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Tony Copsey

rugby player

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 10, 2026
Entity authorityQ123049869
Source-derived summary

Anthony Hugh Copsey (born 25 January 1965) is an English-born former Wales rugby union international.

Copsey was born and raised in Romford, the youngest of five children. He attended St Edward's Comprehensive School, Romford, and continued tertiary studies in Wales at Cardiff Institute of Higher Education. While studying in Wales he got recruited by Llanelli RFC, debuting for the club in 1988. He played his rugby as a lock.

Qualifying for Wales through residency, Copsey made his debut against Ireland at Lansdowne Road in the 1992 Five Nations and was considered fortunate to not be sent off only 12 minutes into the match after punching Neil Francis. He earned 16 caps in total with Wales and was a member of the squad that won the 1994 Five Nations Championship.

Copsey played professional rugby with Saracens in the back end of his career. He was managing director of Harlequins from 2000 to 2007, CEO of Wasps for two years, then an interim CEO at London Scottish and London Welsh.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tony Copsey” is rugby player. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tony, Copsey and rugby, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1988, 1992, 1994—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-01-25. For this dossier, Tony, Copsey and rugby is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “rugby player” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q123049869. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1988, 1992 and 1994.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tony Copsey”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tony Copsey primary sources, Tony Copsey archive and Tony research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tony Copsey”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Tony Copsey” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.