“IF someone made a film about this season, I don’t think people would believe it, honestly.”
North Wales Crusaders might have been unable to provide the perfect ending to the script as Doncaster won the League One promotion final.
But Andy Moulsdale, chief executive of the country’s sole surviving professional Rugby League club after the demise of West Wales Raiders last December, believes there are positives aplenty from a campaign that was fraught with problems before finishing with a memorable play-off push.
Now he’s looking to build on this year’s achievements under player-coach Carl Forster, with the club confident that their days of scratching around for a place to play due to the unavailability of Stadiwm CSM at Colwyn Bay are a thing of the past.
It’s been well chronicled that only two of nine home 2023 league games were staged in the coastal town that North Wales, formed in late 2011 from the ashes of the former Crusaders Super League club, relocated to from Wrexham in 2021.
After a clash with rugby union, which is also played at the council-owned Stadiwm CSM, meant the opening-round meeting with Dewsbury was switched to Widnes, Crusaders took on Oldham in Colwyn Bay before work began on replacing the grass pitch with an artificial 4G surface.
They were due to return in mid-June, but with the project overrunning, matches were staged in Llanrwst, Chester and Rhyl before Stadiwm CSM was the scene of the 62-20 final-round win over London Skolars, which sealed the final play-off place.
That was a seventh victory under Forster, who last November left Barrow to replace long-serving Anthony Murray, who had moved to Workington, and had to deal with a glut of injury problems early in his tenure.
Crusaders lost their first six league games before four wins in a row showed the 31-year-old former Whitehaven and Rochdale player-coach was starting to find his feet.
Even so, four defeats in the next five, including a 40-38 ‘home’ loss to Cornwall at Rhyl, meant play-off involvement for the third season running was looking increasingly unlikely.
However a 28-22 penultimate-round defeat of Doncaster at Chester provided a shot in the arm, and once in the play-offs, Crusaders, who last featured in the Championship in 2014, won at Workington (26-10), Oldham (13-12) and Hunslet (25-18) to seal their trip to South Yorkshire, where they put up a real fight before going down 18-6.
“There have been some really tough times this year,” reflected 36-year-old Moulsdale, a former club halfback and captain (and third-tier promotion winner in 2013) who has been in his current post since 2018.
“The situation with the stadium was really difficult, and impacted on us quite a lot.
“And at the start of the season, we struggled, partly because of being on the road all the time, partly because of injuries and partly because of a tough set of fixtures when Carl was still settling into the job.
“But we have shown a lot of resilience as a club, and were confident we had the potential to turn it around.
“Looking back, the home defeat by Cornwall was probably a turning point, because it was a wake-up call for everyone. But it galvanised us, and we kicked on.
“To put ourselves in a position where we were just one win off being promoted less than a year after not even having a coach in place is unbelievable.
“I’m so pleased for the players, who showed faith in me and the club when signing up even though they didn’t know who would be in charge of the team, and also our fantastic fans, who have stuck with us.
“They kept coming when we were playing all over the place and turned out in their numbers for the final and backed us superbly.
“Now the challenge for us and Carl is to build on this season and push forward.
“With the new pitch in place, the situation at Colwyn Bay will be far more stable, and because the surface is so much more durable, we shouldn’t even have to switch cup-ties, which we’ve had to do previously when there have been fixture clashes so as not to overuse the old grass.
“And Carl will have the opportunity to put his own stamp on the squad and have a more complete pre-season, so hopefully we will be start more strongly than this time.”
