Dai Hiddlestone
Welsh rugby union player
David 'Dai' Hiddlestone (14 June 1890 – 16 November 1973) was a Welsh international rugby union player who played club rugby for Neath. He was capped five times for Wales and was notable for leading an ill-advised response to the New Zealand Haka during the team's 1924 tour.
Rugby career
Hiddlestone was born in Hendy, Carmarthenshire, where he played his early rugby with local club, Hendy RFC. After the end of World War I he joined Llanelli a first class team within Welsh club rugby. He left Llanelli under poor circumstances, some sources stating that Hiddlestone was considered "too dirty" for the club, though at the time of leaving the club he was the present team captain, a position elected by the club members. Whatever the reason for his leaving Llanelli, Hiddlestone was accepted to play for Neath. In 1922 he was first selected to represent Wales as part of the Home Nations Championship in a game against England. The Welsh team he joined had many new caps, including Swansea's Islwyn Evans and Frank Palmer, Bridgend's Bobby Delahay and William Cummins from Treorchy. Led by Tom Parker, Wales overran the English team, scoring a record eight tries against England; Hiddlestone himself not only scored one of the tries, but is also credited as being the central linchpin in the Welsh attack that won the game so comfortably.
Hiddlestone played in all three of the remaining matches of the 1922 tournament, which saw Wales win the championship. The team beat Ireland and France, and it was only a draw with Scotland that prevented the team taking the Grand Slam title.
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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 Dec 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q5209004. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1890, 1973, 1924 and 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Dai Hiddlestone” 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.