ANDY WILSON reflects on Huddersfield Giants’ departure from the Accu Stadium when they played their final game there on Saturday.
“QUE sera, sera; whatever will be, will be; we’re going to Dewsbury…”
Fartowners have always had a good line in bleak humour, and they were in fine voice after an eight-try demolition of a truly desperate Castleford – five of the tries coming after the appalling indiscipline of Fenton Rogers left the Giants a man down late in the first half.
That made it six wins in eight matches, the mood in and around the club having been transformed since the return of Ralph Rimmer and the ensuing appointment of Jim Lenihan.
The club’s directors aren’t naïve enough to think that all those Fartowners will make the move to Dewsbury next season. But if half of the 5,000 or so home majority in Saturday’s gate are sufficiently enthused to turn up for the first game in February, it will generate a much more intense and possibly hostile atmosphere than the Giants have experienced for more than three decades at the home they have shared, mostly uncomfortably, with Huddersfield Town.
Then it will be over to Lenihan and what will be a significantly reshaped team to pick up where they’ve left off since July, with the aim of restoring the Giants to the play-off jostling that that became the norm under Jon Sharp, Nathan Brown and Paul Anderson.
Meanwhile the stadium that opened in 1994 as the McAlpine, and which seemed to offer so much promise for the sport of Rugby League, will be home only to the Terriers, with the exception of some concerts in the summer. It’s been almost entirely blue and white, with hardly a hint of claret and gold, for some time – a dispiriting situation for the Giants staff, players and supporters.
As things stand, there won’t be any professional Rugby League played in 2027 in the town where Rugby League was born in August 1895 – it seems fitting that The George is currently a building site, with no sign on Saturday of the blue plaque that marks its special place in sporting history, and no plans for the hotel to reflect that heritage when it is built.
Do we just shrug “Que sera, sera” to that?
It feels desperately sad to me, a damning comment on the sport’s failure to cherish those roots over 131 years, and perhaps a reality check for those of us who occasionally claim that Rugby League is the greatest game of all.
The people of Huddersfield have never really been convinced by that, leaving us to reflect on 32 years of Rugby League memories in the stadium adjoining the River Colne – from Lee Briers giving the Kangaroos a fright in the 2000 World Cup to Danny Brough lifting the League Leaders’ Shield in 2013.
Maybe it doesn’t carry the emotional heft of the end of Central Park, Knowsley Road, Wilderspool, The Boulevard or for that matter Fartown. But it’s a damn shame, all the same.
At least Huddersfield said goodbye in style.