----- Original Message ----- From: "Joan Sims 1" <joan.sims1@btinternet.com> To: "Dyfed" <Dyfed@rootsweb.com> Sent: Saturday, July 25, 2009 4:26 PM Subject: [Dyfed] Pem wrestling tournaments > Hello listers, > Hope you don't mind but I am asking the same question again in the hope > that someone has some information. I was told that James Phillips born > 1854 in Castlemartin Pem was a champion wrestler in the sport known as > "Catch -as catch- can" and that there were ten yearly tournaments before > the First World War.If anyone knows anything about the tournaments I > should love to know. > Regards, > Joan Presumably you've read the latest account at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch_wrestling. Since there was no overall body controlling the sport on a national or an international basis, and "the rules of Catch [Catch-as-Catch-Can] Wrestling would change from venue to venue", I'd guess that each tournament would have been organised locally. The majority of contestants were probably drawn from a fairly limited geographical area - a bit like Cumberland and Westmorland wresting today http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumberland_and_Westmorland_wrestling, which still has competitors in the annual Grasmere village show who even now are designated as "World Champions" http://grasmeresportsandshow.co.uk/Wrestling-Roger-Robson's-NEWS-48.htm). Your best chance of finding references would probably be in the local press - unless you were fortunate enough to find such contests being mentioned in personal diaries or in private correspondence. If you were extremely lucky, an old programme for the local sports day might turn up one day, although it probably wouldn't have very much detail at so early a date. There seem to be quite a lot of sporting organisations which have failed to preserve their earlier records very systematically (beyond what appeared in the newspapers) - presumably because they never imagined that these could have any lasting interest. George Owen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Owen_of_Henllys apparently provided some references to wrestling and various other sports taking place in Pembrokeshire during Elizabethan times. AJ PS Some users (like myself) who downloaded Internet Explorer version 8 are apparently experiencing a number of difficulties, including the opening of some Wikipedia articles. These should still open with IE7, or with other browsers.