Edgar Watkins

Edgar Watkins was an outstanding gymnastic prospect from the moment he joined the Powell’s Tillery Gymnastics Club in Abertillery at the age of 15. Within two years he was a member of their team that won the 1906 Welsh Team Championship, a feat they repeated in 1907 and 1908.

When he won the Welsh individual title in 1908, Watkins was still only in his 20th year, and in beating Sidney Domville by half-a-point he became the youngest ever winner of the title at the time, and that was despite injuring an arm in an accident at work on the day of the Championship. Also in 1908, Watkins was in the Tillery team that lost to Dunfermline Carnegie in the final of the Adams Shield, for the National Team Championship, but he was in the Tillery team when they again won the Welsh team title in 1912, Watkins later became a gymnastics judge.

Watkins was working in a local colliery at the age of 13, and he curtailed his competitive gymnastics after the 1908 season to study for a colliery manager’s certificate, rather than spend his life working underground. During World War I, Watkins served as a sergeant with the 10th Battalion of the South Wales Borderers. His brother Evan was a well-known local rugby player and Minor Counties cricketer, and in 1908 moved north to join the Warrington Rugby League team.