By TheSaracens.com
July 19 2020
Scrum half Aled Davies joins Sarries following 2 years with Ospreys. He was born in July 1992 in Bronwydd, which sounds like a rather nice little place in Dyfed. Apparently it takes its name from The Bronwydd Arms, on the A484. Sadly the pub closed in 1978, long before young Aled was born, and was demolished in 1981. The locals now drink at The Hollybrook which stands on the site of an even older hostelry, the Clothiers Arms which sadly closed in 1871 (even I wasn’t born then).
Back to Aled, he showed promise as a youngster learning his rugby at Whitland RFC, Ysgol Gyfun Bro Myrddin and then Colleg Sir Gar before he was picked up by Scarlets, representing the U18’s in the Reebok Regional Championship Final in 2009 alongside Scott Williams, Josh Adams, Gareth Davies and Samson Lee.He made his debut for Scarlets from the bench in a friendly against Worcester Warriors and his competitive debut the following season when Scarlets beat Leicester Tigers 31-3 in the Anglo-welsh Cup. He remained at Parc y Scarlets until the end of the 2018 season, making 71 appearances for the club (and scoring 3 tries) before moving to Ospreys for the next couple of seasons filling the gap left by the departure of Rhys Webb. He made 13 appearances for Ospreys but didn’t trouble the scorers (as they say in cricket – a rather silly phrase in my opinion because as a former scorer, a batsman getting out for a duck caused the scorers a lot of trouble. But I digress…)
He made his U18 debut for Wales in the 2009 U18 6 Nations against France, scoring a try in a 27-15 victory. In 2010, welsh legend Phil Bennett was impressed with young Aled, saying he had “a dream of a pass”. He was called up to the full squad in 2013 but not selected for the team. In 2016 he was in the 6 Nations squad but again didn’t make the team and had to wait until 2017 when he was selected for the Welsh summer tour of Tonga & Samoa. He made his debut against Samoa and won his second cap from the bench against Tonga. The following season he was the regular back up to Rhys Webb. With the departure of Webb to Toulon, Gareth Davies leap-frogged his namesake to claim the 9 shirt and once again Aled had to be content with keeping the bench warm. He made the Welsh World Cup squad for Japan but this time he dropped behind the fast rising Tomos Williams as well. He only played against Uruguay with Williams & Gareth Davies sharing the rest of the duties between them. He has since been capped 20 times for his country, however he didn’t make Wayne Pivac’s Six Nations Squad this season. With Rhys Webb back in the Principality, Aled was likely to fall even further down the pecking order. If he doesn’t play Test rugby again, he will look back on an 80 percent win record in a Wales jersey. Only three players who have played 20 or more games for Wales in the country’s 139-year Test history can better that stat.
In signing for Sarries, Aled puts an end to his international career, unless his home nation change the rules, so it was a huge decision to join an English club. Aled explained that of course he wanted to play for Wales but “I just thought about the bigger picture. If I wasn’t going to sample something else now, I never would have. It’s an opportunity for me to get better and I want to win trophies. Saracens is a place where I can win trophies.”
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