St Helen’s ArchivePreserving the past for the future

Origins of the cap

Rugby-School-Cap

Rugby School cap 1839

There is evidence of cricket caps going back to illustrations in the eighteenth century when a variety of headgear was worn at the crease, from stovepipe top hats to tricorns or floppy felt headgear. By the nineteenth century a low peaked cap was coming into vogue as obviously more practical for batsmen or fielders. It was not long before soccer and rugby 'caps' took on a similar design. The origin of the rugby cap can be traced all the way back to Rugby School. In 1839 Queen Adelaide, widow of King William IV, visited Rugby school and the boys of school House wore caps specially ordered for the occasion by the school. They bore the royal colours of crimson with gold tassels. As the queen had enthusiastically asked to see a football game, the boys obliged, still wearing their tasselled caps and so a tradition was begun.

It became the norm to wear a cap partly because it was less cumbersome than the top hat that preceded it. But the cap was also a badge of rank and was awarded to boys sufficiently senior to ‘play up’ in the main body of the match as it was played at the time under the school’s idiosyncratic laws (junior boys generally defended the goal from behind the goal-line and did not participate in the on-field game). Velvet caps were adopted by each school ‘house’ incorporating their own ‘house’ emblems and the major matches its owner had played in were embroidered on the different segments.

This practice was adopted by other schools and quickly taken up by clubs and representative teams. In club sides, a certain number of matches for the club or participation in a significant match was usually achieved before a cap was awarded. In Swansea’s case the criteria for early awards is not clear but as the club progressed a blazer badge was the ‘mark’ of seniority by the 1970s. A new design Cap for over 100 appearances was introduced in 2016 and the first awards made at a dinner in the St Helen’s Lounge on 18th March 2016, 19 players receiving their Swansea caps. Since then the club has begun awarding the ‘100 Cap’ retrospectively in a move to re-establish the significance of the rugby cap at Swansea RFC.