Neath

Neath and Aberavon have played the "REAL Welsh Derby" for generations. Neither rivalry, though, explains the black jersey with its white cross pattée. That kit dates to 1880, adopted in mourning after a player named Dick Gordon died from injuries suffered in a match against Bridgend, and it earned the club its nickname, The Welsh All Blacks.

The Gnoll has been home since 1874, and it was there in 1994 that Neath met the touring Springboks in a match still remembered as the Battle of the Gnoll. New Zealand and Australia have also played the ground over the years. In 1988–89, playing under rules that valued a try at four points, Neath scored 1,917 points and 345 tries in a single season, a record no other club has since matched.

The club has since been through harder seasons than that one. The Cuddy Group, which had owned Neath, collapsed in July 2018 as owner Mike Cuddy dealt with serious illness, and unpaid wages drove players out ahead of a 2018/19 campaign that ended with Neath bottom of the Welsh Premiership on three points. Winding-up petitions followed before the finance company Jardine Norton took control in January 2019 and installed Matt Church as chief executive. Relegation to the Championship came with the crisis, but promotion followed in May 2023, and the next month Jardine Norton sold the club for £1 to Matty Young, who set it up as a Community Interest Company under community ownership.

Shane Williams, capped 87 times for Wales, came through at Neath, as did the All Black Xavier Rush before his career took him elsewhere. It was a consortium of ten men who founded the club in 1871, among them T.P. Whittington, who went on to play for Scotland two years later — the oldest rugby club in Wales, built by men who then went off to play for other countries.