Born in the Stow Hill are of Newport and educated at Monmouth Boys Grammar School, Lou Phillips would go on to become an architect. On the rugby field he played 80 games for Newport between 1897-1901 and won four caps for Wales.
He was a Triple Crown winner in 1900, partnering his Newport team mate Llewellyn Lloyd at half-back. He was one of six new caps in the side that beat England 13-3 at Gloucester and then helped Wales to beat Scotland 12-3 at St Helen’s and the Irish 3-0 in Belfast.
His fourth cap, in an 18-8 defeat in Inverleith against the Scots, was his final appearance after he picked up a knee injury that ended his rugby career.
A strong swimmer, international standard water polo player and good cricketer (he played once for Monmouthshire against Glamorgan), his ‘second’ sport was golf. He won the Welsh amateur title at his first attempt at Porthcawl in 1907, was runner-up the next year and triumphed again at Porthcawl in 1912.
In 1913, he was second in the Irish Championships and he reached the last eight, the sixth round, at The Amateur Championships in 1914. He also played golf for Wales against Ireland and was one of the founding members of Newport Golf Club in 1903.
He was killed in WW1 while serving in the Royal Welch Fusiliers, cut down at Cambrai in March 1916, aged 38. As rugby historian Gwyn Prescott, author of Call Them to Remembrance: The Welsh Rugby Internationals who Died in the Great War, wrote: “[The] 20th Royal Fusiliers were in the line near La Bassée at Cuinchy. On the night of the 14th he was with a wiring-party out in no man’s land, when he was shot in the chest and killed, another brave victim of the casual attrition which was the daily experience of life on the Western Front.
“As the Welsh public opened their copies of the South Wales Argus a few days later, they were faced with the headline, ‘Great Athlete Killed’. It was no exaggeration.”
