PONTYPOOL Park will host a special match in memory of Roger Addison on Friday, November 4 (kick-off 7.15pm), when Pontypool will play a Torfaen XV with representation from every club in the Torfaen area.

Roger was playing for Pontypool on November 5, 1966, when he was paralysed from the neck down when he broke his neck after a scrum collapsed in a match at Rugby in Warwickshire.

He died in March 2010, aged 65, and next month’s match marks 50 years since his accident.

Tickets cost £5 and all proceeds from the game will go to Rookwood Hospital in Cardiff and Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury – the two hospitals where Addison was cared for.

The Pontypool team that played at Rugby in 1966 was: Jeff Lester, Laurie Daniel, Garvin Howells, Gary Rosser, Maldwyn Green, Lyn Targett, John Prince, Mike Williams, Roy Taylor, Roger Addison, Mel Leighton, David Husband, Mel Stiff, Brian Gregory and captain Jim Jarrett.

All the above players are invited to attend the memorial match and those who will be attending are asked to contact Ray Ruddick via email at raymond.ruddick@sky.com.

Roger was born in Pontypool in 1945. His father James had played as a forward for Pontypool and Newport in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Roger played for Twmpath Secondary School, Pontypool Schools, and Pontypool Youth before gaining his Welsh Youth cap at prop in the 9-6 defeat by France at Stade Larribau, Biarritz, in March 1964.

He first played for Pontypool against Oxford at Pontypool Park in March 1964 – Pontypool won 6-0.

He scored seven tries in 79 appearances for the club and the future looked bright for this talented prop forward when tragedy struck the 21-year-old on Guy Fawkes’ Day in 1966.

It was initially feared he would not survive the first three weeks, but he defied medical opinion in his time at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, where his guests included film stars Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

Pontypool RFC spokesman Bob Jeremiah, who visited him in hospital almost every week for 44 years, said at the time of his death: “He couldn’t move from the neck down and could only whisper so we had to lip read.

“But he still loved the game and had a photograph signed by the Wales team hanging over his bed.”

In April 1967 a Clive Rowlands’ XV played a David Watkins’ XV at Pontypool Park to raise money for the Roger Addison Appeal Fund and a 5,000 crowd turned up to watch the David Watkins XV win 35-31.