Our Rugby Towns #3 Gwenllian Pyrs
When Gwenllian Pyrs was offered a professional contract with Wales, there was only one response. But, once the dust settled, it dawned on her she’d have to leave home: leave the village, the farm, her family, and, more importantly, Dot and her four siblings.
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The border collie bounds off across the field, seemingly ignoring the half a dozen sheep huddled to its right – the ones it’s supposed to be herding. But then, a sharp whistle from its owner calls Dot [Eryri Dot, to give her full name] to a halt, and she crouches low to the ground. More whistles, she loops around behind the sheep, driving them forwards – never scattering them, always keeping them tightly bunched – and then, with more whistles from her owner, tweaking the sheep’s position left or right, the flock is through the first gate. There are more hurdles, or rather gates and pens, to overcome, but it’s a good start for Dot, and so too the ‘whistler’ Gwenllian Pyrs, the Welsh loosehead prop, who’s been looking after and breeding sheepdogs since she was nine.
Britain has long had a soft spot for sheepdog trials, with the weekly show One Man and his Dog, amassing eight million viewers in its peak years in its prime-time slot on BBC2. A quick scroll through YouTube clips – for those that can’t remember its weekly 1976 to 1999 prime – shows you why it’s always fascinated: for the most part, man (or woman) and dog seem symbiotic as they carefully control the largely compliant flock.
This performance by Dot and Gwenllian (from the 2018 North Wales Sheep Dog Society Championship Double Gather – Google it) is one of many at sheepdog trials, at least for the latter, with the four-legged half of the partnership the latest in a long line of competitors. “Dot is the fifth generation,” explains Gwenllian, when Rugby Journal visits the family farm in North Wales. “The first one I had when I was nine, Eryri Fflei, and I’ve tried to keep the line going. “Eryri is Snowdonia in Welsh,” she adds, “so every dog we breed on the farm gets called Eryri-something.”
Every part of Gwenllian’s home life is on the doorstep of Snowdonia: her village Ysbyty Ifan; the family pub; and the farm where she lives. “Ysbyty Ifan is tiny,” she says. “We’ve got a post office that’s open once a week, a primary school, a village hall, a church and that’s it; the farm is a mile away, the pub ten minutes’ drive.
“I think the most pupils we had in the school when I was there was about 36 kids, and there were only four in my school year – I still know them all too.
“It’s homely,” she continues. “When I come home, you always see someone you know, you can never go anywhere and not see someone you know. And it’s good that everyone knows everyone, because if something happens, you’re in trouble with a flat tyre or something, everyone is always ready to help.”
It’s a close community partly because with all farmland owned by the National Trust – as part of the Snowdonia National Park – the farms are comparatively small. “It’s not a big farm, sixty acres; we’ve got sheep and cattle. I’ve grown up here, it’s where I’ve always been,” explains Gwenllian.
The modest size of the farm meant her dad Eryl also runs a local pub with some of Gwenllian’s siblings, but then there are a lot of Pyrs to consider. “I’m one of ten,” she says. “I’m the sixth, I’ve got four older brothers and one older sister, then one younger brother, and three younger sisters.
“It’s always been a busy household,” she says, something of an understatement. “There’s never been a quiet time, but it’s been really good. If you wanted to do something, wanted to chat to someone, there’s always someone there.
“There used to be a lot of rows,” she admits, “when we were younger that is, but we don’t ever really argue now we’re a bit older – my youngest sister is now fifteen, and the eldest 34.”
Gwenllian’s parents split when she was fifteen, but everyone remains local. “Some of the brothers and sisters go between mum and dad, but everyone lives probably fifteen minutes from each other. I was the youngest child that stayed with my dad, all the little ones stayed with Mum.”
It was her dad who introduced her to sheepdog trials. “I first competed when I was maybe twelve,” she says. “My dad always had dogs and the farm; he was always competing. My older sister Ellie used to do it too.
“I competed a few times in the nationals, I represented Wales young handlers in the internationals, and also competed in the young handlers on One Man and his Dog on television [2013], I was about fifteen then.”
With the TV cameras present (One Man and his Dog continued post-1999 as part of Countryfile), Gwenllian learnt about the pressures of international competition early. “I always get nervous, all the time,” says Gwenllian, who still competes today, when rugby schedules allow. “You’re there on your own, just you and your dog, and you just don’t know what can happen – the dog could just do its own thing and not listen; the sheep could be bad – you just never really know.”
Earning, literally, a first Welsh cap with her dog for representing Wales in international competition, she also picked up a Welsh ‘bib’ for One Man and his Dog – which pits England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales against each other, a bit like a six-legged Four Nations.
She’s also used to pioneering the under-represented. “There weren’t many girls competing, not even many women doing it, mostly men,” she says. “But there’s more women now, which is nice to see. Farming has always been male-dominated, but now you’re having more women come in too.”
It was Eryl who introduced rugby to Gwenllian, and also to the local town, as he was part of the group that set up Clwb Rygbi Nant Conwy in Llanwrst, which Rugby Journal visited five years ago [issue 7, 2019]. Like some of his friends, he’d been playing rugby elsewhere in North Wales, but the travel times were getting out of hand, so they decided to set up a local club. “On a beer mat, we wrote down a team of people we knew who we thought could play,” he told us. “There were lots of farmers, so we just thought, ‘why not?’.”
That club grew quickly, helped along by the Pyrses. “Every single one of us has played there,” says Gwenllian. “But I didn’t really go up when I was young, so my early memories of rugby were on TV, watching it on S4C, I never fancied playing, I didn’t want to play with the boys.
“I was just happy at home on the farm with the dogs,” she adds, “obviously after school, we played in the field; we played rugby, but then we’d play anything with a ball: tennis, football, anything really, but I never went down to the rugby club.”
Eventually, aged sixteen, she gave it a go. “The club started an under-18s girls team, so I went to training, enjoyed it, and kept playing. My coach at the time trained with Wales, and knew the coach from Scarlets, so I had trials with their under-18s and got in.”
Progress was quick. That first training session was in September, and the successful trial was in January, just four months from novice to regional player.
It was far from easy though, not least because for someone so happy, and comfortable at home on the farm in North Wales, not to mention continually surrounded by family, trials threw up other challenges. “It was nerve-wracking because I didn’t know anyone [in rugby] at that time, I remember going for the trials in South Wales and it was so scary,” she admits. “I’m not good in new situations, so doing that was genuinely scary, playing with all these girls I didn’t know, it was really hard, but I must have done something right.”
With success came similar social challenges. “I was nineteen when I got called up by Wales,” she says. “The coach came up to me [after a Scarlets game] and said, ‘the Welsh head coach is going to call you on your way back home so make sure you’ve got a signal’. I was on my way home on the bus and it broke down where there was no signal, so by the time we got off the bus I had three missed calls from Rowland Phillips asking if I wanted to train with Wales.”
Despite being happy with the call-up, it wasn’t without drawbacks. “The first time [I got called up], I actually didn’t really want to go, I was so scared,” she admits. “I had been watching the girls play for Wales, and the thought that I was about to go into the Wales squad and actually train with them, was a bit overwhelming.
“But,” she adds, “there were a few girls from the north at that time, and I’d played with them at Caernarfon, which helped.”
Not that Gwenllian doesn’t like being part of a team, quite the opposite. “I’ve aways loved team sports,” she says. “When you do sheepdog trials, it’s just you and your dog, it’s individual, but with rugby it’s not just about the game, it’s about the people you’re playing with; you get to make so many new friends from a different part of country, you travel so much, see different places, it also helps with…” she pauses, finding the right words, before starting afresh. “I just feel that when I play it takes all my aggression and everything out.
“I do still struggle with new environments,” she repeats, “and meeting new people, especially when I’m on my own. I think it’s because there’s always been so many of us, at home, I’ve always had someone with me.
“But in rugby, going into a new team, you always have to make that effort, speak to people on your own, and I am better now. Once I get past that initial getting-to-know people stage, I’m okay. I think at the start people think I’m shy, but when they get to know me, they change their perspective…”
And yet despite this ‘shyness’, she’s performed with just her sheepdog in front of terrestrial television cameras. “It’s so weird, I find it so hard to explain,” she admits. “I know I’m going places on my own, and I’m in front of a lot of people, but I guess when it’s competition time – like on game days – I can just focus on one thing and that makes it all easier…”
Which is handy, because the growth of women’s rugby has meant she’s gone from playing in front of, well, one man and his dog, to tens of thousands. “Every game is nerve-wracking because the game has grown so much,” she says. “My first cap, I was so nervous, we played against Italy in Italy 2017, and I think maybe the crowd then was two hundred and then this year it was ten thousand, it just grows all the time, but my nerves are still there.”
Away from rugby, the farm was always going to play a pivotal role in Gwenllian’s life. “I just love being with animals, and I love the countryside, it’s peaceful,” she says. “And there’s no … I don’t know how to describe it, but in the city everything is ‘go, go go’, but in the countryside, you take everything in, you’ve got time to do everything. And on the farm, it’s also nice to see animals grow up, especially as I’ve had a part in doing that, that progression…”
It’s for these reasons that her first career choice was to breed and train sheepdogs, before taking on a role as a rugby hub officer. The dogs remain something she’s still passionate about, although before going full-time professional, she had begun a new career trajectory. “Before the contracts came out, I was doing an access course to go into midwifery,” she explains. “I wanted a change from playing rugby and rugby hub officer, and I had been doing some care work after school which I really enjoyed. I also like being with kids, and my brothers’ girlfriend suggested midwifery, so I thought I’d give it a go.”
But, that career was curtailed two years ago. Despite being a valued prop, when the first professional contracts were announced in 2022, Gwenllian was taken by surprise when she was offered one. “They released twelve full-time contracts and I never thought I’d get one. I’d played a few games,” she acknowledges, “but I still didn’t think I was good enough, so I was in shock really.”
It also meant change. “I had to make massive life choices,” she admits. “I was living at home when I was offered a contract, so I had to change everything: where I lived, my job, it was massive.
“I had five dogs at that time, so moving down to Cardiff would also mean I couldn’t take the dogs with me, so I’d have to sell them, and I’d been building that [sheepdog breeding and training business] for years, so that was massive choice.
“I also had to decide if I was going to keep Dot.”
Did you consider not taking the contract? “No, I said ‘yes’ straight away,” she says. “It was just after I said yes, it was ‘oh my gosh, what now?’. I had to move down to Cardiff, and I hadn’t lived anywhere else. I didn’t go to uni, the only thing I knew was living on the farm.
“The first few months were fine,” she continues, “I was so busy training, it was all new, and exciting, but after a little bit I started struggling with not being on the farm, and not having the countryside around me, the peace and quiet, and instead being so busy all the time. When I did have a few days off, I wasn’t sure what to do.”
After holding off going home for the first few months, Gwenllian relented, and returned home as much as her schedule allowed. Not least to see Dot who, unsurprisingly, hadn’t been sold. “Even now, if we train on a Friday morning and have the afternoon off, I’ll go straight home to have a full weekend back home.”
This season, more change, having left Bristol Bears for Sale Sharks. “It’s been a hard choice for me, but I wasn’t getting game time at Bristol,” she says. “And I also think with a World Cup next year, I need to be happy and playing, and Sale is closer to home and I’ve been missing home a lot recently, so this move will be better for me. I’ll play better if I’m happier.”
While she’ll settle as much as she ever does in Sale, sharing a house with team-mates, the international set-up has also had a bit more of a familiar feel to it with the emergence of her 18-year-old sister Alaw, a talented lock, who made her debut recently against Scotland. “She’s the second youngest,” says Gwenllian, “and she’s always loved rugby, she played it from when she was allowed – six or seven – and played with the boys and everything. At Nant Conwy now, most of the girls are the best players, and fair play to her, Alaw was standing out as she went through the age grades. She started training with us for a few weeks before the Six Nations and really enjoyed it.
“It was a bit weird having her in,” she admits, “I never thought of having her in the squad with me, so it was interesting seeing how she was in that environment. She just did what she wanted to do; we are quite close, but we’re quite different.
“People would say we’re different personalities, she’s a different character. In the under-18s she was like bubbly, outgoing, life of the party, but coming to the senior squad, she was a bit more serious.
“I think she’ll bring that other side back in when she finds her feet though.”
With two daughters in the Welsh rugby set-up, Eryl must be proud. “I think he is,” says Gwenllian, “He doesn’t say it that much, but yeah I think he is; he’s definitely very, very supportive and without him I wouldn’t be where I am now. He took me down to all the Scarlets training sessions, and that was every weekend, and we had to go to Carmarthen which was three and a half hours away.”
If she makes it to the Rugby World Cup 2025, it’ll be her third time on rugby’s biggest stage. “It’s flown by,” she says of her international career. “Looking back at the time when I was nineteen and I thought I was ready, I wasn’t ready at all,” she admits. “The last few years though, I’m now at the stage where I enjoy it more, because I think before I was too worried about doing too many things wrong, and not getting picked.
“I don’t think about making mistakes as much now. I watch the games back now and instead of focusing on the mistake itself, I think about what I can do next time, so that it doesn’t happen, to make it better.”
As with many professional sports people, the mental challenge is a tough one. “It’s hard because I’m always in my own head,” she says. “I overthink everything, so I need the support of players and coaches to tell me ‘you are doing well’.
“I’m close to the team doctor in Wales and she always told me, ‘pressure is a privilege’. That quote has helped me a lot.”
After the Rugby World Cup, there’s the first-ever women’s British & Irish Lions tour to look forward to. “I’d love to be an option for that,” Gwenllian says. And beyond that?
“I always think about what I’ll do after rugby, because you never know when it’s going to end, you’ve got no control,” she admits. “Some people play until they want to go, some get injured and never play again. I don’t know what my options are. It could be with dogs again, with Dot; I did try and breed her, but she’s not in pup, so I’m gutted, and she’s getting old…
“I’ll probably do something on the farm with the dogs though,” she concludes, stating the obvious. “But unless I do something on a big scale, I’ll always have to do something else too, I’m just going to have to think about what that is, so when I do retire, I’m ready…”
To finish, we return to her favourite topic. What is it about dogs she loves so much? “Every dog is different, you never get the same dog,” she says. “And they’re always there. When you’re having a bad day, something’s gone wrong, they’re always there to greet you, they’re never in a shit mood, they’re just welcoming, and always put a smile on your face.
“That’s why loads of girls in rugby have dogs, I think it takes your mind away from rugby. We obviously love rugby, that’s our job, but we need that break from rugby mentally as well, and that’s where dogs come in.”
Story by Alex Mead
Pictures by Richard Johnson
This extract was taken from issue 27 of Rugby.
To order the print journal, click here.
This Our Rugby Towns story was created in Partnership with Vodafone, Founding Principal Partner of Wales Women’s & Girl’s Rugby. For more information, visit vodafone.co.uk/mobile/partnerships
