Rob

April 2004. Paid by £10 too! Where's Parksider these days?

Sorry for going all geeky lol, but I'm sure they'll be some anoraks on here who will find it interesting! Here's a map showing where it was on Quay Meadow, around 1895 ish

Just came across this photo today, which I think shows the grandstand or pavillion on Quay Meadow, where the original Lancaster Northern Union team played. Y Top right of photo, the building in the middle of the field, clearly showing the angled slope towards the playing area. The building existed on maps until the 1940 at least this photo of from around 1960, some 55 years after the point at which they went bust. This the the first photo I've seen of the old ground.

Mike Latham/Tom Mather produced a book a few years back (The Rugby League Myth - the forgotten clubs of Lancashire, Cheshire & Furness). It's an insightful read regarding the difficulties of running clubs in the district. Some difficulties are still with us today. The original Lancaster folded in 1905 after a re-arrangement of the competition left clubs to arrange their own fixture lists with the proviso "clubs could not refuse a fixture against a club in their own county and in their own division the previous year". This meant the likes of Wigan would be choose to play Saints, with big gate receipts, but chose not to agree to a fixtures with smaller clubs such as Lancaster. Lancaster struggled to attract the fixtures and went bust due the absurd nature of the big clubs choosing to line their own pockets. Does this sound familiar? Clubs refusing to travel to play Heysham has been a recurring theme throughout Heysham's history. Heysham are viewed as an 'outlier' where amateur/community clubs from Wigan, St Helens, Warrington, Widnes frequently 'cry-off' with weddings, illnesses (insert any other excuse) all coinciding with the inconvenience of an hour's journey out of their hometowns. This does sadly reflect badly on the insular nature of many within our sport!

Wigan do. We've had a few Wigan-run coaching academy days in the holidays, where I think the kids pay around £10 or so? They keep sending ticket offers, opportunities to be mascots etc There was talk of them contributing towards the funding of a development officer up here too. Saints might have had some limited involvement too, but not 100% sure about that.

Could Lancaster accomodate more community clubs like Heysham? Firstly, Google says Lancaster now has a population of around 140,000. Of these, about 20% - 30% might be in the playing age bracket, i.e. around 30,000-40,000 people. Heysham have around 200 of the local kids signed up, and another 40 adults for the first team squad. That leaves up to 39,000 other people from whom further players could be sourced. It matters not that it's not a "Rugby League town". What matters is that someone has the enthusiasm and time to stand in front of the kids on a training field. Essex Eels and Cramlington Rockets are other great examples of people coming together in non-traditional rugby league areas and creating fantastic junior clubs. So, in answer to your question, could Lancaster accommodate further community clubs? Yes, it accommodate many more clubs. The 250 people already associated with rugby league through Heysham are not the problem. It's more the case what do the other 39,000 potential recruits do with their spare time? And will anyone step up to undertake the hard work of getting a team or club off the ground? It's this latter question that is the real problem. There's plenty people, especially kids who will play, but how many people are willing to step-up and do the organising? A bit about Heysham's recent resurgence at junior level. Until around 2016 Heysham junior rugby league was a bit sporadic. We had one team who did well, mainly because of a former player who was willing to coach a team which included his son. But, at other year groups? No activity whatsoever. Then along came Liam Aspden. Former cricket guy, former RU player (at a high level, and with local RU club Vale of Lune), a giant of a man and in his seventies. Never played league but all round good guy. He was instrumental in getting a team off the ground by visiting schools, holding assemblies, handing out flyers etc. Now having an 'older' man who had never played league start a team wasn't necessarily supported by everyone within the club, but it really was better than nothing. Liam had the energy to drive things and got kids out there playing. We set up a new 'junior club' within the club and I supported him with anything digital, like RFL bureaucracy, registrations, flyers, and anything that needed a computer. Liam was the main guy 'on the pitch', I just helped out. The first training session....there was just 4 kids out there with me and Liam. I think we managed 9 for the first game. We succeeded and eventually a couple of other significant others came on board, who were better technical coaches (example Dan Helme, who still coaches with the club now). The next year, we started another team at a different age group....things just grew and grew. Then a few parents started coming on board. Eventually a critical mass was reached and there were enough people involved for it to keep going. Liam passed last year, and was still involved as much as his deteriorating health allowed right up to the end, age 77. Standing room only at the local crem, paying respects to a man with a massive heart who dedicated a huge part of his life to getting kids playing sport, not just rugby league. There's now 200 kids involved at the Atoms, and the club had an annual award dedicated to the memory of Liam. None of these kids are from a 'rugby league' background. They don't know or care about the history between the codes. If there's someone willing to coach kids, there's kids in every neighbourhood in the country that would love to play rugby league. Just 2 or 3 people are enough to start a club off. Pictured is Liam, Dan and myself in 2016. I'd love to get involved again, but personally life has taken me in a different direction at the moment.

On a serious note about the feasibility of a professional club in Lancaster, a couple of observations. - Lancaster is quite different from many other Lancashire towns, due to the influence of the university. Whilst is has similarities (former mill town, industrial origins, even a ship-building past) nowadays it's relatively affluent due to the university and probably helped by the big wages at the nearby nuclear powerstation. - House prices are high, in some Lancashire towns you can pick up a terrace house for £30k+, in Lancaster I doubt you'd get much change out of £200k for the same house - I will suggest that many of the residents are not from the area originally (such as me) and therefore family ties to the local sporting club (Lancaster City etc) are probably lower than what you might expect for a town the size of Lancaster. Lancaster City FC only get 200-300 attendances. Whether the above makes it easier or harder to set up a new professional club in any sport, I am not sure. Incidentally, Heysham Atoms were a RU team who switched to league as many of their players were lads from Wigan who moved up to work on the Nuclear Power station. Just like colonists, they brought their sport with them. Historically of course, Lancaster and Morecambe had their own professional rugby league teams playing in the Lancashire Senior Competition? (I think).

I wish I had donated my bed. Got bloody scabies from that hostel, which I brought home and shared with my girlfriend, who wasn't impressed!

...and I only ran into separate others, it was a bloody harsh decision!

Happy, Happy days. We didn't win many games though. My Total RL profile pic is still in a Lancaster shirt (at York International 9's). I still have the rest of the Lancaster shirts in my garage - probably a bit musty by now If it helps, the rugby posts are probably still behind the stand at Giant Axe. Brief history of Morecambe / Heysham / Lancaster rugby league

Seriously. They must be an explanation - maybe Neil Hudgell has done some work for them and he's called in a favour? Or, they are taking pity on us and it's a patronising token gesture to northerners!

Delighted for Hull KR, but somewhat incredulous that Coldplay have chosen to play at Craven Park. Feather in their cap to get a gig of this magnitude: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy0gll8lp5ko How long as Craven Park been hosting gigs?

Absolutely spot on.

It says here http://www.sportinglife.com/rugby-league/news/article/480/8805376/steve-menzies-announces-retirement "Menzies, who won the first of his 15 caps for the Kangaroos in 1994, spent 16 seasons with Manly Sea Eagles before coming to Super League with Bradford in 2009 and is expected to return to the club to embark on a new career off the field." Does this mean he is expected to return to Bradford or Manly?

Yeah, I noticed the lack of coverage too. I emailed the Editor the following, a couple of days ago, if more people did maybe something will happen? I do apologise for the opening bull****, but I didn't want to appear too narrow minded..... lysanne@bskyb.com dateWed, Sep 29, 2010 at 8:01 PM subjectSky magazine mailed-bygmail.com hide details Sep 29 (2 days ago) Hi Lysanne, I've just received my Sky magazine, as usual a reasonably good read. I was a bit surprised though when scanning through the sports 'October highlights' section on page 12, that one of your keynote sports events in October doesn't even merit a mention, namely the engage Superleague Grand Final on October 2nd. Instead, the recommended sports viewing on that day is Hearts Vs Rangers - I understand that soccer is our 'national sport' (much to my dismay) but I cannot understand why such a fixture (Hearts' average home gate barely scrapes over the 10,000 mark) would be in the 'highlights' over the dramatic climax to the rugby season to see which team will be crowned champions in front of 75,000 plus sell-out crowd at Old Trafford. And, later on in the month, I don't see any mention of the four nations tournament either!! I presume that Sky have at least some of the rights to the four nations tournament, though the deafening silence in October highlights would appear to indicate otherwise. I think my preferred sport needs a fair crack of the whip! Yours disappointedly, Rob