardiff were Tredegarville, who began playing around 1870. By 1874 a team named Glamorgan FC had been formed and in 1876 they merged with Cardiff Wanderers to form the Cardiff Football Club. At the time, association football was little known in South Wales and it was not until the 20th century that the team became known as Cardiff Rugby Football Club.
Cardiff FC played their first fixture on 2 December 1876,Davies (1975), pg 19 versus Newport at Wentloog Marshes. In 1881, Cardiff beat Llanelli to win the South Wales Challenge Cup, though the tournament was scrapped soon after due to persistent crowd trouble.
Hancock and the four three quarter system
In 1885 under Frank Hancock, Cardiff began playing with seven backs and eight forwards and perfected what was known at the time as "the passing game". Up until this time, rugby had been played with 9 forwards and 6 backs, with play focused on forward exchanges. Hancock's methods for the first time utilised the full width of the pitch and clever timing of passes to make use of overlaps. He banned his players from kicking penalties and drop goals. For the whole of the 1885–86 season, Cardiff would only score through tries and conversions. They won all but one game all season. Crowds flocked to the Arms Park and the Cardiff style of play helped make rugby football hugely popular throughout the city and surrounding areas. Giving the club a huge well of talent on which to draw from.
These innovations eventually spread throughout the rugby world and in 2011 earned the club a place in the World Rugby Hall of Fame, one of only three clubs to have this honour. Several former Cardiff players including Gwyn Nicholls, Bleddyn Williams, Cliff Morgan, Gareth Edwards, Barry John and Gerald Davies are also members of the Hall of Fame.
Early glory
In 1898, Cardiff were unofficial club champions of Wales for the first time. One year later, centre Gwyn Nicholls became the first Cardiff player to play for the British and Irish Lions (then only representing the British Isles), and scored a try in both the first and second Tests against Australia. Nicholls would also go on to captain Wales between 1902 and 1906. In 1904, Cardiff players fly-half Percy Bush, centre Rhys Gabe (who later captained Wales in 1907) and Arthur 'Boxer' Harding all went on the Lions tour to Australia and New Zealand (Nicholls was not selected). Bush scored in the first and second test against Australia, as Nicholls had, and thanks to his tries and goal-kicking during the first three Tests, finished as the top Test points scorer. Gabe scored a try in the third test against Australia, while Harding converted a try in the first Test and was the only Lions player to get on the score sheet against New Zealand, after scoring a penalty goal in the game against them at the end of the tour.
In 1905, there were four Cardiff players in the Wales team that famously beat New Zealand: Harding, Nicholls, Bush, Gabe and Bert Winfield, who would go on to captain Wales three years later. After an eight-year wait, Cardiff also managed to win the unofficial Welsh club championship in 1906 (going unbeaten in every game they played apart from against New Zealand) and 1907.
On New Year's Day 1907, Cardiff beat South Africa 17–0, a great achievement considering the national side had been beaten 11–0 by the Boks only a month earlier, and France were thrashed by them 55–6 two days later. The only other team to beat South Africa during their 29-match tour were Scotland.
After this performance, and Wales winning the Five Nations Grand Slam for the first time in 1908, four Cardiff players were selected for the Lions in 1908. Harding was selected as the first Cardiff player to captain the tour and was the only one of the four to have played for the Lions before, the other three being uncapped half-back Willie Morgan, and three-quarters Johnny Williams and Reggie Gibbs. Gibbs remains the only player to have been capped for Wales at least 10 times and averaged more than a try a game, with 17 tries in 16 caps, and Williams came very close to his record with 17 tries in 17 Tests.
The tour was not a success, with the Lions managing to draw the second Test but losing the first and third by over twenty-five points each. However, Gibbs did manage to score in the first Test. The disappointed players made up for their failure the next year by winning the Grand Slam with Wales for the second time in a row and winning the unofficial championship with Cardiff. Cardiff also beat Australia 24–8 on 28 December 1908. However, following this, the glory years were largely over for Cardiff and Wales, although Wales did manage to win the Grand Slam in 1911, and Cardiff came within one point of beating South Africa in a 7–6 defeat in 1912.
Between the wars The First World War certainly had some effect on the club – Johnnie Williams died in the first weeks of the Battle of the Somme, and many other players returned wounded or simply too old to play rugby. Cardiff were forced to turn to younger talent for their team. Jim Sullivan was a prime example of this, making his first appearance for Cardiff at the age of 16 in October 1920, and went on to make 38 appearances over the rest of the season. In December 1920, just after his 17th birthday, he became the youngest player to ever appear for the Barbarians. However, in June 1921 he signed for professional rugby league club Wigan, beginning a new trend of Welsh union players "going north" to play rugby league.
In 1922, Cardiff Rugby Club and Cardiff Cricket Club would form the Cardiff Athletic Club, and then purchased Cardiff Arms Park.
In the 1930s, Scrum-half Howard Poole, although never capped for Wales, was selected to play for the Lions in 1930, as was Ivor Williams in 1938. The club also won their first unofficial Welsh championship for 28 years in 1937, and managed to retain the title in 1938 and 1939, before the start of the Second World War.
After the Second World War After the resumption of regular rugby, Cardiff beat Australia 11–3 on 21 November 1947, captained by scrum-half Haydn Tanner and were also unofficial Welsh champions in 1947/48, when Bleddyn Williams set a club record of 41 tries in one season, and 1948/49, when the Blue and Blacks went completely unbeaten against Welsh opposition, only Swansea and Newport succeeding in salvaging draws. The club had a fantastic record against Newport during these years, going 15 games unbeaten against them between 1946 and 1950. Cardiff players helped Wales win their first Grand Slam in nearly forty years in 1950, and later that year supplied five players to the Lions for the first time later that year. The five were fly-half Billy Cleaver, prop Cliff Davies, centre Jack Matthews, scrum-half Rex Willis and Bleddyn Williams, the "Prince of Centres". Williams captained the Lions in the third and fourth Tests against New Zealand. Wales won another Grand Slam in 1952, with much the same side.
In 1952–53, Cardiff won the unofficial Welsh championship again, helped by the rise of prodigiously talented fly-half Cliff Morgan, but the best was still to come. On 21 November 1953, Cardiff faced New Zealand in front of a crowd of 56,000 at the Arms Park and, after a brilliant defensive effort following a 5–0 lead at half-time, hung on to win 8–3. Five Cardiff backs were selected in the Wales team captained by Bleddyn Williams that beat the All Blacks again less than a month later. These two results remain the last time either Cardiff or Wales have beaten New Zealand.
Cardiff repeated their unofficial championship victory two years later in 1955, and had three Lions in the 1955 touring side, notable for not including any of the five that toured in 1950. The three this time were fly-half Morgan, centre Gareth Griffiths and wing Haydn Morris. Morgan, in front of a then-world record crowd of 100,000, helped defeat the South Africans 23–22 with a brilliant try despite an injury to Reg Higgins reducing the Lions to 14 men (no replacements were allowed at this time). After the South Africans squared the series in the second Test, Morgan was made captain for the third Test and inspired the team with a combination a stirring team talk and a great kicking game to a 9–6 victory, ensuring the series could not be lost, after which he was dubbed "Morgan the Magnificent" by the South African press. After his Lions heroics Morgan was made captain of Wales, and helped them win the title (although not the Grand Slam) in 1956.
Australia played against and were defeated by Cardiff for the third time in 1957, 14–11 thanks to two great tries from Gordon Wells, after which a reporter from the Sydney Daily Telegraph wrote "we fell to the world's best rugby union club", and another unofficial championship title was secured in 1957–58, but only second row Bill "Roddy" Evans was selected for the Lions in 1959, although he started four of the six Tests. A downturn in Welsh and Cardiff fortunes occurred around this time, although prop Kingsley Jones and second row Keith Rowlands from the club were still selected for the 1962 Lions tour, and Cardiff managed to come within a point of beating the All Blacks again in 1963, scoring the only try of the game. However, the slump began to end in 1964, when Wales shared the Five Nations title with Scotland, after which Wales won the Triple Crown and the title in 1965, followed by another championship in 1966, although the Grand Slam still eluded them. However, these successes helped Cardiff players centre Ken Jones and prop Howard Norris win places on the Lions tour to New Zealand. Later that year Cardiff beat Australia 14–8, although Wales were not able to repeat the feat a month later, losing 14–11.
The 1968 Lions tour was a historic one, containing a record six Cardiff players, wings Keri Jones and Maurice Richards, prop John O'Shea, (then) centre Gerald Davies, fly-half Barry John and scrum-half Gareth Edwards. While Jones and Richards would soon switch codes to play rugby league and O'Shea's tour would be marred somewhat by being the first Lion ever to be sent off for foul play, Davies, John and Edwards would go on to become legends, although their careers got off to inauspicious starts, the Lions losing three of the Tests again South Africa and only drawing the other one.