Queen’s Birthday Honours: Gareth Bale, Brynmor Williams and Hugh Morris named MBE's
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Brynmor Williams, Gareth Bale and Hugh Morris are among the Wales sports figures to be named in the Queen's Jubilee birthday honours list
Wales captain Gareth Bale has been made an MBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours list for his services for football and charity.
Former Wales rugby player Brynmor Williams is honoured with an MBE for services to sport and charity in Wales.
Glamorgan chief executive Hugh Morris has also been recognised with the same honour for his services to cricket and charity.
The accolades are part of the Queen's jubilee celebrations.
The list has been announced on the eve of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee weekend, and comes two weeks earlier than her birthday honours are usually named.
Gareth Bale
Gareth Bale has scored 38 goals for Wales
Wales captain Bale, 32, has enjoyed a trophy-laden nine-year spell at Real Madrid.
He became the first UK player to win the Champions League on five occasions when Real beat Liverpool in Paris last Saturday, his final match-day involvement for the Spanish club.
Bale also won three La Liga titles among 19 trophies which also included four Club World Cups, three UEFA Super Cups, one Copa del Rey and three Spanish Super Cups.
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"I recognise the privilege of being able to do what I love, and for all the incredible moments, experiences, achievements and memories football has given me, I hope I've been able to give just as much back," said Bale.
"Football is my whole life and I am deeply humbled to be recognised by the Queen."
Bale scored more than 100 goals for Real, including three in Champions League finals - one against Atletico Madrid in 2014 and two versus Liverpool four years later, the first of which was a stunning overhead kick.
The Cardiff-born forward, who is Wales' record goalscorer, began his career at Southampton and joined Tottenham in 2007.
Bale was twice named Professional Footballers' Association player of the year at Spurs before moving to Real in 2013 for a then-world record fee of £85million.
He inspired Wales to qualification for the 2016 and 2020 European Championships, and is set to lead the way in their World Cup play-off final on Sunday against Ukraine.
Bale donated more than £1m to hospitals in Wales and Spain in April 2020 in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, and has also supported other charities in his home country.
Brynmor Williams
Former Wales and British Lions scrum-half Brynmor Williams says he is overwhelmed with his MBE
Brynmor Williams is a triple Welsh international who represented his country at rugby union, rugby league and athletics.
Williams, 70, played three internationals for Wales between 1978 and 1981 and three Tests for the British and Irish Lions in 1977 against New Zealand which included a victory over the All Blacks.
He has been a well respected television and radio pundit for BBC Cymru Wales and S4C for more than 30 years and is currently group sales and marketing director with insurance company Thomas Carroll Group.
Williams has been recognised for his passionate charity work over the last 50 years.
He is a trustee of the Welsh Rugby Charitable Trust which helps look after rugby players with life-changing injuries, making a significant contribution both in terms of fundraising and directly providing ongoing support to individual players and their families.
Williams is also a patron of Velindre Hospital, where he became an active presence after losing his sister to cancer in 2010. In one event he organised at the Wales Millennium Stadium, more than £70,000 was raised.
Brynmor Williams pictured with his son Lloyd who also has played for Cardiff and Wales
He also organised a dinner for 500 people which raised £20,000 for the motor neurone foundation set up by Joost van der Westhuizen, the former South Africa player who died of the disease.
He was chair of the Fields in Trust Wales from 2017 to 2020 and remains an ambassador for them.
The charity protects green spaces in communities to make sure people have access to open spaces, as well as the chance to play sport, walk and talk. He has travelled all over Wales promoting the trust.
He is a patron of Prostate Cymru, vice-president of Sports Aid Wales, president of the charity Ceredigion Actif - which is the former sports council of Ceredigion - and is involved with the Cardiff Blues charity 'Stay strong for Ows'.
Other charities he has worked with include Stroke Association Wales, Horatio's Garden, Tenovus, Tŷ Hafan, City Hospice and St David's Hospice.
Hugh Morris says he is fortunate to have been involved in a sport he has loved for over 40 years
Hugh Morris
Left-hand opener Hugh Morris, 58, was one of the most consistent and successful batters in Glamorgan's history and played three Tests for England in 1991.
He made his county debut in 1981 whilst still at Blundell's School, where he set a host of batting records.
After playing for and captaining Young England in the mid-1980s, he became Glamorgan's youngest-ever leader in 1986.
Morris stood down from the captaincy at the end of the 1989 season in order to concentrate on his batting, a move which reaped its rewards in 1990 as he hit a club record of 10 centuries and 2,276 runs.
He returned to the captaincy in 1993 and led Glamorgan to the Sunday League title and also led England A to South Africa, West Indies and Sri Lanka.
After helping Glamorgan win the County Championship in 1997, Morris retired to take up posts with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
In December 2005 he was promoted to deputy chief executive before being named the first managing director of the England cricket team in 2007.
He presided over a successful period for the Test team, which included three straight Ashes wins.
This included a series win in Australia in 2010-11, which had been last achieved two decades earlier, showing the magnitude of the achievement.
A day after England claimed the 2013 Ashes, he stepped down from his ECB role, where he had been for 16 years, to return to Glamorgan as chief executive in January 2014.
Following his diagnosis with cancer in 2002, Morris became the patron on a head and neck cancer charity called Heads Up.
"I am extremely honoured and humbled to receive this award," said Morris.
"I have been incredibly fortunate to have spent more than four decades in a sport I love both as player and administrator and I would like to thank my family and friends who have encouraged and supported me on that journey.
"It was also a privilege to be patron of Heads Up, a charity that has done fantastic work to support essential research into the disease, and to have played a small part in that has been hugely satisfying."
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