Hopping Mad

That's the club's traditional shirt (ideal for summer, you'd think). Whitehaven moved away from that design only from the mid-1980s, although it keeps coming back.

Can't get the image to attach, but Whitehaven have gone for a couple of retro designs, echoing home and away kits they wore at the back end of the 1980s. Pretty smart. https://whitehavenrl.co.uk

Not sure about. Whitehaven were in a right mess in the early 90s. One season (I forget which), they were so poor on the field, in Division Three, the only clubs they finished above were the handful of familiar also-rans (Chorley Borough, Nottingham City, Trafford Borough etc). Since the mid-1980s, average attendances at the Recreation Ground had halved (from circa 1,800), and the club were in such a bad state financially the chairman had to bring in one of his mates, a professional who knew something about finance, to try to sort things out.

In the days of Carlisle RLFC, playing at Brunton Park then Gillford Park, Carlisle supported a two-division Carlisle & District Amateur Rugby League competition. A couple of former colleagues used to play in it, for Dalston ARLFC. Tragically, all lost now. A squandered opportunity.

Let's see how Goole get on in their pre-season friendlies. Can't help recalling Mansfield beat Wakefield (15-0) and Fulham beat Wigan (24-5). Neither needed easing in.

Oh, come on. It's been done before. Mansfield Marksman opening with a home game against Wakefield Trinity springs to mind immediately. As does Fulham starting against Wigan.

Midlands Hurricanes not the most exciting opposition for Goole's February 23 opener. I thought the RFL would have engineered a meeting with one of the third tier's bigger names.

Went to the Victoria Pleasure Grounds - home to Goole Vikings RL - yesterday (23/11) to watch Goole AFC play football. The VPG's grass pitch is a superb drainer, enabling the football club to get games on when many others have to be postponed. As part of the stadium's multi-million revamp (scheduled for completion within the next 12 months), demolition of the main stand, on the near side, is about to start. Alternative dressing rooms, in portable buildings, have been provided at the near end, and a kit-type, 50-seat, temporary stand installed on the far side. I was told a plastic pitch will go down some time during February or March next year. The football club don't seem overly happy about what, clearly, they regard as their rugby league counterparts 'piggy-backing' on their hard work. A columnist in yesterday's match programme wrote: "The emergence of professional rugby league next year has taken up plenty of column inches etc, and good luck in the venture, which they will need, but the Victoria Pleasure Grounds is a football arena and has had wonderful moments. In no way doubting that the rugby league side will want to be a success, football MUST retain the No 1 spot. After all, without a sizeable chunk of finance, it is unlikely the new facility would have even reached the drawing board. A good word then for [football club] chairman Alan Wilson, who understandably has taken flak over the club's fall from grace, but without a lot of effort with the ground's consultants and others, it [the redevelopment] would certainly be still a pipe dream rather than reality." Crowd for yesterday's football was just 119. Goole lost, 0-3 to Hallam, to remain rooted to the foot of the Northern Counties East League's Premier Division (the ninth tier of English football). Given the size of the crowds Goole Vikings are likely to attract next season, surely it is inevitable the football club will play second fiddle to rugby league? Got chatting to the bloke standing next to me. Turned out to be a Doncaster RLFC (and Goole AFC) supporter, going back to Tattersfield in the 1970s. He's looking forward to watching Goole Vikings games. Could be Vikings' hopes of becoming a lot of semi-local rugby league fans' 'second team' might not be far off the mark.

There's something in this (although what can be seen from The Shay says as much about Halifax as what could be seen from Thrum Hall). New grounds marooned near an outer ring road, plonked down amid generic retail parks and/or industrial estates (e.g. Doncaster, Salford, York), are never going to have the same sense of place, regardless of whether they offer superior spectator comforts.

I went to Comets' new track, at Northside, in 2023. Lot of potential there. I see Workington Reds Ladies have now changed their name to Workington Town Women, and changed their colours from red to blue. Looks like their reserves play at Netherhall RUFC (rugby league ever played there?).

A few years ago, my wife did set up an Excel thingy for me.

It's a lifelong affliction.

Oh, yes. I watch rugby league where I can find it. For clarity, I've added the names of the not obvious rugby league clubs.

Quite a lot of yours, Matt, plus: Alfreton Sports Stadium, Alfreton, football and rugby league (Mansfield Marksman). Alt Park, Huyton, football and rugby league. Anchor Ground, Darwen, football and rugby league (East Lancashire Lions). Asterdale Sports Club, Derby, football and rugby league (Derby City). Bankfoot Cricket Club, Bradford, cricket and rugby league (West Bowling). Belle Vue, Doncaster, football and rugby league. Belle Vue, Wakefield, football and rugby league. Blue Hill Lane, Wortley, rugby union and rugby league (Bramley Buffaloes). Bootham Crescent, York, football and rugby league. Borough Park, Workington, football and rugby league. Brunel Road, Doncaster, rugby union and rugby league (Bentley). Brunton Park, Carlisle, football and rugby league. Burnden Park, Bolton, football and rugby league. Butts Park Arena, Coventry, rugby union and rugby league. Canal Street, Runcorn, football and rugby league. Castle Park, Doncaster, rugby union and rugby league (Sheffield Eagles). Clifton Park, York, rugby union and rugby league. Copeland Athletics Stadium, Whitehaven, athletics and rugby league (Cumbria ARL Youth). Cougar Park, Keighley, football and rugby league. Coundon Road, Coventry, rugby union and rugby league (Coventry Bears ARLFC). Craven Park (v2), Hull, football and rugby league. Deepdale, Preston, football and rugby league (Lancashire Lynx). Derwent Park, Workington, speedway and rugby league. Don Valley Stadium, Sheffield, football and rugby league. Dukes Park, Bridlington, rugby union and rugby league (Bridlington Bulls). Filtrona Park, South Shields, football and rugby league (Gateshead Thunder). Giant Axe, Lancaster, football and rugby league (Lancaster ARLFC). Gillford Park, Carlisle, football and rugby league. Greenwood Road, Billingham, rugby union and rugby league (Teesside Steelers). Grundy Hill, Horwich, football and rugby league (Chorley Borough). Halton Stadium, Widnes, football and rugby league. Hare Lane, Chester, rugby union and rugby league (Chester Wolves). Headingley, Leeds, rugby union and rugby league. Heywood Road, Sale, rugby union and rugby league. Hoghton Road, Sutton, football and rugby league (Highfield). Horsfall Stadium, Bradford, football and rugby league (West Bowling). Hurst Cross, Ashton, football and rugby league (Oldham). International Stadium, Gateshead, football and rugby league. Kingston Park, Newcastle, rugby union and rugby league. Knowsley Road, St Helens, football and rugby league. Laund Hill, Huddersfield, rugby union and rugby league (Siddal). Lenton Lane, Nottingham, football and rugby league (Nottingham Outlaws). LNER Community Stadium, York, football and rugby league. Mayfield Sports Centre, Castleton, football and rugby league (Rochdale Mayfield). Mount Pleasant, Batley, football and rugby league. Odsal Stadium, Bradford, speedway and rugby league. Ovenden Park, Halifax, rugby union and rugby league (Queensbury). Owlerton Stadium, Sheffield, football, speedway and rugby league. Park Lane, Whitefield, rugby union and rugby league (Swinton). Peninsula Stadium (Moor Lane), Salford, football and rugby league (Swinton). Post Office Road, Featherstone, football and rugby league. Red Rocks, St Helens, rugby union and rugby league (Thatto Heath Crusaders). Seamer Road, Scarborough, football and rugby league (Scarborough Pirates). South Leeds Stadium, Belle Isle, football and rugby league. Station View, Harrogate, rugby union and rugby league (Harrogate Hawks). The Shay, Halifax, football, speedway and rugby league. The Sycamores, Bramhope, rugby union and rugby league (Leeds Akkies). The Warrels, Bramley, rugby union and rugby league (Bramley Buffaloes). Valerie Park, Prescot, football and rugby league. Valley Parade, Bradford, football and rugby league. Victoria Pleasure Grounds, Goole, football and rugby league (Goole Vikings). Wembley Stadium (v1), football and rugby league. Woodlands Memorial Ground, Lytham, rugby union and rugby league (Blackpool Panthers). York Railway Institute, rugby union and rugby league (York Lokos).

The end covers at Barrow were unsafe, I was told, and had to be removed.

Huyton didn't fold. They relocated, and became Runcorn Highfield. After Huyton's departure, Knowsley United FC moved into Alt Park - and transformed the ground. By the time Knowsley were playing in the Northern Premier League, Alt Park was really quite tidy.

Yes, that's right. If you walk up Wigginton Road, away from town, you'll pass the site of York's old ground (opposite the hospital). Beyond the traffic lights, on the right, there's one of the entrances to the chocolate factory. At present, some of the buildings are being converted into apartments, with houses going up on disused bits of the factory's land. The (huge) development is called The Cocoa Works.

In his 'The Best Years of Our Lives' book, Paul Wilson tells a good story about a York-Wigan game at floodlight-free Clarence Street. It was the time of year when the days are short. In gathering gloom, Wigan's David Stephenson was struggling to line up a kick at goal. Somebody jumped over the pitch barrier, and handed him an ignited lighter! Went to Clarence Street just once - right at the start of its final season - for an August midweek evening fixture, with Batley, kicking off at 6.15. Smashing ground. A real splash of amber in a brown cityscape. Little did I realise, 20 years later, I'd be living in York, on Wigginton Road, 150 yards from the 'lost' ground's former main entrance. This time of year, in particular, I wish the ground was there and rugby league still had winter matches. When I walk past, I always touch the white, oval heritage sign, detailing the ground's history.

Tattersfield managed to sort out floodlights - along with numerous other improvements - before it closed. Recall they were ex-railway yard floodlights (makes sense).

Must be passed down through generations. Kids were still doing that, in the mid-80s, on the roads leading to Anfield or Goodison. Probably still are!

Me, too. Part of rugby league's character was wrapped up in the traditional grounds at which it was played. Inevitably, some of that has been lost. Always enjoyed the banter in the tin shed side stand at Post Office Road. At one game, a Fev fan had been baiting the visiting Oldham lot about being sheepshaggers. Losing patience, an Oldham bloke, in a thick Lancashire accent, yelled: "Yeah, we shag 'em then you eat 'em."

A player (forget who), in a match programme Q&A, asked about his least favourite ground, responded: "Watersheddings, for reasons obvious to anyone who has been there." I liked Watersheddings - along with most of rugby league's traditional 'lost' grounds. Final visit was for the much-delayed last game, against Swinton. Appropriately, it was played in freezing, foggy weather. A relic from a bygone era was the dank gents under the little stand on the Thrum Hall Lane side at Halifax. Usually, it was unlit, which, after nightfall, only added to the 'fun'. Fartown was a real favourite. Even when Huddersfield's crowds dropped to a few hundred, games there felt like an occasion. Tiny dressing rooms, mind - although not as small as the original ones at Carlisle's Gillford Park, where, IIRC, there wasn't sufficient space for everybody to change simultaneously. Intermittent hot water, too! Remember, on a snowy, bitter, December afternoon, reporting a game at McLaren Field, Bramley. A Villagers club official brought whisky miniatures into the press box at half-time! Better than the press box at Hilton Park, Leigh. Its seats generally had a coating of pigeon poo. The press box - its filthy windows needed cleaning before every game - in the now-demolished main stand at the Recreation Ground, Whitehaven, was horrible. For a rearranged, midweek evening game, against Hull Kingston Rovers, its solitary bulb had blown. Haven laid on a candle, which the three occupants gathered around. I got the impression the visiting Hull Daily Mail reporter, a big guy who could barely squeeze into the space available, had never seen anything like it! As ex-Leeds and Halifax half-back Neil Hague remarked: "Away games in Cumbria were like stepping off the end of the world." When I was at university (Liverpool), I was part of a little band of sport nuts that travelled across Lancashire (and bits of Cheshire), by train or bus, to watch Sunday afternoon games. Enjoyed going to Runcorn Highfield, partly because it was a quick rail ride from (s)Lime Street and partly because, compared to, say, Knowsley Road, Wilderspool or Central Park, the atmosphere was low-key and relaxed. At opposition play-the-balls, Geoff Fletcher's voice, urging his team-mates to "Meet 'em!", would boom across the Canal Street pitch. One of our group, a dentist, was from Worcester. He had got into rugby league through the BBC's coverage. On Sunday mornings, at breakfast, in our hall of residence, he'd look outside. If it was murky and/or raining, he'd rub his hands with glee, and remark: "Rugby league weather!" We didn't forget our first visit to Station Road, Swinton, for a midweek evening Challenge Cup replay against Leeds. Having slogged over, from Liverpool, on the train, we arrived to find the gates locked and the ground in darkness. Between departure and arrival, the game had been postponed - pitch frozen. No social media in the mid-1980s! I felt Station Road, even when sparsely populated, had the same sense of occasion as Fartown. By chance, in January 1987, I happened to be at the last Blackpool Borough first team game at Borough Park. First and only visit. Whitehaven won, 8-5, in front of 386 spectators. Nobody realised Borough wouldn't be back therefore no fanfare. Borough saw out the season at Bloomfield Road, the Blackpool FC ground.

Actor Timothy West, 90. theguardian.com: The actor Timothy West, whose career ranged from Shakespeare, Ibsen and Pinter on stage to TV appearances in Brass, EastEnders and Great Canal Journeys (with his wife, Prunella Scales), has died aged 90. His children Juliet, Samuel and Joseph West said in a statement issued by his agent: “After a long and extraordinary life on and off the stage, our darling father Timothy West died peacefully in his sleep yesterday evening. He was 90 years old. “Tim was with friends and family at the end. He leaves his wife Prunella Scales, to whom he was married for 61 years, a sister, a daughter, two sons, seven grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren. All of us will miss him terribly. “We would like to thank the incredible NHS staff at St George’s Hospital, Tooting and at Avery Wandsworth for their loving care during his last days.”

Couple of extracts, about refereeing, in an online Guardian article (12/11) about leading referee David Coote (everybody will know the background). Caught my eye. Let us also not overplay the offence here. Who among us has not said very bad words about someone at work. Here’s a secret: everyone hates everyone else in football. Everyone, even nice saintly people with honorifics after their name, calls everyone else this kind of thing all the time. And the life of a referee is at the sharp end of this, a business of unalloyed and near-constant abuse, essentially an uncontrolled social experiment on the breaking points of assorted slightly officious human beings. Refereeing is basically a nightmare now, a job that requires you to be simultaneously a regulation hyper-nerd, super-cool air traffic controller, long distance runner, font of matey common sense and also immune to mass abuse and threats of violence. David Coote, washed up on a sofa, bleeding self-pity, high on the validation of a crowing circle of hostile acolytes. Is this a surprising outcome?

Previous head coach, since 2022, Josh Ireland, resigned towards the end of September, ending a three-year spell at the club. Albion statement said he had stepped down voluntarily. Albion's chairman, Andrew Stokes, was quoted as saying: "I sincerely hope Josh will continue to work with us in some capacity and help shape the future Albion."