Brian Rees

Brian Idris Rees Order of the [British Empire|OBE] was a Welsh international rugby union player.
Rees was born in Neath and attended Neath Grammar School, where he learned his rugby. He won four blues while studying at Christ's College and captained Cambridge to a narrow defeat against the touring 1966 Wallabies.
Moving to London to study at St Bartholomew's Hospital, Rees joined the London Welsh club and in 1967 won three Wales [national rugby union team|Wales] caps as a hooker in their Five Nations campaign. He made the 1968 Wales tour of Argentina, for which caps weren't awarded, then earned a call up for their 1969 New Zealand trip, but had to decline due to medical exams.
A surgeon by profession, Rees became the lead cancer clinician at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff and was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000 for services to medicine.
Rees held the ceremonial position of High Sheriff of South Glamorgan in 2008.